Unpredictable as Weather (Part 27)

Most of today’s survey dates from 1951. Another broad variety is represented, featuring Tex Avery and Chuck Jones outings, New York cartoons from Terrytoons and Famous, Walter Lantz in the director’s chair, and a triple-dose from Disney, including two classic appearances of Chip ‘n’ Dale. Lots of fun where the sun don’t shine.

The Peachy Cobbler (MGM, 12/9/50 – Tex Avery, dir.) – Weather plays only a brief role here, but provides an exposition plot point, in Tex Avery’s version of “The Elves and the Shoemaker” – a treatment which is probably most-strongly influenced by – and an answer to – Friz Freleng’s episode for Warner, “Holiday for Shoestrings”. In intentionally melodramatic and over-acted fashion, Daws Butler provides narration regarding the shoemaker falling into ill health and the shop’s business falling off. The shoemaker and his wife are down to their last crust of bread – emphasized as “whole wheat” (in an era when processed breads were the new thing, and the comparative higher nutritional value of whole wheat bread had not been effectively studied). As the snow falls outside the house upon this sad scene, the shoemaker spots some “poor little snow birds” trembling with cold upon the branches of a tree outside.

He tosses the last crust of bread to the birds, who happily gobble it up. But the birds are not birds at all, and magically transform into happy little shoemaker elves, who slip into the shop to repay the man’s kindness by finishing all the shoes for him. Spot gags overflow the rest of the film. A Friz Freleng gag is borrowed from “Rhapsody in Rivets”, as many elves hammer on many levels of shoe soles, each hammering a nail into another’s butt. A cowboy elf shoots patterns of holes into the toes of shoes with bullets – then converts crossed lines of holes into a tic-tac-toe game. An elf placing layer after layer of material for a sole is hammered down between layers by another elf, leaving a writing bulge in the heel.

An elf who hits his own thumb is accompanied by another who stands at the ready with a glass jar, clamping the jar over the first elf’s head to silence the swear words he utters. An elf keeps getting hit on the head by a cross-eyed elf each time he hold our a nail for the other to hammer. “You need glasses, doc”, says the first elf, and produces a pair for the other, along with an eye chart, which the cross-eyed elf reads perfectly. They try again, but elf one gets hammered again on the head anyway. An American Indian elf bends an arrow in a jagged pattern, ties a shoelace to it, then laces a tall set of shoes by firing one shot from his bow. Bunny slippers multiply as they are passed behind a post, producing about eight additional little ones. Running gags include an elf who can’t thread a needle many times his size, and a service-station elf who polishes shoes, only to have them splattered with mud by a passing roller skate. On his third attempt at polishing, the station elf sees the roller skate coming, and splashes a pail of mud on the shoe himself to beat the skate to the punch. To his surprise and dismay, the skate turns and parks inside a shoe box, never coming close to a[[roaching the mud piddle. A pageant is held in celebration after the work, where elves hidden inside shoes perform traditional dances of many lands – followed by the hit of the performance – shoes that appear to perform a lady’s striptease. The shoemaker awakens, to find a store full of beautiful shoes. He looks out the window at the birds, and wonders if they could have had anything to do with this. The birds put on little elf hats, and respond with Artie Auerbach’s (Mr. Kitzel’s) catch-phrase from radio – “Ummm….Could be.”

Cold Storage (Disney/RKO, Pluto, 2/9/51 – Jack Kinney, dir.) – On an icy winter morning, a lone stork stands shivering with cold on a nearly-frozen marsh. His legs begin to turn blue, and he breaks his feet out of icy blocks of pond water, pecking away at the ice with his long bill. He takes off from the pond, still with bill chattering, looking for someplace to keep warm. Opportunity presents itself, as he spots the partially snow-covered yard of Pluto, which includes at its center a cozy-looking doghouse. Diving down, and finding Pluto for the moment nowhere in sight, the stork takes occupancy inside the wooden shelter. Along comes Pluto, returning from whatever errands a dog’s gotta do, and himself trembling with cold, anxious to take refuge inside his fine doggy bungalow. But somehow he keeps missing the mark. First, just as he settles down inside the house’s darkness, a long orange leg shoves him outside. A second attempt at entry has him pass the doghouse completely, as the same legs lift the structure off the ground as Pluto enters, , then drop the house back to the ground when Pluto has passed its rear wall. Pluto gets inside on the third try – but the house rises from above him, steps away a few feet to the side on those long orange legs, then plops down in a completely new spot. This time, Plito catches a glimpse of eyes inside the house’s doorway, and witnesses the structure perfom a 180 degree turn to face its back wall to him. Thinking himself to be going mad or sick, Pluto measures his own pulse, then looks at his tongue in a reflection within his doggy dish. When he sees the house move again under its own power within the reflection of the dish, Pluto knows he isn’t nuts, and that he is up against a real adversary.

