Movies - Screwball Squirrel

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Screwball "Screwy" Squirrel is a cartoon character, an anthropomorphic squirrel created by Tex Avery for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, generally considered the wackiest of the screwball cartoon characters of the 1940s, who include Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Woody Woodpecker.

Among the most intangible and non-standard cartoon characters ever created, Screwy can do almost anything to almost anyone: he pulls objects out of thin air, doubles himself, and constantly breaks the fourth wall; all the while uttering a characteristic cackling laugh. The character was not a successful as Avery's Happy Hound (later Droopy Dog) was at this time, and Screwy was phased out after only appearing in five cartoons between 1944 and 1946.

The character was notable for being brash and erratic, and is considered by some to be annoying with few sympathic personality characteristics such as Bugs Bunny's nobility or Daffy Duck's pathos. Most of his cartoons revolve around him inflicting various forms of torture on his enemy (usually a dog) for seven minutes. In one cartoon, Screwy hits a dog across the head with everything he can find in a trunk labeled "Swell Stuff to Hit Dogs on the Head With". When he finishes, the dog remarks, "Gee whiz! He hit me with everything but the kitchen sink!" Screwy, producing a kitchen sink and knocking the dog over the head with it, responds "Well, I don't wanna disappoint ya, chum!"

Hanna-Barbera Cartoons resurrected Screwy for the Droopy: Master Detective Saturday morning cartoon on Fox Kids in 1993-1994. The Tex Avery originals have been frequently seen on Turner Broadcasting System-run networks such as the Cartoon Network and Boomerang.

On April Fools' Day, 1997, the cartoon Happy-Go-Nutty played over and over again and again. Any person who visited the Cartoon Network area at AOL knew that Screwball took over Cartoon Network, taken the programmers hostage, and forced them to run the same cartoon over and over (actually an April Fool's joke). It ran from 6 AM to 6 PM.

Screwball Squirrel cartoons

1944: Screwball Squirrel
1944: Happy-Go-Nutty
1944: Big Heel-Watha
1945: The Screwy Truant
1946: Lonesome Lenny

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