144. Milk and Money (1936)

Release date: October 3rd, 1936

Series: Looney Tunes

Director: Tex Avery

Starring: Joe Dougherty (Porky, Porky’s Father), Billy Bletcher (Mr. Viper)

The first cartoon to have Porky’s face plastered on the opening title, a theme that would continue on for many, many, many years! The music would switch to “Porky Signature” starting with Porky in the North Woods, and would be replaced in favor of “The Merry Go Round Broke Down” in Rover’s Rival. 

Into the 1936/1937 season we go, starting with Milk and Money: porky’s father only has 3 days to pay rent, and things aren’t looking up. Porky works as a milkman, but it seems the true money-making is brought in with the help of an unlikely contributor—a horsefly.

Two Carl Stalling favorites open the cartoon: “We’re in the Money” and “Home Sweet Home”, the latter underscoring a beautiful aerial view of the farm. Zoom into Porky’s father hoeing in the fields, looking none too pleased. A few whistles offscreen, and Porky’s father turns to the audience, grinning with pride as he announces “That’s my son, Porky.” pan over to Porky ploughing the fields with a rather tired horse (the underscore, of course, “The Old Gray Mare”), with great juxtaposition as Porky beams, slapping the reins repeatedly, oblivious to the horse’s decrepit physique.

While Porky’s hard at work at the reins, the camera focuses on the interior of the barn. Covered in saddles, there’s a tiny little wooden home, the sign “HANK HORSEFLY” emblazoned over the door. Indeed, Hank, a fly with a horse’s head, marches out of the door. He spots the elderly horse crawling along on the fields, and deems it an appropriate source of protein, contentedly tying a napkin around his neck. Tex plays around with his love of speed as the horsefly nips the horse on the butt, which sends him rocketing through the fields, the field plowed 5x as fast in neat, orderly rows, with Porky dragging behind. The musical timing is superb and an essential part of the gag.

The horse breaks through the fence, slipping out of the reins and landing in a tub of water. The horsefly buzzes around his potential meal, the horse smiling in thanks as we pan to Porky, hanging from the plow handles by his suspenders. Porky’s dad comes to the rescue, and with some wonderfully smooth animation (Chuck Jones?) plucks him off of the handlebars with ease and places him down.

Suddenly, Porky’s dad gives an “Uh oh.” A menacing underscore accompanies a comically nefarious villain, hunched over in his carriage, dressed in a black hat, coat, and boots. His name is Mr. Viper, as the bottom of the screen so helpfully informs us. He unravels a scroll and grins at it—the mortgage. Fittingly, “the snake!” is added below his name, accompanied by a censored string of curses. Zoom out to reveal Viper’s horse, sneaking around just like a villain would. A truly hilarious walk. I love the Tex Avery villains, because they feel like such obvious parodies of themselves, especially Mr. Viper.

Chuck Jones animates the next scene, transitioning to Viper gleefully lecturing Porky’s dad. “...and, if you don’t have the money by tomorrow at 3 o’clock, I TAKE THE FARM.” A reoccurring gag as Viper suddenly turns to the audience, winking as he sneers “He’ll never make it!” With that, he dismisses himself, and Jones provides wonderfully hilarious animation as Viper lives up to his namesake, literally curving and snaking across the ground, curving up the side of the wheels on his carriage, and taking off.

Bob Clampett takes over animation duties as Porky’s father laments “Things look pretty dark, son. Pretty dark.” Such a genius gag as the screen literally darkens as he speaks. To make it better, Porky, ever the optimist, responds “Brighten up, pa! Brighten up!”, the screen now brightening to its former state. Porky declares that he and the horse are headed to the city to rake in some cash.

