For Scent-imental Reasons

Plot synopsis:
The owner of a perfume shop in Paris is horrified to find a skunk, Pepé Le Pew, testing the wares inside his store. A strong and powerful gendarme, also repelled by the odor, is of no help.
The perfumer notices a black female cat (not named in this short, the black cat character is identified as such in the much later Carrotblanca as Penelope Pussycat), and with rage flings her into the store and demands her to "Remove that skunk, that polecat pole from the premises. Avec!". The cat slides into the shop, hitting a bureau and causing a bottle of white dye to spill and run down her back and tail (a black cat acquiring a white, skunk-like stripe is a running gag in most Pepé Le Pew shorts). Pepé Le Pew sees her and immediately mistakes her for a skunk.
The cat smells Pepé's odor and immediately tries to run away, chased by Pepé. As she attempts to wiggle free from Pepé's embrace, he makes comments like, "it is love at sight first, no?" and "we will make beautiful music together." She breaks free and attempts to wash the stripe and the smell off but is unsuccessful. She runs to a window and tries to open it, but it is stuck. She finally takes refuge inside a locked glass cabinet, much to Pepé's chagrin. Pepé first tries to lure her out sweetly, then demands that she come out of the cabinet. She refuses, indicating that it is due to his odor. Pepé Le Pew becomes saddened, pulls out a gun, walks out of sight and fires the weapon, presumably killing himself. Panicked, the cat rushes out to save him, only to run directly into Pepé's arms. He tells her, "I missed, fortunately for you." The chase continues until Pepé finds the cat on the windowsill. He believes that she is trying to prove her love for him by committing suicide, and declares that he will save her. Pepé grabs for her, but she slips through his arms. Pepé then calls out: "Vive l'amour, we die together" and steps off the window ledge. The cat falls into a barrel of water under a rain-spout, while Pepé lands in a can of blue paint.
The water washes the white stripe off the cat, and also gives her a cold. When Pepé climbs out he is blue. He sees the ragged-looking, sneezing wet cat but does not recognize her. He wanders off to find the "beautiful young lady skunk." The soaked black cat watches his blue form walking away and she falls for him. When Pepé goes back into the perfume shop to look for the female skunk, he hears the door shut and the lock click behind him. When he turns, he sees the drenched female cat leering at him and begins to panic, realizing that he is now the victim of love. She drops the key to the lock down her neckline as the startled Pepé says, "Oh, no!" and runs away. As Pepé runs as fast as he can, the cat follows using Pepé's familiar hopping pace. The short ends with Pepé telling the audience: "You know, it is possible to be too attractive," while continuing to run.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
One of Pepe's earliest and greatest roles..
Paris, France: A perfume shop owner discovers that the amorous skunk Pepe Le Pew is generously sampling his perfumes.
The distraught shop-owner flings a cat inside to eject the skunk.
The feline femme fatale, of course, has her back dyed white, and when Pepe sees this, he of course tries to woo her (sometimes forcibly), blissfully unaware that she is trying to escape his scent-imental attentions.
"For Scent-imental Reasons" was the first Pepe cartoon I ever saw, having seen it on tape in "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie".
The ending and beginning are a bit funnier and more unique than usual, and some of the humor comes from sources besides Pepe, which is unusual.
Formed a cartoon legend!.
This was the cartoon that formed Pepe Le Pew as we know and love him.
It was this cartoon that Chuck Jones found the correct formula to make Pepe a true winner.Earlier, producer Eddie Seltzer thought that no one would believe that a French-speaking skunk was funny.
But when this cartoon won an Academy Award in 1949, he was proven wrong, and stepped up to receive the award anyway!According to Chuck, Pepe, like Bugs Bunny, is one of his aspirations.
He held a place in Chuck Jones' heart.
He claimed that he never had much luck with 'les femmes' when in school, and Pepe is a character with so much security in his own sexuality that he contained much will power.
So Pepe's a very personal character to Mr. Jones.In the past, the humorous 'talking-through-the-glass' scene was cut due to the suicide reference.
However-Pepe: I meesed...fortunately for you!"
His name was a spoof of Charles Boyer's character in the French film Algiers, a character named Pepe Le Moko.A truly great for the Warner Bros.
Looney Tunes collection.BTW: I am saddened by the fact that Mr. Charles M.
Jones, the last of the original Looney Tunes directors and creator of such a great Looney Tune, passed away just recently.*sniff* Goodbye, Chuck Jones...
