User Reviews

In my opinion a little too many negative reviews for this one, which is kinda sad since I sort of enjoyed it. I agree it does start slow, and a little bit of uncertainty is brought to your attention at the 2 minute mark, but Later on this does "feel like looney tunes". The gambling bug is a unique character, and the dog and cat give you quite the laugh. So By any means this is not a horrible cartoon like some people choose to rate it as such, I think its pretty decent and entertained me at least.

7/10.

For me, out of all the cartoons made by McKimson personally seen, the answer would be yes to that. Again to me, there are worse cartoons around than 'Early to Bet', but not enough stands out here to make it a favourite. And agreed, despite Carl Stalling's music and Mel Blanc providing voices it doesn't feel like a Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes cartoon, or not enough of one anyway.

'Early to Bet' has been compared often to another McKimson cartoon 'It's Hummer Time' from a year previously. Subjectively, 'It's Hummer Time' is by far the superior cartoon, and to this reviewer it is one of McKimson's best and one of his most undervalued. 'Early to Bet' does have many good merits, more so than is credited here, but doesn't have the constant fun and cleverness of that cartoon, and that cartoon has more memorable characters, a more plausible scenario as to why the punished character is being punished and is much more consistently entertaining.

As aforementioned, there are many good things to like about 'Early to Bet'. A good deal of the animation is very good, it's bright and colourful with the backgrounds lovingly drawn and careful in detail. Carl Stalling's music is the highlight of 'Early to Bet', it's adds so much character to everything and like the best of the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons have a sense of humour of their own. As well as being energetic and characterful, it is also lovely music to listen to, and it's use of recognisable pre-existing material was also delightful.

There are far more memorable characters in a McKimson cartoon, and in a Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes cartoon for that matter, but this said the cat was an amusing and likable character, the most well drawn and expressive character too, and it was easy to empathise with him. The humour doesn't come consistently but there is some amusing visual humour and the ending is very funny indeed. Mel Blanc does excellently as ever with the voices.

However, the humour is not laugh-a-minute, there isn't quite enough of it and other than the ending it's not really hilarious. The gags fare better than the dialogue, with the former having some fun and imagination and the latter actually pretty lame and forgettable. It is agreed that 'Early to Bet' focuses too much on its moral message, a message that would strike one nowadays as painfully obvious and with not much to say, and it is delivered fairly heavy-handedly, takes too much prominence in the cartoon which hurt the gags somewhat.

Apart from the cat, the other characters don't make much impact. The dog is pretty bland and the rapport between the two is odd and not given enough of an explanation. The character of the gambling bug is perhaps what brings down the cartoon most, he's a very unappealingly drawn character, he's irritating and actually there was no real need for him too considering that unlike 'It's Hummer Time' the cat never behaved in a way that warranted such treatment. It's one of the rare times where Stan Freberg fails to even raise a laugh.

In summary, not bad but very much a lesser McKimson effort. 6/10 Bethany Cox

'cause it sure doesn't feel like it. In fact it seems more like a Disney Public Service Announcement from the 40's. I mean, there is a black and white cat in this short and it's not even Sylvester. Why?

Basically it's about how fool's gamble their life away with opportunities they know are phony. A gambling bug (a very unaesthetic character) bites the cat in the ear and he feels compelled to play cards with a big dog. If he loses the penalty is torture. And he does nowt but lose. Man, that message there is really subtle huh?

The only good thing about this cartoon is the music, which is rather lively and engaging.

"Early to Bet" starts off somewhat lame - as a warning not to gamble - before they start showing the usual crazy stuff (the cat's increasingly nasty punishments) and have a pretty humorous ending. This is of course a product of the days when people considered gambling a sin and moral failure. They probably had no idea that gambling would one day be a major part of the economy.

So more than anything, this cartoon comes across as a period piece. Not as much as we usually expect from a Looney Tunes cartoon (maybe there would have been more with the presence of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck or one of those guys).

This is a cartoon warning about the evils of gambling, featuring The Gambling Bug, a creature I've never seen before in a Loony Tunes short. The bug - kind of flying ant - takes a day off and observes a big dog trying to talk a cat (which looks like a Dr. Seuss drawing) into gambling. The cat wants nothing to do with gambling, until the bug goes over and bites him.

They play for "penalties," and of course the cat loses. His penalty is "gesundheit." The cat goes back and loses two more times with other penalties.

