What struck us about Chuck Jones' 1950 short animated cartoon, "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" was not just that he's paying homage to Errol Flynn sword & dagger-type melodramas that were so popular with movie-goers of the time (and coincidentally, skewering them), but also how contemporary this kind of costume drama is (you know the kind, where every actor — usually British — has a major/minor/cameo role all wrapped up in the service of art.)  Here's the first page of the script, edited, we imagine, on the fly, during the recording (remember, there was no extra money for post-production work); it should give you a good idea of the machinations and inside workings of both Jones' and Maltese's creativity.  (The cartoon is below this, you can read along…)