The Jet Cage

"The Jet Cage" is a Looney Tunes cartoon released in 1962 by Warner Bros.. The short runs for about 6 minutes and is written and directed by Friz Freleng.

Voice actors are Mel Blanc (doing the voices of Sylvester, Tweety and Blackbird) and June Foray (doing the voice for Granny).

Animations have been created by Gerry Chiniquy, Lee Halpern, Art Leonardi, Bob Matz and Virgill Ross. The layouts have been designed by Hawley Pratt and the backgrounds by Tom O’ Loughlin. The original music is composed by Milt Franklyn. Franklyn died of a heart attack while composing the cartoon's score. William Lava finished the score, starting with the scene when Sylvester tries to catch Tweety with a net. He is not credited in this cartoon, but the difference in music is obvious.

Plot

Tweety sits in his house, a bird cage, looking at the birds through the window. Tweety yearns dearly to fly freely like other birds, but not allowed to do so by Granny. This is considering his safety, as Sylvester is always lurking around waiting for a chance.

Granny reads a newspaper advertisement by Jet Age Technology who has invented a $12.95 Flying Bird-Cage, which would allow birds fly safely. Granny, who understands Tweety's longing for freedom decides to buy the cage and presents it to Tweety. This enables Tweety to fly around outdoors without leaving the security of his cage. He pilots the jet-powered cage like an airplane.

On the other hand, Sylvester doesn't give up easily and employs several tricks to get the bird, but all in vain.

Sylvester attempts to capture Tweety with the cage with a butterfly catcher’s net. The jet-powered cage is strong enough to drag the butterfly net along with the cat hanging to it. He then attempts to intercept the flying object of interest with a rocket-bomb. The rocket-bomb on the other hand, flies back at attack the cat himself. In hot pursuit, Sylvester also employs a powerful horseshoe magnet tied to a fishing rod to grab the metallic cage, but meets the same fate as with the butterfly net.

When Tweety lands the jet-cage for refuelling and to get the flying manual, Sylvester manages to get inside the cage itself sitting behind the little bird-pilot. Tweety has picked up the manual to train to fly like a bomber and releases the bombs while in mid-air (Without much surprises, the only bomb dropped is, of course, none other than Sylvester).

At the end, Sylvester, who limps on crutches with all the bandages on, decides to joins the U.S. Air Force, vowing to get his square meal (rather the round-headed meal).

Censorship

*The ABC version of this cartoon cuts the sequence where Sylvester builds a Nike rocket to capture Tweety (which predictably backfires).

Notes

reflist [http://www.davemackey.com/animation/wb/1962.html]