Spring is in the air, and everyone is talking about the Robin Hood since Grumbletarian’s article about his visit to his first renaissance faire. UnCivil went and bought all the Robin Hood films, for example. Everyone is sharing their impressions of ren faires. I felt like I should get in on this party! So let’s start this party off right with two classic Warner Brothers cartoons about Robin Hood. Just like any respectable film festival would do!* It’s a little mind-blowing that Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood was so famous that more than ten years later, Warner Brothers was making cartoon spoofs of it. These cartoons are squeezed into blocks of three cartoons per episode, so if you just want to watch the Robin Hood cartoons exclusively, I noted the time to fast forward:
Rabbit Hood (1949): Starts at 13:30, it is the last cartoon. This is one of my favorites. “Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!” Truly a classic, often over shadowed by the Daffy Duck Cartoon below:
Robin Hood Daffy (1958): Starts at 0:00, it is the first cartoon. “Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!!”
Bonus! Robin Hood Makes Good: A real oldie! From 1939, the year after the release of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Starts at 7:30. Let’s see who remembers this one!
The Adventures of Robin Hood: With Errol Flynn! This is still one of my favorites, and it is directly referenced in Rabbit Hood at the end, when Errol Flynn swings onto a tree and says “Welcome to Sherwood!”
I am going to digress a little, since all of these should be well known. Search tools for finding streaming films online have been changing a lot, and sites cut off their nose to spite their face and stopped tracking films on a bunch of streaming platforms. I switched over to Reelgood and have had excellent luck, it finds most of what I am looking for. What are you using?
Also I want to give a shout out to Insertnamehere51, who went through all the time and trouble to separate all of the Warner Brothers Cartoons on Tubi by year and alpha. Amazing work. That work made it possible for me to find the missing Bugs Bunny Robin Hood cartoons, it was buried at the end of a string of three cartoons. Also note that when you have those kinds of combined episodes, nobody’s search engine does a good job of finding the individual cartoons.
Some trivia! In Rabbit Hood, Little John was a caricature of Chuck Jones, who apparently needed to lose some weight at the time (courtesy IMDB). Below are two good bits from The Adventures of Robin Hood which you may enjoy. Both are courtesy IMDB. There are about 50 trivia bits on IMDB about this famous film:
- James Cagney was the studio’s original choice for Robin Hood. However, when Cagney walked off set, the film’s producer Hal B. Wallis made the decision to cast Errol Flynn, against the studio’s wishes. It was also Wallis’s decision to keep Maid Marian, when the original scriptwriter wanted to dump her character. Wallis felt Marian was an indispensable fixture of a Robin Hood adventure.
- The production used all 11 of the Technicolor cameras in existence in 1938 and they were all returned to Technicolor at the end of each day’s filming.
Well, this is it from me. No more babbling. Enjoy your cartoons and feature film!
So watch! Or don’t! Everything is voluntary! If you hate Robin Hood and think he is a secret commie, you can always talk about your garden. Next week, I shall find something to play. And it shall be… a film.
*Don’t get me wrong, I am not respectable.
I’m not even sure what a ren faire is?
As a potato you wouldn’t.
You didn’t exist in the old world.
Renaissance Faire
I’ve never been to one or anything.
“Wallis felt Marian was an indispensable fixture of a Robin Hood adventure.”
Also keeps it from being a total sausage party.
Olivia, a definite would.
This one also has the comic relief romance of Una O’Connor and Herbert Mundin (who died tragically young about a year after Robin Hood).
Rabbit Hood and Robin Hood Daffy were both directed by Chuck Jones, arguably one of the best of the WB directors.
Very true. And he put up with workplace harassment very well.
Time to watch some cartoons.
Tubi doesn’t let me FF. That’s… annoying.
FF?
Fast forward
fast-forward
I’m not seeing any FF or RW buttons, but I can click anywhere on the time bar and it goes there.
Didn’t work for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s my wife’s birthday tonight, so I will be in and out. Other things to focus on, and all that. I just assembled a turntable cabinet a moment ago.
HBD 🙂
What kind of turntable?
A basic Audio Technica, with auto start and a pair of matching Audio Technica bookshelf speakers. It was much better than I expected.
All her friends bought her records by her favorite bands.
Assault venison!
Also, that door is fucking ridiculous.
“Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!”
And Baron of Munchhausen.
I watched the whole bit not just the Rabbit Hood short. I miss the old cartoons. I liked in the first one that vagrancy is illegal but you can walk around without pants. Cigars, drinks, and no background checks for guns.
I say that it is art, in its own way, like a movie is a form of art. With humor. “Arise, Earl of Cloves. Arise, Milk of Magnesia.”
Robin Hood Makes Good is another Chuck Jones directed short.
Turner, when he bought shorts for his stupid channel, cut the credits off, if I remember correctly. Stupid Turner.
Turner. Hrm. He was kinda a genius. Lotsa Braves fans, out there. Big reason they were my #2 team growing up. They were on! (And the 90s Braves were, uh, damn good. They did win once!)
I fondly, fondly remember Robin Hood Daffy. Daffy’s the best. As I’ve said, he’s cartoon Costanza.
“But for that moment, J̵e̵r̵r̵y̵ ̵Bugs! I *was* a̵ ̵m̵a̵r̵i̵n̵e̵ ̵b̵i̵o̵l̵o̵g̵i̵s̵t̵ Robin Hood.”
Grey goose shaft is also the name for his penis.
Robin Hood Daffy – seems legit when the monk stops the spinning with just a stick.
I watched the whole thing. I liked the Foghorn Leghorn short.