156. I Only Have Eyes for You (1937)

Release date: March 6th, 1937

Series: Merrie Melodies

Director: Tex Avery

Starring: Joe Twerp (Ice Man), Elvia Allman (Old Maid, Katie Canary), Tedd Pierce (Announcer), Billy Paye (Bing Crosby)

Tex’s Merrie Melody input would grow stronger and stronger. By the end of the year, he’d be directing Merrie Melodies exclusively all the way until 1941. His next cartoon, a Looney Tune, would change the face of looney tunes for generations to come—Porky’s Duck Hunt introduces us to the enigma that is Daffy Duck. 

But for now, the local ice delivery man attempts to win over Katie Canary by crooning. However, his methods for achieving such golden pipes are seldom legitimate.

Right away, the story launches into a catchy little jive in minor key, exposing the plot. The ice delivery man, a bird with an overbite doing an Eddie Cantor eye roll as he rolls along in his jalopy, is on his way to deliver ice to his least favorite house. An old hag is absolutely smitten with him, to the point of sexual harassment as she flaunts the ever scandalous YOO HOO! sign in her window. The lyrics are highly amusing: “She orders 50 pounds of ice 10 times a week, he hates delivering ice to her!” The old maid’s line of attack is to lure the iceman in with her baked delicacies (”How our hero hates the stuff the old maid makes!”) 

Elsewhere, we stumble upon Katie Canary, who has our hero “nutty as a loon”. While the iceman is out begrudgingly delivering unforeseen amounts of ice to a creep, his true love is obsessed with the crooners, perched in front of the radio, her house adorned with photos of crooners like Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, and Rudy Vallee. Why Cantor and Jolson are considered crooners beats me, but it’s certainly funny nonetheless.

It wasn’t long after this cartoon that Joe Dougherty was let go from the studio on account of his stutter being too out of control. In fact, the next Porky cartoon, Porky’s Romance, would be his last. The directors made their frustration working with Dougherty known, so much so that Tex Avery decided to lampoon it in this cartoon here. 

As the iceman prepares to drop off his delivery to the old maid, he stumbles on his words and switches them up (Joe Twerp providing the vocals instead of Joe Dougherty): “ Gy mosh—er, uh—my gosh. This old maid pure is a shest… er, boy, she sure is a pest.” 

I feel bad for Dougherty, as he was talented in my eyes, but I can sympathize with Tex’s frustration. Dougherty’s stutter caused a lot of retakes, which, in turn, cost a lot of money. It’s easy to be fed up. While this isn’t the most friendly of characters in terms of background, I admit that it amuses me a lot, knowing the backstory.

Sure enough, the old maid IS a pest. The iceman creeps into the house, shifty-eyed as he gingerly drops a block of ice in the icebox. The coast is eerily clear, and for good reason. Great setup on Tex’s part: she’s baking pies, putting up creepy signs, she makes her presence known. So why isn’t she breathing down the iceman’s neck? The tension is very strong and very believable. With that, the iceman tiptoes out, his speed gaining as he grows more and more relieved… until the door slams shut as the old maid pins him inside, waiting behind the door the entire time. 

Suddenly, the old maid attempts to corner the iceman, shoving food in his face she had been storing behind her back. The iceman struggles to refuse, stumbling “Oh, tho nanks. Er, na thonks. Er, not me!” 

The gag picks up in momentum as the poor, meek iceman almost breaks out into a backwards run, the old maid pulling out donuts and watermelons and turkeys behind her back with the utmost of ease and nonchalance. 

Terrified, the iceman pins himself against a wall, which turns out to be a murphy bed. The bed flops onto the ground, concealing the iceman, while the old maid sighs in perverted satisfaction. “At last, a MAN!” I can only wonder if Bob Clampett animated this next scene, seeing as it would be reused in The Daffy Doc. The old maid’s mannerisms are strikingly similar to the black widow spider in Clampett’s Eatin’ on the Cuff as well. 

Nevertheless, the iceman outsmarts the old maid, jumping out of the bed and allowing the murphy bed to spring back into the wall, old maid inside it and all. A famous, amusing Avery-ism as the iceman hops into his truck and screeches away. Suddenly, he reverses, giving an exhausted “Whew!” to the audience before speeding out of sight once more.

Finally, a more pleasant delivery as the iceman arrives to the abode of his crush, Katie Canary. But this is a different delivery—our hero comes bearing flowers. He bumbles his way inside, Katie still perched in front of her own love, the radio, fiddling with the dial. “Fere’s some howers—er—how’s some fleers—“ 

While the iceman stumbles his way through, Katie rudely hushes him as she finds her desired radio station. The warm warbles of Bing Crosby’s “Let It Be Me” fill the air, and Katie listens, enraptured, while the iceman leans against the radio in a huff. Borrowed from another Tex entry, I Love to Singa, Bing interrupts his singing. “Don’t lean on the radio, son, you bother me.” 

When the song ends, the iceman perks up, offering his flowers to Katie. However, Katie still refuses. This is the first of MANY, MANY, MANY Katherine Hepburn impressions, primarily in Tex Avery cartoons. Tex just LOVED Kat’s voice, finding it as the perfect lampoon. Katie speaks in the Hepburn inflection, shooing him away. “Please go away. Cahn’t you see I’m saving my haaht and my lahv for radio croonahs? Someday, somewhere, sometime I shall marry one, and I know we should be all so tehhribly happy, rahlly I do.” The poor iceman wilts, along with his flowers, a telltale sign of Lost Romance. He sulks out the door, nearly dragging along across the floor.

