Three Little Bops

United States

1957

7 Min

Color

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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Musical retelling of the classic children’s story, “The Three Little Pigs,” this time set to a hip rock-flavored jazz beat. Three pigs have formed a jazz trio and play in upper-class nightclubs, entertaining the crowds with their uptempo rock-flavored music. All’s well until The Big Bad Wolf, armed with a horn, repeatedly makes unwanted auditions to join (and no wonder; the off-key wolf is awful). Each time, the frustrated pigs throw the inept Big Bad out, with the windy wolf retaliating the first two times by blowing down the pig’s nightclubs — appropriately, the first made of straw and the second of sticks. Big Bad’s third attempt comes when the pigs perform their gig in a nightclub made of bricks. After he’s thrown out and Big Bad’s unsuccessful attempt to blow down the brick nightclub, the wolf makes several more attempts to join and/or get back at the pigs. Finally, the exasperated wolf makes one last desparate attempt to get in — by blowing the place up. He only succeeds at blowing himself up, but all’s well that ends well: the deceased wolf finally got hot and now plays real cool. —IMDb

Director

Friz Freleng

Friz Freleng began animating cartoons with Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks at United Film Ad Service in the mid-1920s, then moved with his associates to the Disney studios. Freleng left Disney in 1929 and after directing his first cartoon for Walter Lantz at Universal (Wicked West), joined the Warner Brothers animation department. There his black-and-white cartoons of the mid-‘30s showed a special flair for integrating music and action, especially in his “Bosko” series. Freleng began directing Warners’ color series of Merrie Melodies cartoons in 1934 and over the next three decades made many of Warners’ funniest cartoons, creating such memorable characters as Yosemite Sam (said to be a self-caricature) and Speedy Gonzalez, as well as developing the identities of such iconic figures as Porky Pig (Porky’s Hired Hand), Bugs Bunny (Racketeer Rabbit, Rhapsody Rabbit), Daffy Duck (Ain’t That Ducky), and Sylvester and Tweety (Tweetie Pie, Birds Anonymous). After Warners’ cartoon unit folded, Freleng… read more