| Get Rich Quick Porky | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Robert Clampett |
| Story by | Bob Clampett (uncredited) |
| Produced by | Leon Schlesinger |
| Starring | Mel Blanc asPorky Pig and the dog Earle Hodgins as John Gusher Cal Howard asGabby Goat Shirley Reed as the gopher Billy Bletcher as the driver (all uncredited)[1] |
| Edited by | Treg Brown (uncredited) |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by | Charles Jones Uncredited: John Carey Norm McCabe Robert Cannon Jerry Hathcock Bill Hammer[1] |
| Layouts by | Chuck Jones (uncredited) |
| Backgrounds by | Art Loomer (uncredited) |
| Color process | Black-and-white Color (1968 color edition and 1992 computer colorized version) |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 7 minutes |
| Language | English |
Get Rich Quick Porky is a 1937Warner Bros.Looney Tunes cartoon directed byBob Clampett.[3] The short was released on August 28, 1937, and starsPorky Pig.[4] This cartoon marks the final appearance of Porky's sidekickGabby Goat in a classic Warner Bros. cartoon short; he would return decades later in theNew Looney Tunes television show onCartoon Network.
Chuck Jones, later to be famed as a director, is credited as animator on the short, whose working title wasThe Oily Bird Gets Porky.[1][5]Get Rich Quick Porky marked the fourth and final short Clampett, Jones andRobert Cannon worked on while on loan fromLeon Schlesinger Productions toUb Iwerks'Animated Pictures Corp.[2] Iwerks had directedPorky and Gabby andPorky's Super Service before quitting the project. Clampett assumed official directorial duties in his stead, with Jones assisting him by drawing the character layout drawings.[5]
Unlike the two Iwerks films andPorky's Badtime Story, which were written at Schlesinger primarily byCal Howard, the storyboard forGet Rich Quick Porky was devised entirely by Clampett himself at the Iwerks studio.[5] Howard did work onGet Rich Quick Porky as the voice artist for Gabby Goat.[1] Following completion of the short, Clampett, Jones, and Cannon returned to the Warner Bros. Sunset Boulevard studio lot where the Schlesinger studio was based.[5] Under the auspices of a new subcontracting setup run by Leon Schlesinger's brother-in-law, Ray Katz, Clampett would be given his own unit, with Jones as his lead animator until the latter became a director as well in 1938.[5]
The title screen changes seamlessly into a sign reading: "Get Rich Quick", followed by "For Sale/This lovely lot containing lots and lots/Oh!--Just oodles ofOIL!" An oil tanker pulls into the lot, and the lot's owner,dogface con artist John Gusher, hooks the tanker to asprinkler system tomake it appear as if the land is saturated with naturalcrude oil, in hopes of luring some suckers to buy the otherwise worthless land. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies Porky Pig and Gabby Goat ascending the steps of the First National Bank, where Porky means to deposit themoney contained in a sack that he is holding; Gabby eagerly tries to convince Porky not to deposit his money (this in a time whenbank failures were still fresh in recent memory) and spend his savings on pleasure, like a yacht "or a chocolate soda or something;" Porky insists on getting his 2%interest. Mr. Gusher jumps in front of the two, barely introduces himself by way of a hastily drawn and withdrawnbusiness card, and points out the plot just across the street. With Gabby egging him on, Porky signs the wayward oilman's deed and turns over his sack in exchange for the field.
The two friends, having gathered some tools in the meanwhile, begin their excavation. Gabby, by means of a pickaxe, unearths acan of oil. A dog wanders onto the property and attempts to bury a bone, only to have it spat back at him by a small gusher; the dog has some further difficulties restraining the spouts of crude. Gabby rides ajackhammer as "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" plays, and, as he can not control the device, drills into the earth and out again, and in again, not to be seen again for several moments. We return to the dog, who is confronted by a gopher, who performs amagic trick: he flattens the soup bone with his hands, then causes it to appear out of the dog's left ear, to the canine's delight. The gopher then buries the bone for the dog to personally exhume: but the dog only gets a face full of oil, while the gopher magically removes the bone from his "volunteer"'s mouth and absconds with it to his subterranean lair, leaving the poor dog to howl in frustration!
Returning to Porky, he hits a small squirt of oil that disappears quickly; when he hits the same spot again with hispickaxe, he discovers a piece of the sprinkler system and realizes he's been conned. An angry Porky confronts Gusher and demands his money back, but Gusher (feigning sincerity) offers only one dollar in return for the deed. Porky, reluctantly, begins to hand over the deed. By this point Gabby, still astride his jackhammer, is far beneath the earth. Just as Porky is about to accept Mr. Gusher's offer, Gabby hits a large vein of natural crude oil, which then bursts through the surface and carries all of the major characters high into the air just before Gusher can get his hands on the deed. Porky realizes his new wealth and latches onto the deed, with Gusher also getting his hands on it and causing atug of war battle. Gabby unintentionally strikes Gusher with the jackhammer, leading the crook to shout in pain and let go of the deed. Gabby and Porky fall to the ground, with Porky proudly holding the deed in his hand—only to find that instead, he has the dog's bone. A despondent Porky turns away, but his sulking is interrupted by the gopher; silently requesting the useless bone, the cheerful gopher transmutes the bone back into the deed, but only offers to return it if Gabby and Porky give the gopher a 50% share of the deed as "partners."
Get Rich Quick Porky entered into the public domain in 1966 when its copyright was not renewed. It has been widely distributed on discount media since then, usually in the form of poor-quality colorized prints. The full black-and-white cartoon is featured on thePorky Pig 101 DVD box set.
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