142. Porky's Moving Day (1936)

Disclaimer: This cartoon contains racist contents, stereotypes, imagery, and concepts. I do not at all endorse this content and I find it gross and wrong. While this isn’t as extreme as other depictions, it just as well needs to be noted and talked about. Thank you for understanding and bearing with me.

Release date: September 12th, 1936

Series: Looney Tunes

Director: Jack King

Starring: Joe Dougherty (Porky), Elvia Allman (Homeowner), Joe Twerp (Dopey)

The day has come: here since the heart of the Buddy days, Jack King marks his final cartoon at Warner Bros. with Porky’s Moving Day. I’ve warmed up to him and appreciate his ambition, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about his Donald Duck cartoons at Disney, though I can’t say I’m too heartbroken to see him go. Better things are on the way from here on out! For his final entry: Porky is in charge of a moving company, and has to empty out a house as fast as possible as the threat of the house toppling into the ocean looms.

Open to Porky’s moving van (appropriately labeled as such in big black letters on the exterior), nothing more than a little wooden shack. Porky and his assistant are fast asleep on their cots inside. Elsewhere, pandemic: a house brilliantly built threatens to topple over the edge of a cliff, waves repeatedly throwing the house into the air. A woman darts from window to window, crying for help. The woman is none other than a Clarabelle Cow facsimile (which would have worked maybe 3 years prior, but the Disney influence has definitely begun to fade by this point... except for King.) As her house teeters along, she struggles to keep her furniture in place, pushing it back as various items threaten to run her over as the house leans back and forth.

Fretfully does "Clarabelle" (her unofficial nickname for simplicity's sake) ring up the operator in the telephone, begging for “Bunyan”. Her call is interrupted by a drastic lean of the house, and she topples over the window, the cord snapping in the process. She hangs upside down out of the window, still calling into her broken mouthpiece for Bunyan. I’m sure this is a reference going way over my head, but it’s obnoxious regardless.

Back at Porky’s moving van, the phone rings. Porky’s assistant wakes up at the sound of the ring and instantly grows punchy, boxing with an invisible foe at the sound of the ring. Porky approaches, mallet in hand, and conks the guy over the head. He immediately stops and drones “Okay, booooooss.” A phrase that will be repeated 7 TIMES throughout this cartoon, same voice recording and all! 

Nevertheless, the phone rings on, and Porky answers with a chipper “Porky the mover!” Clarabelle panics on the other end, derailing about how her furniture won’t stay in place and that her house is bound to tip over anytime. “Oh for sakes and gosh! We’ll be right over!” Porky then tells his assistant “C’mon Dopey, we got a job!” Wow, that’s not at all seriously offensive: a subtly black-faced caricature of a monkey named Dopey whose only line is saying “Okay, boss” over and over again. I’m shocked they didn’t give him a stereotypical accent—had this come out in 1938 or 1939 instead, you could bet your bottom dollar that Mel Blanc would be doing his Rochester impression as the voice.

Porky crawls outside of his van, where we see his pet ostrich Lulu resting by a tree. He wakes her up and positions for her to get into place in front of the van. Climbing onto the front, Porky grabs the reins—his assistant arbitrarily “okay boss”ing him for no reason at all—and orders Lulu to step on it. They race through town, Lulu eventually running on air as a result of the high speeds. The animation is rather nice here, and the accompanying siren sounds are a nice touch.

Lulu screeches to a halt at their destination, the van swinging a full rotation and right up close to the audience for impact. Porky meets Clarabelle, who barks some frantic orders to him. Porky and Clarabelle rush inside, the door slamming on Dopey. He rings the doorbell, and the sound of the bell sends him into a fit once more. Don Williams animates this absolutely beautiful display of animation, that, surprisingly, is NOT from a redrawn colorized version of the cartoon with a grayscale filter over it. This is the real deal! It seems like even the animators weren’t into this one. Not sure what happened here, but it’s pretty bad. Sorry Don. Another conk on the head, another “okay boss.” 

Inside, Porky unloads the furniture into some outside, unknown source. No image of the furniture piled outside. A piano threatens to flatten him into a piggy pancake after another jostle from the waves outside, and Porky steadies himself on the leaning wall for support. “Holy smoke, we’ll never get out of here!” Porky drops a mattress outside the window, and somehow manages to push the piano out, which crashes into the earth and forms a gaping hole, any trace of the mattress or piano gone. The waves tilt the house in the opposite direction, and Porky crashes into a toy tricycle, sending him down the other end of the house. He barrels into Dopey, urging him to “Snap out of it.” You’ll never guess what Dopey says in response! And, of course, Dopey dismantles an entire fireplace from the wall and drags it along.

