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Few would
be likely to argue that, in the pantheon
of great cartoon characters, the Pink
Panther occupies as high a seat as, say,
Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote, or even
Bullwinkle. The Panther is not a complex
or detailed personality, and his
adventures are short on texture.
There’s no
deep pain under the zaniness.
Yet for
all that, the Panther, sauntering along
to the relentless beat of Henry
Mancini’s slinky theme, has his own
charm, and so do many of the cartoons in
which he starred.
It’s a
superficial charm. The hip, unflappable,
clean-slate blamelessness of our hero,
the graphic simplicity of the
two-dimensional pop-art world in which
his adventures unfold, the unhurried
pacing and the nonchalant surrealism of
the gags combine to cast a frothy spell.
The PP,
developed by veteran animators David
DePatie, Isadore “Friz” Freling and
Hawley Pratt, made his debut in the
title sequence of the 1963 Blake Edwards
comedy The Pink Panther.
The
sequence was such a hit that a couple of
the reviews proclaimed it better than
the movie which followed. The first
cartoon short proper, called “The Pink
Phink,” pitting the pink-loving feline
against a hapless housepainter who
prefers blue, won the 1964 Oscar for
animated short, and thereafter
DePatie-Freling Enterprises cranked out
well over a hundred PP shorts throughout
the rest of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
He became
a fixture on Saturday morning TV, and
was hugely popular overseas, where the
usually wordless cartoons easily leapt
over the language barrier.
Released
this month in connection with the
current live-action Pink Panther
remake, The Pink Panther Classic
Cartoon Collection offers 124
cartoons.
I was
tickled, well, y’know, pink to see my
own childhood favorites, “Little Beaux
Pink,” in which the Panther, as a
shepherd, watches over a weepy,
aggrieved little sheep, and “Extinct
Pink,” in which the Panther and other
famished prehistoric creatures all
compete for the same bone (the latter
cartoon, however, like several others in
the set, is still unfortunately polluted
by its TV laugh track).
It was
likewise fascinating to see the two 1965
cartoons (“Sink Pink” and “Pink Ice”) in
which the Panther spoke, in a cultured
English accent provided by Rich
Little—an experiment that the filmmakers
quickly abandoned in favor of pure
pantomime.
The
five-disc collection also includes a
generous helping of special features.
Among these are about a half-dozen
delightful short documentaries tracing
the development of the character, along
with the complete title sequences from
The Pink Panther, A Shot in
the Dark, The Pink Panther
Strikes Again, The Revenge of the
Pink Panther and The Trail of the
Pink Panther.
Fun as
these extras genuinely are, I would
recommend against buying the 5-disc
Classic Cartoon Collection unless
you happen to be a particularly
passionate PP fan. Even at their best,
these shorts are—by design—somewhat
repetitive, and many of the later ‘70s
entries are quite stale. If you want a
taste of PP nostalgia, the inexpensive
single-disc collections, especially the
first or second volumes, offer a fine
representative sample of the Panther in
his best vintage.
As for the
new Pink Panther feature now in
theaters, starring Steve Martin as
Inspector Closeau—I’ve seen it, and can
only say that I’m proud to carry on the
critical tradition: The animated opening
titles are far better than the movie
which follows.
M.V.
Moorhead is a former longtime movie
columnist for Phoenix New Times. He
writes regularly for Wrangler News. |
