They're Nuts

Whether it was characters reading title cards, stopping the action and demanding the credit roll or hatching out of nuts and then beginning the plot, Tex Avery found unique ways to open his cartoons.

The nut-hatching (the characters are “nuts,” get it?) begins after the credits appear in the 1937 Merrie Melodie “Daffy Duck and Egghead,” while Carl Stalling plays “Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May” behind the action. Daffy does two takes when he sees Egghead, who fires at the fleeing duck. Could this be an Irv Spence scene?



The “nuts” pun may have come from writer Bugs Hardaway, who loved obvious stuff like that. Virgil Ross gets the animation credit.

Incidentally, the music over the title card is “‘Cause My Baby Says It’s So” by Warren and Dubin from the 1937 movie “The Singing Marine.”