Smog

Smog jokes were pretty common in the early ‘50s; you’d hear them all the time on network radio shows.

The best-known one in a cartoon is in the Chuck Jones opus “What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957) but Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen pulled off one in a string of sight gags in “Little Johnny Jet” (released 1953). Little Johnny helps his obsolete prop plane father win the big race by zipping past various landmarks. In this cartoon, they go so fast, the smog over Los Angeles is dragged away in their wake.



I’ll bet those orange groves are long gone. The background drawings are by Johnny Johnsen. It’s conjecture on my part that Ed Benedict did the layouts.

Ray Patterson came over from the H-B unit to help animate this one, along with Bob Bentley, Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.