Pluto begins barking at the house, but is shocked when a long orange bill points out of the entrance, then takes a sip of water from a water dish. The bird stands, extends its wings out the sides of the house underneath the roof panels, and attempts to fly the house to a safe perch atop a nearby fence. But Pluto collides with a loose board in the fence, flipping the house back to ground level. The house lands upside-down, and the stork is finally fully-revealed, resting inside the inverted house and rocking himself as if in a baby’s cradle. Pluto attacks, and believes he has chased the bird off, as well as righted the doghouse. He enters his home, plopping down on what he believes is a soft pillow inside. The pillow, however, is really the stork, all scrunched up. Gently, the stork emerges outside, carrying the sleeping dog on his back. The bird proceeds to a frozen goldfish pond, cutting a hole in the ice with one claw as if using a can opener, then slides Pluto off his back and into the hole. A few moments later, Pluto rises, carrying the entire sheet of cover-ice from the pond as a sort of collar around his neck, and with a look of extreme discomfort from the shock of the frozen water. The dog and the bird then engage in an extended game of who is going to throw who out of the house. After trading off the task of kicking each other out several times, Pluto and the bird slowly pace out of the house side-by-side, then run a foot race to beat each other back to the house entrance. It is a dead heat, and the two struggle, stuck side-by-side in the narrow doorway. Suddenly, the weather decides to make an abrupt change, and the sun breaks through the clouds at full brightness, dispersing the cloud cover within a matter of seconds. Inside the doghouse, a thermometer hanging from the roof jumps from “Colder’n”, to “Unbearable”, to “Hotter’n”. Now, the dog and bird battle to see which of them can get out of the sweltering doghouse first into cooler air. The stork prevails, and pulls the dirty trick of planting his long legs across the doghouse entrance, trapping Pluto inside like a pair of jailhouse bars. But Pluto manages a countermove, lifting the doghouse and the stork atop it off the ground, then carrying it a few feet over to the goldfish pond. There, Pluto allows the house to settle down to earth, leaving Pluto, though still trapped inside, to bask in and drink from the cooling water, providing a comfortable spot to spend the whole summer if necessary.

Corn Chips (Disney/RKO, Donald Duck, 3/23/51 – Jack Hannah, dir.) – A personal favorite among the many encounters of the duck with Chip ‘n’ Dale. A night of stormy weather has not left Donald in a cheery winter mood, as his entire front yard and walkway are buried deep in snow. Bundled up in snow hat and sweater, Donald has to break out the old snow shovel, and toils laboriously to shove the heavy white stuff off his walkway to one side. Adjacent to the walkway is the tree-limb leading to the home of the chipmunks in a hollow tree. They too have incurred the effects of the storm, and also work with sustained effort to clear their tree branch of a deep coating of the white frost. Seeing their effort, Donald gets a devilish idea. Gently inserting the edge of his shovel under the layer of snow in the tree the chipmunks are working on, Donald deposits both chipmunks and snow onto his own walkway. The chipmunks keep right on working, still thinking themselves to be on their tree branch, and Donald watches with glee as the chipmunks do all the work of clearing Donald’s walkway for him. Only when the chipmunks reach the curb, and collide with a fire hydrant, do they discover the switch, and realize they have been duped. Donald breaks himself up with laughter, and returns to the house. “Gee whiz, that’s a raw deal”, scowls Dale – and the two chipmunks take out their frustration by building a miniature snowman effigy of Donald, then knocking it apart with boxing blows. The two then scamper to the house, attempting to turn the front doorknob to have it out with the real Donald. Then knob won’t budge, but Chip spots something interesting through the keyhole, and points it out to Dale. Donald has placed near the fireplace a carton of Yum Yum Popcorn. It sounds tasty to the chipmunks, though they have no familiarity with the stuff. Donald pucks up a small wood basket, and proceeds to the front door to obtain more kindling for the fire. As he opens the door, the chipmunks hide behind the doorknob on the other side, then quickly switch to the inner doorknob while the door is ajar and Donald passes them. “Heh, we’re in”, states Chip. They dart to the carton, toppling it over, and attempt to sample the small yellow kernels they find inside. Even with rodent’s teeth, the chipmunks find the kernels unyielding. “These nuts are tough. We’ve been gypped”, complains Chip, kicking a small mound of the kernels away into the fireplace. Exposed to heat, the kernels reveal their natural secret, and begin popping like mad. Chip picks up one that escapes the fire without exploding – and it pops open right in his paw, revealing the tender white stuff inside. One taste, and the chipmunks are hooked. They begin devouring what is popped, but hear Donald returning outside. Hastily, they push the kernels back into the carton, tipping the box into upright position – and with nowhere else to go, hide inside the carton itself. Donald settles by the fire, produces a metal corn popper, and pours a generous supply of kernels into the popper – not noticing he has also poured in the chipmunks too. Placing a lid on the popper, he holds the container by its long handle over the open fire. The next shot is imaginative, satisfying the curiosity of every child as to what happens inside a corn popper, as we view from the chipmunks’ perspective the chaos as all the kernels inside the container begin popping open one by one, rapidly filling the space within the popper. When the popping subsides, Donald pours the finished foodstuff into a bowl – chipmunks and all. A bit shell-shocked from the activity they have just endured, Chip dodges Donald’s hand descending toward the bowl. Donald still gets a partial grip on Chip’s ears between a handful of kernels, but Dale pulls Chip loose by grabbing his foot. When Donald reaches down for a second mouthful, the bowl is gone. A look toward the door reveals the bowl being carried toward the exit by Dale, with Chip still riding inside it and waving “Bye bye.” The chipmunks rapidly slide the bowl on the frosty walkway toward a small hole in the trunk of their tree. Once the bowl is inside, the chipmunks brush at the snow to cover the track left by the sliding bowl, making the trail end a few feet short of the tree trunk. Though Donald should have had a clear view of the activity, the dumb duck is confused by the trick, and stands scratching his head.

