Life with Feathers

Life with Feathers is a 1945 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film directed by Friz Freleng.[4] The short was released on March 24, 1945, and is the first cartoon to feature Sylvester the Cat.[5]

Life with Feathers
Lobby card for Life with Feathers.
Directed byI. Freleng
Story byTedd Pierce[1]
Produced byEdward Selzer (unc.)
Starring
Edited byTreg Brown (unc.)
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Milt Franklyn (unc.)
Animation by
Layouts by
Backgrounds byPaul Julian (unc.)
Distributed by
Release date
  • March 24, 1945 (1945-03-24)
Running time
7:41
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The title is a play on the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, Life with Father (the title being the only connection between the two works). Warner Bros. would produce a film version in 1947.

Plot

A lovebird decides to commit suicide after his wife Sweetypuss kicks him out of their birdcage. The bird finds Sylvester and wants the cat to eat him, but Sylvester is suspicious that the bird is poisonous and refuses. Throughout the cartoon, the lovebird tries and fails to get Sylvester to eat him. Just as Sylvester is finally ready to give in, the lovebird gets a telegram saying that his wife is moving out, so he tells Sylvester he no longer needs to eat him. However, Sylvester refuses as he "hasn't changed his mind" and pursues the lovebird, who quickly escapes and heads back to his birdcage. When he gets home, he finds out she has decided to stay, and he starts looking for Sylvester again in order to get himself eaten.

Cast

Home media

Notes
  • Life with Feathers featured the first appearance of Sylvester. Sylvester would appear in 102 more shorts in the Golden Age.
  • Life with Feathers was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
  • This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on March 3, 1951. Like most reissued Merrie Melodies at the time, the original closing bullet titles were kept.
  • This was the last cartoon to use the 1941–1945 opening rendition of Merrily We Roll Along and the last non-Bugs Bunny cartoon to have "WARNER BROS. PICTURES INC." and "Present" fade in after the WB shield zooms in. As such, the opening themes would be shortened, but the ending rendition still remained unchanged for another ten years.
  • In 1951, Chuck Jones reused a similar concept for Hubie & Bertie's final cartoon Cheese Chasers.
  • In the American and European Turner "dubbed versions" (and presumably other TV prints), Sylvester has black fur (similar to his current appearance). The restored version on Blu-ray Disc/DVD shows that Sylvester originally had a lighter bluish-black fur.
  • The scene where Sylvester is rummaging through trash cans for food is reused in Kit For Cat, and Tweety's S.O.S. A similar but reanimated scene is also featured in Catch as Cats Can.

References
  1. Beck, Jerry (1991). I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-8050-1644-4.
  2. Ohmart, Ben (2012). Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices. BearManor Media. p. 411. ISBN 978-1-5939-3788-1.
  3. "Moonlighting Animation Artists in Comics: OWEN FITZGERALD -". cartoonresearch.com. January 31, 2018. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
  4. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-8050-0894-4.
  5. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. New York: Checkmark Books. pp. 140–142. ISBN 978-0-8160-3831-2. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
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