Watch Merrie Melodies Online
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969. Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the newly renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons continued production until 1963. Merrie Melodies were outsourced to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises from 1964 to 1967, and Warner Bros. Cartoons re-assumed production for the series’ final two years.
Dressed in a tuxedo, the Big Bad Wolf announces the evening’s program: the tale of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, set to the music of Johannes Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Queue the fairy tale: we watch each pig build his house, the first two pigs dance and play, the wolf arrives and, wearing a gypsy woman’s disguise, almost catches them. They run to hide in the brick house, where the wolf tries various ruses to gain entry, including dressing as a poverty-stricken old woman reduced to playing a violin for donations. He fools the two simple pigs and gets inside. Will he dine on pork? The house has an elevator, the wolf gets the shaft.
The short begins with a pleasant group of mice enjoying various water sports in a kitchen sink. Lurking nearby is a sinister cat who gains the confidence of a dim-witted mouse. The cat persuades the unsuspecting rodent to tell the other mice to become the cat’s slaves, and the cat promises a never-ending cheese supply in return. The mouse (who much more resembles a rat) follows the cat’s orders, but he soon finds out the cat’s true intentions—to make them his dinner. The mice then form a united alliance against the cat as both sides prepare for war. After battling the cat a cream is thrown at the mouse throwing him into the leg of the robot they built.
At Corny-Gie Hall, Elmer (as Deems Taylor) conducts two cartoons set to music. In “Tales Of The Vienna Woods,” Bugs foils hunter Porky and his dog. Bugs, Porky and Porky’s dog do a ballet, with Bugs donning drag to appear as a ballerina. The second piece, “The Blue Danube,” is a spoof of “The Ugly Duckling,” with a baby black duck- not unlike a juvenile Daffy- saving the day when the swans are threatened by a goofy buzzard.
Two alley cats, Babbitt and Catsello, decide to make a meal out of Orson as he sleeps in his nest atop a telephone pole. The gullible (and loud) Catsello is repeatedly gulled into trying to “get the bird,” earning a variety of thrashings from the casually murderous little canary. Catsello finally resorts to an air strike (with a pair of wooden boards for wings), but it’s wartime, and Orson has the cat blasted out of the sky by anti-aircraft guns.
A classic melodrama featuring Pimento U. students Tom, Dick and Larry (a.k.a. The Dover Boys) who must rescue their girl Dora from evil Dan Backslide. The Dover Boys are three upstanding but stupid “big men on campus” at turn-of-the-century Pimento University (“good old P.U.”). During a fateful game of hide-and-seek, the brothers’ favorite date, Dainty Dora Standpipe, is kidnapped by blue-skinned villain Dan Backslide. The Dover Boys (heroes that they are) must come to her rescue. Well, sort of.