Chuck Jones's 'For Scent-imental Reasons' is a brilliantly witty cartoon for which Pepe Le Pew won a well earned Academy Award on only his fourth outing.
As a child I hated the Pepe Le Pew cartoons for several reasons.
Of course, I thought love was yucky but also the pseudo-French gags and more verbal approach to comedy went completely over my head.
Bearing in mind that these sexually charged cartoons were never meant for young eyes, it's hardly surprising that I have come round to loving Pepe and his straight-to-camera witticisms.
Having said all that, even as a Pepe-hating child I still enjoyed 'For Scent-imental Reasons'.
There was something about it that made it stand out over the other Le Pew shorts and clearly the Academy agreed.Set in and around a perfume shop, 'For Scent-imental Reasons' finds Penelope the cat locked in with the amorous skunk after a bottle of white hair-dye bestows the obligatory deceptive markings down her spine.
There follows a series of great gags, two of which involve aborted suicides!
The best gag in the whole cartoon is when Penelope locks herself in a glass case causing Pepe to go absolutely insane with frustration until finally he pulls out a gun, puts it to his temple and walks out of sight.
Hearing the shot, the guilt-ridden cat unlocks the case and leaps out straight into Pepe's arms.
'For Scent-imental Reasons' is a lovely piece of work and undoubtedly one of the best Pepe Le Pew cartoons.
From its familiar setup through to the table-turning ending, it's a classy and classic short..
Classy and one of Pepe Le Pew's best.
I quite like the Pepe Le Pew cartoons, and I quite like Pepe himself for how unique and how he stands out among the rest.
For Scent-imental Reeasons is a very classy cartoon and one of Pepe Le Pew's best.
From the hilarious beginning and familiar set-up to the classic talking through the class gag and the ending which is a table-turner, For Scent-imental Reasons works so well.
Complete with beautiful, elegant looking animation, lilting and amorous music that couldn't have been more perfect for the cartoon's tone, fresh dialogue, very funny gags and Mel Blanc's infectious vocals particularly as Pepe, you have a near masterpiece.
Pepe is wonderful and gives one of his best performances, and Penelope is not shabby either.
In conclusion, classy and entertaining, perhaps it could have been longer, but so much works you don't necessarily mind.
9/10 Bethany Cox. For Scent-imental Reasons is the Oscar-winning Pepe Le Pew cartoon.
Like just about every Pepe Le Pew cartoon, there's a female cat who's mistaken for a skunk because of white paint that conveniently forms a straight line on the cat's back.
As a result, Pepe falls madly in love with her while she is repelled and tries to escape with her running frantically and he just hopping along without a care in the world.
That's the premise of the nearly whole series in a nutshell but this one has a twist at the end that makes For Scent-imental Reasons somewhat worthy of the Oscar it eventually won.
In fact, I was pretty amused throughout most of the cartoon.
And I always wonder how much of the French was real and how much of it was gibberish!
Zees cartoon eez ze locksmith of greatness!.
Pepe Le Pew chases a female cat through a perfume shop, until an unexpected event reverses their roles.
Sometimes, I interpret Pepe Le Pew as the sort of person whose attitude turns people off without him realizing it, much like Pepe can't help that he smells terrible.
After all, isn't it good enough that he at least tries to strike up relationships with women?
But even ignoring that, "For Scent-imental Reasons" is still a classic cartoon.
But on the other hand, these cartoons weren't really intended as cute entertainment for children; they always had an edge.
Anyway, this one definitely deserved its Oscar win.Le meow.
Pepe Le Pew's only Oscar bid was a winner!.
This cartoon won an Oscar for Pepe Le Pew almost ten years before Bugs Bunny won for Knighty Knight Bugs.
Pepe is one of my favorite characters and this is one of the better cartoons in the series, although not my personal favorite (that's Touche and Go).
Pepe discovers wht it's like to have the shoe on the other foot in this one.
Great fun in this one.
It has been in the past, most notably on the tape A Salute to Chuck Jones from the Golden Jubilee series.
Cartoon Network shows it fairly often.
Not the best, but one of the first and an Oscar winner.
When a French perfume shop owner opens up one morning he finds Pepe Le Pew using the perfumes in his store.
Desperate, he paints his cat like a skunk in order to distract Pepe and get him out of the store.Looking back now it is often difficult to watch these cartoons in the order they were made.
For this reason it is often difficult to know which came first and which were just copies of more original cartoons.
