I have a theory about it. And a few more about this period of Chuck Jones' career.
I think that once he teamed with storyboard/writer Mike Maltese, his cartoons started to become funnier.
Maltese's gags themselves were not the only funny thing about the cartoons though.
The way Jones' drawings reacted to the gags really sold them to the audience.
In a way, I think Jones was competing with
Maltese's gags by coming up with visual toppers -like the tit eyes that happen after each gag in "Mouse Wreckers". It was a way of punctuating the gags and competing for attention with them.
Mouse Wreckers is full of great gags, but the structure of the cartoon is built around Claude Cat's reactions to them.
You remember the gags of Hubie and Bertie nailing the furniture to the ceiling and
tieing Claude up and pulling him through keyholes, but what really stands out in the cartoon are Claude's tit-eyes. The drawings and timing are perfect too.
Mouse Wreckers is from the period of what I think of as Chuck's funniest/best year - roughly 1948.
It's after the "Bobe Cannon period" and before the stylized angular pose to pose talky period.
More about all that in the next posts. This is a fantastic cartoon, don't ya think?
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Jones/48mousewreckers/ClaudeCatTitEyes1.movOh, to introduce another subject, after watching the clip, go back and just listen to the music. I'll do a post about different approaches to music sometime. This is one approach, where the music is added afterwards and has no melody; it's just there to help to punctuate the action - acting like sound effects.
What goes with tit-eyes? Find out in another post coming soon.
In the meantime, here's another great scene from "Mouse Wreckers".
These are all great frames to draw from.
1948 was a year when Chuck was drawing extra solidly. He combined human anatomy with pears and sphere style with animal anatomy.
I just love how solid and menacing this bulldog looks.
The lip is beautiful!
This dog is very McKimson like - the way McKimson drew 8 years earlier. Solid with great hierarchy!
This is a clever gag, showing the scene turn red to indicate the Bulldog's growing rage.
Even cloud scuffles had construction!
Here it is:
