Baby Bottleneck

Baby Bottleneck is a 1946 Looney Tunes short directed by Robert Clampett.

Title[]

The title is a play on "baby bottle", "bottleneck" meaning something that slows down progress and movement.

Plot[]

A massive baby boom is happening in the United States following the end of World War II; a newspaper headline reads "UNPRECEDENTED DEMAND FOR BABIES OVERWORKS STORK!" An overworked stork, who is a caricature of actor Jimmy Durante, is getting drunk in the Stork's Club, saying "I do all the woik, and the fadders get all the credit!" There is an emergency delivery in which inexperienced animals take the babies to their parents. As a result, babies are being sent to the wrong parents; another headline reads, "NATURALLY SOME SLIGHT MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE." A baby hippopotamus has been delivered to a Scottish Terrier, a baby alligator to a pig, a baby skunk to a goose, and so on.

To clear up the confusion, Porky Pig is brought in to manage the factory, with Daffy Duck as his assistant. The babies, including Tweety in a brief cameo, are going along a conveyor belt (to the tune of Raymond Scott's famous "Powerhouse") and sent by various animals via the aid of jet-powered mechanical storks which helps speeds up the baby deliveries, while Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby, who had four sons, Eddie Cantor, who had five daughters and no sons, and the Dionne Quintuplets. "Mr. Dionne, puh-leeze!!", is Daffy's shocked reaction.

At first, things seem to be going smoothly until a stray egg is found without an address. Porky decides to have Daffy sit on it until it hatches, but Daffy refuses to sit around on top of an egg. Furious, Porky chases Daffy around the factory, complete with an imitation of Porky by Daffy, until they are stuck on the conveyor belt. The belt stuffs both of them into one package, with Porky as the legs and Daffy as the top half, and sends them to Africa, where a gorilla is waiting for her arrival. When the gorilla looks at the "baby," Porky peeks through the diaper, causing the gorilla to freak out and to cry on the telephone, "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!!"

Caricatures[]

• Jimmy Durante - The drunk stork
• Billy Gray - "I'm only three-and-a-half seconds old"

Availability[]

(1986) VHS
Viddy-Oh! For Kids Cartoon Festivals: Porky Pig and Daffy Duck Cartoon Festival Featuring "Tick Tock Tuckered"

(1988) VHS
Cartoon Moviestars: Porky!

(1988) LaserDisc
Cartoon Moviestars: Daffy! and Porky!

(1991) LaserDisc
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 8: 1940s Zanies

(1992) VHS
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 8: 1940s Zanies

(1996) VHS
Looney Tunes Collection - Further Adventures of Porky Pig

(2004) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc Three (original titles restored)

(2004) DVD
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 2 Disc 1

(2005) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Tweety and Sylvester Volume 1

(2011) Blu-ray
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (original titles restored)

(2011) DVD
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (original titles restored)

(2011) DVD
Tweety Pie

(2012) Blu-ray
Looney Tunes Showcase: Volume 1

(2012) DVD
Looney Tunes 3 Feature Collection Best Of

(2013) DVD
Best of Warner Bros. 50 Cartoon Collection: Looney Tunes

(2014) DVD
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volumes 2-3 Repack

(2018) DVD
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volumes 1-3 Repack

Streaming[]

Boomerang App (2017 - 2024)

HBO Max (2020 - 2023)

Max (2023 - )

Music Cues^[3][]

• "Buzz-Buzz-Buzz" (Will You Be My Honey?) - by Alice Simms [Credits]
• "Rock-a-Bye Baby" - Effie I. Canning [Opening shot]
• "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" - Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer [Inexperienced help for emergency deliveries, Sung by Daffy Duck as he walks off]
• "Rock-a-Bye Baby" - Effie I. Canning [Baby hippo & Scotty dog, Newspaper shot, Ending]
• "Piggy Wiggy Woo" - Abel Baer, Paul Cunningham and Ira Schuster [Baby alligator scene, baby cat and Mr. Mouse]
• (Ho-dle-ay) Start the Day Right - Maurice Spitalny [Daffy answers the telephones]
• "Powerhouse" - Raymond Scott) [Conveyor belt sequences]

Censorship[]

• The original version of the pig and alligator scene had a close-up shot of the mother pig telling the baby alligator "Don't touch that dial!" This was removed before its theatrical release for being too suggestive.^[4] The shot is now considered lost as the release on the Golden Collection never restored it.
• On the Turner Entertainment "dubbed" version (except for Cartoon Network's The Bob Clampett Show where cartoons aired uncut), partially removed was the baby alligator delivered to the mother pig, so that the cut did not seem as abrupt as it is when the cartoon is unedited here. Also removed as of 2001 was the scene near the beginning of the cartoon, with the drunken stork at the Stork Club (though that was only removed on Cartoon Network versions of the short that aired outside of The Bob Clampett Show).

