(Writer’s note: This is something I wrote in early 2023 as part of a possible “Best 30 Looney Tunes shorts” collaboration list between a bunch of a folks from the World Animation Discord. I can’t quite remember what happened with that plan, but I thought I’d post this on its own to celebrate a good piece of animation and encourage folks to give it a look.)
Over the past two years, I’ve been making my way through various Looney Tunes shorts that I’ve never seen before. Part of the delight of seeing something for the first time is getting to experience them with fresh eyes, unclouded by years of ubiquity from TV repeats and pop cultural osmosis, and enjoying them however they come. Three Little Bops is one of my favourite examples, because I’d never heard of it until someone on the World Animation Discord posted a clip of the wolf dancing excitedly to the pigs’ music, animated by the Looney Tunes dance master Gerry Chiniquy.
Checking it out soon after, I was delighted to find an upbeat, constantly energetic short that retold the story of the Three Little Pigs but in a manner that, like Page Miss Glory, reflects the specific point in time and culture it was made. The tale is reworked as the pigs being jazz musicians and the big bad wolf as an earnest but appallingly naff trumpeter who won’t take no for an answer, and is told as a continuous jazz tune with the narrator and characters singing their lines (provided by Stan Freberg, in one of few shorts where Mel Blanc is nowhere to be heard).
The animation is somewhat conservative in its usage, often using a handful of shots of the pigs playing various instruments whenever they move to a new club, but that allows for characters to quietly bounce, gesture and move in time to the music without becoming distracting. There’s a real sense of passion conveyed in their movements, like you can tell their love of jazz through their musical and acting performances.
The highlight for me will always be that shot by Gerry Chiniquy where the wolf is introduced, so amazed by the music he dances his way to the pigs, shakes their hands and tries to join in. It’s such a delightfully animated shot, perhaps one of my favourite bits of acting and/or dancing in anything from Looney Tunes, and the first thing that always comes to mind whenever I think about this short.
It’s such an atypical toon even in terms of the music, being the only Looney Tunes short scored by jazz musician, trumpeter and arranger Shorty Rogers, who alongside his band delivers a boisterous tune in the 12-bar blues tradition that keeps the short’s energy going throughout. The end result is a short that does something unique and with gusto, which is especially impressive considering this came out in 1957. Even after 27 years (and Friz Freleng directing cartoons for 24 years), the folks at Termite Terrace could still pull out all the stops in telling stories in new kinds of ways.
There’s nothing quite like the Three Little Bops, and that’s why it’s worth a watch.
FrDougal9000 writes for hardcoregaming101.net as Apollo Chungus. When he isn’t writing about video games, he is cultivating his love of animation that’s only increased over the last few years as he’s explored the wide, weird and wonderful world of the medium.