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For Scent-imental Reasons
For Scent-imental Reasons
	The title card of For Scent-imental Reasons
Directed by	Charles M. Jones
Story by	Michael Maltese
Produced by	Edward Selzer; (uncredited)
Starring	Mel Blanc; Bea Benaderet
Music by	Carl Stalling
Animation by	Ben Washam; Ken Harris; Phil Monroe; Lloyd Vaughan
Layouts by	Robert Gribbroek
Backgrounds by	Peter Alvarado
Color process	Technicolor
Production; company	Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures; The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date	November 12, 1949;
Running time	6:55
Language	English

For Scent-imental Reasons is a 1949 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese.^[2] The short was released on November 12, 1949, and featured the debut of Penelope Pussycat^[3] (who is unnamed in this cartoon).

It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1949 and was the first Chuck Jones-directed cartoon and the second short produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons to win this award (after Tweetie Pie won in 1947).

Plot

A Parisian perfume shop owner is horrified to find a skunk, Pepé Le Pew, sampling his fragrances. The man calls upon a gendarme for assistance. Unhelpfully, the officer also recoils from Pepé's scent and flees the scene.

A black-and-white stray cat winds around the shop owner’s legs, trying to comfort him. Deciding to have her remove Pepé, he tosses her into the store. She slides across the floor, slams into a table, and overturns a bottle of white hair dye. This leads to a white stripe down her back and tail.

Pepé immediately mistakes the cat for a skunk and falls for her. Despite her clear aversion to his smell, he persistently tries to woo her. After failing to scrub off the dye, she locks herself in a glass case (much to his annoyance).

Eventually, she mimes through the glass that she won’t come out because he stinks. Heartbroken, he pulls out a gun, puts it to his head, and walks out of the frame. A “bang” is heard, so she frantically rushes out—only to find that he’d tricked her (“I missed, fortunately for you!”). The chase resumes, with Pepé leisurely hopping after the hightailing cat.

The pursuit ends on the second story, where she jumps onto a window ledge. Believing that she is about to end her life out of love for him, he tries to save her. When she slips from his grasp, he dramatically leaps after her. She lands in a barrel of rainwater, and he in a can of blue paint.

Not only has the water washed away the cat’s stripe, but it has also given her a cold. She looks so bedraggled that Pepé (who is completely blue) doesn’t recognize her. So, he wanders off to search for his “young lady skunk.” As he walks away, the cat notices how muscular the paint makes him look. Coupled with the fact that her sinuses are now blocked, she falls in love with him.

Meanwhile, Pepé goes back inside the shop. As soon as he crosses the threshold, the door slams and locks. He turns to see the cat leering at him. She pockets the key in her fur and begins to approach him. Realizing that the tables have turned, he starts running for his life. The cat follows, using his trademark hop.

Notes

In 1957, this cartoon was reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies. However, like all cartoons reissued between 1956 and 1959, the opening title (The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down) music still plays and the original ending title was kept.

Home media

This cartoon can be seen with the Blue Ribbon reissue on the first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 DVD set (disc 3) and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection (disc 1). In 2011, it also appeared in Looney Tunes Super Stars' Pepe Le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best and Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1.
The oft-censored glass case/suicide sequence was used in both the Chuck Jones compilation movie The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and Chuck Amuck: The Movie, though in the former, the scene with Penelope attempting to wash the stripe off her back is left out.
This short was featured on the UK Rental VHS release of Singles.
This short was included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray release of Gay Purr-ee.^[4]

References

^ "For Scent-imental Reasons". BCDB.com. Archived from the original on December 19, 2016. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
^ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 204. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 117. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
^ "Warner Archive Announces August Releases".