This was really lame and not funny in the slightest. Why it would be included in a quality DVD "golden" or "spotlight" collections is beyond me.

Excellent music I can not take out of my head... and I desperately need to find. 35 years so far... It evokes the unavoidable approach of an uncanny "deus-ex-machina"... that eventually is the punishment cat deserves. I have heard this music in other WB cartoons. Rather than a critic to gambling, as I have read in other comments, I guess this cartoon is about fate and a metaphor about predestination and temptation, where cat plays the role of human species, Gambling Bug is the devil, and the dog is a punisher angel. ...well, I think so... I first saw when I was a child, and it did shock me pretty much, not because of the punishments (which are ***funny***) but because of this perfect combination of music and drama ...reading between the lines ;)

We follows the misadventures of a 'gambling bug' who causes people and animals to gamble the lives away. Now THIS is the Robert McKimson that I know, totally and grossly incompetent and unfunny, I was getting worried when I was amused by the last two shorts that I've seen of his. This is a tired ham-fisted morality tale that has very few laughs makes this one of the worst Looney Tunes shorts that I've ever witnessed. It's just simply dreadful in every sense of the word. This animated short can be found on disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1.

My Grade:D-

Robert McKimson's 'Early to Bet' is an unnecessary retread of his earlier cartoon 'It's Hummertime' which fails to live up to its predecessor. While the original had been a brilliant piece in which a cat attempting to catch a hummingbird was repeatedly given his just desserts by a bulldog who metes out cruel and unusual punishments, 'Early to Bet' introduces a convoluted subplot involving The Gambling Bug, an insect whose bite induces an instant urge to gamble. The Bug is an awkwardly drawn and irritating character who adds nothing to the scenario. He coaxes the innocent cat into gambling for penalties with the bulldog, resulting in more bizarre punishments interspersed with some lifeless card-playing sequences. Aside from the fact that the gambling angle slows the cartoon down, 'Early to Bet' is tainted by the fact that the cat is a complete innocent and has done nothing to deserve his punishments, unlike in 'It's Hummertime' where he was attempting to annihilate a bird. There's also something completely unconvincing about a dog seeking out a cat with the motive of gambling! 'Early to Bet' is an oddity but not a successful one. For an example of an oddity that works, seek out the original and best, 'It's Hummertime'.

"Early to Bet" is a hilarious cartoon about a gambling bug that bites a cat, which gives him a compulsive need to play cards with a soft-spoken bulldog. The dog is surprisingly funny here, as are the penalties the cat is subject to after losing every game.

It is beyond me why it's getting so many negative reviews here. This cartoon isn't teaching any morals; people seem to be taking cues from Mr. Enter and snuffing out morals in shows that don't have them.

This is a rehashing of gags from another LT, "It's Hummer Time" from 1950, also from Robert McKimson and Warren Foster. In the earlier cartoon, a cat chases a hummingbird but winds up bothering a dog who gives the cat similar punishment as this cartoon. The final gag when the cat gives the bug his comeuppance was very funny. "Oh no, not the post, not the post" before the cat starts to hit the bug with a rolled up copy of the Post newspaper.

A menace exists in the form of the gambling bug - biting men and making them bet over all manner of things. A cat wisely avoids trouble with a large dog, until he is bitten by the bug and starts to play cards against the dog with pain as the stakes.

I watched this as a double bill with quite a good Tweety Pie cartoon. However I dipped when I noticed that this had none of the big characters in it - although the cat and the dog both look like skinny versions of more famous characters! The plot starts out with deadbeat men showing the down side of gambling by having them look pathetic etc. Then we progress to the cat and dog story where the cat faces repeated punishment for his desire to play (and lose) at gin.

It isn't very funny and really just feels like a moral message against gambling (which is what it). However I didn't feel like they had done themselves justice and that the message had maybe overpowered the makers and hence they struggled to come up with clever ideas to make it worth watching.

As a throwback piece of public service humour this is worth a watch but really, there are much better Mel Blanc cartoons out there to watch.

Early to Bet (1951)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely poor Merrie Melodies short has a "gambling" bug biting various people and then we see how bad gambling is. I'm really not sure how to explain this short because it's so unpleasant and unfunny that you can't help but be shocked and think this has to be one of the worst the MM ever did. The "gambling" bug is annoying from start to finish and he actually gets worse as the film moves along. None of the supporting characters are any good be it with laughs, looks or even the vocal work. It's rather hard to think of a more unfunny cartoon.