My Misspent Retirement

I bet those of you in the work-a-day world didn't watch Looney Tunes cartoons this afternoon, huh? I watched as many of my favorites as I could think of, a list that includes inter alia,

Bugs Bunny with Yosemite Sam "Bucaneer Bunny" (1947).
Marc Antony and Pussyfoot "Feed the Kitty" (1951). The sweetest Looney Tune of all time. My daughter's favorite. I don't how many of them have their own Wikipedia page but this one does.
"Southern Fried Rabbit" (1952).
"Bully for Bugs" (1952).
Foghorn Leghorn "Plop Goes the Weasel" (1952) (1952 was a very good year).
"Sahara Hare" (1954) (opens with Bugs: "Miami Beach, hooray!", closes with Daffy Duck: "Miami Beach, hooray!").

                 "Whoa Camel!...Ah, come on whoa!" BAM. "When I says Whoa, I means Whoa!"

 

"Hair Raising Hare" (1955 (which is the greatest year of mankind's existence)).

 

"Monsters live the most inn-teresting lives, my stars."

"Knighty Knight Bugs" (1957), the cartoon short that won Warner Bros an Academy Award. “Whoa Dragon!" And "Dragons is so stupid."

I'm sorry, this was the golden age of cartoons. They are the greatest and these are among my favoritist favorites. Each has got laugh out loud scenes. I've watched them all of my life and still laughed out loud this afternoon. And I noticed something this afternoon that I had not before. "Sahara Hare" and "Knighty Knight Bugs" have castle-drawbridge scenes. "Sahara Hare":

The trope is repeated in each. Sam makes two or three attempts by various means to scale the castle walls.

                                 "Knighty Knight":

HOLD IT! The lasso attempt reminded me of something. I didn't look it up immediately. Not until,

Google "pink panther drawbridge scene".

        "Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976):

                      A mountaineering hooked lasso.

                                             

          Fail of course, there he goes into the moat.

Clouseau makes 3-5 attempts. Here he is by canoe:

 

Hold it! This, "Knighty Knight Bugs," 1957, is when I realized it.

  "Pink Panther Strikes Again", 1976. Climbing out of the water, first scene.

      

                                Second scene:

It's the identical trope shot from the identical angle as that used in Looney Tunes in 1954 and 1957.

Now, how common is the castle-drawbridge-moat trope in slapstick comedy? I bet not that common. What we have here, I am sure, is artistic cross-fertilization. I don't think (but I am not sure) that Blake Edwards "plagiarized" but I do think that as a comedic artist he watched what Chuck Jones and Fritz Freling did in those acclaimed shorts (one, an Oscar-winner), it stuck in his subconscious and nineteen years later he adapted it. How was work?