EASTER WEEKEND SPECIAL: "Freddie Get Ready" from My Dream is Yours (1949) (Patreon)

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"Freddie, I said time to get ready!"

To start of the Easter weekend special, here is the dream sequence from Michael Curtiz’s My Dream Is Yours (1949), starring Doris Day and Jack Carson and a guest appearance by Bugs Bunny. Many of you might have seen this musical number, but here, it is presented here newly restored in high-definition.

The song “Freddie Get Ready” is sung to the tune of Franz Lizst’s second Hungarian Rhapsody, a composition immortalized in many classic animated films, particularly by animation director Friz Freleng. Freleng had been involved in an animated dream sequence for the Jack Carson vehicle Two Guys from Texas (1948), which also featured Bugs. The June 19, 1948 edition of Showmen’s Trade Review stated the live-action was scheduled for four days of shooting, the combination of live-action and animation would take approximately ten weeks. (Tweety’s appearance in the sequence was announced earlier in April, having just received an Oscar win for Tweetie Pie [1947].)

The animation in this sequence is handled by some of Freleng’s regular crew of animators including Virgil Ross, Art Davis, Ken Champin and Gerry Chiniquy. Ken Harris’ animation can also be seen in some scenes of Bugs, though he was not one of Freleng’s mainstays. Harris was loaned out from Chuck Jones’ unit for this sequence— perhaps his ability to produce thirty feet of animation a week (approximately twently seconds of screen footage) seemed a valuable asset to the director.