Friz Freling, born Isadore Freling in 1905, was the most prolific of all of Warner Bros’ Looney Tunes directors. Not only did he direct more shorts for the series than any other person, he had a hand in creating several of the most popular Looney Tunes characters including Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Sylvester. In 1935 Freling directed “I Haven’t Got a Hat”, which introduced Porky Pig. Porky would soon become the series’ most popular star, appearing in the opening and closing titles of every short. While Bugs Bunny would clearly overtake Porky’s popularity in later years, back in the black-and-white days leading up to the early 1940s, Looney Tunes was all about the pig.

“Porky’s Pastry Pirates”, directed by Freling and released in January 1942, sees Porky running a bakery and being terrorised by a hungry bee. It is amiable, entertaining stuff, with a good stream of visual and slapstick gags as the two characters make their way around the kitchen. The Bee is a great creation, played by Kent Rogers as a parody of popular crime film tough guy James Cagney. Porky is, of course, voiced by Looney Tunes stalwart Mel Blanc. It is a shame that this short is a one-off creation, since there is a lot of potential in Porky fighting a bee in different comic contexts.

Stylistically the film sits at a mid-point: still produced in black-and-white, still resembling the old Disney Silly Symphonies that first inspired Warner Bros’ competitor shorts, but showing an evolution in aesthetic that foreshadows the more iconic look of the Looney Tunes during the 1950s. The timing between the animation and the musical score is particularly crisp and entertaining.

The earlier cartoon shorts of the late 1920s and 1930s often require an understanding of historical context to appreciate them, and their humour is often simplistic and dated. “Porky’s Pastry Pirates” still feels genuinely funny now – slapstick is essentially timeless, after all. As Warner Bros failed to re-register its copyright in the early 1970s, the short is now in the public domain and can be found fairly easily on streaming video sites like Tubi and Youtube.