Mouse and Garden

Jeez, no matter how you look at it, Sylvester probably has THE worst luck of all the Looney Tunes. In some cartoons it plays out more than in others, but Friz Freleng's "Mouse and Garden" is an example.

One night, Sylvester and his friend Sam (an orange tabby who talks as though he suffers from either Downs syndrome or cerebral palsy) are rummaging through garbage cans looking for food - not to mention stealing each other's morsels - when they catch a mouse. But each cat still wants the mouse for himself, and so they spend the rest of the night trying to eat the little guy, all the while suspecting the other one of trying to do just that and trying to stop the other one from doing it! Needless to say, there's some dynamite involved.

While Milt Franklyn's music didn't quite equal Carl Stalling's, it still provides a neat setting for the wacky action here. And Daws Butler was clearly pretty adept at doing voices (he voices Sam, accompanying Mel Blanc as Sylvester). In any case, this is one of the nearly 1,000 classic cartoons released through Warner Bros. That'll never be all, folks.

And I now see that the song is called "Moonlight Bay". I'd heard the song before in "Porky's Duck Hunt" (Daffy Duck's debut), but couldn't understand the whole thing. Now I finally know.

Mel Blanc and Daws Butler - two Hall-Of-Fame voices - combine their talents to give us this battle of the felines over possession of one mouse.

Sylvester (Blanc) and Sam (Butler) are two waterfront cats browsing through the garbage cans on the pier when they get a little mouse. The story from that point is the paranoia and mistrust these two guys have for each other. Neither is willing to share and both try every trick in the book to hide the fact they have the mouse. (It keeps changing hands, er paws.)

The huge moon and beautiful nighttime artwork in here on the water with his big house is fantastic. For the visuals alone, this is a good cartoon but listening to the accents and funny voices of these two geniuses doing these characters makes elevates this from very good to excellent.

"Sylvester" and his bright orange pal "Sam" are raiding the waterside dustbins looking for their evening meal when they espy a mouse! This isn't the nimblest critter around and so is soon apprehended, but in the spirit of companionship they agree to savour this little snack for tomorrow's breakfast. Safely ensconced in a corked jar dangling beneath their cabin, the mouse is left whilst the two try to catch some sleep. Of course soon their tummies start to rumble and their imaginations run wild, and so what now ensues sees each of them trying to outwit the other so they don't have to share! It's quite good fun, this, featuring the usual calamity props. What it does miss, though, is more activity from their prey. Indeed, despite some lovely fed up expressions near the start, it doesn't really appear as the two cats try to find new uses for sticks of dynamite. Passes the time fine, but not so very memorably.

Yeah, the Looney Tunes shorts from the '60s were a mixed bag that and finding one that is truly great is not easy to do. But this Oscar-nominated Sylvester short really wasn't that special, in my opinion. I do like it but it wouldn't make my top ten Sylvester shorts and might not even make my top ten Looney Tunes from the '60s. The premise is that Sylvester and his friend Sam both try to keep a mouse they find to themselves and not share it. There are some amusing gags and lines here. The Sam character is the best thing about it. Daws Butler provided the voice and he's just a hoot to listen to. Mel Blanc is great as Sylvester, as always. The animation is scratchy but colorful. I'm not sure why this was nominated for an Oscar but looking at the list of nominees that year, it appears there wasn't a particularly strong selection all around.

This short was nominated for an Oscar and deserved to be! There's not even a feather to be seen of a certain little yellow bird and the object of Sylvester's gastronomic desires is little more than a prop in this. The cartoon is stolen by Sam, another feline, who 1) is a "friend" of Sylvester's and 2) will not be a candidate under serious consideration for membership in MENSA in this lifetime. He's hilarious and makes the cartoon. Sylvester works best as a more or less secondary character, reacting rather than acting. This is his best outing without Tweety (although there are one or two with Porky that are close) and Cartoon Network runs this fairly frequently. Most recommended.