Friday 15 August 2008

Fleas in cartoons 1948

Thanks to an anonymous contributor at Wikipedia

"Another vintage Warner Bros. cartoon, 'Curtain Razor,' has Porky Pig as a theatrical agent auditioning acts, including a shaggy dog, who turns out to be the transport of a flea circus, which proceeds to set itself up, perform, and return to the dog, on command."


The Looney Toons film is from 1949 and the dog shuffles into the office and blows a whistle to command the fleas. The act does look to be more of a funfair than a circus but they do have a big top which presumably contains all of the acts. Apparently the film was retitled for TV changing from "Curtain Razor" (a reference to the Razorback pig) to "Show Stopper" and was remade with Daffy for "Show Biz Bugs" in 1957

The BFI have some good information about this film in their film at TV Database.

BFI film and TV entry for Curtain Razor

According to Scanton & Wilkes Barre the film preceded many of the Warner Bros. films released theatrically in 1949 and was incorporated into the 1983 feature film Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island.

You can also watch this on youtube (at the time of writing)

2 comments:

Susan said...

Hi Mr. Flea Circus Director,

After many phone calls up to the Tahachaphi Mountains, near Bakersfield, California, where my grandson lives...we finally figured out what he watched that was so awful.

He is nine and has never seen a cockroach, however, while visiting here he saw lots and lots of fleas. He ended-up staying with my mother and not here. I wish I had stayed somewhere else myself.

Anyway, the show was Joe's Apartment and it was about cockroaches. He saw the movie a couple years ago, at a friend's house. My son had seen the movie when he was in college...sorry, not fleas.

Actually, I think it would be a great horror movie. Blood-sucking beasts from the planet, DogIt.

Thanks for the post--you know when you can't think of someone's name, it "bugs" you all day. Well, we went through them all and finally arrived at Joe's Apartment. Susan

FleaCircusDirector said...

Shame that it's not a flea film but I agree your planet DogIt film is a good idea, perhaps you could pitch it to Fox?

The flea and the cockroach both belong to the Neoptera classification of insects which is most of those with wings, both the flea and the roach have evolved away from needing to use their wings, on the flea they are almost totally gone. Some roaches have little stubby wings.