Suddenly, a scattering of small, somewhat off-white stuff begins to fall around Donald’s head. “It’s snowing”, observes the duck. But as he starts to pace toward the house to get out of the cold, he finds the falling flakes to be localized to only the immediate vicinity of the tree trunk. Looking up, he locates its source as from the limb at the upper entrance to the chipmunks’ home. There, the chipmunks indulge on corn from the bowl, with stray kernels falling from the bowl’s sides as each chipmunk reaches his paw in. Donald wriggles up inside the hollow tree, his face appearing inside the hole at the end of the limb. His hand reaches out the hole, grabbing the bowl into the tree – then replacing the bowl on the limb, but empty of its contents. Unaware of this switch, Chip reaches up for another handful of yummy corn – but finds nothing. He darts an insinuating glance at his partner, who reclines on the opposite side of the bowl with what appears to be a very full belly. “You big baboon. You ate all the corn”, Chip accuses Dale, giving his partner a kick. Dale denies the crime. “Oh yeah? Looka there”, says Chip, pointing to Dale’s lumpy tummy. Dale quickly explains this appearance away, revealing that he is resting on top of a pine cone. Proved wrong, Chip inquires, “Then where do you think it went?” The answer presents itself as passing Donald is observed, returning to the house, The duck’s snow hat seems unusually tall and lumpy, and as the chipmunks lift the cap off Donald’s head from the limb, the popcorn is revealed, piled high upon Donald’s head. In a clever strategy, one of the chipmunks whistles to Donald from a position ahead of him on the limb. As Donald turns his neck to look upward, the other chipmunk holds the bowl behind his head, catching the popcorn as it topples off the duck’s brow.

Donald pursues the chipmunks across the tree limb and onto the house roof. There, the chipmunks take a toboggan ride inside the bowl down one side of the roof. They reach the rain gutter, and the bowl topples over the side, as does the Duck in pursuit. However, the chipmunks scurry down the side of the house by way of the gutter downspout, while the corn falls into the hole inside the same spout. Using Donald’s hat, the chipmunks catch the corn again as it emerges at the bottom of the downspout, ant tie it up safely inside the cloth hat. Donald meets them on the walkway, and the three engage in a game of keep-away that resembles a football game on the gridiron lines created by the walkway’s green tiles. Donald intercepts a pass, but slides face-first into the side of the house, allowing the chipmunks to recover the fumble. They push the hat back into their tree – so Donald tries a new means of attack, building a small fire in the hole at the base of the tree to smoke them out. Just as the fire is lit. Donald hears a whistle from the chipmunks. Chip is waving a small white flag, and Dale tosses down to Donald the corn-filled hat. Accepting the token of surrender, Donald leaves the fire birning, assuming that it will hold the meddling rodents for awhile. But the chipmunks have other plans. Somehow, they have acquired Donald’s carton of still-remaining unpopped popcorn, and the two begin pouring the yellow kernels into the tree trunk. Instantly, it’s the Fourth of July, as the tree resounds with popping louder than a string of fire crackers, with popped kernels shooting from every limb and crack of the tree. A stunned Donald watches in a helpless daze, as a blanket of off-white kernels necomes a miniature blizzard, covering completely all the area in front of his home he and the chipmunks had previously cleared. Taking up the snow shovel again, Donald is right back where he started. And all he can say as he laboriously shovels is “Aw, rats.”

