Road Runner music question

[Matthew Hunter]

Okay. This may be an unanswerable question, but I still can't help wondering. In the copy I have of "Adventures of The Road Runner" (which is, unfortunately, slightly incomplete) Milt Franklyn provides the music for the entire film. There is no credit to or evidence of Bill Lava. In making a composite of this to sort of give closure to my print (which cuts off during footage that is the same as the final gag of "To Beep or Not To Beep", so I just completed that gag with my print of said short) I realized that although the footage is the same, "TBONTB" is scored by LAVA. The same footage in "AOTRR" is scored by Franklyn. So my question is, which came first, "AOTRR" or "TBONTB", and why is the same footage in each film scored by different musicians? (Franklyn does it better, FYI).
-Matthew

[Greg Method]

I'm of the thinking that "Adventures...." was in production first, and "To Beep" was partially taken from it, but there are others who think the other way around (but I feel that's because the LT/MM book leads one to think that way).

The way I see it, Bill Lava took over after Milt Franklin passed away, so if he scored "Adv" before Lava stepped in to score "To Beep," then obviously the "Adv" footage was produced first.

It's possible that both were in production at the same time, and Chuck felt that in case the pilot wasn't picked up they would still have a solid series of gags (the catapult) to fill a short.

[J Lee]

Apparently, Warner Bros. and ABC had a falling out in 1962 over their five-year relationship, where WB became the first major studio to supply a network with cartoons, and "Adventures of the Road Runner" (along with Freleng's "Philbert") were among the casualties. In order not to waste at least some of that work, Jones took some of the footage from that cartoon and worked it into "To Beep or Not To Beep," but in the meantime, Franklyn had died, so to maintain continuity, the score for the entire cartoon was done by Lava, including the scenes like the catapult previously score by Lava.

Fast forward two years and Warners is again trying to sell a Road Runner cartoon show, now for Saturday morning TV, and they need more product. Jones is at MGM, and D-FE has just begun farming out the new RR shorts to Format Films, so someone at WB gets the bright idea to take "Adventures of the Road Runner" cut it into two parts and eventually put those two new cartoons "Zip, Zip Hurray!" and "Road Runner A Go-Go" into the roation. But in this case, the original music by Franklyn was used, while Lava's only contribution was on the title theme music.

[Matthew Hunter]

Oh, okay. I get it, it was about the time Franklyn died, so the music wouldn't match in all the scenes. I wonder why the heck Warner didn't decide to just leave the featurette/pilot and the short scored by Lava alone, and release the featurette as part of a TV show anyway? They would then still have a full half-hour episode and a cartoon short to stick in the package to join the others. Plus the fact they would have kept having material for new episodes, after the Larriva and McKimson films of the time left theaters and joined TV. One half hour could be the "Adventures" pilot, and the other episodes could include one new cartoon and two or three oldies...that's a pretty good setup. They should have left "AOTRRT" as-is. It would have fit the "Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour" or "Roadrunner Show" perfectly. Cutting it into those two shorts doesn't do it justice at all...the two edit-down shorts are disjointed and choppy compared to the film itself.
-Matthew