CROSSOVER MADNESS

The WB toon Sylvester is even more involved than the Herman and Katnip team discussed here.                                                                         

                                                          

                             

Famous Studios' Herman the Mouse already had starring status by the time he was teamed with Katnip, and though it's been argued that Katnip was preceded by various "proto-Katnips," the first Herman/Katnip cartoon is really Katnip's first appearance, and a crossover thanks to Herman's established status. Sylvester, in contrast, is not given his familiar name in his first appearance in 1945's "Life with Feathers," but it would be tough to label this a "Sylvester cartoon." In it the cat functions to simply react to the foolishness of the main character, a suicidal lovebird. Sylvester's also a subordinate character in the 1946 Porky Pig short "Kitty Cornered" and in the 1947 Foghorn Leghorn short, "Crowing Pains."                                           

    Sylvester's ascension to stardom (albeit under the name "Thomas") really comes about in the 1947 "Tweetie Pie." Tweety had been the main character of a handful of shorts starting with 1942's "A Tale of Two Kitties," though he only got the name Tweety in a 1944 cartoon. Thus "Tweetie Pie" counts as a crossover in which Sylvester "guest stars" in a Tweety cartoon, though together they become so strongly associated that they form a semi-bonded ensemble. However, only their first interaction counts as a crossover, since the two became so strongly associated that it erased their previous associations. Thereafter, Tweety hardly ever appears thereafter without Sylvester, while the cat makes other starring appearances as a solo act.                                                                                                   

   The most prominent "Sylvester solos" usually involved him attempting to capture the baby kangaroo Hippety Hopper, whom Sylvester mistook for a giant mouse. The kangaroo started out as an opponent to the cat in 1948, and all of these shorts focus on Sylvester's comic takes rather than Hippety's responses to him (even though some of the cartoons give Hippety shared top billing alongside Sylvester). In one 1952 take, after Sylvester did various cartoons with his son Sylvester Jr as another subordinate, here Sylvester has a one-shot teamup with a new character, Benny, whose name resembled his namesake, Steinbeck's "Lenny" from OF MICE AND MEN. In this cartoon dimbulb Benny keeps calling Sylvester "George" (another Steinbeck reference), but Sylvester is still the only star.                                                                                                           

   Benny gets one more shot at stardom in 1953's "Cat-Tails for Two," where he's teamed with a diminutive cat who really is named George (or who has accepted that Benny calls him that). However, though Benny builds a little crossover-charisma here due to his previous appearance, the star of the short was the first version of Speedy Gonzalez-- who I regard as identical with the later version despite differences in design.                                                                       

   Speedy would also be paired with Sylvester for a few shorts starting with 1955's "Speedy Gonzalez." These were not as iconic as the Tweety-Sylvester pairings, but all of these cartoons are crossovers, as are the much later (and not iconic at all) pairings of Speedy and Daffy Duck.