Hubie and Bertie - Later Films

Later Films

Trap Happy Porky (24 February 1945) was their second appearance. Nameless, indistinguishable except for color, they appear only in the first act. Quick, clever food stealing foes of a Porky in nightshirt & cap. They are silent except for a single "I'm only three and a half years old", and retreat when one of Jones great cats shows up - a Rube Goldberg by day, drunken roisterer by night.

Jones would repeat the theme of mind-games several more times in his Hubie and Bertie shorts, as in their third cartoon, Roughly Squeaking on 23 November 1946. This time, Jones has the mice exploit Claude's stupidity by convincing him that he's a lion and that a dog is a moose he wants to eat. By the short's end, Claude thinks he's a lion, the dog believes he's a pelican, and a bystanding bird has pulled his feathers out and imagines himself a Thanksgiving turkey. The mice are here voiced by Mel Blanc (Hubie) and Stan Freberg (Bertie). The short was followed by House Hunting Mice on 6 September 1947, where Hubie and Bertie run afoul of a housekeeping robot. In the next cartoon, Mouse Wreckers, and for the remainder of the series, Blanc and Freberg would handle the voices of Hubie and Bertie, respectively. After the classic cartoons, Joe Alaskey would usually play Bertie.