Release Date:

June 5, 1954

Main Character(s):

Foghorn Leghorn, Egghead Jr., Miss Prissy

Summary:

Not wanting to spend another winter in his run-down shack, Foghorn Leghorn decides to marry Miss Prissy to stay in her henhouse. Prissy agrees on the sole condition that Foghorn prove he is a good father to her super-smart son, Egghead Jr. Foghorn’s attempts to play games with Jr. end with Jr. always showing him up.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 1289 and was released as a Looney Tune.

This is the first appearance of the brainy character known as Egghead Jr., the small kid with yellow feathers who wears glasses and also never speaks (though he is heard mumbling unintelligibly when counting during the hide and seek sequence). He would also appear in “Feather Dusted” (1955) and “Crockett Doodle Do” (1960).

Gladys Holland voices Prissy in this cartoon, hence why her voice sounds different here.

Speaking of Prissy, she never says her trademark “Yeeeesssss” in this cartoon and actually has more extensive vocabulary. This would also be the case with the aforementioned “Feather Dusted”.

The title is a pun for “Little Boy Blue”.

You can find out who animated what scene here.

This is one of two times where Foghorn acts like he has feelings for Prissy, just to live with her and move out of a run-down domicile. He would do this again in 1961’s “Strangled Eggs”.

Favorite Scene:

When playing hide and seek, Foghorn hides in the feed box but Jr. manages to find him by using a slide rule and digging him out of a hole. Completely bewildered at being found at a different place, Foghorn walks back to the feed box to look inside but decides not to, “I just MIGHT be in there!”

The paper airplane scene is a runner-up.

What Happens in This One:

In his shack, Foghorn is seen reading the newspaper’s headline, “Coldest, I Say, Coldest Winter On Way Here” (animated by Charles McKimson). A fall wind and leaves blow into his shack as Foghorn shivers, “Brr! Feels like it’s ALREADY here! If I was to spend another winter in this air-conditioned deep-freeze, I’d freeze my tail-, I say, I’d freeze my tail feathers off!” He looks out his window (animated by Herman Cohen) and spots the cozy-looking henhouse where Prissy resides. “Say, now! That widow hen has a nice cozy little roost! Maybe, I say, maybe I’ve been a bachelor too long!” While scatting to “Camptown Races”, Foghorn brushes the feathers atop his head like hair (animated by Charles), before walking out of his shack with a gift (animated by Cohen).

Once at Prissy’s residence, Foghorn knocks on the door and takes some flowers from the windowsill. He greets Prissy with, “Good, I say, good day, Widow Hen! May I come in?” Prissy is delighted with his presence, “Sakes alive, a man! Well, come right in, Mr. Leghorn!” Foghorn walks in and hands her his gifts, “Here, I say, here’s the flowers. And here’s the candy. The courtship is now over. So how about it, Widow Hen? Will ya marry me?” Prissy begins to explain, “Well, I couldn’t, eh-”, before Foghorn interrupts, “But I need you, Widow! I need your love to keep me warm!” Prissy tells him what she was trying to say, “I couldn’t marry you unless you could prove you’d be a good father to my son”. Foghorn asks, “Good father?” before clearing his throat and answering, “Why, I-I just dotes on boys! Yeah! I-I’m a natural born father! Eh, where is the little fella at?” Prissy answers, “Jr.’s right over there, Mr. Leghorn” (animated by Cohen).

Jr. is shown sitting atop a pile of books and reading, “Splitting the Fourth Dimension”. Foghorn calls to him, “Hey, boy! Come on over here! Let’s have a look at ya!” Jr. walks up to him with his book, with his intelligent appearance confusing Foghorn, “This is a BOY!?” Prissy requests, “Why don’t you take Jr. outside and play games with him? That’d be a good way to see if he’d like you for a father”. Foghorn agrees to the idea as he leaves with Jr., “Good, I say, good idear, Widow Hen! I know the boy will be crazy about me! Eh, crazy, that is!” (animated by Charles)