A title card reads THE CITY as we fade into porky scanning a newspaper for job offerings, his trusty steed asleep next to him. Suddenly, Porky brightens up— WANTED — MILKMAN WITH HORSE — APPLY FULLER-WATER MILK CO. Porky rushes to the steps of fuller-water milk company, his old gray mare trudging behind wearily. Inside, the boss gives him a cold okay and a warning: “Okay, son. You get the job. But if you break ONE bottle, you’re fired!” Next thing you know, Porky’s rolling along on his patented fuller-water carriage, whipping the exhausted horse along as they crawl through the city streets.

Back to Hank Horsefly, who’s still fancying himself a nice, old horse. However, he’s met with a rude surprise: hanging from the ploughing reads a sign—Gone to the city. Dobbin. Appropriately signed with a horseshoe. Hank buzzes some unintelligible curses, retrieving a map and a suitcase and heading off to find his meal.

Porky’s hard at work being a milk man, placing the glass bottles at each doorstep he passes by. Unbeknownst to him, a line of cats chug the milk from behind. One dives in and drinks, another replaces the cat by walking for a bit and drinking the next bottle, and so on. An endearing combination of satisfying timing and cheery music, all in all reminiscent of the Harman-Ising looney tunes. Porky approaches one house that particularly captures his attention. Above the doorbell, a plaque reads “Mr. & Mrs. D. ONNE and family”. Porky sets out three bottles each—“Mister... Missus... and family,” the family bottle capped off with a rubber glove that look like udders. 

This is one of MANY references to the Dionne quintuplets. Born in 1934, the quintuplets were the first known to have survived infancy. Annette and Cécile Dionne are still alive today. The Dionnes were subject to many jokes in Looney Tunes, such as in Baby Bottleneck when Daffy answers the phone at the stork factory and gasps “MR. DIONNE, PLEASE!”, ogling in bewildered mortification at the audience, implying Dionne has a death wish for wanting quintuplets.

Hank Horsefly is still devoted to getting his dinner, flying above the country fields and occasionally glancing at his map. Porky, on the other hand, runs out of bottles to distribute. He dumps a tray of empty milk bottles into a giant milk barrel, and with the turn of the handle on the spout, filled milk bottles pop out into the tray Porky holds like nothing. A fitting accompaniment of “Lullaby of Broadway” (“The milkman’s on his way!” is one of the lyrics.) 

Just then, a “yoo-hoo!” directs Porky’s attention to a woman waving on top of the roof of a skyscraper. “I want one bottle of milk, please!” With some quick thinking, Porky shoves the bottle in the gutter on the side of the building, taking a heaping breath and blowing into the tube. The bottle is propelled up the gutter and safely into the woman’s hands (with a rather impressive aerial overhead perspective.) 

Hungry Hank has now made it to the city, scanning the streets for any signs of the horse. He drops his briefcase with excitement as he spots the tired old horse dragging Porky’s wagon along. Hank prepares to reach the horse at super speed, but is stopped by a pesky traffic light, cursing in more unintelligible buzzes. A fun way to play around with speed and pacing for sure. Hank gets the go ahead, and is so damn determined to eat the horse that he pulls a lever on his body to make him rocket towards the horse. Tex’s knack for speed plays a pretty hefty role in this cartoon. Hank barrels into the horse, who gallops away at such frightening speed that the whole horse and buggy is turned into a figurative arrow, which is only broken as the horse crashes into a streetlight, bottles of milk shattering on the ground.

Porky remains relatively unscathed. Donning the milk basket on his head, Porky looks at all the broken bottles and remembers his bosses words: “but if you break ONE bottle, you’re fired!” No further justification as Porky forlornly rides his trusty steed on horseback, now jobless. They trudge past a racetrack, and his horse is inexplicably filled with new energy and vigor. A bucket of oats hangs in one of the nearby stables, and the horse wastes no time shoving his head inside.

Conveniently, the stable they arrived in is one of the racing stables: jockeys open the doors and allow the horses onto the racetrack, Porky included. All of the horses are raring to go, positioned at the starting line. All horses except Porky’s. Porky glances around anxiously as his horse lazily parks his rear on the track, and even the crack of the starting pistol isn’t enough to motivate him. The other horses speed off, and a catchy underscore of “In the Stirrups” rages on as all of the horses make laps around the tracks.

