The Gay Anties

The Gay Anties is a 1947 Merrie Melodies short directed by I. Freleng.
== Title ==
The title is a play on "the gay nineties," the decade in which this short is set.
== Plot ==
A colony of ants surreptitiously invade a young couple's park picnic in the 1890s and contrive to steal their food. The ants, frustrated three times in their efforts to make off with a sandwich due to the man eating their handmade sandwich each time, seeks revenge by spreading mustard on the back of the girlfriend's hand and trick the boyfriend into biting it, resulting the girl to dump him by slapping him away into the lake. 
Meanwhile, a female ant sings an overly melodramatic song, "Time Waits for No One" in a high-pitched voice, which gets the other ants to run for cover.
==Notes==
*This cartoon bears several similarities to that of "The Dover Boys" directed by Chuck Jones five years prior despite both cartoons having completely different plots, since both cartoons are set in the 1890s and are some of the earliest examples of limited animation combined with extensive use of stylized and exaggerated animation and movements in the 1940s, even the Toonheads episode "Ant's Life" explores this.https://archive.org/details/Toonheads_233_Ants_Life
*According to the What's Cooking Doc section in the July 1945 issue of Warner Club News, June Coke created some dances for this short.https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/warner-club-news-1945
==Goofs==
* The human characters have visible four fingers from far, although when their hands are shown in close-up when they have the normal five fingers.
==Caricatures==
*Helen Forrest
==Availability==
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Vol. 4.jpg|(1993) LaserDisc The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 4, Side 3
===Streaming ===
Lt hbo max.jpg|HBO Max (2020 - 2023) (restored)
Lt max.jpg|Max (2023 - ) (restored)
==Gallery==
Gayanties.jpg|Screenshot from a scene from the cartoon (with 1992-2004 Cartoon Network USA bug)
GayAntiesRESTORED.jpeg|Cropped screenshot of 2020 restoration
==References==
==External links==
*Big Cartoon Database article
es:The Gay Anties
Category:Merrie Melodies Shorts
Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng
Category:1947
Category:Shorts
Category:Blue Ribbon reissues
Category:Cartoons written by Tedd Pierce
Category:Cartoons written by Michael Maltese
Category:Cartoons with layouts by Hawley Pratt
Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Hawley Pratt
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer
Category:Cartoons in a.a.p. package
Category:One-Shot Cartoons