Baby Bottleneck

Plot synopsis:
There is a baby boom of the post-war United States; an overworked stork (a clear Jimmy Durante reference) gets drunk in the Stork Club. There is an emergency delivery in which inexperienced animals, mostly older animals but including four crows attempting to deliver an elephant, take the babies to their parents. As a result, babies are getting sent to the wrong parents (such as a baby skunk to a goose, a baby kitten to a duck, a baby gorilla to a kangaroo, a baby hippopotamus to a Scottish Terrier, a baby alligator to a pig and a baby cat to a mouse). To clear up the confusion, Porky Pig is brought in to manage the factory, with Daffy Duck as his assistant. The babies are seen going through a conveyor belt (to the tune of Raymond Scott's famous "Powerhouse") and getting sent by various animals, while Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor and the Dionne Quintuplets.
When a stray egg is found without an address, Porky decides to have Daffy sit on it until it hatches. However, Daffy refuses to sit around on top of an egg and he said, "Sittin' on eggs is out! O-W-T — Out!!". Porky chases Daffy around the factory (complete with an imitation of Porky by Daffy), until they wind up trapped on the conveyor belt. The belt winds up stuffing both of them into one package (with Porky as the legs and Daffy as the top half) and send them off to Africa, where a gorilla is waiting for her arrival. When the gorilla looks at the "baby" she sees Daffy Duck crying, Porky peeks through the diaper, causing the gorilla to cry on the telephone, "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!!" (a reference to John J. Anthony, who conducted a daily radio advice program at the time called The Goodwill Hour; its stock phrase was "I have a problem, Mr. Anthony").

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
A Clampett Classic.
Another Clampett powerhouse!
Fast, funny, frenetic, and nightmarish.
Porky and Daffy run a factory that delivers babies to their expecting parents.
The highlight is Scribner's animation of Porky trying to get Daffy to sit on an unhatched egg.
These scenes are presented without backgrounds, just color cards.
As Jones would prove later with "Duck Amuck," Clampett shows that the only important thing is the character's personalities; that they don't need any arbitrary props or even backgrounds.
In the beginning of the cartoon, Daffy argues with some irate parents over the phone.
Clampett, writer Warren Foster, and animator Rod Scribner manage to make Daffy, alone with just a phone, hilarious..
Pretty amusing idea with good characters.
With a baby boom occurring among affluent parents, the storks are unable to cope with the extra work and begin to get behind on orders and make mistakes.
Porky Pig is enlisted as the transportation/logistics manager to ensure all delivers are made and Daffy Duck is given the job as his assistant.
However the department is so stretched that errors and problems are inevitable.Opening with an imaginative idea (although it has been done a lot as I write this) the film makes itself better by adding the great characters of Porky and Daffy together, albeit in separate scenes within the same film.
The plot allows for plenty of imagination  the production line `making babies' prior to shipping out via stork (or whatever) right down to the scene showing the wrong babies delivered to all the animals!Daffy is manic but is allowed the edge of bitterness that always made him appear at his best when done just right.
Porky is good as well, as are the majority of the support characters no matter how big their role.Overall this is amusing as it is all quite imaginative and funny.
The inclusion of two popular and strong characters just serves to make it funnier and more polished a product..
maybe the baby boom inspired Fonzie.
Usually I never would have suspected that a cartoon would portray the baby boom that occurred after WWII, but "Baby Bottleneck" does just that.
It portrays Daffy and Porky working in a baby-producing factory and trying to avoid the glitches that have sent certain infants to the wrong parents.
Then, an unidentified egg sends everything haywire.Aside from looking at the new things going on in the world, I get the feeling that this cartoon may have inspired Fonzie.
You see, when Porky picks up the egg, he tells Daffy "Sit on it." In later years, that would become the Fonz's catch phrase.Oh well, maybe I'm the only person who sees that.
The overarching point is, this is a classic cartoon..
A Bob Clampett, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig classic.
Maybe there is some unintended bias, seeing as Bob Clampett has a very interesting and wonderfully wacky style that is always a joy to watch.Daffy is also one of Looney Tunes' most iconic, most interesting and funniest characters and while Porky is sometimes bland on his own and can be overshadowed by supporting characters he is amusing and likable and his partnership with Daffy is always hugely enjoyable.
