Tag: rock a bye pinky

Coming Up Shorts! with… The Pink Panther Cartoon Collection: Volume 2

Welcome back for another full post of Coming Up Shorts! This time, I’m going with theatrical shorts starring The Pink Panther, featuring the shorts from 1966 through 1968 that have been released together on disc in The Pink Panther Cartoon Collection: Volume 2.

Here’s a list and quick plot description for each of the cartoons included in this set (for my comments on the individual cartoons, click on the title to go to my previous reviews):

  1. Pink-A-Boo (1966) (Length: 6 minutes, 14 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther has to deal with a mouse and his friends who have come to party.
  2. Genie With The Light Pink Fur (1966) (Length: 6 minutes, 7 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther tries to become a genie, to hilarious effect!
  3. Super Pink (1966) (Length: 5 minutes, 58 seconds)
    • After reading a superhero comic, the Pink Panther tries to be a superhero himself!
  4. Rock A Bye Pinky (1966) (Length: 6 minutes, 8 seconds)
    • When the Pink Panther can’t sleep due to the Little Man’s snoring, he tries to do something about it!
  5. Pinknic (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 9 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther is stuck in a cabin awaiting the arrival of spring, and is stuck with an equally hungry mouse.
  6. Pink Panic (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 1 second)
    • Coming out of a storm, the Pink Panther tries to spend the night at a haunted hotel in a ghost town.
  7. Pink Posies (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 11 seconds)
    • The Little Man tries to plant some yellow posies, but the Pink Panther keeps replacing them with pink posies.
  8. Pink Of The Litter (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 1 second)
    • When a policeman catches the Pink Panther littering, the Panther is forced to clean up the town of Littersburg.
  9. In The Pink (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 13 seconds)
    • Feeling a little fat, the Pink Panther goes to the gym to work out.
  10. Jet Pink (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 3 seconds)
    • When the Pink Panther walks onto an experimental aircraft base, he decides to try becoming a famous pilot.
  11. Pink Paradise (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 11 seconds)
    • When the Pink Panther comes upon a tropical island, he finds himself trying to avoid the Little Man, who is doing some hunting.
  12. Pinto Pink (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 5 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther is trying to hitchhike across the country, when he spots a horse and decides to try riding him.
  13. Congratulations It’s Pink (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 12 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther steals a basket from some campers, only to find it has a baby in it and not food.
  14. Prefabricated Pink (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 11 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther sees a “Help Wanted” sign at a construction site, and hops right in to help out the workers.
  15. The Hand Is Pinker Than The Eye (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 15 seconds)
    • On a cold winter’s day, the Pink Panther sneaks into a house to get warm. What he doesn’t know is that the house belongs to magician Zammo the Great, and he has to contend with all sorts of magical troubles!
  16. Pink Outs (1967) (Length: 6 minutes, 14 seconds)
    • In this Pink Panther cartoon, there is no story. It’s just a series of different gags, switching from one activity to another.
  17. Sky Blue Pink (1968) (Length: 6 minutes, 11 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther tries to fly a kite, but keeps causing trouble for the Little Man.
  18. Pinkadilly Circus (1968) (Length: 6 minutes, 2 seconds)
    • When the Little Man pulls a nail out of the Pink Panther’s foot, the Panther offers to be his slave out of gratitude.
  19. Psychedelic Pink (1968) (Length: 6 minutes, 17 seconds)
    • The Pink Panther walks by a psychedelic book store, and comes inside after being hypnotized by the door.
  20. Come On In! The Water’s Pink (1968) (Length: 6 minutes, 4 seconds)
    • At Bicep Beach, the Pink Panther runs afoul of a muscle-bound freak with his various inflatables.

Given that I haven’t had any luck in finding out much in the way of background information with regard to the era of Pink Panther cartoons contained in this set (compared to what I could find on Pink Panther Volume 1), I will then confine my comments to what I think of the shorts that are included. While I don’t have as strong a memory on whether I saw any of these shorts when I was younger, there are still a number of fun shorts here. Genie With The Light Pink Fur stands out as a fun one, with the Panther pretending to be a genie in a lamp (but nobody wants to make any wishes, instead chasing him away most of the time). Pink Panic is fun as a more Halloween-centered short, as the Panther deals with a ghost and skeleton (and one of my favorite shorts to watch around that time of year). The gym-centered In The Pink is also fun, as the Panther tries to exercise (and inadvertently causes trouble for the Little Man). There are some shorts that are very similar in this set (with at least two dealing with the Panther causing trouble for the Little Man’s dog, who knows the Panther is there but can’t get that across to his master, who blames him for his trouble), plus others that are close in story to some from the first set, but they are still quite entertaining. The only ones that I really didn’t care for were Pink Outs (due to its lack of story) and the hippie-era Psychedelic Pink. Apart from those, this second chronological volume of Pink Panther shorts is still quite entertaining! The level of restoration (or lack thereof) is quite similar to Volume 1, which is good enough for me to recommend it!

The Pink Panther Cartoon Collection Volume 2 is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber. The whole set has a runtime of two hours, eight minutes.

“Star Of The Month (June 2021)” Featuring Claudette Colbert in… Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)

Next up for our June celebration of actress Claudette Colbert (as the Star Of The Month), we’ve got the 1938 comedy Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, also starring Gary Cooper!

