runar-4 Review of Fit to Be Tied

Fit to Be Tied (1952)

Hanna & Barbera created their own spoiler for this one.

[12 August 2004]

People who look at William Hanna & Joseph Barbera's body of work with a dispassionate eye will quickly notice that they had a penchant for recycling old story lines (they weren't the only ones - Friz Freling at Warner Brothers regularly reused gags, but seldom complete stories). With slight variations as to the devices, "Fit To Be Tied" is nearly identical to 1944's "The Bodyguard". The similarities are such that if another studio had produced "Fit" they could have been sued for plagiarism. I guess with hundreds of cartoons to their credit, originality can't be expected every time, but `Fit' appeared long before the general decline of the quality of cartoon storywriting in the ‘60's, so it could have been closer to the norm in 1952.