Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures / The Vitaphone Corporation
Short Synopsis
Sylvester, rummaging hungrily through dustbins, wanders down to the docks and spots Tweety in his cage through the porthole of a cruise ship. He opens the porthole, Tweety slams it, and Sylvester drops into the water. Undeterred, he climbs aboard and grabs Tweety, but Granny beats him with her umbrella. He knocks her glasses off and kicks them under the couch; Tweety puts them back on her just in time. The ship sails, with Sylvester stowed away in lifeboat number 13. While Granny naps on deck, Sylvester paints a picture of Tweety on her glasses so she won't notice the bird is gone, and chases Tweety up into the rigging. When Sylvester is left hanging from a wire by one paw, Tweety counts "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" on his fingers, prising them off one by one, but Sylvester has only three fingers, so Tweety only reaches "miny" before he falls: "Well, what do you know, no mo'!" Then the sea gets rough and Sylvester turns green. Tweety sweetly offers him a nice piece of salt pork, and the cat runs for the seasickness remedy. Recovered, he chases Tweety below decks, is tricked into the ship's furnace and shot out of the smokestack. When he runs for the remedy a second time, Tweety has already filled the bottle with nitroglycerin.
Why It Matters
- The seasickness gags are the highlight: Sylvester is so ill that every attempt to catch Tweety collapses into green-faced nausea, and Freleng times the rolling of the ship against the chase with real precision. The "no mo'" finger gag is one of the series' best-remembered jokes.
- It shows the Tweety and Sylvester formula at its most polished, with Granny as the bird's formidable protector, a combination Freleng had established a few years earlier with the Oscar-winning Tweetie Pie (1947). The team made dozens of variations and Tweety and Sylvester became one of Warner's most profitable pairings.
Notes and Trivia
- Granny is voiced by Bea Benaderet in this period, before June Foray took over the role.
- The lifeboat's number, 13, signals Sylvester's luck from the start.
- See also: Tweet and Lovely (1959).