However, this short is famous as it was one of the first Pepe Le Pew cartoons and it won him an Oscar in 1950.
For this reason it is one of my favourite Pepe shorts.
It may not be the best but the others just kept repeating this one gag until it killed it.The plot is the usual deal but it has some nice touches at the start and end that make it different enough to be amusing.
It is unfair to really look back on this short with the knowledge that Pepe just kept doing the same stuff over and over, I don't really like him for this reason, but this short is still good and helped me get over the repeating issues.Overall this is an enjoyable short that is better than it comes across if you try and remember that this was fresh when it was made, as opposed to his other films that generally retread this gag.
Not sure it deserved to be called an Oscar winner but it was funny and the fresh quality of the film has managed to shine through despite the numerous repeats..
Pepe's first truly great role..
Up till this point the few Pepe Le Pew movies were actualy pretty boring.In this one we are introduced to his mate Penelope Cat.Pepe has broken into a perfume shop in France and the owner has the idea to sent her in to chase him away.What an idea.Once she gets a white stripe on her buck Pepe has chosen her as mate.His efforts to persuade her to join him and her own to avoid him are ecxelent comedy material.And one his scent is removed and she finaly notices how does his body look the roles are reversed.The odd couple does belong together.Too bad most of the other Pepe movies repeated this film and made it lost his uniqueness.Because it is one of the best of the Looney Toons..
I was never a big fan of Pepe Le Pew. Every one of his cartoons is the same.
For some silly reason a cat will end up a white stripe on it's back and Pepe, a smelly skunk, falls in love with her.
His foul scent is so strong that when he grabs her and unleashes an endless barrage of kisses, she can only become like butter in his arms with a dazed look on her face.
Occasionally she will try to escape and Pepe will fob it off with something like 'You are play-eeng hard-to-geet'.
Blah, blah, blah, they are all the same.Grant, this one was the first and it won an Oscar.
But that was probably the reason they made so many more.
This one does have a funny twist at the end when Pepe's love falls into a barrel of water and emerges like crack-addicted rat and the tables are turned.
Pepe was only ever a supporting character and never strong enough to carry a whole cartoon.He IS very cute though..
(Pepe Le) "Pew" - This Cartoon Stinks!.
An owner of a French perfume shop enters his store one day and discovers a skunk sampling the merchandise!
A cat then sidles up to the Frenchman, so the latter throws the cat in the building with orders to get that skunk out of there.
The black cat bumps into a can of white paint, which conveniently pours a steak down his back.The skunk - our first look at the character "Pepe Le Pew" - sees the cat and thinks it's a female skunk.
He woos it, using every French cliché of the day and the cat keeps running away, of course.
When the two of them fall out the window, Pepe falls into a vat of blue paint and the cat falls into a vat of water.
Because of their new appearances, the shoe is on the other foot with the cat now "in love" with Pepe!Frankly, I found most of this unfunny, nothing I would watch again unless for "historical" reasons to see the "birth" of Pepe in Merrie Melody cartoons..
Wonderful Le Pew short that, for the most part, follows the formula for the rest of the series: a black cat somehow winds up with a white stripe painted down her back and draws the amorous attentions of everyone's favorite skunk.
Throughout the short, the cat tries to elude her smelly suitor with no luck.
The cartoon ends with a nice role reversal and a hilarious final line.
It's a very funny cartoon, with many great lines and bits.
Love all the Frenchisms, particularly when the cat says things like "le mew, le purr".
The voice work from Mel Blanc is excellent.
It's one of the best of the series.
Notable for being the first Chuck Jones-directed short to win an Oscar and the only Pepé Le Pew cartoon to do so..
Pepe LaPew breaks into a perfume store and a female cat is sent in to get the smelly skunk out, of course the cat finds a way to accidentally get whit paint on herself, thus looking like a female skunk.
I never understood the love for Pepe LePew. He's a rather weak character, he's not that funny and he's French.
It doesn't help that in his cartoon shorts that there's really just one gag that's used over and over again.
This short won an Oscar as well, big deal I can name a good number of things that aren't great at all that have won Oscars through out the years.
This cartoon is on Disk 3 of the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1" It also has an optional commentary as well as a featurette.
Funny cartoon.
This is one of the cartoons I remember watching many times as a kid.
I think it was in one of the Looney Tunes compilation films (possibly the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner movie).
Years later, I can still watch it and enjoy it.Pepe Le Pew finds his way into a perfume shop, much to the shock of the store's owner.
