User Reviews

Directed by Frank Tashlin, "Swooner Crooner" is an excellent Warner Bros. cartoon that takes place at a chicken farm/factory. The proprietor is Porky Pig, but he's not really the star of the picture. All of his hens are defense workers doing their part for the war effort; they show up to work every morning with their badges & lunch pails and punch in their time cards. Their job is simple: to lay eggs while being transported on a conveyor belt. But when a debonair popular-singing chicken arrives, the "young ladies" all leave their posts in order to become entranced by this one-of-a-kind hypnotist ("It's Frankie!!!"). The hens' "absenteeism" stops the whole operation, and Porky panics...until another vocalizing chicken named Bing shows up.

My favorite moments from "Swooner Crooner" include the following. Aside from the excellent caricature of the Bing Crosby chicken (Hawaiian shirt, hat, pipe, & voice), there are several well-made caricatures of other chickens that Porky auditions before he meets Bing: Nelson Eddy (singing "Mommy's Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread"), Al Jolson (singing "September in the Rain"), Jimmy Durante (singing "Lullaby of Broadway"), and Cab Calloway (singing "Blues in the Night"). Frankie's emaciated body disappears behind the microphone stand as the hens all scream in ecstasy, and the popular standard "As Time Goes By" causes all the hens to happily faint. Upon hearing Bing's vocalizations, one hen lays such a gigantic mountain of eggs that her henhouse actually rises upward on top of the egg structure!

"Swooner Crooner" may not exactly be the quintessential Hollywood caricature cartoon, but no matter; the chicken caricatures are quite good, and the songs are memorable. This cartoon is on Disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3, and for an added bonus, treat yourself to a very interesting audio commentary by music historian Daniel Goldmark.

I agree with most of the above reviews, but the one that appears just prior to mine (at least as I am writing this) has a glaring error! It was written by a man in England who seems not to have been paying attention to the plot, which he scorns! No, Sir, the hens are not laying piles of eggs because they are aroused by Frankie's singing! They are DISTRACTED by his singing and are NOT laying eggs! THAT's why Porky is auditioning other caricature roosters: To get the hens back to work! The auditions are a riot! Sorry that you, Sir, are offended by what happens in this cartoon. Wake up, Man--this is not deep Orson Welles stuff! Take it as the funny send-up that it is!

. . . is about more than propagating enormous piles of chicken eggs, Warner Bros. makes clear. The sign at the beginning of SWOONER CROONER indicates that Porky Pig is managing the "Flockheed Eggcraft Factory--100% War Work." But is this facility REALLY populated by farmyard fowl? Heck no! When one hen is temporarily Defeathered about four minutes into this animated short, it's revealed that underneath her fluffy white quills she's sporting a matching lingerie set comprised of a lacy pink brassiere and panties! Furthermore, whenever the Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby roosters croon love songs, they send this female flock's egg ducts into overdrive, upping their output from a single white orb to dozens of eggs popped out per hen at a single sitting. Clearly, SWOONER CROONER constitutes a U.S. War Department-sanctioned effort to get America's Rosies riveting overtime. Why all the love songs at a "100% War Work factory?" (After all, these are not the "Make love, not war" 1960s!) Mainly this bullets & bombers by candlelight campaign was implemented due to Hitler's threat to spearhead a "Thousand Year Reich" or Ten-Century Reign of Nazi Terror. This, of course, raised the specter of a multi-generational conflict. That made it the DUTY of every American woman to become pregnant at every opportunity, preferably with twins, at least, since the Babes of Today became Tomorrow's Grunts. (And if Rosie could not be with the one she loved--or to whom she was wed--her marching orders were to love the one she was with!) That way, Rosie could make tanks, and have her baby, too. In hindsight, this proved to be Overbirth, leading to the Baby Boom, but who wants to be a Monday morning quarterback?