I Wanna Be a Sailor

I Wanna Be a Sailor
I Wanna Be a Sailor
	Lobby card
Directed by	Fred Avery
Story by	Ben Hardaway (uncredited)
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Starring	Mel Blanc; Elvia Allman; Billy Bletcher; Bernice Hansen; Robert Wrinkler (all uncredited)
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Paul Smith; Virgil Ross; Sid Sutherland (uncredited); Elmer Wait (uncredited); Irven Spence (uncredited)
Layouts by	Griff Jay (uncredited)
Backgrounds by	Art Loomer (uncredited)
Color process	Technicolor
Production; company	Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures; The Vitaphone Corporation
Release dates	September 25, 1937 (Original release); April 30, 1949 (Blue Ribbon re-release)
Running time	7:10; 7:00 (Blue Ribbon reissue edition)
Language	English

I Wanna Be a Sailor is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon film directed by Tex Avery.^[2] The short was released on September 25, 1937.^[3]

Plot[edit]

A mother parrot in a cage is teaching her three children to say, "Polly want a cracker." The first two kids, Patrick and Patricia, do so after some effort, but Peter boldly refuses, pointing at a framed photo of his dad he states, "I don't want a cracker! I wanna be a sailor, like me pop." His mother immediately begins deriding her husband, telling Peter that right after he and his siblings were born, their dad had set sail for Hawaii ("No, Maw, it was Catalina," Dad, as she remembers him, reminds her). She tells her son, "I used to burn a little light in the window" (it was actually a searchlight), hoping for his dad's return, but he never did come back.

Nonetheless, Peter stubbornly stomps off to become a sailor. He bumps into a barrel, from which he builds a ship with a red pajama for a sail and a skull-and-crossbones label from a poison bottle for a Jolly Roger flag. He joins forces with an annoyingly loquacious duck (whom he silences by clamping his beak shut with a clothespin), and the two set sail on the lake - Peter as captain, the duck as deck-swab. They eventually run into trouble in a thunderstorm (which the duck revels in, being more accustomed to water) and end up overboard. Peter calls out for his "Momma". She comes running, but the duck has already saved him. Despite it all, Peter still wants to be a sailor, which causes his mother to faint.^[4]

Voice cast[edit]

Robert "Bobby" Winkler as Petey Parrot
- Danny Webb as Petey Parrot for the line "...I am a Man!" (reused from Egghead Rides Again)^[1]
Mel Blanc as Dizzy Duck
Elvia Allman as Mother Parrot
Billy Bletcher as Father Parrot
Tommy Bond as Patrick Parrot
Bernice Hansen as Patricia Parrot^[1]

Notes[edit]

The voice of Peter Parrot was supplied by prolific child actor Robert "Bobby" Winckler, who had worked in more than 80 films and 200 radio shows with most of the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. His IMDb page is listed under his often-credited name Robert Winkler.^[5]
The duck in this cartoon is often thought to be the same duck that appeared in the Porky Pig cartoons It's an Ill Wind^[6]^[7]^[8] and Porky's Hotel, as well as She Was an Acrobat's Daughter.
During the storm sequence, the cartoon's soundtrack music includes a few bars from the second movement of Gioacchino Rossini's William Tell Overture.^[9]
The mother parrot sings part of the chorus of the song "Poor Old Joe"^[10] as she comes to Peter's rescue ("I'm coming...").
I Wanna Be a Sailor is the first Warner Bros. cartoon to end with the 1937-38 Merrily We Roll Along rendition.
This cartoon is one of a handful of pre-1943 shorts to enter the public domain in the United States because United Artists, the owners of the short at the time, failed to renew the copyrights in time, though they had planned to do so. It is the oldest color Warner Bros. cartoon to currently be in the public domain, entering in 1966.