Release Date:

September 5, 1953

Main Character(s):

Tweety and Sylvester, Granny

Summary:

On a snowy night, a homeless Tweety is blown to the house where Sylvester lives. Wanting to eat him, Sylvester manages to keep Tweety a secret from Granny, but instead has to contend with her bulldog, Hector, who despite his injured leg, is determined to thwart Sylvester.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 1272 and was released as a Looney Tune.

The title is a play on words for “A Streetcar Named Desire”. This is also one of the few cartoons where the title is misleading, due to Sylvester being a house cat in this one.

The opening scene of Tweety keeping warm on a snowy night by a cigar butt is similar to the opening scene in “Tweetie Pie”.

This is one of two cartoons where Granny is unaware of Tweety’s presence. The other one is 1958’s “A Bird in a Bonnet”.

Tweety references the popular winter tune, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at the start of the cartoon.

A photo of Freleng reviewing the storyboards for this cartoon with his unit can be found online (unfortunately, the only photo of this found online only shows him, Virgil Ross, and Hawley Pratt as it’s been zoomed in. The rest of the photo showed Ken Champin behind Pratt, and Arthur Davis and Manuel Perez behind Freleng. Strangely, Warren Foster wasn’t present, even though he wrote the cartoon).

At one point, a painting of a yellow barn can be seen on the wall signed by “Irv W.”, which is a reference to Irv Wyner.

“In an 18th Century Drawing Room” plays throughout the cartoon as Granny’s theme.

Favorite Scene:

Sylvester finds Tweety attempting to hide in the knitting box, only to hide in there himself when he hears Granny coming in to finish her knitting, while Tweety exits the box. Some of Sylvester’s fur ends up being caught in the yarn being knitted, so he begins to lose his fur. He knits it back onto his body, but also ends up taking the yarn Granny was originally knitted, coming out with the lower half of his body being in patchwork colors.

What Happens in This One:

On a windy, snowy night, Tweety is seen trying to keep warm near a cigar butt as he comments, “Brr! Baby, it’s COLD outside! Brr! I just gotta find a sanctuawy or fweeze my wittle tail feathers off!” A strong gust then causes him to roll all the way to the front door of Sylvester’s house. Tweety figures, “Ooh. This wooks wike a pwace that would offer shelter to a fwozen wittle bird!”, before knocking on the door. Sylvester opens it and upon seeing Tweety, shuts the door in bewilderment before saying to himself, “Sufferin’ succotash! I tawt I taw a Tweety bird!” Outside, Tweety says, “I tawt I taw a putty tat!” Sylvester opens the door again to check and says in delight, “I did! I DID taw a Tweety bird!” Tweety realizes, “I did! I did taw a putty tat!” (animated by Virgil Ross)

Sylvester opens the door back up once more to grab Tweety, who tries to flee to no avail. Sylvester licks him hungrily, but before he can eat him, he hears Granny calling his name (animated by Ross). In order for Granny to not see what he brought in, Sylvester stuffs Tweety into a vase on a desk and puts several books atop it, before pretending to have been taking a nap on the floor. Granny finds him and picks him up to take him into the kitchen, “Oh. Oh, (chuckles) there you are, Sylvester. It’s time for your dinner” (animated by Manuel Perez).

Granny gives him a dish of dry cat food as she assumes, “Oh, you must be starved, kitty” (animated by Arthur Davis), before telling him, “Eat it. It’s full of vitaminiss”. Sylvester turns his head away from the cat food in refusal, much to Granny’s surprise. “Oh, ho. You won’t eat it, huh? Well, you get nothing else until you do”, to which Sylvester flutters his right eye at the audience to signify he’s already settling on something else, namely Tweety. Granny and Sylvester then spot Hector in his bed with his injured leg propped up with a leg cast angrily barking at Sylvester. Granny scolds him, “Hector, stop it! It’s your own fault! If you hadn’t been chasing Sylvester, you wouldn’t be in the fix you’re in!” (animated by Perez)

Sylvester hungrily goes over to get Tweety out of the vase, only to hear Granny call his name in a part-confused, part-what are you doing tone, so he goes back to pretending to nap on the floor again. Granny goes over to the desk and wonders, “Now, what are those books doing on my vase?” To keep her away from Tweety, Sylvester pulls on the string holding up Hector’s leg, causing it to repeatedly bounce on the ground like a bungee jumper, and Hector to exclaim in pain. Hearing him, Granny exclaims, “Heavens to Betsy! What’s going on?” After Sylvester runs away, Granny comes in with a bottle of medicine that Hector desperately shakes his head at, “Hmm? That leg bothering you again? Here, you better take your medicine”. She opens his mouth and pours the medicine, which contains a green liquid, into it, which causes Hector’s face to turn green and cough in disgust, revealing that it’s a putrid medicine. Oblivious to how disgusting the medicine actually is, Granny walks out, saying, “That’ll make you feel better in a jiffy” (animated by Perez).

