Screwy Squirrel
Screwy Squirrel is an animated cartoon character, an anthropomorphic squirrel created by Tex Avery for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Among some of the more outrageous cartoon characters, Screwy's feats include pulling objects out of thin air, doubling himself, and breaking the fourth wall, all the while uttering a characteristic cackling laugh. The character was not as successful as Avery's Droopy was at this time, appearing in only five cartoons: Screwball Squirrel, Happy-Go-Nutty, Big Heel-Watha, The Screwy Truant, and Lonesome Lenny.
Biography
The character was known for being brash and erratic, with few sympathetic personality characteristics such as Bugs Bunny's nobility and Daffy Duck's pathos. Most of his cartoons had him paired with Meathead Dog as his adversary. Meathead's physical appearance differed between the three shorts in which he appeared, but otherwise the character remained the same.Screwy's shorts revolve around his infliction of various forms of torture on Meathead – or another enemy – for seven minutes, often doing so by breaking any sort of laws of reality. In The Screwy Truant, one gag has Screwy hitting Meathead over the head with everything he can find in a trunk labeled "Assorted Swell Stuff to Hit Dog on Head". When he finishes, Meathead remarks, "Gee whiz! He hit me with everything but the kitchen sink!" Screwy responds with, "Well, don't want to disappoint you, chum", then pulls out that very item and bashes him over the head with it.
Screwy would make his last regular appearance in the 1946 short Lonesome Lenny. In the cartoon, Screwy gets adopted from a pet store by a wealthy woman as a new companion for her pet Lenny, a large dimwitted dog with unfathomable strength. By the end of the cartoon, Lenny reveals that he accidentally "killed" Screwy by crushing him to death from a hug, with him lifting up the squirrel's flattened body from his "pocket" as evidence. However, Screwy suddenly opens one eye and brings a sign out from behind his back that reads, "Sad ending, isn't it?", implying he is still alive.
The reason as to why Screwy was discontinued after five cartoons was said to be that Tex Avery grew to openly dislike the character. Animator Mark Kausler used to send Avery letters about his rendition of Screwy, only for Avery to throw away anything related to the character.
Later appearances
Meathead Dog made a cameo appearance in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He is seen sniffing around at R. K. Maroon's Cartoon Studio in the film's beginning. Screwy is mockingly mentioned by one of Eddie Valiant's bar patrons Angelo: "Who's your client, Mr. Detective of the Stars? Chilly Willy, or Screwy Squirrel?"In 1993, Hanna-Barbera resurrected Screwy in new animation for the series Droopy, Master Detective as part of Fox Kids' programming block of Saturday morning cartoons. Those new cartoons featured the character's name as Screwballnever Screwyand pitted him not against Meathead, but against a pair of typical Hanna-Barbera authority figures, a human park attendant named Dweeble and his oafish dog Rumply. "Screwball" himself wore a T-shirt and often a "Napoleon-style" bicorne hat.
On April Fools' Day in 1997, Cartoon Network broadcast an edited version of the 1944 Screwy Squirrel cartoon Happy-Go-Nutty repeatedly from 6 am to 6 p, as part of an April Fool's joke that the cartoon character had seized control of the network.
On April Fool's Day in 2012, Cartoon Network broadcast Screwy Squirrel's debut cartoon The Screwball Squirrel, at 6:00 am and 11:45 am, which marked the first time that a cartoon by Tex Avery was broadcast on the network since The Tex Avery Show.
In 2013, both Meathead and Screwy Squirrel made appearances as residents of "Fairy Land" in Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure, retaining most of their traits. Screwy Squirrel was voiced by Paul Reubens and Meathead was voiced by John DiMaggio.
In 2019, Screwy Squirrel made an appearance as a landlord of an apartment building called Screwy Arms Apartments, in the third season of The Tom and Jerry Show episode called "Double Dog Trouble". He also made various cameos in the series. Screwy was voiced by Sean Kenin.
American animator and producer Bruce W. Smith briefly began developing a series for Warner Bros. starring the titular character. In Smith's proposed story line, which was never produced, Screwy thinks he is in Hollywood, California, but in reality he is in Hollywood, Alabama.
Voice actors
- Wally Maher
- William Hanna ''
- Pinto Colvig
- Charlie Adler
- Jeff Bergman
- Paul Reubens
- Sean Kenin
Cartoons
Comics
List of comics appearances
- Our Gang Comics #12–14
- Tom & Jerry's Winter Carnival #1, #2
- Tom & Jerry's Winter Fun #3, #6, #7, #8
- Tom & Jerry's Summer Fun #1, #2
- Tom and Jerry #213, #231, #232, #258
- Golden Comics Digest #3, #5, #8, #18, #22, #25, #28, #41
- Tex Avery's Wolf and Red various issues
- Tex Avery's Screwball Squirrel
- Tex Avery's Droopy various issues
- Comics and Stories various issues
Home media
Several Screwy Squirrel cartoons were released as bonus features on classic Warner Bros. titles including:- Screwball Squirrel on the DVD of The Thin Man Goes Home
- Happy-Go-Nutty on the DVD of Dragon Seed
- The Screwy Truant on the DVD of The Clock
- Lonesome Lenny on the DVD of Undercurrent
- Screwball Squirrel on the Blu-Ray of Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2