Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting A QUESTION!

[Do-Do]

Does anybody know why most of the redrawns and/or Sunset prints of Looney Tunes have a theme song that has the first several seconds cut off? :confused:

[J Lee]

The theme song was originally cut off by Sunset Films, which decided only to use about a five-second title card at the start of the cartoons over the Warner Bros. shield, instead for the entire 8-10 seconds that the normal opening title card is on screen.

When the cartoons were redrawn in the 1960s, prints with the full theme were used where available, but when the merger between Warner Bros. and 7 Arts occured and the 1967-69 title card was put on the cartoons, it was five seconds shorter than the themes used in the 1930s and early 1940s. So the music was clipped again (though in some cases, the music would just be played over a black screen for five seconds, before the 'pinwheel' opening began).

When WB decided in 1980 to attatch a 1956 opening to the redrawns and use the original Schlesinger LT title cards, the openings were attatched based on whether or not the print's music was "clipped."

In general, more of the 1936-40 cartoons had their full themes while more of the 1941-43 cartoons had their opening music clipped. That's why now, a lot of the 1941-43 computerized cartoons have the wrong opening title music, because Warners had to go back in and reattch the music to those cartoons, and for some reason, whoever did it was either too lazy to go find the right version at times or just wanted to play around, and stuck 1937 themes on 1942 cartoons, 1938 themes on 1936 cartoonsm etc. (they did restore the correct music to the 1942-43 season B&W cartoons with the concentric circle openings, apparently because not to do so would have been too obvious a screw-up on their part).