You Ought to Be in Pictures

An amusing behind-the-scenes, studio-tour parody, "You Ought to Be in Pictures" is especially comical as a gag on what was happening to Porky Pig's character in the Looney Tunes cartoons. In the black-and-white beginning, he was Leon Schlessinger and company's top toon, starring as a stuttering everyman-type anthropomorphic hog in such innovative animated shorts as "Porky in Wackyland" (1937). But, he soon began to be overshadowed by one of the characters the cartoonists tried to make his side-kick, Daffy Duck, who in this film tries to trick Porky into getting out of his contract so as to break into live-action features--and not coincidently put Daffy in line for a promotion. Little did they know, however, and unaddressed in this film, is that another star was just getting started at Looney Tunes the same year, Bugs Bunny. In the tradition of tragic irony, the Pig has been a secondary character ever since as if serving out Schlessinger's punishment for him trying to once be released from his contract. Echoes there of John Gilbert's career sabotaged by Louis B. Mayer holding a grudge. Or William Haines run out by Mayer. Or Judy Garland mistreated by Mayer.... Well, Mayer just wasn't a good guy.

Anyways, it seems as though just about every animation department made this type of cartoon-interacting-with-animators film at some point, and it's one of my favorite types of cartoons, for the reflexivity and technical craft of mixing animation and live action. Winsor McCay adding a framing narrative to explain how he made his cartoons and also becoming one himself in "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914), Willis O'Brien's work with stop-motion animation culminating with matte shots in "King Kong" (1933), "Cartoon Factory" (1924) taking advantage of rotoscoping in Fleischer's Koko the Clown - Out of the Inkwell series, selective double-exposures and editing trickery in Disney's "Alice's Wonderland" (1923) and the rest of the Alice comedies, and this. It's not "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) , but it's still clever and well done. The bit where Porky pretends to be Oliver Hardy to sneak onto the studio lot is pretty good, and the drawing live-action actors' hands for their interaction with the Pig is an innovation that I'm not sure I've seen done prior, or at least not quite as thoroughly. Another one of the "50 Greatest Cartoons" according to Jerry Beck's Looney-Tunes-heavy book, which although I might not go that far, there are certainly worse ways to spend nine minutes.

Friz Freleng's 'You Ought to be in Pictures' is a brilliant, atypical Warner Bros. cartoon. Beautifully combining animation and live action film (only Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Porky's car are animated), it stars many of the Warner staff, including Leon Schlesinger who, despite playing himself, manages to be hammier than the pig he's acting opposite! While the animators at the Warner Bros. studio are out at lunch, the newly drawn Daffy Duck convinces the newly drawn Porky Pig that he deserves better than a career in animation and sets him on his way to seeking a starring role in the movies. His motives, of course, are to get rid of Porky so that he can take his place as Warner's big star. An early glimpse of the greedy, narcissistic version of Daffy (as opposed to the crazy version of Daffy more commonly seen in these early black and white shorts), this is also another clear case of Daffy stealing the cartoon, something that would lead to life imitating art as Daffy really did replace Porky as Warner's most popular star. Porky's trip to a movie studio and his high speed chase through the streets to get his job back make 'You Ought to be in Pictures' seem more epically expansive than the average short of this era and the interaction between real life and animation is surprisingly smooth for such an early example of the two mediums coexisting. All in all, 'You Ought to be in Pictures' is a fascinating, entertaining short which is extremely easy to love. Ironically, having achieved his aim of replacing Porky as a comedy star, Daffy would be complaining of being typecast as a comedy player just ten years later in Chuck Jones's 'The Scarlet Pumpernickel'. There's just no pleasing some ducks!

As all the animators at Warner Brothers run off for lunch, Porky Pig has just been drawn on an artist's pad. He comes to life, only to hear the voice of Daffy Duck, who is in a picture on the wall. Daffy begins to coerce Porky into demanding to be in legitimate pictures. Porky goes to the boss's office and makes demands and ends up quitting. The boss wishes him well and off he goes to a different movie studio. Things don't go so smoothly. First of all, he's supposed to be a leading man, opposite stars like Rita Hayworth. Let's not forget he is a pig with a severe stuttering problem. He has an encounter with a security guard, who chases him across the lot. Anyway, the joining of actual film and animation is pretty interesting. Of course, once Porky is out the door, Daffy is in the boss's office trying to move up in the business. Nicely done little cartoon.

I realized before I watched this cartoon it would have a live action appearance of Fred Schlesinger, but I did not realize there were other filmed characters and that the very new art of live action and cartoon together would be done so well in this episode! I was expecting to see quite a lot of Daffy Duck in this episode, but Porky Pig is definitely the main character here. In the Warner Brothers studio, Daffy, who wants to be as high as Porky is right now, does his best to convince his cartoon companion to rid himself of his cartoon contract and go to the "features". Well, if you know Porky, you know he'll do pretty much the persuasive Daffy will tell him to and he goes off to ask Fred Schlesinger if he could leave the cartoon studio. Porky feels very nervous, but is pushed by Daffy and Fred seems to accept Porky is going...

I really enjoyed the characters of Daffy and Porky in this cartoon (even though Daffy was a meanie), the plot, the premise of the cartoon and the way the cartoon was funny even though there were no real jokes. The whole thing was very entertaining and very well done, with good moments from the three main characters. :-) If there was anything I felt even slightly iffy about the cartoon it was the fact that everyone was unnecessarily mean to Porky, but it is a "film thing", the way it happened.

I recommend this to people who love old Looney Tunes and to people who just enjoy and entertaining cartoon. Enjoy "You Ought to Be in Pictures"! :-)

P.S Both LeeEisenberg and ccthemovieman said in their reviews that they thought it was amazing how they managed this cartoon with live action while Roger Rabbit was nearly 50 years away. That is what I was thinking as well!!

Wow, this is different, and way ahead of its time, that's for sure. You have a 1940 cartoon that mixes live characters with cartoon ones, such as Porky Pig. This is almost a half-century before "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came out!

We are at the artist's studio where Porky Pig and Daffy Duck are drawn and when everyone goes to lunch, Daffy comes alive and asks Porky, "Say, you want a good job?"

"I know where you can get a good job in features as Bette Davis' leading man," says the duckster. Porky is reluctant, saying he already as a good job and a contract but Daffy, sounding the Devil pouring bad advice into Porky's ear, advises him to go up and tell the boss that "I quit." Unfortunately for Porky, Daffy's advice wasn't very good.

I loved Porky's line to the boss: "What's Errol Flynn got that I haven't?"

Notes: It was interesting to see Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger, although he wasn't much of an actor, and the voice behind all these famous characters, Mel Blanc, who plays both a security guard and a stagehand......This cartoon runs almost 10 minutes, which is several minutes longer than normal.