The Goofy Gophers (1947) - Looney Tunes Classic - Public Domain Cartoons

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he Goofy Gophers are animated cartoon characters in the Warner Brothers, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The gophers, named Mac and Tosh, are small and brown with tan bellies and buck teeth. They both have British accents. Their names are puns on the surname "Macintosh." They are characterized by an abnormally high level of politeness.
The Goofy Gophers were created by Warners animator Robert Clampett for the 1947 short film The Goofy Gophers. Norm McCabe had previously used a pair of gophers in his 1942 short Gopher Goofy, but they bear little resemblance to Clampett's characters. Clampett left the studio before the short went to production, so Arthur Davis took over as director. The cartoon features the gophers' repeated incursions into a vegetable garden guarded by an unnamed dog whom they relentlessly, though politely, torment. Voice actor Mel Blanc plays Mac and Stan Freberg plays Tosh. Both speak with high-pitched British accents like those used in upper-class stereotypes around at the time. After classic cartoons, Joe Alaskey plays Mac.

Some sources claim Clampett intended the Goofy Gophers to be a spoof of Disney's chipmunk characters, Chip 'n' Dale, with whom they are sometimes confused. Others, however, point out that this seems unlikely given the two pairs of characters are so different in characterization. The only real similarities are the fact that the characters are rodents, are paired up, and have puns for names.

The gophers' mannerisms and speech were patterned after Frederick Burr Opper's comics characters Alphonse and Gaston, which in the early 1900s engendered a "good honest laugh". The crux of each four-frame strip was the ridiculousness of the characters' over-politeness preventing their ability to get on with the task at hand.

The gophers' mannerisms may be styled on performances from the British film Great Expectations directed by David Lean and released in 1946, one year before Clampett's restyled 1947 version. The gophers' speech and affectations closely mirror the enthusiastic deferential relationship between Pip, played by actor John Mills, and Mr. Pocket played by actor Alec Guinness.

The pair's dialogue is peppered with such over politeness as "Indubitably!", "You first, my dear," and "But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!" The two often also tend to quote Shakespeare and use unnecessarily long words; for example, in Lumber Jerks, instead of "We gotta get our tree back", they say "We must take vital steps to reclaim our property."[3] Clampett later stated that the gophers' mannerisms were derived from character actors Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton.

Davis would direct one other Goofy Gophers short, 1948's Two Gophers from Texas. The unnamed dog from the first cartoon returns as their nemesis in this cartoon, this time aiming to eat like an animal in the wild as he pursues the gophers with a gopher cookbook in hand.

Robert McKimson was the next Warners director to utilize the characters. He pitted them against Clampett and Arthur's dog once again in the 1949 film A Ham in a Role wherein the dog's efforts to become a Shakespearean actor are foiled by the rambunctious rodents.