A Sheep In The Deep

Don't Give Up The Sheep is a 1953 Happy Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones.

Title

The title is a play on the 1897 song "Asleep in the Deep".

Sammy wakes up at dawn as Ralph sleeps in. Just as Sammy reaches the punch clock and reads the time, Ralph's alarm clock goes off, triggering the conveyor system that he uses to get to work. A claw lifts his blanket, his bed tilts, dropping him into a trap door where he falls into the shower, after a second in the shower a spring below him engages, sending him into a towel and onto a roller skate. As he rides the roller skate down its rail and dries off with the towel, he is fed a slice of toast and coffee. Finally, he grabs his lunch from a hook and rides the roller skate out his front door, down the path, and punches into work before Sammy. As always, the two merrily greet each other.

1. Ralph begins sneaking into the field and snatching a sheep. As he walks back, Sammy drops a banana peel on which Ralph slips. Instead of falling immediately, Ralph slides around on the banana peel, and on his way back Sammy snags the stolen sheep with a lasso. As Ralph continues to slide forward, he begins to say "Ooh, I'd like to..." only to hit a tree face-first.
2. This time Ralph digs a hole under Sammy and out the side of the cliff face, and decides to try to snatch a sheep This is successful, but while Ralph is pulling the sheep up Sammy leans over the edge and into Ralph's hole, where he glares at Ralph intimidatingly. Ralph innocently lowers the sheep down, but Sammy grabs Ralph by the neck and hits him on the head, propelling him into a tree trunk. As Ralph climbs out of the tree trunk, he resembles a stack of pancakes.
3. Ralph's next plan is to tunnel under Sammy. Successful, Ralph ties a dinner napkin around his neck and prepares to steal a sheep. However, as he's doing this, Sam pulls out a corkscrew and removes the piece of earth that the jack is supporting, sending the entire chunk of earth crashing onto Ralph.
4. In Ralph's fourth attempt, he ties himself to a bunch of helium balloons and floats over Sammy. Sammy pours a box of BB pellets into his mouth and shoots at Ralph's balloons with a blow gun. Ralph is left grasping on to a single balloon, but the knot on the balloon slips and Ralph is projected into Sammy. Sammy grabs Ralph by the neck and prepares to drop him off the cliff. However, before that can happen, the punch clock whistle blows and Sammy and Ralph head off for lunch. They enjoy their sandwiches, then they have a smoke break. They both walk back to the cliff, and as soon as the whistle blows to signal the end of lunch, Sammy grabs Ralph by the neck and finally drops him.
5. Ralph's next plan is to build a large slide behind Sammy and drop a cannonball down the slide. Sammy points a large spring at the end of the slide, sending the cannonball back up the slide and into Ralph's dropped jaw. Ralph angrily walks away as the cannonball inside his tail weighs him down.
6. Ralph then attempts to use a record titled "Music to put sheep dogs to sleep by" to put Sammy to sleep. This appears to be successful, and Ralph tests to make sure that Sammy really is asleep. After walking off, stealing a sheep and preparing to eat it, the sheep turns out to be Sammy in disguise. However, the two of them continue to remove disguises.

* Ralph turns out to be a sheep
* Sammy turns out to be Ralph
* The sheep turns out to be Sam
* Ralph turns out to be a sheep
* Sammy turns out to be Ralph

Finally, Ralph grabs the sheep by the neck, and the sheep turns out to be a stick of dynamite.

However, Ralph is saved by the bell when the punch clock whistles. Sammy walks in off screen and extinguishes the stick of dynamite, saying "It's too close to quittin' time Ralph, let's pick it up there in the morning." The two wish each other good night.

Censorship

* Two scenes were removed from this short on ABC. The entire scene of Ralph's second plan was removed, and the entire lunchtime gag, where Sammy holds Ralph leave to have lunch and smoke, and then return to drop Ralph off the cliff was removed.
* CBS and Cartoon Network/Boomerang left Ralph's second plan, but edited the lunch break scene to remove the shots of Ralph and Sammy smoking. However, the part with Sammy cleaning his pipe by tapping it on his foot was left in. Despite CN/Boomerang USA editing out this scene on television, this scene is left on Boomerang streaming service and on international versions of Boomerang and Cartoon Network.