''Baby Bottleneck'' is a 1946

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

'' Looney Tunes'' cartoon directed by Bob Clampett and written by

Warren Foster Warren Foster (October 24, 1904 – December 13, 1971) was an American writer, cartoonist and composer for the animation division of Warner Brothers and later with Hanna-Barbera. Early life He was born in Brooklyn, New York to Marion B. Fos ...

. The cartoon was released on March 16, 1946, and stars

Daffy Duck Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character created for Leon Schlesinger Productions by animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. Styled as an anthropomorphic black duck, he has appeared in cartoon series such as ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Mel ...

and Porky Pig.

Tweety Tweety is a yellow canary in the Warner Bros. ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being an English onomatopoeia for t ...

makes a cameo appearance in the film.

Plot

As the

post-World War II baby boom The middle of the 20th century was marked by a significant and persistent increase in fertility rates in many countries of the world, especially in the Western world. The term '' baby boom'' is often used to refer to this particular boom, general ...

explodes, an overworked stork (patterned after comedian Jimmy Durante) gets drunk in the Stork Club, complaining that he does all the work and the fathers get all the credit. Inexperienced animals; among them a dog with a propeller-powered tail carrying bundles of babies, four crows attempting to deliver an elephant, a pelican with simple devices to help haul the babies in its bill, and a mouse dragging a baby

rhino A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species o ...

; are among those commissioned to handle the increased workload as they take the babies to their parents. Because of the inexperience of the substitutes, babies are getting sent to the wrong parents; a mother

goose A goose ( : geese) is a bird of any of several waterfowl species in the family Anatidae. This group comprises the genera ''Anser'' (the grey geese and white geese) and '' Branta'' (the black geese). Some other birds, mostly related to the ...

is disgusted by her baby skunk, a baby kitten refuses to swim for its mother

duck Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form ...

, a baby

gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

rides uncomfortably in the pouch of a

Kangaroo Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern ...

, a Scottie Dog tries to rock his

hippo The hippopotamus ( ; : hippopotamuses or hippopotami; ''Hippopotamus amphibius''), also called the hippo, common hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extant ...

to sleep, and two parents receive offspring that try to eat them—a kitten to a terrified mouse and an alligator to a pig. Porky Pig is brought in to manage Storks Inc. and its

assembly line An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in se ...

, with

as his assistant. While Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby ("I'm sorry, Bing, you've used up your quota."), Eddie Cantor ("You say you haven't got that boy yet?") and the Dionne Quintuplets' father ("Mr. Dionne, please!"), Porky runs the control room, contacting references to Roydan Stork,

Jimmy Doolittle James Harold Doolittle (December 14, 1896 – September 27, 1993) was an American military general and aviation pioneer who received the Medal of Honor for his daring raid on Japan during World War II. He also made early coast-to-coast flights ...

as Jimmy Doo-quite-a-little, and a B-19. Then a dog worker, apparently research and development, comes in through Porky's door and tells him that strapping a skyrocket to the back would speed things exponentially, but the rocket exploded before the send-off. It's back to the drawing board for that idea. Then Daffy yells, "Fffull-speed ahead!" and Porky pulled the switch as the babies (among them

in a brief cameo) are seen going through a conveyor belt (to the tune of

Raymond Scott Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow; September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994) was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments. Though Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, his music is ...

's famous " Powerhouse") as they are diapered, fed milk and mechanically burped before they are sent by various animals, one of which is a baby hippo crying loudly and paused as it cutely said, "I'm only 3½ seconds old," before resuming its wailing. Several minor mishaps happen along the assembly line; the machine that diapers babies is presented with a baby turtle but works around it by taking the baby out of their shell, then when the milk feeding machine tries to feed the turtle, it ends up flooding the shell, forcing the turtle to bail the milk out while badmouthing the machine; when the milk feeding machine begins sprays milk over a puppy's diaper, it begins crying as an alarm suddenly sounds. In response, Porky pulls a lever that sends the puppy to be given a rather quick bath. Problems, however, occur when Porky, reading the tags from the other babies, finds a stray egg is without an address and decides to have Daffy sit on it until it hatches. However, Daffy refuses to sit around on top of an egg. Furious, Porky chases Daffy around the factory (complete with an imitation of Porky by Daffy) until they wind up trapped on the conveyor belt. The belt winds up stuffing both of them into one package (with Porky as the legs and Daffy as the top half) and sends them off to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

via a stork-shaped skyrocket (Patent Pending), where a

is waiting for her arrival. When the gorilla looks at the "baby" she sees

crying, Porky peeks through the diaper, saying, "Uh, boo...", causing the gorilla to cry on the telephone, "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!!" (a reference to John J. Anthony, who conducted a daily radio advice program at the time called '' The Goodwill Hour''; its stock phrase was "I have a problem, Mr. Anthony").

Censorship

When the alligator is trying to get milk from Mrs. Pig, she starts to say something before it abruptly cuts. According to Bob Clampett, she says “Don’t touch that dial” (a common cliché when radio or television shows cut to commercial). It was cut out because the

Hays Office The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the ...

deemed it too risqué. No footage has surfaced of the original uncut scene.

Reception

Michael Barrier writes, "''Baby Bottleneck'', like '' Book Revue'' (1946), reveals just how great Bob Clampett's impact was on the Warner Bros. cartoons in the early 1940s... As so often in Clampett's best cartoons, there is a prevailing air of hysteria and madness: The stork is drunk, inexperienced help is delivering babies to the wrong mothers, everything is a mess — and all is bliss."

Home media

*DVD: Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 *DVD:

Storks Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family called Ciconiidae, and make up the order Ciconiiformes . Ciconiiformes previously included a number of other families, such as herons an ...

(1952 blue ribbon reissue) *Blu-ray and DVD: Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1

References

External links