Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald
Short Synopsis
Buzzy, a small black crow with a Rochester drawl, is caught by a hungry cat and about to be eaten when he notices that the cat is superstitious: a black cat himself, he is terrified of every omen in the book. Buzzy talks for his life. A broken mirror means seven years' bad luck; a ladder must not be walked under; an open umbrella indoors is fatal; Friday the thirteenth, a black cat crossing his path, spilled salt, the number thirteen, each one is sprung on the cat at the moment he reaches for the bird, and each sends him into a panic that Buzzy exploits with a new superstition and a fresh escape. By the end the cat is a nervous wreck and Buzzy is at liberty, having talked his way out of a frying pan with nothing but folklore.
Why It Matters
- It is the first appearance of Buzzy the Crow, the fast-talking bird who was Famous Studios' answer to Bugs Bunny and who appeared in Noveltoons through 1954; his voice, a caricature of Eddie Anderson's Rochester, is of its time, and the cat's superstitions give Carl Meyer and Jack Ward a tidy structure for the gags.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright among the pre-1950 Noveltoons that National Telefilm Associates let lapse, and it was reissued theatrically in October 1953; Buzzy's films have circulated widely in public-domain packages, with the racial caricature of his voice the usual caveat.
Notes and Trivia
- Buzzy's next film, Cat o' Nine Ails, survives only without its soundtrack.
- Graham Place, co-animator, later directed for the studio.
- See also: Cat o' Nine Ails (1948), Naughty but Mice (1947), Spree for All (1946).