Curtain Razor

Curtain Razor is a 1949 Looney Tunes short directed by I. Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a play on "curtain raiser," a stage act that is taking place before a more important one.

Plot[]

An operatic tenor voice and piano music for the Act III Prelude from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin accompany the opening credits and earth-shaking scene as hopeful stage talents wait outside the office of Goode and Korny: Talent Agents. While singing, the voice boasts of his previous experience in other venues. The voice turns out to belong to a tiny grasshopper, who ends his performance with Blanc's trademark pronunciation of "Cuc-amonga". Porky, who is the agency's producer and listening to the auditions, tells the grasshopper he might have a spot for him.

The rest of the short consists of a series of acts by various performers, most of whom Porky rejects, often via the use of a trap door:

• Act 1: A hen (who bears a resemblance to Disney's Clara Cluck) clucks "Blue Danube". Porky seems to like this act, but the hen literally "lays an egg" and takes this event in its figurative sense in that her act flopped. Porky pulls a lever next to his desk that sends the hen through a trap door in the floor. The egg hovers for a moment and hatches to reveal a sad-looking, Tweety-like chick who waves goodbye before also falling through the trap door.
• Act 2: A character resembling Cecil Turtle, but with Mel Blanc's voice says he is the "man of a thousand voices." He goes through a rapid fire montage of voice impressions (including Lionel Barrymore, Senator Claghorn, Bugs Bunny, Rochester, and Jimmy Durante). Porky says that he counted only 999 voices. The turtle is stumped as to what his thousandth voice is and exits the office hoping that he'll remember it later (a similar character is Noah's dad in the Noah Byrd Movies and series).
• Act 3: Bingo the Parrot (from "Catch as Cats Can"), Frankie the Rooster, and Al the Duck, resembling Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Al Jolson, respectively, sing the popular hit song April Showers, each in the distinctive manner of their namesakes. Porky tells them that he'll consider their act but says after they leave that it was a low class act that only bobbysoxers would like.
• Act 4: A literal two-headed man enters the office. Porky gushes "Oh boy two-headed! This ought to be a sensational act!" The two-headed man exclaims "Act, Shmact! I'm the janitor," as he empties Porky's pail into another pail and leaves.
• Act 5: J. Fenton Hadding, a dog in a bathing suit, places his briefcase on the floor. It turns out to be an elevated platform that the dog rides through the office skylight five hundred feet into the air. The dog then dives into a glass of water that he is holding in his hand, describing his whole act throughout. Porky sends the dog stuck in his water glass down the trap door.
• Act 6: Crawford Coo, a man in a circus ringmaster's outfit, has a trained pigeon act. He sets up various pigeon-sized acrobatic equipment and releases the pigeons from a box, but the pigeons fly out the window. Crawford tries tap dancing instead, but Porky sends him down the trap door.
• Act 7: A shaggy dog enters. Porky thinks it's a dog act, but the dog hands him a business card, announcing that he is the Itch and Scratch Flea Circus. The dog blows a whistle and fleas hop from his back to build a tiny circus tent and carnival midway, then dismantle it when the dog blows the whistle again. The music played here is the Wackyland Rubber Band rendition of "Frat" as featured in the shorts "Tin Pan Alley Cats", "Knights Must Fall", and "Dough for the Do-Do".
• A running gag found throughout the short is the fox frequently barging in to arrogantly brag to Porky about his "sensational act", only for Porky to reject him every time. The first time happens between Act 1 and Act 2, A fox bursts in telling Porky that his act is the best ever, but Porky tells him that it's not his turn yet. The second time happens between Act 4 and Act 5 when the fox barges into the office again, telling Porky to watch his act, only for Porky tells him to go back out and wait his turn. The third and final time happens between Act 6 and Act 7 when the fox bursts in again, only for the fed-up Porky to send him down the trap door.

Finally, it is the fox's turn to do his act. He dons a devil's costume and swallows atomic powder, TNT, gasoline, and finally, a lit match, which he explodes into total nothingness. Porky applauds him, thinking the act is terrific, but the fox, now deceased and as a transparent ghost, comes through the office door and says that there is only one tiny problem with the act: he can only do it once!