While suffering a terrible loss that grows more devastating with each second, Porky grows optimistic as he spots a sign advertising a $10,000 handicap. Porky grows belligerent, slapping the reins as his horse finally moseys along. “Let’s go! This is a race, not a walk!” 

Porky’s horse DOES kick it into high gear (and then some), but not from Porky’s encouraging words: Hank Horsefly has found the horse yet again, and zips it on the butt. The horse whinnies in pain, and thus sparks a fantastic display of Tex Avery’s need for speed, enhanced greatly by the shrill sound effects of the horse looping around the track thrice as fast as the other competitors. 

I laud Avery’s speed so much, because speed is difficult to handle. No matter what, you always pull into the direction of being too slow, and you never really reach “too fast”. This doesn’t at all seem like a problem for Avery, but in fact feels natural. Momentum is not lost, but gained. Sure, there is PACING that can be too fast, but in terms of scenes and gags that specifically require speed, such as in race scenes like these, you can never reach the limit.

A collection of gags spawned by the tremendous speed of Porky’s horse: three jockeys riding on their horses are suddenly smushed together on one single horse, a man and a horse switch roles, with the man running on all fours and the horse riding him, and a crowd getting sucked to the adjacent set of stands. Unsurprisingly, Porky gets first place, his horse now lying back down nonchalantly on the ground, his work done, crowned with the first place floral wreath.

Back at the farm, Porky’s father paces in trepidation as Mr. Viper revels in checking his watch (more Chuck Jones animation.) “‘tis now one minute to three.” He whips towards the audience—“I’ve got him going!” 

That twisted ecstasy turns to a furious grimace as a car horn sounds, Porky’s father exclaiming “Well I’ll be jiggered!” A ceremonious underscore of “We’re in the Money” accompanies the sideview of a comically and pompously elongated limo rolling into view. Porky waves his hat from the backseat, decked out in a snazzy suit and tie, victoriously signaling to his bag of dough while his faithful horse contentedly chuffs on a cigar from behind. A long line of tires stacked up later (a reoccurring gag with pompous limos), and hank even has his own throne, also fancying himself a cigar and side-eyeing the audience.

“Curses!” Viper whips to the audience. “I’m sunk!” Porky jumps into his father’s arms, handing viper a wad of cash with a scowl. “Here’s your money, Mr. Viper!” Viper leans over, tipping his hat with a sly “Thaaaank you!” 

As he leans over, the all too familiar sound of Hank Horsefly warming up his wings roars in the background, and Viper is zinged in the butt, flying up and landing on the ground. No iris out, but instead Porky pulling down a black screen behind viper, “That’s all, folks!” victoriously scrawled over a dazed Mr. Viper.

I really do enjoy this cartoon a lot! Definitely one of the best Dougherty-era Porkys in my opinion. I enjoyed Porky the Rain-Maker too, but I feel this is a better entry, so to speak. I suppose you could also deem Porky’s Poppa as another installment to this “series”, especially considering that short also revolves around the burden of a mortgage. 

Chuck Jones’ animation of Mr. Viper is hilarious and very well crafted, very smooth and malleable. The gags were spot on in this cartoon, whether it be the animation of Viper’s horse, Viper snaking on the ground, the “brighten up!” gag, or the “That’s all, folks!” ending. They felt rewarding and fulfilling, not just limited to some polite laughs. Tex’s knack for speed is amazing in this cartoon, and will continue to grow. His pacing definitely determines the memorability and success of his cartoons: The Village Smithy and Porky the Wrestler, two of his best Porky cartoons, are transformed and taken to new lengths thanks to his spot-on pacing. This is a cartoon you need to watch! Funny, feel good, and entertaining for sure.

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