Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton's 'Porky and Teabiscuit' is an utterly pedestrian cartoon which, after Bob Clampett's barrage of amazing Porky Pig cartoons the previous year, seems like a step backwards. Casting Porky in his original role as a child, the clichéd plot unfolds slowly and uninterestingly as we follow Porky on an errand for his father which results in him being conned out of eleven dollars in exchange for a dishevelled old nag of a racehorse. Porky must enter a steeple chase to win back the money. The cartoon only picks up pace when the race begins and by then the cartoon is nearly over. It's far too little, too late and 'Porky and Teabiscuit' emerges as a misfire that seems unsure whether to go for cuteness or gags and ends up skimping on both. Unlike the majority of the Warner Bros. catalogue which is noticeably adult orientated, 'Porky and Teabiscuit' feels like a short made specifically for children and easily entertained children at that!

Following his debut in the 1935 Merrie Melody "I Haven't Got a Hat", Porky Pig mostly starred in hokey Looney Tunes until the early 1940s (Chuck Jones's "Old Glory" may have been Porky's only cartoon during this period that constituted anything more than a series of childish gags; I think that it was also Porky's only appearance in Merrie Melody during this period)."Porky and Teabiscuit" was one of the hokey ones. While it did follow the theme of casting Porky as the underdog, it doesn't have much clever. Not that it isn't worth seeing (there are a few neat gags). But I suspect that most people will agree that if Leon Schlesinger Productions hadn't started giving Porky roles with greater complexity, then that would have quickly been all for him, folks. This one is OK, not great.PS: directors Cal Dalton and Ben Hardaway headed what had been Friz Freleng's unit. Freleng worked at MGM from 1937 to 1939, returning to Warner Bros. when MGM canceled the series that he had been directing. Ben Hardaway's nickname was Bugs, and he submitted a drawing of a rabbit titled "Bug's Bunny". You can probably guess what happened from there.

Little did these animators know how famous "Seabiscuit" would become almost 70 years later, thanks to a best-selling book and feature movie about the great horse of the '30s.Anyway, we see a fairly young Porky Pig in this cartoon, a kid who works for his dad Phineas (who stutters the same as Porky). The "kid" loves horse racing and races his little toy horse - yet he's old enough to drive a car! Oh, well.He goes into town to deliver feed to the stables at the track and collect $11 for it. Then, he accidentally winds up purchasing an old, broken-down horse, "Teabuscuit" for the 11 bucks. Oh, man, his pop is going to kill him when he finds out.However, you just know something will work out, that the old beat-up but face-liking likable horse will do something good to bail out Porky.This winds up being a "cute" cartoon, more than it is funny. The actual race was wild and insane, but not really anything that would provoke a big laugh. It's a passable animated short, decent but nothing great.

"Porky and Teabiscuit" is a very good black-and-white Warner Bros. cartoon starring our favorite sweet-natured pig Porky. Porky's father Phineas (who stutters just as profusely as Porky does) sends Porky to a racetrack to deliver some feed and collect eleven dollars, which he inadvertently blows on a broken-down, half-starved horse named Teabiscuit. But Porky is determined to recover his money by entering Teabiscuit in the steeplechase and being the jockey.Although nothing about this cartoon really makes it stand out, "Porky and Teabiscuit" is still an entertaining film with at least a couple of memorable moments. Teabiscuit becomes fed up with a competing horse's rear end blocking his path, so he bites the horse's tail! And Teabiscuit has a peculiar attraction to trombones as he observes & listens with a funny smile on his face; when last seen, Teabiscuit tries to play a trombone himself! In closing, Carl Stalling's excellent music score for "Porky and Teabiscuit" bears mentioning. The popular song "Jeepers Creepers" can be heard when Porky delivers the feed to the racetrack and collects his money. (This may have been a direct reference to the live-action feature film "Going Places" [1938], in which the great Louis Armstrong sings "Jeepers Creepers" to a racehorse.) In addition, "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" can be heard during the auction scene.