Teacher's Pest
About Teacher's Pest
Mama Owl hauls Junior out of bed and shows him a family album of wise owls, Napowleon among them, before he sets off for kindergarten singing that he will graduate soon. He walks into Wolfie's jaws and out an ear, so the wolf reverses the road signs, paints his house red, and letters "Skool Howse" over the door. Dressed in a cap and gown, the wolf drops Junior into a pot and ends a counting rhyme with "Nine, ten, I eat again." Mama, bringing lunch, lifts him free, and Junior turns the same count into a beating that lids the wolf in the pot until it blows him through the roof. She says that today he is a man, and the wolf's cap and gown drift down onto Junior.
Cast & crew
More about Teacher's Pest
Noveltoon production number P9-5. Isadore Sparber directed, with Myron Waldman. Isadore Klein wrote it. Paramount released it on March 31, 1950. The MPAA number is 4783, and a Technicolor print runs 6 minutes 52 seconds.
Themes
Making
Klein's story is a school day that never reaches the school. The red house, the misspelled sign, and the reversed road markers are the whole campus.
Music
Winston Sharples wrote the score. Junior's walk to school is a song about starting kindergarten and graduating soon.
Preservation
Thunderbean's Noveltoons Original Classics Blu-ray carries a restored transfer. The short is Technicolor production P9-5.
Notes
- Cecil Roy voices Junior, his mother, and the worm in the apple. Sid Raymond voices Wolfie.
- Junior hands the "teacher" an apple. The worm inside leaves.
- The wolf's math lesson is a rhyme: "One two, I like you" through "Nine, ten, I eat again.
- The family album Mama shows him includes Napowleon, the Wizard of Owls, Professor Owlstein, and a playboy Night Owl, called the black sheep.
Scenes
- Junior strolls into the wolf's jaws and keeps singing out the ear.
- Steam gauges spin in Junior's eyes under the pot lid.
- The wolf shoots out the chimney, loses the cap and gown, and floats downstream with his ears up like a periscope.
Also available
- DVD: Noveltoons Original Classics (2012, Thunderbean Animation)
- DVD: 300 Cartoon Classics (2011, Image Entertainment)
- Blu-ray: Noveltoons Original Classics (2019, Thunderbean Animation)
Quotes
This humidity is killing me.
Today, you are a man.
I'll be graduating soon.