Goofs[]

• In the scene with Mr. Mouse and the baby cat, his pipe disappears when he climbs up the wall.
• The muzzle of the baby puppy changes multiple times between shots.
  • The baby puppy suddenly becomes a baby bear once the conveyor belt is reversed.
• When Daffy talks to Porky, his mouth doesn't move until the shot changes.
• The size of Porky and Daffy's hats change between animators. Bill Melendez, Izzy Ellis, and Manny Gould draw Daffy's hat too big and Porky's hat too small, however Rod Scribner draws Porky and Daffy's hat the right size.
• When Porky is pulling on Daffy's leg, Mel Blanc is saying Daffy's lines in Porky's voice, complete with the stutter.
• When Porky and Daffy have a "wild take" on the conveyor belt, the wrong cel of Daffy was placed for one frame.
• During the close-up when Porky chases Daffy, his gloves are changed to the color of his skin.
• In the scene when Porky chases Daffy on the conveyor belt, Porky disappears for a single frame.
• When the machine prepares Porky and Daffy to bent sent off, for two frames, Daffy's eyes are painted incorrectly.
• In the original 1946 non-Blue Ribbon version of this cartoon, when Porky comes out of the drum a few frames are missing when he blinks. This occurs on the original non-Blue Ribbon print of "Book Revue" as well.

Notes[]

• This short was copyrighted on 25 December 1945.^[5]
• This was the very first cartoon to air as a "dubbed version" on Cartoon Network, replacing the cartoon's a.a.p. print which had aired on the channel (as well as its older sister channels TBS and TNT) in previous years. This cartoon's mid-1990s Turner remaster debuted on an airing of Cartoon Network's The Bugs and Daffy Show on 11 May 1997.^[6]
• Robert McKimson allegedly did some animation on this cartoon, but this remains unfounded.
• Much of the backgrounds in this cartoon are simple gradients.
• This is the last Porky Pig or Daffy Duck cartoon not to credit Mel Blanc as the voice of these characters. The clause in his contract granting him exclusive voice credit had been extended to their cartoons in March 1945.
• The cut line "Don't touch that dial!", was a popular slogan by the Blondie comic strip radio show, which is a reference to radio announcers telling viewers not to touch their dial on their radio to entice viewers to stay on the station.^[7] This was previously parodied in Norm McCabe's "Confusions of a Nutzy Spy".
• During the telephone scene with Daffy, he makes references to numerous celebrities of the time.
  • Bing Crosby had four boys by 1946, which is why Daffy tells him that his quota is used up.
  • Eddie Cantor had five girls and was desperate for a son. Daffy mocks him by saying "You say you haven't got that boy yet? Well, if at first, you don't succeed..."
    • Years prior, Clampett made an entire cartoon mocking Cantor's lack of a son in "Slap Happy Pappy".
  • The Dionne quintuplets became famous for being the first quintuplets to survive infancy. The joke is that Mr. Dionne requests another set of quintuplets to Daffy's shock.
• Porky also mentions a few people while in the control room.
  • According to Michael Barrier, Roydan Stork was someone whom Clampett met on a school lot that neighbored the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio.
  • Jimmy Doo Quite-a-Little is a reference to American general, Jimmy Doolittle who is famous for his raid on Tokyo on 18 April 1942.
• A baby bird that resembles Tweety appears on the conveyor belt.
• When the babies are burped, they literally say "burp" because it was against the Hays Code for films to feature a realistic belching sound. Another instance of this happening is in "What's Cookin' Doc?", another Bob Clampett cartoon.
• The mother gorilla crying out the line "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!" at the ending upon encountering the Daffy/Porky-hybrid "baby" delivered to her is a reference to John J. Anthony, who conducted a daily marital radio advice program at the time, The Goodwill Hour; its stock phrase was, "I have a problem, Mr. Anthony". This Mr. Anthony character was also referenced in "Ain't That Ducky" the previous year.
• This is the only Looney Tunes cartoon shown in the openings in Futurama that is not in the public domain. It was shown in the opening credits of the episodes "I, Roommate" and "The Series Has Landed".

Gallery[]

Credits

Director credit

Lobby card

Lobby card

References[]