Gold Diggers of '49

Gold Diggers of '49 (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Beans is out digging for gold and hits the big one. He rushes into town and soon everyone is out there digging. Porky Pig is helping Beans when their bag of gold is stolen so Beans must go after it.

GOLD DIGGERS OF '49 is a fairly entertaining short from Tex Avery and it features that wonderful animation that he is known for. There are a lot of good gags scattered throughout the running time but for me the highlight is simply the animation. This is especially true during a sequence where Beans feeds his car some extra fast gas. Just look at the detail as they go zipping by various things including picking up Porky. Speaking of Porky, this here was his second short and he's bigger than he's ever been, weight wise, and makes for an interesting father.

It's 1849 and prospectors are searching for gold in Red Gulch. Our hero Beans finds it by way of a slot machine and inspires a small town to join the gold rush. There are lots of captions to move the story along, although they never explain what kind of animal Beans is. I suppose he look a bit like Felix the cat, but then most of the characters in the thirties did. Still the Warner brothers must have had high hopes for Beans, as he gets the honour of saying "That's all folks" at the end. Lots of silly animals appear, including an unnecessary barbershop quartet and a big fat pig who seems to be in charge of things. Could this slob really be Porky? He has the stutter, but that is the only recognizable feature.

Enter the villain employing an impressive lasso gun to steal Porky's most prized possession. If beans gets it back Porky tells him he can literally have his daughter. Luckily for Beans the girl does not look like her father but seems to be of the same unidentified black and white species as our hero. The chase scene features some early examples of the kind of lunacy that would make Supervisor Fred (Tex) Avery famous in later years, but the pace is much slower. The art of animation was so new at this time, that just seeing funny animals riding mules and horses, driving cars and playing racial stereotypes was good enough for a laugh.

4 out of 10

'Beans' is a golddigger in '49 and to many surprise he actually finds something, just as the sleepy town he's living in had no high hopes anymore (as we see in the introduction).

Beans instead of keeping the gold (that comes in coins, very handy indeed) for himself is telling everybody in town, including Porky Pig whose daughter he wants to marry. I love it when they find a book called 'how to find gold', it says 'Start to Dig!'.

Then enter a villain who steals what appears to be a sack of gold (but really was only Porky's lunch) but Beans gets it back in his supercar.

Not a lot going on in this cartoon, a bit racist at times but nothing to get too excited about on all accounts. 5/10.

Porky Pig's second appearance (and Tex Avery's directorial debut) does feature a few racial stereotypes, but overall, "Gold Diggers of '49" made me laugh. Set at the time of the 1849 California gold rush, Porky and Beans are prospectors, and Beans wants to marry Porky's daughter Kitty (the three characters got introduced in "I Haven't Got a Hat" earlier in 1935, and Porky looks as if he needs triple bypass surgery). Part of this involves Beans guarding a little something of Porky's.

If you've seen any of Tex Avery's cartoons, then you should know what sorts of things to expect here. The gags aren't quite as zany as I might have hoped for, but I try to imagine how hilarious they must have looked the first time that moviegoers ever saw them. If absolutely nothing else, this should be of interest to cartoon fans as a look into the Termite Terrace crowd's early days. Worth seeing.

As for the question of how a pig fathered a cat...well, in cartoons things don't have to make sense.

Tex Avery has gone on to far better cartoons since, but 'Gold Diggers of 49' is not a bad first cartoon at all, while not great it's decent.

Wasn't crazy about Porky here, really like him as a character but his taller and slobbery look is nowhere near as appealing as the design that we're more familiar with, pretty crude from personal opinion actually. Nor with Joe Dougherty's voice work, Mel Blanc's Porky stutter is much more natural while Dougherty's sounds annoying and overdone. One gag misfires too, and that's the racially stereotypical gag with the Chinese dogs.

However, while Avery's animation style became more refined later on there are some really imaginative and beautiful visuals here, especially in the chase sequence with lots of fluidity, crispness and meticulous detail. The music is no Carl Stalling, but it's lively, charmingly orchestrated, rousing and dynamic enough. There are some good gags, though Avery's succeeding cartoons were more consistent in humour and were sharper and wittier, especially the barber shop gag and the chase sequence, the latter being the highlight of the cartoon. There are some cute moments too, and the whole stuff with the gold makes for good fun.

Beans is not one of the funniest ever characters and there are more interesting ones too, but he is compelling and amusing enough and he's likable. Kitty is adorable, and the villain is suitably dastardly. The chemistry between the characters is also enjoyable, and apart from Dougherty the voice acting from Bernice Hansen and Billy Bletcher is very good but the lack of Mel Blanc is much lamented.

All in all, a decent first cartoon for Avery but he went on to do better. 7/10 Bethany Cox