You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
About You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
A jazz band pulls a crowd with the title song. Piggy collects his girl Fluffy and takes her to the theater. He jeers at the trumpet solo, then climbs on stage and plays a corny “Silver Threads Among the Gold” on saxophone. Three shabby drunk dogs in the balcony sing the title line back at him and get the applause. One dog bounces off a drum, swigs bootleg liquor, and belches in Piggy’s face. The fumes knock Piggy out. He grabs the bottle and runs. He pours some into a car radiator; the car tears through a city that bends and talks while the dog chases them. Both end in the back of a truck that dumps them on a landfill.
Cast & crew
More about You Don't Know What You're Doin'!
Rudolf Ising directed the fourth Merrie Melodies short and the first to star Piggy. Isadore Freleng and Norm Blackburn animated. Frank Marsales is the music credit. Warner Bros. released it; the earliest date on record is 21 October 1931. The reel runs 6 minutes 54 seconds. Johnny Murray and Rochelle Hudson are uncredited voices.
Themes
Making
Ising’s Piggy is a one-shot star of the early Merrie Melodies, not the later pig. The gag that lasts is Martin’s horn standing in for a car that has drunk the radiator’s bootleg.
Music
Frank Marsales supervised. The Abe Lyman Orchestra plays, with Slim Martin’s trombone for the drunk automobile. The title song and “Silver Threads Among the Gold” are the two numbers Piggy and the dogs fight over.
Preservation
The 1931 black-and-white short survives. A 1987 redrawn colorization is a shorter, damaged tracing of it, not a restoration.
Notes
- The band on the track is the Abe Lyman Orchestra. Some prints credit Gus Arnheim by mistake.
- Orlando “Slim” Martin’s trombone carries the drunken-car effects. Schlesinger’s sound department later built machines to imitate those noises.
- “Silver Threads Among the Gold” is the 1873 song Piggy massacres.
- A 1987 redrawn color version drops frames and bits of animation.
- Disc 3 of Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6 includes the short.
Scenes
- Piggy elbows the trumpet player and offers “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”
- The balcony dogs sing the title and take the applause.
- A belch of bootleg liquor puts Piggy under.
- He tips the bottle into the radiator and the city starts to hallucinate.
- A garbage truck dumps Piggy and the dog on the landfill.
Also available
- Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6, Disc 3
- Wikimedia Commons (You Don't Know What You're Doin' 190611 LTGC.webm)
