Huckleberry Hound - Lion-Hearted Lion

Plot: Huck goes to Africa to hunt big game, and takes on a practical joking King of the Jungle. Huck takes a pounding and doesn't capture the lion, but leo gets his in the end when one of his tricks backfires.
Cast: Huck (Daws Butler), Lion (Daws Butler), Narrator (Don Messick), Monkey (Don Messick).

Ken Muse is creditted with the animation here, with the layout by Bick Bickenback and backgrounds by Fernando Montealegre in various shades of jungle green. Charlie Shows wrote this with Dan Gordon, who provided story sketches.



The best part in this cartoon is, as usual, Daws, this time using his Frank Fontaine-ish voice for the lion. Huck's cartoons are pretty standard. He gets picked on, sometimes violently, then stops and remarks something to the audience (see above right), generally so casually it's like pain doesn't bother him.

Charlie Shows seems to have loved the idea of a narrator. You'll find one in a bunch of the H-B cartoons he wrote. He wisely uses one here just to establish the story and then the action takes over.



Some clever animation-saving devices can be found here. One is where movement is simulated by holding a character in the air and then doing a leg spin-cycle for a few seconds (above left); Jinx did this in Cousin Tex. This same cycle is used once before in the cartoon, thus saving more animation.

When Huck is caught in the trap, the audience never actually sees it; there's a cutaway shot to the lion. On top of that, there's a five-second hold on the shot in the above right while the lion laughs. Can footage be any easier?

There's a continuity screw-up. When the lion is woken up by the phone, he is not wearing a crown. There's a cut to his arm reaching to answer the phone, and then the scene cuts back to a full shot of the lion and he's wearing a crown.

Only four music beds are used in the cartoon itself. This one has the most common of the circus-chase pieces found in the early H-B cartoons. I haven't been able to find who wrote them. I have found three different F-3 numbers assigned to the tune Recess (I picked the number in my downloaded music file). And Huck hasn't learned to sing Clementine yet.

0:00 Huck drum open theme (Hoyt Curtin)
0:26 ZR-49 LIGHT EERIE (Geordie Hormel). Monkey warns lion Huck is looking for game.
2:01 1-F-1 FISHY STORY (Jack Shaindlin). Huck follows tracks, chases lion into cave, digs hole.
4:00 bassoon effect.
4:06 circus chase music (?). Lion covers hole, snares Huck, tosses tacks in path of Huck's jeep.
5:13 21-F-3 RECESS (Shaindlin). Lion jacks up jeep, Huck caught in trap, lion steals motor.
6:48 circus chase music (?). Lion rides motor in sky.
7:12 Huck drum close theme (Curtin)

Dodsworth