Studio: International Film Service
Short Synopsis
Krazy Kat is the cook in a little restaurant, and Ignatz Mouse is the only customer. Ignatz orders roast duck with gravy. Krazy brings it, adds a whole pie as a gesture of generosity, and starts making conversation: a lot of famous people, Krazy has noticed, have names beginning with "G". Ignatz is sceptical and demands examples. Krazy obliges with "G. Washington", and then, pleased with the theory, keeps going with "G. Rusalem" and "G. Hosafat", puns on Jerusalem and Jehoshaphat that only work out loud. Krazy offers one last treat, a big strawberry pie. Ignatz has heard enough, and the pie ends up in Krazy's face, leaving the cook flat on the floor and covered in jam, as serene as ever.
Why It Matters
- The joke is pure Herriman, a piece of daft wordplay delivered in speech balloons, with Krazy's sweet-natured nonsense meeting Ignatz's contempt. Getting a pun to land in a silent cartoon with lettered balloons is a small feat in itself, and the pie-in-the-face payoff swaps Ignatz's usual brick for something messier.
- It is one of the first screen versions of Krazy Kat, made by William Randolph Hearst's International Film Service within months of the studio's founding to bring Hearst's newspaper comics to cinemas. These shorts ran as extras attached to newsreels, and they made Herriman's cult strip one of the earliest comics adapted into a cartoon series.
Notes and Trivia
- The International Film Service animators, including Frank Moser and Leon Searl, worked under Gregory La Cava; the studio was closed in 1918.
- The title is typical of the early IFS series, which often named shorts after the topic of conversation rather than the plot.
- Krazy's gender is famously ambiguous in Herriman's strip; the films do not settle the question either.
- See also: Krazy Kat Goes A-Wooing (1916).