A 1955 Chuck Jones directed life lesson, One Froggy Evening was a profound representation of the human tendency toward greed and the consequences it has wrought.
It began with a construction worker, vintage 1950s, finding a box, a cornerstone to a building being demolished. Inside the box was a frog that could sing and dance. He popped out crooning ‘Hello Ma Baby.’
Seeing this fortunate development as a way to make money, the man tried everything, including renting out a theater with the promise of free beer, to get the frog to sing and dance for an audience. Alas, it would only sing for him, alone.
Having used all his money to promote and market this dynamic and talented frog, the man became homeless and was committed to a psychopathic hospital. He made the mistake of trying to convince a policeman that the noise coming from his park bench was the frog singing. Michigan J. Frog simply croaked at the cop.
Eventually freed from the hospital in tatters, he placed the frog into the cornerstone of another building, this one in the process of being built and scampered away.
In the end, the year 2056, another construction worker, this one in a spacesuit-like uniform found the frog once again. And in reinforcement of man’s universal greed that transcends time, he began thinking of the money he could make and ran holding his new find as the cartoon ended.
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