#91 -- Swooner Crooner


Title - Swooner Crooner
Director - Frank Tashlin
Released - 1944

Interesting Fact -- Nominated for Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons)

Reason for Placement --

One of Tashlin's most popular works, Swooner Crooner is a great wartime cartoon featuring Porky Pig as the owner/proprietor of Flockheed Eggcraft Factory (nice little bit of wordplay there, though it seems like it would have been more at home in a Tex Avery cartoon).  The chickens are apparently laying eggs for the war effort (just go with it), only to get distracted by a Frank Sinatra-sounding rooster outside.  Porky holds auditions to find another singing rooster to get his hens back on schedule, and eventually finds his salvation with a Bing Crosby-caricature.  And so we get a battle of the crooners to see which one can get the hens to lay more eggs.

Termite Terrace was well known for putting caricatures of famous actors and singers in their toons, and Swooner Crooner has this in spades.  Besides Sinatra and Crosby getting the animated touch, Porky goes through a list of singing roosters and listens to parodies of Nelson Eddy, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante, and Cab Calloway (pictured above).  And it's also worth noting that this is the only Porky Pig cartoon to ever be nominated for an Oscar (losing to Tom & Jerry's Mouse Trouble).  

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