Bea Benaderet says that as one of this Merrie Melodie's last lines, as a society chick waiting to christen a newly-build WWII Liberty Ship at a totally empty dry dock. Rather than standing there "holding the bag," this floozy is holding a full bottle of champagne. In answer to her question, Mel Blanc as a politician on hand for this occasion says something like "Don't worry about THAT, just start swinging!" Having blind faith in the word of any politico (similar to the blonde in BORN YESTERDAY), the ditzy chick closes her eyes, takes a back swing with her bottle, rushes it forward--and, lo and behold--a spanking new Liberty Ship pops up from the bottom of the enclosure in time to get doused with bubbly from the smashed booze vessel (speaking of which, how did they launch Navy ships during Prohibition? With sparkling grape juice?) Anywho, a sad footnote to this story is that this newly launched ship is probably rusting today in one of our "mothballed reserve fleets," polluting a bay or river with tons of rust. I know I've seen two such unbelievably huge such wastes of steel in my travels (I think one was around Philadelphia, and the other near San Francisco). So it goes.
Review of The Weakly Reporter
