Conrad the Sailor is a 1942 Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 cartoon in the Merrie Melodies

Merrie Melodies

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,...

 series, directed by Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

. The title character, a.k.a. Conrad the Cat, is voiced by Pinto Colvig

Pinto Colvig

Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was an American vaudeville actor, radio actor, newspaper cartoonist, prolific movie voice actor, and circus performer whose schtick was playing clarinet off-key while mugging....

. The other featured player is Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...

, voiced as usual by Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

.

Plot synopsis

The story takes place aboard a battleship

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

 staffed by anthropomorphic

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...

 cats (barely recognizable as such), most of whom are singing "The Song of the Marines (Shovin' Right Off Again)" as a chorale group. Cut to Conrad, who talks and sings exactly like Colvig's characterization of the Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 character "Goofy

Goofy

Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...

".

As Conrad swabs the deck, he is interrupted by Daffy and his pranks. The two spend the cartoon chasing and tormenting each other. A running gag in the picture is that all action screeches to a halt whenever the ship's diminutive captain walks by, as both sailor and duck snap to attention and salute. The final gag involves Conrad and Daffy being chased by a shell from one of the ship's big guns. All three, including the shell, snap to attention as the captain walks by.

Innovation

Animator John McGrew

John McGrew

John Burton McGrew was an American animator, painter and musician. Although best known for working at Warner Bros. Cartoons, where he was the studio's first designated layout artist, working under Chuck Jones, he was also known as a member of the Hollywood blacklist.McGrew trained at the Chouinard...

 borrowed much of the staging for the cartoon from Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...

's film The Battleship Potemkin

The Battleship Potemkin

The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...

whilst it also saw his first use of match cut

Match cut

A match cut, also called a graphic match, is a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions in which an object in the two shots graphically match, often helping to establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots...

s where different objects in separate scenes would have the same basic shape, with McGrew giving the example of a gun and a cloud.

Availability

Conrad the Sailor is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4

Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4

Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 is a Looney Tunes collection on DVD. Following the pattern of one release each year of the previous volumes, it was released on November 14, 2006...

Disc 4.