Back Alley Oproar

Back Alley Oproar is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies (Blue Ribbon reissue) animated short directed by Friz Freleng and originally released in theaters on March 27, 1948. The short features Sylvester and Elmer Fudd as its main characters, voiced by Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan respectively. The title is a play on "uproar" and "opera". This is a rare exception for Sylvester as he actually wins in this cartoon.

Summary
Elmer is ready for bedtime, but Sylvester has other plans as he starts singing in Elmer's back yard. A series of gags play out, as Elmer tries everything up his sleeve to get rid of that unwanted pest. Elmer eventually confronts Sylvester, but before Elmer can blast him with his shotgun, Sylvester sings a sweet, gentle lullaby to ease him to dreams. However, this doesn't last, and the insanity continues…



Elmer eventually dies from explosives from his attempts to get rid of Sylvester. His spirit of his life winds up in Heaven, on a cloud ascending into space. Momentarily he thinks he will finally get some peace and quiet. However, the spirits of Sylvester's nine lives ascend around him, with the male and female cloned ones following them, each with a numeral on its back, singing in a multi-nonet from "Lucia di Lammermoor", with their voices. Just after one of the spirits steals his halo, Elmer's spirit dives off his cloud and a crash is heard off-screen.

Production
The cartoon is a remake of 1941's Notes to You, also directed by Freleng. It has a similar plot (although the ending of the original doesn't have the characters die from an explosion; instead the cat dies from getting shot, and returns as nine singing angels), but the Elmer and Sylvester characters in Notes to You were taken by Porky Pig and an unnamed alley cat (the latter bearing a striking resemblance to the cat from Bob Clampett's The Hep Cat).

Back Alley Oproar is notable in the Warner cartoon canon as one of the very few shorts in which Sylvester actually "wins out" over another character, albeit at the presumed cost of his life.

At the end, the singing is made up of by what seems like three voices (in order of most prominent to least prominent): Blanc's voice, the female voice from earlier, and a deep voice.

Release
This cartoon was reissued with Blue Ribbon titles and shown that way in TV for years. It was restored with original titles (and shown uncut and uncensored) for the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 DVD.