Foghorn tells Jr., “I know, I say, I know what a real boy likes to play! Here!”, and pulls out a baseball. Jr. only puts the baseball in his mouth as if it’s some sort of large gumball, before Foghorn pulls it out of there, “Hey, boy! Take that ball out of your mouth! Haven’t you ever seen a baseball before?” Jr. shakes his head at this (animated by Charles), which shocks Foghorn, “Haven’t you ever PLAYED baseball?” Jr. shakes his head again to which Foghorn asides, “There’s somethin’, I say, there’s somethin’ kind of YEEEEE! about a kid that’s never played baseball!” He then decides, “Okay, boy. I’ll learn ya the game. Now we got the ball. And this is a bat”, as he brings out a baseball bat. “Uh, you know what the bat’s for?” Jr. nods and hits Foghorn on the head with it. Foghorn then yells at the top of his voice, “No, no, boy! You’re supposed to hit the BALL with it! The BALL!” He then instructs Jr., “Now you stand there and I’ll pitch, I say, I’ll pitch ya a couple!” Before throwing it, Foghorn encourages, “Alright, boy! Lean on it! Let’s see ya drive it right down my throat!” After Foghorn pitches the ball, Jr.’s hit literally causes the ball to go right down Foghorn’s throat and into his stomach. “We, I say, well, I asked for it” (brilliantly animated by Rod Scribner).

Foghorn decides, “You’d better do the pitching now, boy. Uh, that bat’s a little too heavy for ya”. He takes the bat and gives Jr. the ball. “Now let’s see if you can throw it this far! And put a little pepper on it!” Jr. literally douses the ball with pepper and then writes down a complicated equation that equals “Strike 1”. Jr.’s throw results in the ball zooming through the bat so fast it burns a hole in it. After yelling, “Come on, boy! Throw it!”, Foghorn reacts in shock to the hole burned in his bat and then sees that the ball has burned a hole through several trees (animated by Scribner). Foghorn becomes suspicious at this, “There’s something going on around here that just don’t add up”. Jr. walks up to him and shows him the paper he wrote his equation down on, which causes Foghorn to decide, “Oh, uh, yeah. I guess it DOES add up. Uh, yeah” (animated by Charles).

Walking over to a stump with a piece of paper, Foghorn says to Jr., “Come over here, boy, and I’ll show ya how to make a nice paper aeiroplane”. After making a typical looking paper airplane, Foghorn tosses it into the air. “There she goes! Look at her fly! How’s that for a- Huh?” (animated by Charles) He sees Jr. making a paper airplane of his own, but his looks like an actual plane. Foghorn attempts to correct him, “No, no, boy. That’s no way to make a plane. That’ll never, I say, that’ll never-”, only to see it zoom off like an actual jet plane, “-fly”. Jr.’s plane not only flies a lot better, it also guns down Foghorn’s plane and sends it falling to the ground in flames! Once Jr.’s plane returns, Foghorn picks it up and looks at the paper it was made out from in confusion, before his attempt to explain something to Jr. is interrupted by Jr. writing down an equation of how this worked. Crumpling up the piece of paper Jr.’s plane was made out of and tossing it aside, Foghorn tells him, “Oh, never mind, Einstein. Knowing the answer wouldn’t do me no good anyway. Uh, let’s play hide and seek” (animated by Cohen).

Foghorn sets Jr. up at a tree and has him count (which sounds more like unintelligible muttering) while covering his eyes. He hides in the feed box and laughs, “That boy ‘d have to use a slide rule to find me in here!” Once finished counting, Jr. does indeed take out a slide rule and writes down another equation before walking in a direction away from the feed box. Foghorn jovially believes, “The genius must’ve got his signals mixed! He’s headed in the wrong direction!” Jr. walks up to a random spot on the ground with a shovel, digs a hole, and ends up pulling out Foghorn from the hole! Utterly bewildered at how this happened, Foghorn stammers, “But-but, boy-I, I-, over there! Th-the box! I-I couldn’t!-”, only for Jr. to show the equation he made with a drawing of Foghorn’s head next to the equals sign. Foghorn replies, “Yeah, I know. Figures don’t lie, but still- One side, boy!”, before walking back to look into the feed box. He has second thoughts however, “No. I better not look. I just MIGHT be in there!” (animated by Phil DeLara)

Jr. is seen mixing something with his “Tiny-Tot Chemical Set” which also has the word “Harmless” on the box. Foghorn walks up to him and becomes curious, “Well! Let’s see what you’re makin’ there, boy!”, and upon grabbing the test tube, figures, “Looks like so-dee pop!” He then chuckles, “Watch it, fizz!” as he shakes the tube up, but once he takes his finger off of the tube, it explodes, leaving him featherless (animated by DeLara).

At home knitting, Prissy hears a knock and asks who it is (animated by Scribner). Having had enough, Foghorn pushes Jr. back in through the door and announces, “Here’s your little boy back, Widow! The deal’s off!” Confused at this, Prissy reminds, “But you said you needed my love to keep you warm!” Foghorn, using a crutch and covered in bandages, informs her, “Madam, I don’t NEED your love! I’ve got, I say, I’ve got my BANDAGES to keep ME warm!”, before walking back to his shack, disgruntled (animated by DeLara).

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