Book Revue (film)


Book Revue is a 1946 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Bob Clampett. The cartoon was released on January 5, 1946, and features Daffy Duck.
The plotline is a mixture of the plots of Frank Tashlin's Speaking of the Weather, Have You Got Any Castles? and Clampett's own A Coy Decoy.

Plot

The cartoon starts out in the same, pastoral "after midnight at a closed bookstore" fashion of Frank Tashlin's trio of "books coming to life" cartoons, to the strains of Moonlight Sonata; a colorized version of the storefront from A Coy Decoy can be seen. Inside, an inebriated "cuckoo bird" pops out of a cuckoo clock to announce the arrival of midnight and the books come alive. The first of these is a book collection called "Complete Works of Shakespeare". Shakespeare is shown in silhouette while his literally-rendered "works" are clockwork mechanisms, along with old-fashioned "stop" and "go" traffic signals, set to the "ninety years without slumbering, tick-tock, tick-tock" portion of "My Grandfather's Clock".
Cut to a book titled Young Man with a Horn; a caricature of Harry James breaks loose with a jazz trumpet obbligato similar to James' "You Made Me Love You", in which he segues into the standard, "It Had to Be You", as a striptease is about to begin on the cover of Cherokee Strip. Book covers for The Whistler and The Sea Wolf show their characters whistling and howling at the off-screen action, Shakespeare's inner workings also break apart at the sight of the action. Henry VIII also gets excited at the sight of the striptease until his mother on the cover of The Aldrich Family calls for him. As she starts to spank Henry, "The Voice in the Wilderness", an emaciated Frank Sinatra caricature, appears gently singing "It Had to Be You" while being pushed along by an orderly. Henry's mother, along with other female book cover characters, begin swooning for "Frankie".
Immediately thereafter, a jam session begins featuring Harry James, Tommy Dorsey on the cover of "Brass", an Indian on the cover of Drums Along the Mohawk who morphs into Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman as the "Pie-Eyed Piper", and a green Bob Burns on the cover of the Arkansas Traveller, all performing a jazz version of "It Had to Be You". Annoyed by the revelry, Daffy Duck steps out of the cover of a Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies comic book and starts rifling through a trunk for clothes. Just after Gene plays some notes on the buttons lining the corpulent stomach of Hudson's Bay, Daffy dons a zoot suit coat, gloves and a curly, blonde wig, as well as what appears to be a set of fake teeth.
Daffy orders for the music to "STOP!" and the jam session screeches to a halt. Standing in front of a book called "Danny Boy" with the classic Ukrainian tune Ochi chyornye as background music and the background becoming one with illegible newsprint superimposed on silhouettes of urban buildings, Daffy says "pooey!" to swing music and jazz. He then starts reminiscing about his "natife willage" with its "soft music", "why-o-leens" and the "happy peoples sitting on their balalaikas, playing their samowars" and also talks about a girl called Cucaracha, who he describes as "so round, so firm, so fully packed, so easy on the draw". Saying that "they would sing to him a little gypsy love song", Daffy breaks into his normal character and briefly sings "La Cucaracha". Daffy continues in his fake Russian accent as he sings Carolina In The Morning, inadvertently teasing the Big Bad Wolf, who at this point is still in the window of "Gran'Ma's House"; Daffy beats a hasty retreat to stage left. Meanwhile, Little Red Riding Hood, based on Margaret O'Brien, skips past Daffy and toward Gran'Ma's House. Realising the danger, Daffy puts himself between Red and the door, breaking into Danny Kaye's scat singing style to warn Red about the Wolf, including mock chewing on her leg for emphasis, not noticing the Wolf adding salt to his leg. Red runs away screaming and Daffy halfway notices the Wolf before returning to continue the biting, until Daffy realises otherwise.
Daffy runs away, pursued by the wolf through Hopalong Cassidy, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Petrified Forest. The police sergeant on the cover of the Police Gazette notices what's going on and alerts all other police officers. The Wolf ends up apprehended by the Long Arm of the Law and is placed before The Judge who declares the Wolf guilty and sentences him to Life in spite of his objections, though the Wolf makes his Escape soon after. Jimmy Durante, incongruously illustrating the cover of So Big, turns toward the Wolf, and his huge nose trips the Wolf, who goes sliding down Skid Row, nearly falling into Dante's Inferno. The Wolf scrambles to the top, but the Sinatra caricature reappears, held in the orderly's hands as if he were a doll. The Wolf, being in the grandma archetype, swoons and faints just as the female characters did and skids head first into the inferno.
The rest of the characters, including Daffy and Red, proceed to celebrate the Wolf's death by dancing to a swing version of Carolina in the Morning. Suddenly, the Wolf pops out of Dante's Inferno, ending the cartoon demanding the characters "Stop that dancing up there! ... Ya sillies!"

Influence

The film was reissued in 1951, as Book Review. In the reissue, the title is a pun, as a "revue" is a variety show, while a "review" is an evaluation of a work.

Edits

The scene where the wolf chases Daffy through Uncle Tom's Cabin was cut from airings on Cartoon Network and The WB. Also cut on The WB was Daffy's line "So round, so firm, so fully packed, so easy on the draw," which was a reference to Lucky Strike cigarettes.