Caricatures[]

• Mel Blanc - "Cuc-amonga"
• Lionel Barrymore
• Kenny Delmar - Cecil Turtle's Senator Claghorn
• Eddie "Rochester" Anderson
• Jimmy Durante
• Bing Crosby
• Frank Sinatra
• Al Jolson

Availability[]

(1984) VHS
The Looney Tunes Video Show Volume 11

(1985) VHS
Porky Pig's Screwball Comedies

(1985) Beta
Porky Pig's Screwball Comedies

(1990) VHS
Porky Pig (1990)

(1993) LaserDisc
Looney Tunes: Curtain Calls: Classic Music and Show Business Cartoons

(1996) VHS
Looney Tunes Collection - Porky Pig

(2000) VHS
Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 3: The Vocal Genius

(2001) VHS
Looney Tunes Special Bumper Collection Volume 9

(2008) DVD
The Joan Crawford Collection: Volume 2

(2012) DVD
Looney Tunes Super Stars' Porky & Friends: Hilarious Ham (restored)

(2017) DVD
Looney Tunes Super Stars Family Multi-Feature Vol. 2, Disc 3

(2023) Blu-ray
Flamingo Road

(2023) Blu-ray
Cats Don't Dance

Streaming[]

HBO Max Latin America / Brazil (2022 - 2024)

Censorship[]

• Much like "Show Biz Bugs", this cartoon was edited on Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends (syndicated version and FOX version) to remove a character drinking gasoline (the fox performing his act for Porky in which he dresses like the devil and ingests dangerous chemicals). The difference between Cartoon Network's cut of this cartoon and the Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends cut is that the former left in the part where the fox swallows a match while the latter did not (though when the end was shown as a "Hip Clip", the match lighting and swallowing were not censored).^[3][4][5]
• Nickelodeon's version also edited the fox's chemical ingesting part and edited similarly to the Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends version, where both the gasoline drinking and the lit match being swallowed were cut. The Nickelodeon-edited version starts with the fox drinking atomic powder and TNT, then immediately exploding.
  • Also cut from the Nickelodeon version was an early scene of the duck version of Al Jolson talking about his "mammy", followed by the Bing Crosby parrot hitting the Al Jolson duck with his pipe.
• MeTV used to air this short uncut until 8 February 2023, when an installment of Toon In With Me aired a version that, like Nickelodeon, also cut the Jolson duck begging for his "Mammy". The difference between Nickelodeon's edited version and MeTV's edited version is that the latter's version left the pipe hitting, making for a non-sequitur joke. MeTV Toons aired it uncut on 17 August 2024.
• When CBS aired this cartoon in the 1970s as part of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, the title was changed from "Curtain Razor" to "Show Stopper", as the censors at the time felt the title was "too violent", despite the cartoon containing no razors, razor-inflicted violence, or dangerous behavior involving a razor.
• When this short was released on the late-1980s Spanish VHS release Festival de Dibujos Animados Volume 4: Porky Pig and the Porky Pig tape of the 1995 Mexican VHS series VideoToons released by Videovista, the entire sequence featuring the three crooner birds Bingo, Frankie, and Al was removed completely for reasons unknown (possibly because the people behind the dub for this cartoon could not redub the singing or because the celebrity caricatures of Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra would be unknown to Spanish-speaking audiences).^{[6][7][dead link]}

Notes[]

• The short is similar in concept to "Hamateur Night" directed by Tex Avery ten years prior, since both shorts are centered on a series of comical stage act-based gags that frequently get rejected via the form of a trap door.
• Both radio and vaudeville were still very popular at the time this short was released. Similar variety shows would soon be seen on television in American homes since the 1950s.
• This is the final cartoon to use green Color Rings for the opening. The next cartoon would have orange rings.
• Dave Barry did many of the uncredited celebrity impersonations, as with most of the other celebrity-based shorts such as "Slick Hare" and many others.
• Scenes from this cartoon were used in Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island, albeit with all scenes involving both the turtle and the fox not included.
• This short is one of three non-Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1949 not to get a Blue Ribbon reissue. The others were "Holiday for Drumsticks" and "Porky Chops".

Gallery[]

Bingo the Parrot, Frankie the Rooster, and Al the Duck (Dave Barry)

References[]