When I was a kid, the Salt Lake television market boasted a number of locally made shows for children. For the toddler set, there was Romper Room with Miss Julie on KSL. When I was older, I enjoyed the old Flash Gordon serials and nautical-themed silliness on KSTU’s Lighthouse 20. And when I was in grade school, my favorite part of weekday mornings was Hotel Balderdash on KTVX, channel 4.
Hotel Balderdash was primarily a forum for running old cartoons, but there were also live-action framing segments that were set in the titular hotel and featured a pair of Laurel-and-Hardy-type characters named Harvey and Cannonball. Guess which one was the fat guy?
Anyhow, as I said, the big draw for Balderdash was the cartoons, which were mostly Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies with the occasional Popeye thrown in for good measure. But these weren’t the same Looney Tunes you saw on the Saturday morning Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. These were whatever cartoons a small-time station located in a little backwater state called Utah could afford, which meant the old stuff. The really old stuff. A lot of stuff involving characters without names and caricatures of Hollywood stars who’d been dead for 20 years before I ever saw them. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck turned up from time to time, but they were the early, off-model versions, the ones where Bugs had short ears and acted, well, looney instead his more familiar cocky self. I never liked those much, but at least they were better than the cartoons starring Sniffles the Mouse.
Sniffles was one of Chuck Jones’ early attempts at creating an animated star for Warner Bros. With his oversized head, girly-sounding voice, and sappy-sweet manner, he was far too cutesy for my tastes, even when I was a kid. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, since Sniffles appeared in only 12 cartoons between 1939 and 1946 before he dropped into obscurity. And Hotel Balderdash ran them all. Frequently. I remember my heart shrinking a little bit inside every time one of them came on. They were things to be endured until Popeye or proto-Bugs came along to restore my spirits. All of them, that is, except Bedtime for Sniffles, the one where Sniffles tries his damnedest to stay awake on Christmas Eve so he can see Santa Claus. For some reason, I liked that one, especially when it actually ran near Christmastime (it wasn’t unusual to see this one in July; Balderdash ran what they had available, regardless of whether it was season-appropriate). I think I enjoyed the gags involving the human-sized “furnishings” of Sniffles’ home, and the music, and the general tone of the piece. I think. I honestly can’t say now, roughly 35 years later, what the appeal was.
I found myself thinking of this cartoon as I drove home about an hour ago, through streets that were eerily barren of life. I was surprised to find it in its entirety on YouTube. And here it is, for anyone who may be dumb enough to be sitting up in the wee hours of Christmas morning, like I am:
To any of my Loyal Readers who may be out there, Merry Christmas. Let’s get to bed, shall we?
