Editing Carl W. Stalling (section)

==Comments by Chuck Jones==

[[Chuck Jones]] and the other ''Looney Tunes'' directors sometimes complained about Stalling's proclivity for musical quotation and punning. In an interview, Jones complained:

{{cquote|He was a brilliant musician. But the quickest way for him to write a musical score was to simply look up some music that had the proper name. If there was a lady dressed in red, he'd always play "[[The Lady in Red (Allie Wrubel song)|The Lady in Red]]". If somebody went into a cave, he'd play "[[The Hebrides (overture)|Fingal's Cave]]". If we were doing anything about eating, he'd do "[[A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You]]". I had a bee one time, and my God, if he didn't go and find a piece of music written in 1906 or something called "I'm a Busy Little Bumble Bee".<ref>''Chuck Jones: Conversations'' by Maureen Furniss (2005, University Press of Mississippi)</ref>}}

Musicologist and animation historian Daniel Goldmark has noted that Jones repeated this anecdote about Stalling in a number of interviews. Jones also claimed in a 1975 interview that "My Funny Little Bumble Bee" song was too obscure for the audience to notice the musical reference. He exaggerated that one had to be 108-years-old to even remember the existence of the song.<ref name="Goldmark">Goldmark (2005), pp. 175</ref> Goldmark believes that the anecdote itself was inaccurate in several ways. The "Bumble Bee song" of the anecdote was actually "[[Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee]]" (1912), which was not obscure to begin with. It was a hit song from the musical ''[[A Winsome Widow]]'', produced by [[Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.]] It had also been recorded to great acclaim by the popular duo of [[Ada Jones]] and [[Billy Murray (singer)|Billy Murray]].<ref name="Goldmark"/> And Stalling actually used this song only once during his entire tenure at [[Warner Bros. Cartoons]]. The song served as the title music of ''[[The Bee-Deviled Bruin]]'' (1949), an animated short directed by Chuck Jones.<ref name="Goldmark"/> Goldmark has also noted that Jones' claim about the repeated use of "Fingal's Cave" in cave scenes was inaccurate. Stalling did use the melody composed by [[Felix Mendelssohn]] in several animated shorts, but never in combination with an actual cave scene.<ref name="Goldmark"/>