The Rainmakers (Terrytoons/Fox, Heckle and Jeckle, 5/13/51 – Connie Rasinski, dir.) – An unusual entry in the magpies’ series, where for once their usual greed, gluttony and buffoonery are not the cause of trouble, but instead, a simple wish carried too far. Also unusual, in that most of the animation is considerably superior to usual Terry fare, including some good-looking special effects which must have placed the film considerably over the average budget of the time. The birds have planned a picnic, but chosen the wrong day for it, as a relentless rainstorm drenches the countryside. Jeckle has brought along a toaster to toast the bread for their sandwiches, but the bread pops out from an internal puddle of water within the device, with the soggy slices plopping over the side of the toaster frame. Disgruntled Heckle has to wring water out of the bread, with both birds taking squirts in the eye. Jeckle produces a wishbone from a chicken, and suggests they make a wish. The bone breaks with the big end in Jeckle’s favor, and he wishes “that it would stop raining forever.” Suddenly, the skies clear, the sun comes out, and the last raindrops come to a standstill in mid-air, the two birds popping each one of them with the touch of a finger. The birds dance around in celebration, Jeckle singing his own lyric to the tune of the “Chicken Reel”, “It’s never gonna rain again, again.”

Six weeks elapse in the world without rain. The magpies, fanning themselves and perspiring profusely, watch a television set, where the announcer notes rising temperatures everywhere, and cities literally melting from the heat, their skyscrapers drooping like spent candlesticks. The broiling sun “beats down on the people’s heads”, as the sun sprouts arms to beat a large tom tom drum, its sound waves emitting visible rays that make direct hits upon the heads of the populace. In New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty waves herself with a hand fan, while mighty ocean liners lay beached on the dry river bed surrounding Manhattan Island. Reservoir water disappears, down to a level where a small sign is revealed, pointing to “last drop.” In homes, housewives conserve all they can, by sucking up final drops of water from their kitchen sinks, and depositing the drops in their purses for safekeeping. At Yellowstone Park, several tourists surround Old Faithful, carrying cups in each hand to catch anything that emits. (Instead, the geyser spurts only a single drop, which evaporates in mid-air before falling.) One farmer is more successful than others, lassoing with a rope what few clouds are left, and milking them of their water like a cow. “I say, did I cause all that?”. Jeckle asks Heckle. The announcer reappears on the TV screen, and pokes his head out of the screen into Jeckle’s face. “Yes – and what are YOU going to do about it?” Jeckle reaches with his foot for the TV knob, shutting off the set, causing the announcer to disappear at the same time.

Then, the birds go into action. Working through the night, the boys devise a flying machine. Fuselage consists of an open-top rain barrel with two holes cut in the side for pilot seats, and a couple of stubby wings tacked on the sides. Tail and rudder are provided by a broomstick stuck into the barrel’s bottom. Propulsion is provided by a helicopter prop and shaft installed in the top of the craft (with no detail provided as to whether there is an engine inside). The birds take off the next morning in search of any stray clouds. They find a very small one, which takes on the personality and form of a little girl (closely resembling Wendy, the good little witch from the Casper series – who hadn’t been invented yet!). One of the birds attempts to coax the little cloud with a beckoning finger, but she turns up her nose and ignores him. The other magpie suggests a more direct method, and hands the first a butterfly net. Finally remembering he’s a bird and can walk on air, the magpie creeps up behind the cloud – but the cloud turns at the last minute, and zaps the magpie with a small lightning bolt. The stunned bird falls toward the ground, but is rescued by a power dive by the other in the plane. The two birds give chase in the plane, until one of them gets within reach and grabs the cloud by its rearmost puff. Although he receives a squirt of water in the face by the stubborn cloud, he and his partner struggle to stuff the little cloud inside the barrel. Unfortunately, having cut holes for two pilot seats, the cloud enters the barrel through one hole, and escapes out the other. The chase is on again, and the little cloud disappears over the horizon, with the plane in close pursuit. Suddenly, the magpies bring their craft to a screeching halt, at an amazing sight. They have stumbled upon the hiding place of the banished clouds, and filling the skies is the image of a huge angry mother cloud, holding her frightened daughter in her arms, and an equally-angry Papa close behind. (This idea, of course, is quite similar to the payoff of Mickey Mouse’s “The Little Whirlwind”.) All the startled birds can do is make a run for it. A continuing line of huge male clouds marches toward them, ready to do battle. The forward troops begin attacking the magpies’ plane with thunderbolts.