In his jalopy, the iceman hilariously struggles to sing a rendition of “Let It Be Me”, eventually giving up and growling “Aw, let it go, let it go…” Carl Stalling’s musical accompaniment is excellent, the chorus repeating like a broken record as the iceman tries his damnest to get the words right. This start/stop approach of music would accompany Porky plenty of times when he himself tries to sing.

Suddenly, iceman perks up as he stumbles across a sign: PROF. MOCKINGBIRD VENTRILOQUIST AND IMITATOR 

But of course! An impressionist! Tex fills up some time by including closeups of signs, such as the aforementioned one and the sign outside of the prof’s door that advertises PROF. MOCKINGBIRD – PRIVATE. 

Prof. Mockingbird greets him with a “Hullo, strenza!” (a yiddishism reused from I Love to Singa) and the iceman tries to get to the point. After struggling, he cuts to the chase. “Look, do something!” Mockingbird more than obliges. Because this is a Tex Avery cartoon, not only does the bird perfectly imitate ducks, dogs, roosters, even car horns, he contorts his body to accompany his display of talent, even twisting and bending himself around as he imitates an airplane. The iceman is certainly impressed. “That’s swell. Er, that’s crell, but can ya swoon? Er, can ya swim? I mean, can you croon?” A few lines of the title song confirm the  iceman’s suspicions. Floored, the iceman yanks Mockingbird out of the office and stows him away in the back of his ice truck.

Back to the iceman’s pursuit as Katie Canary elegantly swipes her hand through her “hair” (Bob Clampett animation), peering out the window, when warm warbles catch her ear. Delighted, she rushes to the window, spotting none other than the iceman singing “I Only Have Eyes for You” from his truck. A lovely layout and angle. And, as expected, we see Mockingbird inside the truck, supplying the vocals instead of the iceman, both pantomiming one another. The scene is humorous as it is with the fake vocals, but the iceman pantomiming the unseen Mockingbird is even better.

Katie has been won over. “I knew he’d come, my lover, my sweet one!” She provides a mini soliloquy as she theatrically poses on her staircase, dreaming of how “sadly happy” she will be. “Oh, at lahst, to be held in the arms of a crooner, it will make me so sadly happy… rahlly, it will.” Katie Eagerly hops into the iceman’s jalopy, and together they ride.

Inside, however, is a bleaker scene: Mockingbird is positively freezing. Another fun Tex(t) gag as the iceman shiftily rings a buzzer on the side of the truck. Inside, a sign blazes SWING IT! The poor mockingbird gives a nasally, shuddering, poor rendition of the eponymous song, trying not to freeze to death. Katie grows slightly suspicious as sounds of an oncoming sneeze loom, but shrugs it off as the vocals revert to semi-normal. 

“Boy, it’s bloody cold in here!” interjects the mockingbird. Katie grows increasingly curious and suspicious as the iceman recognizes his folly. The vocals grow worse and worse (yet funnier for the audience.) Hilarious animation by who I presume to be is Bob Clampett, with Katie’s suspicious grimaces and winks, iceman batting his eyelashes and shrinking into himself, it has Clampett written all over it. 

Finally, Mockingbird gives a behemoth of a sneeze, blowing the iceman’s cover as the entire back half of the truck is ripped off, a freezing Mockingbird quivering on a block of ice. Katie stares down the iceman as he wrings his hat, his tail between his legs.

And so– (signaled with a highly amusing offscreen Ed Wynn warbling “SO–” ), we find Katie Canary pouring boiling hot water in a wash tub, where the recovering Mockingbird is soaking his feet in an attempt to warm up. Two movers come in and haul away Katie’s fated radio, replacing it with a refrigerator. Katie and the mockingbird happily embrace.

AND OUR HERO—he sits in the old maid’s kitchen, who is feeding him all the delicacies he could dream of. He devours a pie, and while he prepares to dig in for another, he finds himself holding the old maid instead, prepping for a kiss. The iceman recoils, pausing to put on sunglasses and hesitantly accepting the kiss. He addresses the audience, stumbling on his words, until he gets to the point—“Well anyhow, she can cook!” Iris out on the unlikely couple as they kiss once more.

This is an intriguing cartoon that I grew to appreciate the more I watched it. The opening number was catchy as can be, and implementing the title song as a rendition sung questionably and sickly is certainly an interesting choice. It’s obvious Tex wanted to do more than just advertise a song. 

Publicity still of our favorite iceman.

While Tex is hardly sentimental or endearing, this is definitely an endearing cartoon. You can easily sympathize with the iceman and his search for love. You can feel the apprehension as he treks through the dangerous territory that is the old maid’s kitchen, you can feel his heartache when Katie dismisses him away in favor of her crooners, you can feel his red hot embarrassment as his fake crooner plans turn awry. He has much more personality than he lets on… or perhaps he just resonates more than usual. 

The whole stuttering thing was highly amusing, too. You can tell Tex really wanted to go the Roy Atwell approach with Dougherty, mixing up sentences and words and cutting to the chase, but couldn’t because of Dougherty’s stutter. Joe Twerp does an excellent job and is one step closer to Tex’s dreams being realized.

In all, this is a good short! I enjoyed it quite a lot. It has a lot of personality to it, and it’s certainly a different approach to the Merrie Melodies as we’ve been seeing. Give it a go! 

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