| I Wanna Be a Sailor | |
| Director: | Fred Avery |
| Producer: | Leon Schlesinger |
| Story: | Ben Hardaway (uncredited) |
| Animator: | Paul Smith Virgil Ross Sid Sutherland (uncredited) Elmer Wait (uncredited) Irven Spence (uncredited) |
| Layout Artist: | Griff Jay (uncredited) |
| Background Artist: | Art Loomer (uncredited) |
| Starring: | Mel Blanc Elvia Allman Billy Bletcher Bernice Hansen Robert Wrinkler (all uncredited)[1] |
| Music: | Carl W. Stalling |
| Distributor: | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Studio: | Warner Bros. Cartoons |
| Color Process: | Technicolor |
| Runtime: | 7:10 7:00 (Blue Ribbon reissue edition) |
| Language: | English |
I Wanna Be a Sailor is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon film directed by Tex Avery.[2] The short was released on September 25, 1937.[3]
A mother parrot in a cage is teaching her three children to say, "Polly want a cracker." The first two kids, Patrick and Patricia, do so after some effort, but Peter boldly refuses, pointing at a framed photo of his dad he states, "I don't want a cracker! I wanna be a sailor, like me pop." His mother immediately begins deriding her husband, telling Peter that right after he and his siblings were born, their dad had set sail for Hawaii ("No, Maw, it was Catalina," Dad, as she remembers him, reminds her). She tells her son, "I used to burn a little light in the window" (it was actually a searchlight), hoping for his dad's return, but he never did come back.
Nonetheless, Peter stubbornly stomps off to become a sailor. He bumps into a barrel, from which he builds a ship with a red pajama for a sail and a skull-and-crossbones label from a poison bottle for a Jolly Roger flag. He joins forces with an annoyingly loquacious duck (whom he silences by clamping his beak shut with a clothespin), and the two set sail on the lake - Peter as captain, the duck as deck-swab. They eventually run into trouble in a thunderstorm (which the duck revels in, being more accustomed to water) and end up overboard. Peter calls out for his "Momma". She comes running, but the duck has already saved him. Despite it all, Peter still wants to be a sailor, which causes his mother to faint.[4]