Tweetie Pie

Tweetie Pie is a 1947 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng and produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, depicting the first pairing of Tweety and Sylvester. Tweetie Pie won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, breaking Tom and Jerry's streak of four consecutive wins on the category.

Allegedly, when Tweety's creator, director Bob Clampett, left the Warner Bros. studio in 1946, he was working on a fourth film starring Tweety, whom he would pair with Friz Freleng’s Sylvester, who previously appeared with Porky Pig in his (Clampett's) cartoon Kitty Kornered (released in 1946). This is probably not true as Clampett's unit was taken over by Art Davis, rather than Freleng. Freleng adopted the Tweety project and merged it with a project he was working on—a follow-up to his second Sylvester cartoon, Peck Up Your Troubles, featuring Sylvester in pursuit of a witty woodpecker. When Freleng decided to replace the woodpecker with Tweety, producer Eddie Selzer objected, and Freleng threatened to quit. Selzer allowed Tweety to be used, and the resulting film went on to win WB's first Oscar, which Selzer accepted. After Selzer's death, the Oscar was passed on to Freleng. The cartoon would also go on to become a phenomenal success, and Tweety would always be paired with Sylvester from that point on as a result, because the duo carried a high amount of star power (in the meantime, Sylvester continued to appear in a fair amount of cartoons without Tweety).

This cartoon, like many from the period, was reissued in 1955 as a "Blue Ribbon" release, with all opening titles and credits replaced.

Synopsis
As the cartoon begins, Thomas (as Sylvester is called in this film) captures Tweety, whom he finds outside in the snow, getting warm by a cigar. The cat's mistress, an unseen owner, saves the bird from being eaten by the cat, whom she promptly reprimands. Tweety is brought inside, and the mistress warns Thomas not to bother the bird. Ignoring this command, Thomas initiates a series of failed attempts to get Tweety from his cage, each ending in a noisy crash bringing the lady of the house to whack Thomas with a broom, and then finally, throw him out.

The cat tries to get back into the house through the chimney. Tweety puts wood in the fireplace, pours gasoline on it and lights it. The phoom sends Thomas flying right back up the chimney and into a bucket of frozen water.

However, Thomas gets back in the house via a window in the basement (or study) and creates a Rube Goldberg-esque trap (virtually identical to one in Chuck Jones' 1945 Porky Pig short Trap Happy Porky) to capture Tweety, which of course, backfires and injures him instead.

Finally, Thomas tries to capture Tweety by running up to the attic and sawing a hole around Tweety's cage, but he ends up causing the entire inner ceiling to collapse (sans Tweety's cage, which is being held in place by a beam). The faux pas creates such a racket that Thomas is sure the mistress will come downstairs and wallop him, and so, he takes her broom, breaks it in half, and tosses the pieces into the fire. This proves to be a bad move, as he finds himself being walloped on the head repeatedly with a shovel...by Tweety.

Availability

 * Tweetie Pie is available with on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 2, TCM Academy Award-Winning Classic Cartoons (Barnes & Noble Exclusive), Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection: 15 Winners, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection, Looney Tunes Super Stars' Tweety & Sylvester: Feline Fwenzy, Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Looney Tunes Showcase: Volume 1 and Tweety Pie and Friends.