Wish or no wish, this is war. The broomstick is blasted off the plane, making steering impossible, and the plane veers around the sky uncontrollably, while the clouds darken everything around them. More clouds join in the thunderbolt barrage, blasting away more and more of the birds’ barrel, until a direct hit leaves the two clinging to the shaft of the spinning prop. The magpies let go, just as a massive blast hits the shaft from all sides and obliterates it. In its wake, the clouds fill in all remaining sky, presenting one continuous bank of downpouring rain. Below, the birds forget to fly again, crashing into the ground and leaving deep holes in their own shape. However, the rain has softened the ground enough that the boys emerge from the holes unhurt, and rejoice in the continuing downpour. “I say, old boy. We did it!”, cheers Jeckle, content in the knowledge that the clouds will no longer honor his wish. A ticker-tape parade greets the birds for a heroes’ welcome (giving the opportunity for reuse of artwork from the title card of “My Boy, Johnny” and slight modification of another scene from such film, as the Statue of Liberty performs celebration cartwheels while wearing a raincoat). A band plays for the parade, the bells of the brass instruments and the insides of the reeds overflowing with rain water – but who cares? Drenched but triumphant, the birds wave happily to the crowd from a soaked limousine, for the fade out.

The Wearing of the Grin (Warner, Porky Pig, 7/14/51 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir,) – Another dark and stormy night, another spooky road, and another sinister castle, this time in the wilds of Ireland. In resplendent effects-animation that really makes it look like our hero and the surrounding terrain are getting soaked, traveling salesman Porky Pig reads a drenched sign stating, “Sure, and it’s still 12 miles to Dublin town”. Realizing he’ll never make it in the storm, Porky opts for a “quaint old castle” to seek lodging. Another foreboding sign appears: “Beware the leprechauns”. Porky scoffs at this as nonsense, and raps at the front door with a shamrock-shaped knocker. When no one answers, he peeps in – and spies a mysterious shadowy figure. But the figure lights a candle, and appears harmless enough, introducing himself as Shamus O’Toole, castle caretaker. O’Toole explains the castle has been empty for many years, with not a living thing but – the leprechauns. Porky’s in no mood for this blarney – and insists on being taken to a room, slamming rhe huge front door behind him. The impact of the door closing causes a heavy steel mace to fall from a mounting above the door – directly on Porky’s head, knocking him unconscious. As soon as Porky’s out like a light, a transformation takes place in the old caretaker – who splits in two at the waist. O’Toole – whose real name is O’Pat – is only half the height we first saw, and has been standing on the shoulders of another wee man – O’Mike – in one caretaker suit. O’Pat is chief of the leprechauns, and while O’Mike worries himself silly that the stranger will find their pot of gold (hidden under O’Mike’s hat), O’Pat insists that he alone with determine how to deal with the likes of this intruder. Returning to their totem-pole positions in the caretaker costume, they revive Porky, and escort him to a room.

