User Reviews

This site decided to put a picture of the old timey movie actor Humphrey Bogart as the poster for this cartoon, as opposed to a pic of Mel Blanc, who provided ALL of the voices in the 7 minute, 38.12 second offering from Merrie Melodies. This is pretty startling, since Bogart has NOTHING to do with THE DRAFT HORSE, at least at face value. But digging deeper into my memory bank, I seem to remember seeing a picture of Blanc for a micro-second years ago. Based on that, my guess is that Humphrey DID look a lot more like a horse than Mel. And while "Mel" might make a nice-sounding name for a mule, "Humphrey the Horse" has a better ring for the racer depicted in this short. As a side note, "Bogart" was used as some sort of an adjective or adverb for people of my parents' generation, as in "Gosh, my nose feels real itchy:" followed by "Forsooth, in that case you better Bogart it" (or maybe the exact phrase was more along the lines of "Don't pick your Bogarts in public!", but this was so long ago my mind's drawing a Blanc).

. . . except when the nag is NOT a horse, of course, one of Looney Tunes' most prophetic directors, Chuck Jones, teaches America in THE DRAFT HORSE. Like most of Warner Bros.' warnings to the U.S. in the form of animated shorts, THE DRAFT HORSE contains a few topical references (in this case, to the World War Two Era). However, a close scrutiny of this cartoon turns up far more allusions to would-be American Game Show Host-in-Chief, Donald J. Duck. The Trumpster was infamously classified as being "4F" (physically unfit for duty) FOUR TIMES to dodge the Vietnam War in Real Life. Naturally, Warner shows the DRAFT HORSE being labeled "44F" (for Trumplestiltskin's 4 times 4). The words "You Son of a Bitch" are Courageously Snuck on screen by Jones 4 minutes, 18 seconds into DRAFT HORSE, an obvious anti-Trump jibe that could have gotten Jones fired by the War Censors. But as Jones said of Hitler, "He was an Enormity Beyond the Horizon--an Evil Thing--a Menace probably created by the Western Powers," which makes equal sense when you plug in "Trump" for Hitler and "Fox 'News'" for "Western Powers." Finally, when ordered to strip down for an Army Physical, THE DRAFT HORSE begins bumping and grinding like a Burlesque Queen or Exotic Dancer auditioning to become Mrs. Trump Number Four. However, this reveals that the eventual equine draft dodger is NOT "hung like a horse," but rather (microscopically) like a Trump.