Release Date:

October 4, 1952

Main Character(s):

Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk, Barnyard Dawg

Summary:

Foghorn Leghorn’s nagging wife makes him sit on her egg while she’s away playing bridge with the other hens, and will be in trouble with her if he steps off of it. Barnyard Dawg takes advantage of this by tormenting him. Wanting to get back at him, Foghorn uses Henery Hawk, dressed as an Indian, to sit on the egg and later have him heckle Dawg.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 1219 and was released as a Merrie Melodie.

The title is a pun for “the excited rooster”.

While Henery dresses up as an Indian in this cartoon, this one isn’t considered “racist” by the higher ups. It was restored for HBO Max in 2020, has been shown on MeTV uncut, and is available on streaming for Tubi. This same restoration of the cartoon will also be made available on the upcoming Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Volume 2 Blu-ray set (which will also contain “A Lad in His Lamp”, “Ain’t That Ducky”, “The Daffy Duckaroo”, and “I Taw a Putty Tat” in brand new restorations and all of which have been missing in action for WAY too long due to having a racial gag, even though “A Lad in His Lamp” didn’t have any. Hopefully, the inclusion of all of these cartoons as well as the inclusion of the equally long missing in action “Mouse Cleaning” and “Casanova Cat” on the excellent and recent Tom and Jerry Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray set, are signs that Warner Bros. have finally abandoned the incredibly stupid “racial stereotypes= no restoration” rule, even though prior to 2025, they had absolutely no trouble with this cartoon being shown on public TV nor on streaming).

When I was in 8th grade (2018-2019), I often liked using Foghorn’s one-liners about fellow guys who often acted up. I slightly tweaked one of his lines in this one, however. In this one at one point, he says, “Smart boy, got a mind like a steel trap- full of mice!” When I said it, I replaced “full of mice” with “covered in rust”.

The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons hilariously spells Dawg’s pronunciation of mother as “mutha”.

This is the only time where Foghorn is a henpecked husband.

The animator draft hasn’t been seen online as of this writing, but it does exist as evidenced by this page.

Favorite Scene:

Foghorn has Henery give Dawg a “chicken” to “hatch out”- which is actually an explosive egg called a “hen grenade”.

What Happens in This One:

Mrs. Leghorn is in the middle of scolding Foghorn, “And just you remember you lazy no-good gallivant loafer! You stay right there on that nest while I’m over playing bridge with the girls!” Sitting on the egg with a bored expression while letting his wife chew him out, Foghorn responds with, “Yes, I say, yes, lambie-pie”. She threatens, “If you dare leave that egg uncovered for so much as one minute, I’ll put more lumps on that fat head of yours than there are in a bride’s mashed potatoes!”, to which Dawg is gleefully listening to as he watches this. Foghorn answers to this threat with, “Yes, my love”. She waves her handbag at him, “And don’t you forget it!” “No, Dreamboat”, Foghorn answers before muttering under his breath to us, “Tugboat, that is”. He calls out to her as she walks out, “Do-, I say, don’t trump your partner’s full house, honey-bun!” She scoffs heavily at him before exiting their henhouse (animated by Herman Cohen).

Foghorn remarks, “Oh, that woman! Got a mouth like an outboard motor! All the time, put-put-put-put-put-put-(squawks three times)-put-put-put-put-put-(imitates car sputtering before running out of gas)”. He then sulks, “I hate-, I say, I hate this egg-sittin’! It’s like backing into a bracing bit. Ya get bored”. Dawg appears in front of the henhouse’s front door and teases, “Well! Put them all together and they spell ‘mother’! Here’s a present for ya, Mother Machree!” and tosses a watermelon towards Foghorn, which lands on his head. Taking it off his head, Foghorn begins to walk towards Dawg, threatening, “Why, I say, why you-”, but Dawg stops him and reminds, “Ah, ah, ah! You better not get off’n that egg! Or I will tell your old lady! Toodle-loo…mother!” before leaving (animated by Cohen).

Foghorn sits back down while talking to himself, “You kn-, I say, you know, if I could get someone to mind this egg for a spell, I’d go over and pay that dog a little social call” (animated by Charles McKimson). Meanwhile, Henery is putting on a “Junior Indian Outfit” as he says, “I’m a chicken hawk and I’ve got, ooh, such a thirst for chicken (animated by Rod Scribner), I’m gonna hunt me one, Indian style”. He heads off with a miniature arrow with a small plunger for a bow. He looks into Foghorn’s henhouse through a knothole and finds him sitting on the egg as he exclaims, “Ooh! There’s the biggest chicken ever I seen!” (animated by Charles) before shooting his plunger arrow at Foghorn’s behind. After reacting to this with a “YIPE!”, Foghorn realizes where this came from as he takes the plunger arrow off, “For a minute, I, I say, for a minute there, I thought I’d become a mother!” He then hears Indian-like whooping and finds Henery doing a war dance around him. Foghorn decides, “This boy’s making more noise than a couple of skeletons throwing a fit on a tin roof!” (animated by Phil DeLara)