After a local policeman fails to get rid of Pepe, the owner sends a female cat inside to resolve the issue.
However, the cat gets a bottle of white liquid on her back, thus making her look like a skunk.
Once Pepe sees her, it is instant attraction for him.Pepe Le Pew is of course one of the most likable of the Looney Tunes, and his love for the cat leads to several laughs.
The very first Pepe Le Pew!.
STAR: "Pepe Le Pew".Director: CHARLES M.
JONES.
Voice characterisations: Mel Blanc.
Producer: Edward Selzer.Copyright 28 November 1949 by The Vitaphone Corp.
"Merrie Melodies" cartoon.
7 minutes.COMMENT: Although it actually won the 1949 prestigious Hollywood award for Best Cartoon, defeating M-G-M's Hatch Up Your Troubles, UPA's Magic Fluke, and Walt Disney's Toy Tinkers, this, the first Pepe Le Pew cartoon, but not in my opinion (despite its prestigious Hollywood award) one of the very best.Admittedly, it has its ingenious moments.
But in this one, the background (a perfume shop) is too circumscribed, the designs are not as art deco colorful, and Pepe doesn't quite have that jaunty Maurice Chevalier air which makes him so totally endearing in his later films.
"For Scent-imental Reasons" is a 7-minute cartoon from 1949 and among Edward Selzer's five Oscars, one was for this one here.
I must say the comedy throughout the film was okay all in all, but not great, so an Oscar may have been too much.
Anyway, the idea of a skunk falling in love with a cat who got paint on her back is a nice one though and it is not too surprising this worked out nicely in the genre of animation.
Mel Blanc shines again and Jones and Maltese deliver the quality we are used to from them as well.
This may not be the first, but it is probably the most known from Warner Bros' Pepe Le Pew cartoons.
If it is a contender for the best, I will decide once I have watched some more of these.
As for now, I recommend the watch, but not with great enthusiasm..
attractive," a frazzled Henry-the-Skunk (a.k.a., Pepe Le Pew) whines to the camera at the close of his Oscar-winning performance in FOR SCENT-IMENTAL REASONS.
This animated short from Warner Bros.
begins with Henry in his habitual serial rapist "Pepe" mode, wife and kids nowhere to be seen.
As always, the object of his inter-species sexual predation is a hapless animal (in this case, a female cat) who's been accidentally splashed with a white paint stripe along the lines of skunk markings.
(If a similar mishap happened to "transform" a sea gull into a duck, even an amorous Daffy would wait until the painted gull waddled and quacked BEFORE concluding that it WAS a duck!) Pepe\Henry has no such compunctions.
Female Oscar voters probably swung the statuette in favor of this particular Pepe\Henry episode because of its ending.
Through another chance occurrence, Ms. Kitty simultaneously loses her skunk markings AND her sense of smell, just as Mr. Skunk is dyed an attractive shade of blue.
The tables are turned for once, as Ms. Kitty heatedly pursues the now balky skunk.
Hence Pepe's Complaint..
Directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, "For Scent-imental Reasons" is an excellent Pepe Le Pew cartoon.
This time around, Pepe finds his "cherie" inside a perfume shop.Highlights: Mel Blanc's vocal acting is absolutely hilarious at the beginning of this short, as the perfume store owner and the gendarme both react in horror at the sight of Pepe, who of course never realizes that he stinks.
With some appropriate musical accompaniment from Carl Stalling, Pepe bounces merrily after the frightened cat/skunk.
A glass plate separates Pepe and the cat, but their inaudible words are still clear to each other.During the opening titles of "For Scent-imental Reasons", the song we hear is "Every Day I Love You Just a Little Bit More".
How could any other love song be more appropriate for the character Pepe Le Pew?.
An early and wonderful Pepe Le Pew short.
Although I will admit that most of the Pepe Le Pew films are very similar, I have always loved these cartoons.
I particularly loved the Charles Boyer-inspired voice as well as the great romantic dialog.Here, as usual, a poor cat is mistaken by the perennially on the make Pepe as another skunk.
Despite showing no interest in him, Pepe "doggedly" pursues her throughout the film.
However, like some of the better Le Pew cartoons, by the end of the film the tables are turned.
In this case, for a very fitting and funny conclusion.
If you are a fan of the skunk, then this is a must-see film and one of the earliest appearances of this beloved character.PS--This film won the Oscar for Best Cartoon Short--rather surprising, isn't it?