The premise is also a pretty unique one for the time.Anybody who is a fan of Clampett, Daffy and Porky are more than likely to love 'Baby Bottleneck'.
For me, it's one of the best and one of the funniest for all three.
The premise is interesting and different, and is executed in a way that constantly entertains and intrigues.
The beginning may not work for some people, personally was never alienated by it and thought it was visually clever and fun.The animation is not only beautifully drawn, very detailed and colourful but there are some really imaginative moments, especially towards the end with the unhatched egg.
Carl Stalling always made a great cartoon even better with his music scores, and with its lush and lively orchestration, high energy and character and action-enhancing synchronisation his music for 'Baby Bottleneck' is hardly an exception.'Baby Bottleneck' throughout is incredibly funny and often hilarious.
The mix ups are funny enough, but the highlight is the war over the unhatched egg with a hysterical exchange of dialogue and imaginative visuals.
The dialogue is deliciously wild and looney and the razor sharp wit is more than evident too.
There are many references here and they are fun to spot and recognise, though they are of the time and may go over the heads of some.
The gags are just as fun and inventive, with the distinctive Clampett wackiness.Daffy is wonderfully manic and bitter, and Porky is a very likable foil and no less amusing.
Mel Blanc's voice work is characteristically fantastic, very rarely did this supremely talented man disappoint in his career apart from when even he couldn't salvage some bad material seen in too much of the mid-late-60s output.Overall, a classic.
10/10 Bethany Cox. Another Clampett winner.
The baby-delivering Stork is in a drunk stupor and the enlisted workers are far from competent making grievous mistakes.
Delevering the wrong babies to parents.
Porky Pig steps up to fix the whole thing out with Daffy Duch as his secretary, but things don't go as planned in this short, another classic by Bob Clampett.
All the mix-ups are frequently very funny and i found myself laughing out load quite a few times, but the ending is the real kicker.
Utterly hilarious!!
This animated short can be seen on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 and also features an optional commentary by Michael Barrier.My Grade: A+.
Primitive Effort Offers Few Laughs.
The year 1946 marks the first full year, I believe, of "The Baby Boomers."Anyway, corny humor and a cop-out beginning (using past footage of other cartoons) has us looking at a newspaper headline reading " Unprecedented Demand For Babies Leads to Overworked Stork." We then go to the famous nightclub, "The Stork Club" (where else) where the drunk Jimmy Durante-stork is crying the blues that he does all the work and gets no credit.
Then they show some stock footage in demonstrating how the stork has been making mistakes with wrong deliveries.That weak segment gives away to better things when Porky Pig is appointed to handle the stork's problems and Daffy Duck assigned as his assistant....but not that much better.
The assembly line babies included some good material but Daffy doesn't look like Daffy and isn't anywhere as funny as he was in later cartoons.
This has the appearance of a 1930s 'toon.
It looked primitive and lacked the smart humor of the 1950s stuff..
"Sittin' on eggs is out!
The stork has been overworked so inexperienced help is brought in, leading to lots of delivery errors.
So Porky is hired to run the baby factory and brings along Daffy as his assistant.
Wackiness follows.
Great Looney Tunes short from Bob Clampett.
Plenty of funny lines, gags, and even pop culture references of the time.
Lovely animation; well-drawn characters and backgrounds.
Nice colors.
The music from Carl Stalling is bouncy and fits the action well.
Excellent voice work as always from Mel Blanc.
The cartoon moves along at a fast pace which plays particularly well to Daffy's zany strengths.
A very entertaining short all around.
Sure to please most fans of the Porky & Daffy team-ups..
A dated curio lifted by Clampett's energetic direction.
Bob Clampett's 'Baby Bottleneck' is a satire on the post-war baby boom in which Porky Pig and Daffy Duck run a factory to assist with the preparation and delivery of new born babies.
This entails an automated production line which dresses, burps, feeds and dispatches the young animals.
For the most part, 'Baby Bottleneck' is a spot gag cartoon with Porky and Daffy simply pulling levers and answering phones.
They only get to really do anything towards the end of the cartoon when they get into a war over an unhatched egg.
Often when he was assigned spot-gag cartoons, Clampett's wild on-screen energy would be dulled but 'Baby Bottleneck' is an exception and Clampett manages to infuse the quickfire gags with a pulsating vitality.
