I Only Have Eyes for You
The Blue Ribbon title card
Directed byFred Avery
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
StarringJoe Twerp
Elvia Allman
Tedd Pierce
Billy Paye[2]
Edited byTreg Brown
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Animation byBob Clampett
Virgil Ross
Layouts byGriff Jay
Backgrounds byArt Loomer
Color processTechnicolor
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
Release dates
  • February 27, 1937 (1937-02-27)[1]
(original release), March 17, 1945 (Blue Ribbon reissue)
Running time
about 8 minutes
LanguageEnglish

I Only Have Eyes for You is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Tex Avery.[3] The short was released on February 27, 1937.[4]

The title of this short is based on the song of the same name.

Plot

The protagonist (voiced by spoonerism specialist Joe Twerp), who drives an ice-delivery truck, is wooed by a homely spinster bird (voiced by Elvia Allman) who hopes to entice him with her culinary talents. The iceman, on the other hand, is only interested in Katie Canary (a Katharine Hepburn impression also voiced by Allman), who only wants to marry a radio crooner and rebuffs his overtures to the point where she prefers ordering a refrigerator.

The iceman, in order to win Katie, hires a voice imitator, Professor Mockingbird (voiced by Tedd Pierce), to simulate crooners from the back of his ice truck while the iceman lip-syncs. The scheme eventually backfires when Professor Mockingbird turns blue from the extreme cold in the ice truck, and gets sick to the point that he sneezes the top of the truck off, causing Katie to discover the iceman's ruse. Katie marries the Professor, being sufficiently impressed by his crooning ability (while replacing her radio with an electric refrigerator, as a means to keep the iceman away from her forever), while the iceman is finally won over by the spinster's cooking and baking and presumably marries her.

Notes

References

  1. ^ "The Film Daily (Jan-Feb 1937)". Wid's Films and Film Folk, inc. January 1937. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  2. ^ Scott, Keith (2022). Cartoon Voices from the Golden Age, 1930-70. BearManor Media. p. 22. ISBN 979-8-88771-010-5.
  3. ^ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 54. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  4. ^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 104–106. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  5. ^ "WARNER BROS. TITLES". www.cartoonresearch.com. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
  6. ^ Sigall, Martha (2005). Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation. ISBN 9781578067497.

External links


Films directed by Tex Avery
Categories