The Isle of Pingo Pongo

The Isle of Pingo Pongo
Lobby card
Directed by	Fred Avery
Story by	Geo Manuell
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Irven Spence
Color process	Technicolor
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corp.
Release date	May 28, 1938 (1938-05-28)
Running time	8 minutes
Language	English

The Isle of Pingo Pongo is a 1938 Merrie Melodies cartoon supervised by Tex Avery.^[1] The short was released on May 28, 1938, and features an early version of Elmer Fudd.^[2] This is the first of a series of travelogue spoofs, and the first Warner Bros. "spot gag" cartoon, where each vignette is punctuated by a moment of blackout.^[3]

The short follows a cruise ship on a trip from New York to the island, presumably located in the South Seas. The ship sails past the Statue of Liberty, who acts as a traffic cop, past the "Canary Islands" and "Sandwich Islands".

The cartoon revolves around themes of jazz and primitivism, and is set on a remote island. The central character is an early version of Elmer Fudd known as Elmer, and most of the cartoon consists of travelogue-type narration and blackout gags, many including Elmer. The inhabitants of Pingo-Pongo are mostly tall, black, and have big feet and lips. Like other cartoons of the era, the native inhabitants resemble animals and reflect stereotypes of the time. The natives are at first playing drums, then break into a jazz beat, still described as a "primitive savage rhythm," which leads the audience to connect the savage jungle to modern jazz music.

There is a running gag with Elmer where he says, "Now Boss?", but the narrator keeps saying "Not now". That is, until the end, where the sun fails to set when he says, "as the sun sinks slowly into the West". Elmer reappears and says "Now Boss?" The boss says "Yeah, now!" Elmer shoots the sun, making it sink into the West and ending the film.

• The Isle of Pingo Pongo is the first of Avery's spoofs of travelogues, followed on with similar cartoons such as Detouring America, A Day at the Zoo, Fresh Fish, Cross Country Detours, and Crazy Cruise.
• This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on August 19, 1944. Because the short credits Schlesinger on re-release, the original closing title card was kept. Despite the cartoon's re-release, a physical copy of the original titles is known to exist.
• Because of the racial stereotypes used against black people throughout the short, United Artists chose to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. As such, the short was placed into the so-called Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people.^[4]

• The Isle of Pingo Pongo at IMDb
• The Isle of Pingo Pongo (Blue Ribbon) on the Internet Archive