Unfortunately, 'Baby Bottleneck' is full to the brim with long forgotten references which inescapably dates the cartoon and makes it more of a curio than a laugh riot to modern day audiences.
There are, however, a couple of typically risqué Clampett gags.
Especially conspicuous is a joke with a baby alligator trying to suckle a mother pig.
When she finally turns to the alligator the cartoon quickly cuts away before she has chance to speak.
The cut line was apparently "Ah-ah-ah, don't touch that dial"!.
Entertaining and imaginative cartoon,.
Baby Bottleneck is a brilliant short and I found it to be quit entertaining and amusing with also a lot of enjoyably funny characters.A Stork has been getting a lot of trouble delivering babys and has been getting inexperienced help to make emergency delieveries,so Porky Pig and Daffy Duck takeover,but a lot of trouble happens when an egg has no address and Porky tries to get Daffy to sit on it.****/*****4/5 STARS9/10-DILLON HARRIS.
Must be seen to be believed!.
Directed by that "Man from Wackyland" Bob Clampett, "Baby Bottleneck" is a classic Porky Pig/Daffy Duck cartoon featuring some wild animation!
Porky and Daffy work as "traffic managers" at an assembly line for a baby delivery service.
One can only imagine all the fun and trouble they could get into under such circumstances.My favorite scenes in "Baby Bottleneck" include: Daffy answering telephone calls; an enthusiastic dog demonstrating his invention to Porky; Porky and Daffy accidentally winding up on the conveyor belt (to the ubiquitous accompaniment of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse"); and the hilarious opening sight gags of deliveries being made (to the accompaniment of "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"), including a few mix-ups."Baby Bottleneck" is a cartoon that truly deserves recognition, considering the wild and wacky atmosphere at Warner Bros.
You might say that Bob Clampett was the mischief-making ringleader of the animation department!.
The average American dreams thrice monthly .
. of waking up helpless, strapped down on a conveyor belt, as automation runs amok, taking all kinds of perverse liberties with their body, according to the most recent poll.
We probably have Warner Bros.
largely to thank for this sorry state of affairs, primarily because of our exposure to Daffy Duck becoming a pig in Porky's blanket at the climax of BABY BOTTLENECK.
The diaper welding Daffy's top to Porky's butt obviously is the archetypal meme that served as a possibly Satanic springboard to BABY BOTTLENECK.
Though Charlie Chaplin had hinted at what could happen when an Assembly Line Goes Wrong in his live-action feature film, MODERN TIMES, even America's original Chuckie Doll would not risk going as far into the coming Horrors of Genetic Modification, Inter-Species Transplants, and Bad Science in general as Warner allowed its animators to forge ahead with BABY BOTTLENECK.
Clearly this animated short had an immediate effect on America's Film Censors, as they were shaking too hard in their jackboots to write out the redo that BABY BOTTLENECK surely merits..
Another Clampett classic (Gosh I love that director....).
Now, Mr. Robert Clampett is my favourite Warner Brothers director.
The work he did while with Leon Schlesinger and Warner's cannot be beat, in my opinion.
I found the scene with the baby hippo and Scotty Dog really funny, with Scotty singing "Rockabye Baby," but having to suddenly change the words to fit the situation - the baby hippo is too heavy, so the rocking chair breaks and Scotty says, "...the cradle will flop." I also really liked the "baby kitten delivered to a mother duck" scene, which was funny because (most) cats are afraid of water (which is evident with the little kitten screaming) and another baby kitten delivered to a father mouse (the father is terrified but the kitty is playful).
I also found what was left of the baby alligator delivered to the mother pig scene laughable, with the alligator stretching his body out to make room for himself, as he pushes the little piglets away.
I find it odd that I liked Daffy's line of "No. Ohhh, no.
Sitting on eggs is out, O-W-T, out!" so much considering The Henpecked Duck, another Clampett classic (and also my favourite Looney Tune of all time) also involves Daffy being instructed to sit on an egg.
But the end is funny with the mother gorilla realizing she basically has a mutant baby with a duck (Daffy) as the upper body and a pig (Porky) as the lower body.
Although I was not originally familiar with the last line, I did feel sorry for that mama.
All in all, my favourite director has scored another point for himself, by a long shot.