Meanwhile, Porky turns his attention to other areas of the house, rolling up a portion of a carpet and rolling it with his feet like a log roller. There is some pretty interesting animation as he weaves between hallways, “sucking up” portions of the rug. It certainly has potential that goes unrealized, though. And, for some reason, Lulu is in the house, strutting in the way of Porky’s giant log of fabric. He runs her over, wrapping her up in an uncontrollable burrito as he barrels down a staircase and crashes into a wall. The impact sends Lulu unraveling back UP the staircase (Porky still on the floor), eventually rolling to a halt as she twirls around like a top on her beak.

Dopey, on the other hand, carries an array of tables, all stacked neatly together like matryoshka dolls. The tables begin to fall, one after the other, forming a makeshift staircase that dopey scales as he heads towards the window. The table is too big to fit through the window, and he’s sent spinning around, flying back down his staircase and sliding across the floor. Instead, he turns his attention towards a shelf full of plates, carelessly dumping them into a barrel. He lifts up the barrel, and sure enough it has no bottom to it: a pile of neatly stacked plates rest on the floor. Even though the sound effects make it sound like the porcelain is being reduced to shards. What fun! It would have been so much funnier if he neatly carried away a pile of broken fragments instead of neatly stacked plates.

And, for some reason, Lulu swallows an alarm clock. The clock goes off, ringing incessantly. Uh oh, ringing! Dopey immediately discards his plates, NOW reduced to fragments as he boxes against his invisible foe once more. A spare plate conks him on the head, and he (say it with me now) responds “okay, boss.” Porky runs along with a table on his back, eagerly barreling through the doorway. The table is too big to fit through, and he’s sent into a whirl, flying backwards. As he recollects himself, he attempts to free the lodged table from the doorway, but to no avail. Dopey meanders along with some sort of string device, almost like a harp? I think it may be some bed springs. The frame gets stuck in the doorway, and he walks along, still holding onto the strings, which threaten to slingshot him any moment.

And, of course, they do. He’s sent rocketing into Porky, who’s still carrying the table. He, in turn, is sent flying out the window, barely holding onto half of the table which is SOMEHOW connected to the house inside... by the legs??? It’s like another slingshot. Not the most comprehensible cartoon for sure. To make matters worse, a steamboat is parked outside in the choppy waters, the steam scalding Porky’s butt. He’s now sent flying back inside, and just in time: water starts to gush in through the window.

Porky struggles to block it out, resorting to swimming upstream as the relentless waterfall keeps on coming. It’s just as well: the climax is quickly put to an end as the water sends all of the furniture streaming conveniently into the back of Porky’s van. So, this whole time, they were unloading furniture from the opposite end of the house. Way to make less work for yourself! Lulu pops up from inside a barrel, alarm clock still lodged in her throat. It rings once more, Dopey emerging from a laundry hamper swinging. Porky rises from a set of dresser drawers, giving him a good ol’ knock on the head with the mallet. I’ll bet you $5 you don’t know what the last line of the cartoon is.

Jack King was starting to grow on me, but after seeing this one, I’m back to my opinion of neutrality leaning on dislike. Aside from the blatant racism of Dopey’s entire existence, this isn’t a funny cartoon at all, and just feels menial and boring. This feels like something straight out of a 1932 Bosko cartoon. I think, ultimately, that was what King’s biggest weakness was, especially in comparison to the others: being behind the times. His cartoons would have fit perfectly during the rampant Disney attitude of the Harman and Ising cartoons, but when Tex Avery and Friz Freleng are littering their cartoons with witty humor and gags, King’s cartoons don’t stand a chance. His Buddy cartoons were better than Ben Hardaway's, and his Beans cartoons weren’t bad, but Porky wasn’t his strong suit. Shanghaied Shipmates was probably his strongest effort, and likely the only cartoon of King’s that I’ll be returning to (watch me eat my words.) (May 2021 update: I've eaten my words many times since writing this in March of 2020.) 

In terms of this cartoon, it’s a no: don’t waste your time, there’s really nothing to see here. In terms of Jack King: it was a good run, maybe, but now we’re onto bigger and better things. This is where things start to get good.

Link!