Foghorn stops Henery and asks him, “Wha-, I say, what’s all the hooping and hollering about, boy?” Henery runs all the way up to his beak (animated by DeLara) where he tells Foghorn while looking at him right in his eyes, “Me heap-big chicken hawk Injun! Me last of Mo-Hawk-uns! Me catch-um chicken for dinner! You come quiet or me let-um you have it right between um-eyes!” Foghorn replies, “Now hold on, I say, now hold on there, Sitting Pretty! You don’t want me! No, too old and tough. Hard as a picnic egg! What you want’s a little tender chicken. Like the one in this deep freeze”, referring to the egg and pointing to it. He puts Henery on the egg as he explains, “All you gotta do is sit on it awhile and thaw it out”. Foghorn then realizes, “Say, boy, you cover, I say, you cover about as much as a flapper’s skirt in a high wind!” before leaving (animated by Charles). Foghorn pulls Dawg by the tail out of his doghouse and whacks him on the behind with a plank. Once Dawg begins to chase him in anger, Foghorn traps him in a pillory and sticks five light bulbs on him, with one in his mouth, one in each hand, and one in each ear. He attaches an electric socket to him, which causes the bulbs to flash one by one and his nose to flash the words, “Eat”, “At”, and “Joe’s” on his nose like a neon sign (animated by DeLara).

By the time Foghorn comes back, he sees Henery about to smash the egg with a mallet, to which he yells, “No, boy! Don’t do it!” He runs in to save the egg, and gets hit with the mallet himself. Foghorn snatches the mallet away as he scolds, “Now pu-, I say, put down that mallet, boy! That’s no way to hatch out a chicken”. Henery complains, “Aw, I’m tired sitting on this old egg! I want a chicken NOW!” Foghorn figures, “Hmm. Well, maybe that’s a slow-hatching egg, but I’ve go-, I say, I’ve got a fast-hatching one right here!” He pulls out a box where the “egg” is actually an “ACME Hen Grenade”, which is a white egg-shaped grenade. “But it’s gotta have PLENTY of heat!”, Foghorn continues before shouting, “Pay attention to me, boy! I’m not just talking to hear my head roar!” He gives Henery the hen grenade and instructs, “Now, the best thing for you to do is take it over and slip it under that warm dog”. Henery agrees before going off to do so, “Ugh. Okay. Me go”. Foghorn tells us, “Smart boy, got a mind like a steel trap- full of mice!” (animated by Scribner)

Henery runs into Dawg’s house and slips the grenade under the sleeping Dawg. “I hope it doesn’t take long to hatch”, Henery says only for it to explode immediately after he exits the doghouse. After the explosion, Dawg is shown sitting amongst his destroyed house with a fried egg on the part of his stomach where the fur has been blown off. Henery comes up to him and asks, “Where’s my chicken? I heard it hatch out”, which confuses Dawg, “Chicken? Hey, what’s going on here!? What’s this all about?” (animated by DeLara) Henery explains, “That big chicken over there told me you’d hatch my egg out for me”. Dawg realizes Henery is referring to Foghorn as he gets up, “Oh, he did, did he!? Well, I got news for ya, buster! He played a joke on us! But we’ll fix him! We’ll play a joke right BACK on him! Now what ya do is, you go over there and tell him-”, as he starts whispering a plan indistinctly to Henery (animated by Charles).

Foghorn is seen sitting back on the nest before he hears Henery shouting, “Quick! Quick! Hurry! Look! Look! Hurry! Quick! Over there! Look!” He gets up to see what Henery is apparently shouting about, but it’s actually just a distraction to get him off of the nest so Henery can steal the egg and make off with it. After realizing, “I don’t see nothing!”, Foghorn goes back to the nest but just before sitting down, he stops and realizes the egg is no longer there as he becomes frantic: “My egg! My egg’s gone! Where’s my egg!? Here, egg, egg, egg!” (brilliantly animated by Scribner)

Henery gives the egg to Dawg, who tells him, “Nice goin’, buster! Now we’ll fix that fat cluck!” as he walks away to go to the phone to inform Mrs. Leghorn of Foghorn getting off the nest (animated by Cohen). Foghorn is still frantically searching for the egg, “If the missus comes back and finds it gone, oooooh, what she’ll do to me!” as he shudders in terror at the thought. He eventually finds Dawg talking on the phone while tossing the egg in his hand, “Yeah, yeah. That’s right, Mrs. Leghorn. He’s deserted the nest. Oh, you’ll be right over?”, but Foghorn immediately retrieves the egg (animated by DeLara).

In tune to “In the Stirrups”, Foghorn, Henery, and Dawg engage in a three-way chase that results in them all grabbing the egg from each other and running away with it. Mrs. Leghorn, who has indeed gotten Dawg’s call, runs out of the “Henhouse Bridge Club”, armed with her rolling pin, as the chase continues. Foghorn: “I got it!” Henery: “Me got ‘em!” Dawg: “I got it!” Foghorn gets it and says, “I go-, I say, I got it!”, only for Mrs. Leghorn to show up and hit him on the head with the rolling pin. Dawg and Henery remark in unison, “He got it!” (animated by Scribner)

Once Foghorn comes to, Henery’s plunger arrow gets shot and pinned on his beak, “Me got-um you now, chicken!” Foghorn removes the plunger, “Hold o-, I say, hold on there, Paleface!” (animated by Scribner) Henery replies, “Me no paleface. Me Injun! Me heap scalp you!” as he takes out a small tomahawk. Foghorn tells him, “Now wait a minute, boy! You ain’t no Indian! Why you couldn’t hurt nobody with that teeny little tomahawk!”, only for Henery to immediately strike him on the head with the tomahawk. Holding his torn-off scalp, Foghorn realizes, “I cou-, I say, I could be wrong!” (animated by Charles)

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