One Froggy Evening
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One Froggy Evening is an approximately seven-minute long Technicolor animated short film written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on December 31, 1955 as part of Warner Brothers' Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. This cartoon also celebrates New Year's Eve 1956 since it was released on December 31.
Some critics and observers regard this cartoon short as the finest ever made. Steven Spielberg, in the PBS Chuck Jones biography Extremes & Inbetweens: A Life In Animation, called One Froggy Evening "the Citizen Kane of animated film." (Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 5, Disc 2) In 1994 it was voted #5 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. The film is currently ranked at IMDb as the second best short movie ever. In 2003 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The film is included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 DVD box set (Disc 4), along with an Audio commentary, optional music-only audio track (only the instrumental, not the vocal), and a making-of documentary, It Hopped One Night: A Look at "One Froggy Evening".
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[edit] Story
A mid-1950s construction worker involved in the demolition of an 1892 building finds a box inside a cornerstone. He opens it to reveal a (seemingly immortal) singing, dancing frog, complete with top hat and cane. The box also contains a deed dated April 16th, 1892. The man tries exploiting the frog's talents for money, but as it turns out, it will not perform in front of anyone else. For the rest of the cartoon, the man frantically tries to demonstrate the frog's abilities to the outside world (first by trying to get an agent to accept him, then by renting out a theater), all to no avail. Eventually he is homeless (after spending all his money renting the theater) and living on a park bench, where the frog still performs for him. A policeman overhears this and approaches the man, but after seeing him accuse the frog of the singing, he has the man committed to an asylum. Following his release, the haggard man dejectedly hides the box in a building that is under construction. The timeline then jumps to the year 2056 (100 years and at least 1 day after the cartoon's debut), where the building is demolished by futuristic ray guns, and the box with the frog is discovered yet again by a 21st century demolition man, starting the process all over.
[edit] Production notes
The cartoon has no spoken dialog, in fact no vocals at all, except by the frog, otherwise relying on pantomime and other visuals, sound effects, and music: mostly songs from the ragtime and early Tin Pan Alley era, with a dash of opera showing the frog's versatility; along with one new song written for the cartoon "The Michigan Rag", a parody of pop-rag songs of the era.
The singer was uncredited and for years his identity was shrouded in some degree of mystery. Various names have been proposed in the past. The Looney Tunes Golden Collection unequivocally credits the vocals to baritone Bill Roberts, a nightclub entertainer in Los Angeles in the 1950s.
The frog had no name when the cartoon was made, but Chuck Jones later named him Michigan J. Frog after the original song. The character became the mascot of The WB television network in the 1990s. In a clip shown in the DVD specials for Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Jones states that he started calling the character "Michigan Frog" in the 1970s. During an interview by a writer named Jay Cox, Jones decided to adopt "J" as the Frog's middle initial, after the interviewer's name.
The DVD also points out that the names of the buildings in the picture, as shown on the various cornerstones, are names of Warner production people on the cartoon.
The cornerstone in which the frog was sealed seems to predate some of the songs he sings. Papers found in the box with him state that it was sealed in 1892, but "Hello! Ma Baby", for instance, was not written until 1899.
A production short-cut can be observed in the final scene, in which the futuristic demolition worker finds the frog in the box. The wide shot shows a smooth, concrete background, while the close-up shot is identical to the first scene in the cartoon, with the rubble of bricks seen in the background.
[edit] Inspirations
The story may have been inspired by the real-life tale of Ol' Rip, a horned toad who apparently survived 31 years sealed in the cornerstone of the courthouse in Eastland, Texas. The cornerstones in both cases had been laid in the 1890s. There are also connections to African myths.
The performing style of the frog is at least in part a tribute to ragtime era greats such as Bert Williams, who was known for sporting a top hat and cane, and performing the type of flamboyant, high-kick dance steps demonstrated by the frog in Hello! Ma Baby.
Chuck Jones would later reprise Michigan J. Frog in a new cartoon entitled Another Froggy Evening (1995), with Jeff McCarthy providing the frog's voice.
[edit] Censorship
- Airings of this cartoon on ABC and the WB cut the part where the man creates a "Free Beer" sign to rope in audience members into seeing the singing frog. The humor of that piece showed a bunch of drunks bullcharging into the theatre. The way it's cut on both channels makes it seem that the audience came in because of the "Free Admission" sign the man creates before the "Free Beer" sign.
- When the short was featured on the compilation movie Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales, the ending where the construction worker from 2056 finds the singing frog and makes off with it, in the hopes of exploiting it the same way the man from 1955 tried, was cut, making it seem as if the cartoon ended with the construction worker from 1955 getting rid of the frog and running off.
[edit] Songs featured
Several of the songs performed by the frog were written after he was presumably sealed into the cornerstone, dated 1892.
- Words and Music by Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard (1899)
- "The Michigan Rag"
- Words and Music by Milt Franklyn, Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones (original song written for the cartoon)
- "Come Back to Erin"
- Words and Music by Claribel (pseudonym of Charlotte Alington Barnard) (1866)
- Words and Music by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle (1921)
- "Throw Him Down, McCloskey"
- Words and Music by John W. Kelly (1890)
- "The Michigan Rag" reprise
- "Won't You Come Over To My House"
- Words by Harry Williams
- Music by Egbert Van Alstyne (1906)
- from "The Barber of Seville"
- Composed by Gioacchino Rossini (1816)
- Words and Music by Sidney Clare, Sam H. Stept and Bee Palmer (1930)
- "Hello! Ma Baby" reprise
Some sources (including one of the DVD commentators) say that only the one man can actually hear the frog, which raises the question of the man's mental state (to say nothing of the mental state of the audience). However, a policeman actually overhears the frog singing "Largo al factotum", in a public park, but by the time he finds the apparent source, it has stopped and he assumes the man was singing. In an earlier scene (at the theatre), the frog is singing backstage but stops just before the curtains open; there is no reason to think the audience [in the story] cannot hear him.
The man who found the frog is the only person who hears the frog singing and sees the frog at the same time. The theatre audience and the policeman do hear the frog when they cannot see it, and the frog has stopped singing by the time any of them can see it.
