Studio: Paramount Cartoon Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Short Synopsis
Detailed accounts of this short are scarce; this summary follows the surviving print. The star is José Jiménez, the gentle, bewildered character created by the comedian Bill Dana, who voices him here. José, a small, earnest man in a pith helmet, is caught up in an expedition after an ancient mummy, and the film follows his mishaps along the way. In one scene someone counts a few coins into his palm. Down in a dusty, cobwebbed chamber, crouched over a map, he clutches his helmet in despair, and later, among jungle leaves, a dark, mysterious figure leans over his shoulder. The comedy comes from José's polite, puzzled reactions to increasingly strange events. How the mummy hunt ends is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- The film's loose, sketchy drawing and spare backgrounds show the new, more graphic direction Paramount's studio took under Shamus Culhane, and casting Bill Dana's José Jiménez, then a popular television and record character, was an attempt to bring current comedy stars into theatrical cartoons.
- It comes from the short period in 1965 and 1966 when Culhane, one of the stylists of Lantz's 1940s Woody Woodpecker cartoons, ran Paramount's cartoon studio and tried to modernise it with offbeat, adult-minded shorts, shortly before the studio closed in 1967. Its José Jiménez character, a gentle Latin American caricature, was later retired by Dana himself in response to criticism.
Notes and Trivia
- The animation historian Jerry Beck has discussed this and the other 1965-66 Paramount cartoons at Cartoon Research.
- The title puns on the phrase "I want my mommy".
- See also: From Nags to Witches (1966), The Barber of Seville (1944).