Swiss Tease

Bouncer the St. Bernard is drummed out of the corps for being drunk on duty -- the spirits in the little barrels they carry around their necks are for medicinal purposes, darn it! To redeem himself, he tries to rescue a little man wandering around the snowy peaks dressed for the summer, despite the objections of the little man.

This cartoon has all the earmarks of a Termite Terrace cartoon, including the big, dumb dog who sounds like a soused version of that fox hound who tries to catch Bugs a couple of times. This makes sense, because the writers are Bob Clampett, Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce and .... wait. Clampett had left Warners the previous year and would bounce around until settling into Beany & Cecil, but Maltese and Pierce were Termite Terrace loyalists and would stay there until they shut the doors a decade and a half later. What's their names doing on a Columbia property?

The only conclusion I can to is that this was a project Clampett had worked with them on and he had given them credit.

Just discovered on Thad's Animation Blog this rare Columbia cartoon that happens to actually be GOOD. Maybe that's because it has a story by Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce, and Bob Clampett. Clampett didn't direct this one, that credit goes to a Sid Marcus. It's basically about a St. Benard dog who's thrown off the rescue team because he ACTUALLY drinks his medication! So the canine, still in his stupor, keeps trying to rescue this mountain climber (he actually sees more than one and always picks the one that's actually there!) but always gets him falling off the cliff while the dog thinks he's carrying him down! There's a few more outrageous gags after that and a neat twist at the end making Swiss Tease sort of a Warner Bros. cartoon made by some moonlighting members of that studio but also giving Columbia some class in the animation department before they gave up and started distributing UPA product. And the music by Darrell Calker is almost worthy of Carl Stalling. So in summation, I highly recommend Swiss Tease. It's available on YouTube.