Title - A Ham in a Role
Director - Bob McKimson
Released - 1949
Reason for Placement --
It's no secret that the boys from Termite Terrace liked to pepper their cartoons with culture. You had shorts with classical music, historical figures or scenes, and in one cartoon, Bob McKimson actually decided to give us a taste of Shakespeare.
A Ham in a Role gives us classic Looney Tunes humor with a heavy dose of the Bard's greatest works. The Goofy Gophers, after being thrown out of their home by a Shakespearean-acting dog (whom is never named), decide to take their revenge while playing on the lines the dog rehearses. The gags are great, playing off classic scenes from Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, and more. For example, when the dog does the graveyard scene from Hamlet, one of the gophers dresses up as a skeleton and turns off the lights.
And I'll go ahead and admit it, when I had to study Shakespeare in high school, I couldn't get the scenes from this cartoon out of my head.
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