What Price Fleadom is a 1948 cartoon directed by Tex Avery.
Title[]
The title is a pun on "what price freedom".
Plot[]
A Chaplinesque flea named Homer is best buddies with his host dog. However, all that changes on the day he notices a female flea riding on a passing dog. He abandons his dog for the girl flea. Homer married the lady flea of his dreams. She convinced him to stay with his best friend, he agrees, and they make themselves at home with their children.
Availability[]
- (2021) Blu-ray - Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 3 (restored; Warner Bros.)
Gallery[]
_poster.jpeg "Fred \"Tex\" Avery - What Price Fleadom (1948) poster.jpeg (750 KB)")
Original poster from the 40s
"What Price Fleadom" and "The Bear and the Hare" on the movies section of The Telegraph-Herald of Dubuque, Iowa on July 29, 1948
Censorship[]
- Versions of this short shown on Cartoon Network and Boomerang cut the scene where Homer's host dog prepares to commit suicide by standing on a large cartoon bomb, putting a noose around his neck, and holding two pistols against his head. The censored version goes from the pitbull shooting at the flea as it hops out of his rifle to Homer extinguishing the fuse to the bomb and saving his host dog's life.
Notes[]
- Homer Flea is the same flea from "The Homeless Flea".
- According to old newspapers, this cartoon apparently played sometimes during before the film "Killer McCoy"