Sylvester now goes back to the vase (animated by Perez), only to pull out a dynamite stick instead of Tweety. Realizing this, he puts it and his hand holding it back into the vase and puts the lid on it, creating an explosion from inside the vase. Sylvester opens the vase and reacts in disgust at his singed hand. Tweety comes over to him and asks, “What you got in the vase, putty tat?” Sylvester begins chasing him (animated by Ross) back into the other room, climbing all over Hector in the process. Just as Sylvester manages to pounce on and catch Tweety, Hector bites him in the tail, causing Sylvester to scream in pain. Granny assumes the scream came from Hector as she is heard asking, “Is that you again, Hector?” Sylvester hits Hector’s injured leg with a cane in order for him to stuff Tweety into Hector’s screaming mouth (animated by Perez)

Granny again opens Hector’s mouth wide to pour the putrid medicine in there, but due to him having been inside Hector’s mouth, it turns out Tweety ended up swallowing it as he is shown with a green face and coughing. Irritated at Sylvester for causing him to have ingested the putrid medicine, he scolds, “You bad putty tat!” Sylvester jumps onto Hector to get at Tweety and resumes chase (animated by Perez). Just as Sylvester grabs Tweety and is about to eat him, he gets a plunger shot onto his mouth by Hector firing it from a bow. Sylvester removes the plunger from his mouth and gets another one shot onto his behind by Hector. Hector uses the rope at the end of the plunger to pull Sylvester towards him before pulling the plunger’s stick backward, causing it to whack Sylvester on the head several times. Sylvester angrily goes up to a chuckling Hector with a club and threatens, “Okay, bub! You asked for it!”, but Hector whacks him in the knee with a club of his own, causing Sylvester to yell in pain (animated by Davis).

This ends up backfiring as Granny mistakes Sylvester’s pained yell for Hector and walks in to pour the putrid medicine in his mouth a third time. Hector turns to the audience and lets out an “Oh, no!”, before he gets it poured into his mouth once more, and his face turns green while he coughs (animated by Perez). Tweety runs into the living room and realizes, “I gotta hide or that putty tat will catch me!” He climbs into the knitting box and figures, “He’ll never find me in here!”, oblivious that Sylvester is actually watching him from behind the chair next to said knitting box. Sylvester opens it to catch him, only to hear Granny enter as she says to herself, “My goodness. I’ll never get my knitting finished. If it’s not one thing, it’s another”. Just as Tweety exits the knitting box, Sylvester dives into it, so Granny doesn’t see him. Granny begins knitting, but the yarn she’s knitting ends up catching Sylvester’s fur and begins to unravel it from his body like yarn. Sylvester realizes this and re-knits his fur back onto his body. Granny becomes very surprised at seeing her knitting going unraveling backwards back into the knitting box, before she sees Sylvester exit with the lower half of his body now consisting of patchwork colors from the same yarn. Thinking she’s seeing things, Granny chuckles, “Astigmatism” while wiping her glasses (animated by Davis).

Hector sees Tweety running around and picks him up for him to explain. Tweety informs, “That bad ol’ putty tat’s twying to catch me!”, to which Hector assures him, “Stay with me, birdie! He’ll have to get you over my dead body!” Having heard him say this, Sylvester decides to ensure this literally happens, “Okay, buster. I can arrange that”. He pulls a fridge up with a rope and pulley, and pulls Hector and his cast bed under it so the fridge will land on him. To Sylvester’s misfortune, the fridge ends up falling on top of him instead! (animated by Perez)

Now bed-ridden in a cast bed of his own and with the top of his head, his arm, and his foot all in bandages, Sylvester is peeved about his predicament and becomes even more peeved at Hector chuckling at him. He snarls, “Ah, shut up!”, only for Hector to whack his injured leg with a club three times, causing Sylvester to yell in pain. Tweety is stopped from mixing some other foul liquids into the bottle of putrid medicine upon hearing Granny ask, “Is that you, Sylvester?” She goes over to Sylvester and pours the putrid medicine into his mouth, “Here. You try Hector’s medicine. That’ll make you feel better”. As she leaves, Sylvester’s face turns green as he begins coughing and spluttering. Tweety laughs over this, “That putty tat’s gonna be in an awful pwedicament when that medicine starts to work!” (animated by Ken Champin)

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕 ½