Little Beau Porky

Current events in the Middle East give us Americans an incentive to watch Porky Pig's early cartoon "Little Beau Porky". This one came out back when the famously stuttering swine was less than two years old and looked like a walking heart attack (and Joe Dougherty was still providing his voice, as Warner Bros. hadn't yet hired Mel Blanc).

Anyway, the plot goes something like this. Porky is a soldier in a foreign legion outpost in either the Arabian desert or the Sahara. He always gets the most menial jobs and isn't allowed to participate in missions to trap the dastardly sheik Ali Mode (the Termite Terrace crowd loved to give people crazy, pun names, didn't they?). But when Ali Mode - who bears a mild resemblance to Osama bin Laden - attacks the fort, Porky pretty much becomes Rambo.

Obviously, the Arab stereotyping makes it a little harder to laugh at this cartoon. It's mostly funny just because of some of the gags they pull. As long as we understand the stereotyping, then it's a pretty entertaining cartoon.

Back when they made this cartoon, they probably never imagined that sixty to seventy years later, a lot of the world's focus would center on the Middle East. "Syriana" should explain it all.

Porky Pig is the weakest soldier in a Foreign Legion fort. The Commandant orders him to scrub his camel. Meanwhile, a messenger arrives with dire news. The Commandant orders everybody to leave for battle. On the other hand, Porky Pig alone is ordered to stay. They don't need a camel scrubber. Of course, Ali Mode attacks the fort instead.

This is a relatively simple black and white Porky Pig cartoon. It has been a year and a half since his debut. His design looks a bit ugly, but that matches the other characters. Certainly, this is not great in modern terms with all the Arab stereotypes, but that's expected.

Little Beau Porky (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Porky joins the foreign legion but he's upset to learn that he can't fight but instead he's given various boring chores that just don't sit too well with the pig.

There are a lot of Arab stereotypes as you might expect from a cartoon made in 1936 but this really doesn't hurt or help the film much. On the whole this here is one of the lesser Porky Pig shorts that were made up to this point because there's really not too much of a story going on and sadly there aren't too many laughs either. The highlight of the film is a scene later in the picture involving a horse but I won't give too much away to prevent the gag from being ruined. As you'd expect there's some nice animation and it moves at a nice pace but there's still not too much here.

Frank Tashlin's 'Little Beau Porky' is an enjoyable cartoon that showcases Tashlin's skill as a director with some trademark extreme close-ups, fast moving action and deft storytelling. Casting Porky as a member of the foreign legion who must protect the fort against the villainous Ali Mode single handed, 'Little Beau Porky' moves at quite a lick once it gets going. The build up is fairly slow but contains some great sequences including Porky's grilling by his commanding officer and an uneasy game of Echo through the fort entrance. It all comes to a satisfying if predictable climax making 'Little Beau Porky' a very enjoyable cartoon. A final noteworthy point is that 'Little Beau Porky' contains the roots of two other, superior cartoons. The camel in this short is clearly a forerunner for Humpty Bumpty from Bob Clampett's completely bonkers 'Porky in Egypt' while the evil Ali Mode is extremely similar to the frightening Lawyer Goodwill from the following year's 'The Case of the Stuttering Pig', one of Tashlin's great masterpieces.

This short, which stars Porky Pig as a soldier in the foreign legion undervalued by his superior, would have seemed like quite an artistic accomplishment at the time of its release in 1936. There is a complexity to the animation and character design that foreshadowed the 1940s heyday of Warner Bros cartoons much more than anything else the studio was putting out at the time, and that alone makes this an important watch for Looney Tunes fans. As was the signature style of director Frank Tashlin, there is a very cinematic feel to the angles and lighting. And it's funny, too! The Porky cartoons from before Mel Blanc took on the voice can be pretty hit or miss, but this one's a hit. The later colorized versions mangle the animation, so make sure to watch the black and white version to fully appreciate the animators' work.