Coming Up Shorts! with… Rock A Bye Pinky (1966)

(available on Blu-ray and DVD as part of The Pink Panther Cartoon Collection: Volume 2 (1966-1968) from Kino Lorber)

(Length: 6 minutes, 8 seconds)

When the Pink Panther can’t sleep due to the Little Man’s snoring, he tries to do something about it! This one is a lot of fun, as the Little Man (who doesn’t know the Pink Panther is there) keeps blaming everything on his dog. Obviously, one can’t help but feel sorry for the dog (who keeps trying to save his master, only to be blamed for it), but the gags are funny enough that you want to keep watching! I know I do, as I enjoy coming back to this one again and again!

And Now For The Main Feature…

Oh, the crazy things that can bring people together! While shopping at a store on the French Riviera, American millionaire Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper) tries to buy only the top half of a pair of pajamas, but the clerks and store owners won’t let him. It is only when Nicole De Loiselle (Claudette Colbert) steps in and offers to buy the pants that everything is cleared up. Michael is also struggling with insomnia, and tries to change rooms at the hotel he is staying at. However, the other room he attempts to switch to is still occupied by the Marquis De Loiselle (Edward Everett Horton) (even though he hasn’t paid his bill for some time and is being threatened with eviction), and Michael discovers the Marquis wearing the pajama pants that Nicole had bought. Realizing that Nicole is the daughter of the Marquis, Michael decides to buy an antique bathtub that the financially-strapped Marquis tries to sell him. Michael finds Nicole at the beach with her friend (and one of Michael’s bank employees) Albert De Regnier (David Niven). While Michael sends Albert off to type up a letter, he tries to propose to Nicole, but she turns him down. Michael keeps trying, and eventually she does agree to marry him. However, at their engagement party, Nicole finds out that he has been married not once, not twice, but SEVEN times previously. She resists the idea of marrying him, but, upon hearing that his previous wives all got a settlement of $50,000 a year for life, she proposes a settlement of $100,000 a year if they divorce, to which Michael agrees. However, things don’t go the way he expects, as, even after marriage, she tries to maintain a distance between them (as in, they don’t consummate the marriage). In spite of that, he’s bound and determined to try and keep this marriage going. Her efforts finally win out, when she attempts to make it look like she’s having an affair, and he walks in on Albert, who had been knocked out (by a prize fighter she had hired to pose as her lover). That’s finally enough to convince him to divorce her, but in the process he suffers a nervous breakdown. Will they come back together, or will this divorce last, too?

This movie was based on a French play by Albert Savoir and its English translation by Charlton Andrews. The story had been done onscreen before, as a silent film in 1923 starring Gloria Swanson. For the new film, director Ernst Lubitsch came in, and, for writers, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were teamed up for the first time. The opening scene about the pajamas came from Billy Wilder, who, as the director and his co-writer later found out, was also prone to sleeping only in pajama tops, and had wanted to use the idea in a comedy for a while.

This was yet another wonderful screwball performance from actress Claudette Colbert. In general, a lot of the fun from this movie comes about as a result of how much smarter her character Nicole is than Gary Cooper’s Michael. Once she learns about his previous wives, she quickly figures out that the best way to keep him is to NOT to behave like a normal wife, and instead make him fight for their relationship. Heck, she even outsmarts the private detective he hires to follow her around, and turns the tables on him, too! Considering how casually Michael considers marriage, it’s hard not to cheer for her as she tries to bring him around to her way of thinking!

I may be coming off my first time seeing this movie, but, wow! What a screwball comedy! I personally think that the chemistry between Claudette and Gary Cooper makes this film work quite well! Again, the fact that he thinks he’s so smart (while she proves far smarter than him) is what makes this film fun! I’ll admit, one moment between the two that sticks out in my mind is when he reads Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew for inspiration on how to handle her. I’ll admit, the only reason this moment works (since he slaps her and then later spanks her) is because she gives as good as she gets, frustrating him to the point of throwing the book in the fire (without that, it wouldn’t be that funny). Honestly, if I have ANY complaint about this movie, it’s that Edward Everett Horton isn’t in it enough! In my opinion, he steals the picture, whether it be his reaction when he finds out about the previous wives (he faints offscreen), to the greed he displays when he hears about the settlements that the other wives got from their divorces. But I’ll never forget how he gets himself into the sanitarium to see Michael when he suffers a nervous breakdown. Seriously, this movie is just a hoot from start to finish, and one I look forward to seeing again and again (so, yes, I would definitely recommend it)!

What’s Old Is A New Release Again (2020) with… Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)

This movie is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. This movie appears to be using an HD scan, one that was probably done a while back. Still, it looks at least decent, with very little dirt or debris. One would wish that it could be improved with a new scan, but this is still good enough for a wonderful movie, and the best way to see it for the time being!

Film Length: 1 hour, 26 minutes

My Rating: 10/10

List Of Actor/Actress Filmographies/Collections

The Bride Comes Home (1935) – Claudette Colbert – The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Alice In Wonderland (1933) – Gary Cooper – Sergeant York (1941)

Top Hat (1935) – Edward Everett Horton – College Swing (1938)

David Niven – Bachelor Mother (1939)

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