Swooner Crooner

In the only Porky Pig cartoon to receive an Oscar nomination, filmdom's most famous swine owns a farm and has the hens lay eggs all day - to the tune of (what else?) Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" - but the hens get distracted by a crooning rooster. But when Porky hires another rooster to woo the hens back, the whole ordeal really turns into a battle of wits.

An obvious aspect of "Swooner Crooner" is that it's truly a product of WWII, what with the clear allusion to Rosie the Riveter. But of course, they parody singers like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Yeah, those guys may have been really popular in those days, but I just bet that most people in my generation believe that BC and FS deserved to get mocked as brutally as possible.

OK, so I don't know whether or not I can speak for every member of my generation. But I can say that this is a really funny cartoon. It got included in Leonard Maltin's "Bugs and Daffy: Wartime Cartoons".

I have loved Looney Tunes cartoons for as long as I can remember, and I could watch them all day if I wanted to. Swooner Crooner is just wonderful, and one of Porky's best for me. Porky is great value here, he can be bland when he is partnered with stronger characters but he is always endearing regardless. The animation is beautiful to watch, very crisp and vibrant in colour, while the music has so much character and nostalgic value. The songs are a treasure trove of old favourites, and are just a joy to the ear. Maybe the story is not the strongest one in the world, though it is an original one, but that doesn't matter in the slightest to me as there is never a dull moment and the whole of Swooner Crooner is relentlessly entertaining. The dialogue has freshness and wit, the gags are clever and imaginatively timed- the auditions especially are an absolute riot- and the caricatures of Frank Sinatra(the best one for me), Bing Crosby, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Durante, Nelson Eddy and Al Jolson are really fun to spot. Mel Blanc's vocal characterisations never disappoint, always a large part of why Looney Tunes cartoons work so well as a majority whole, and Swooner Crooner is no exception. All in all, wonderful and recommended with no hesitation. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Porky Pig has a highly efficient egg production farm. The hens are placed on a production line. They are all distracted by Frank Sinatra Rooster. Soon, none of the hens are at the factory to lay eggs. Porky starts auditioning other crooners to lure the hens back.

This is a fine Porky Pig cartoon. It got an Oscar nomination. It may not be as good for the modern audience. We are not all that familiar with the old crooners' singing even if we know their names. I can imagine the old audiences recognizing each rooster's representation and having fun with it. That's not happening for the present day.

This wartime cartoon features Porky Pig as manager of the "Flockheed Eggcraft Factory." Yes, nobody loves plays-on-words more than the writers of these cartoons.

The hens clock in for their wartime assembly-line duties. The assembly is clever and funny, how they picture the eggs being dumped out of a bombardier, caught below with catcher's mitt, etc.

The caricature of Frank Sinatra had me laughing out loud. If you've seen pictures of Frank when he was really young and the girls were screaming over him, you saw a real skinny guy with a bow-tie. The artists here had fun with that, and portraying the different ways in which all the hens "swoon."

Later, we see other famous singers "audition" but no one makes the grade until "Bing" shows up....and the swooning starts all over again. The the two stars both sing and the egg production goes sky high!

I grew up a decade later but I can still appreciate this fantastic cartoon, which was part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three.

Good cartoon.

Unlike Lee Eisenberg I won't write irrelevant, completely out of the blue stuff in a review, he wrote something like everyone in his generation firmly believes Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra should be mocked as brutally as possible. Where did this come from? I don't know. Why was it worth including? I have no idea. What on earth leads him to believe that Crosby and Sinatra are today viewed alongside Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini as some of history's greatest dictators? only in Eisenberg's special little mind can this one be answered.

The cartoon itself is highly recommended.The fact that it is able to skillfully blend a great mix of WW2 propaganda together with humorous parody's of contemporary entertainers at the time, All while not looking a bit dated by todays standards and reaming one of the most entertaining Looney Tune cartons and far more entertaining than most cartoons produced today alone earns it a great deal of merit.

8/10 Highly recommended.