Pixie and Dixie - Cousin Tex

Plot: Cousin Tex pays a visit and treats Jinks like a horsie. Jinks' plan to bring in his own Texan relative to retaliate is an unexpected failure.
Cast: Jinks, Dixie, Cousin Tex - Daws Butler; Pixie, Cousin Pecos - Don Messick.
Released: October 2, 1958.

This was the debut Pixie and Dixie cartoon. Carlo Vinci handled the animation, Ed Benedict provided the layout and Fernando Montealegre did the backgrounds.

The cartoon's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pixie and Dixie are watching Knockout Mouse (stick/outline figures) on TV (black and white, of course) and Jinks informs them that mice beating up cats happens only in cartoons.

This is not a terribly funny cartoon and about the most enjoyable thing is looking at some of Carlo Vinci's poses. I must admit, the character design at times looks as ugly as something in a Terrytoon, which shouldn't be surprising, I guess, considering Vinci's work on Mighty Mouse not too many years before.



I'm not sure if Monty used a roller to get the paint effect on the couch below left, but he uses it in a bunch of these early cartoons. And we get lots of limited animation; mouths moving on stationary bodies, and a couple of scare takes, where two drawings are alternated in a cycle to simulate movement. One is generally with hair standing on end, like below right.



There's one voice error I caught, where Tex's voice comes out of Dixie.

Jinks' best line is when he's being branded and remarks that it's like "someone's roastin' a overcoat."

Tex only appeared in one cartoon, but Hanna-Barbera briefly tried marketing him anyway. As the studio developed more characters by 1960, Tex was long forgotten. But here, he pretends to be in the big leagues of cartoons by calling Jinks a "mangy varmint" as would a far bigger star at Warners.

Today's number is four. That's how many times Pixie and Dixie run past the same light socket.

The soundtrack features a rare appearance by Bill Loose and John Seely's "Rural" (registered at BMI as "Rural Stage") and the whole version of Jack Shaindlin's "The Reluctant Elephant (aka "Grotesque No. 2"). It runs 2:38, which is a little longer than most of the production beds found in these cartoons. And there's the ubiquitous circus chase music I haven't been able to place but am guessing by the arrangement and the sound its a Shaindlin piece.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie vocal opening theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:26 - TC 42 RURAL STAGE (Loose-Seely) - Mice watch Knockout Mouse.
0:51 - L 81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Spencer Moore) - Jinks appears from hiding.
0:57 - 5-F-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Jinks chases mice into hole.
1:31 - bassoon and zig-zag strings bed (Shaindlin?) - Dixie reads telegram; Tex arrives, walks into living room.
2:54 - TC 303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Jinks talks to Tex in fridge, takes him outside.
3:55 - circus chase music (Shaindlin?) - Tex rides Jinks.
4:55 - F-7 THE RELUCTANT ELEPHANT (Shaindlin) - Jinks branded, calls Cousin Pecos, "I've been sick" Pecos arrives.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie closing theme (Curtin).

Dodsworth
http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com

Dave, thanks for re-posting this. A shame the graphics didn't transfer over.
A couple of additional notes:
Mike Lah handles part of the cartoon. He picks up the animation when Tex is about to brand Jinks and carries through until Jinks leaps into the sky from atop the box.
The late Earl Kress identified the cue at 3:55 as Jack Shaindlin's "On the Run." He never was able to find the name of the other unidentified cue amongst his files.

Yowp
Yowp

That particular cue, OUB, was used in commercials when I was a kid (early '60s). I can't recall if it appeared in late '50s sitcoms, but it's a possibility.
Hanna-Barbera had music clearance sheets for the cartoons at one time, as Earl went through some of them, and a copy for one Huckleberry Hound Show was sent to me.

Yowp