On the way up, however, O’Pat separates from O’Mike, the former climbing the staircase railing while the latter uses the regular stairs. While the seemingly headless O’Mike takes Porky’s hat and coat, the legless O’Pat enters from the other side of the room, asking if Porky’s seen the other half of him. “It’s right back there, Shamus”, Porky calmly directs him, noting “Some people just can’t keep track of their other halves.” Then comes the wild shock take, as Porky looks again. The two parts of Shamus stand side by side, as the head asks, “Now isn’t this sight enough to set the heart crossways in you?” “L-l-l-l-l-LEPRECHAUNS”, shrieks Porky, and dives under the covers of the bed. It’s a Murphy bed, and folds into the wall, dropping Porky into a hidden tunnel inside the wall. Porky falls deep into the dungeons of the castle, landing in a large witness chair beside a judge’s bench. O’Mike appears as bailiff, announcing the case of the Little People v. Porky Pig, for attempting to steal the pot of gold. Judge O’Pat, in powdered wig, takes the bench, and before taking a word of testimony, enters verdict: “Guilty as the day is long.” Porky attempts to protest, but is kept quiet by well-placed shillelagh blows from O’Mike. O’Pat sentences Porky to the wearing of the Green Shoes. O’Mike returns with same – emerald green, which O’Mike laces to Porky’s feet. Porky is a bit taken aback, as the shoes look appealing. “I’m afraid I had you fellas all wrong. Why they’re the nicest shoes I ever – – I ever – -“ His voice trails off to an “I – yi – yi – yi -yi – -“ as the shoes begin dancing an Irish jig under their own power, carrying their hapless wearer with them. The two leprechauns howl with laughter, as Porky dances helplessly over a surreal dream-like Irish countryside. He passes a giant crock of gold, from which huge coins fall, nearly flattening him, with faces of the two leprechauns on them still laughing. Porky grabs his ankles and manages to pry the shoes off, throwing them behind him. But the shoes aren’t giving up that easily, and chase him in a hot pursuit. In more surreal imagery, Porky leaps off a landing railed with Irish harps, while the shoes also leap and chase him in mid-air. Porky falls into the mouthpiece of a giant leprechaun pipe, and is blown out the other end as a smoke puff, materializing into himself. He lands on the ground, and runs straight at the camera toward some vertical lines suggesting bars, trying to break through. The camera pulls back to reveal the lines are strings of a giant harp – and the golden harp framework suddenly shrinks around Porky’s hands, trapping them as if in handcuffs. The shoes sneak up behind him, and deliver a swift kick, flipping Porky into the air – and his feet right back into the shoes. With his hands now restrained, Porky can no longer remove the shoes, which dance him off a cliff. He lands in a pot of molten gold, and flounders around – until a dissolve brings us back to reality, and we find Porky back in the main hall of the castle, in a puddle of water Shamus has just dumped on him to revive him. As Porky comes to, one look at Shamus is enough to send him screaming and leaping to the mounts above the hall door from which the mace fell. “L-l-leave me alone, you old leprechauns. I d-d-don’t want your pot of gold!”, he shouts. “Leprechaun, sir? Pot of gold, sir?”, questions Shamus. “D-didn’t you sentence me to wear the green shoes?”, a puzzled Porky asks. “No sir. Why would I be after doing such a daft thing?”, responds Shamus, who asks him to come down so Shamus can find him a soft bed. Porky tells him to never mind, tremulously picks up his baggage, and insists he’s late for an appointment – “w-w-with my psychiatrist!” Porky streaks off over the hills. But was it all a dream? Hardly, as “Shamus” O’Pat reaches down for the extra hand of O’Mike from his trousers, shaking it in a handshake of victory, while the scene irises out to green with a shamrock-shaped iris.

The Redwood Sap (Lantz/Universal, Woody Woodpecker, 10/1/51 – Walter Lantz, dir.) – Woody lives in an apartment in the hollow trunk of a tree, amidst a bustling community of ants, squirrels, and beavers. While all the other critters work busily in preparation for the oncoming winter season, Woody reclines in bed, enjoying some reading material suitably appropriate to his character – a volume entitled, “Work, and How to Avoid It”, by Hans Doolittle. The only thing that will interrupt Woody from his R&R is the chiming of his patented meal wristwatch, so frequently seen through his early 1950’s episode, ringing an alarm bell when its hands (shaped like a knife and fork) point to pictures of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea. Where does Woody get his meals? From his neighbors, of course. Zipping out his front door, he raids the contents of Dagwood-style sandwiches from the beavers, swallowing all the sliced goodies in one gulp. As the ants carry a full cob of corn, Woody sprinkles salt on the kernels, then pops them all of the cob into his own mouth by heating them with a blow torch. As the squirrel struggles to roll up the tree trunk a towering stack of walnuts into a hole in the tree above Woody’s apartment, Woody appears on the branch above him, devouring each nut as it reaches the level of the hole. In fact, he keeps on chewing when the squirrel’s head also reaches branch level, and ;almost swallows the angry squirrel’s head. Woody then sails back into his apartment, floating into a reclining position on the bed with stomach bloated from his heavy meal. Woody looks up at a sampler-style sign on the wall, bearing his motto: “Why worry about tomorrow? It will be gone the day after.”

This routine continues until the first light sprinkling of snow begins to hit the woods. The beavers disappear underwater into their den, where they sit in a parlor full of food watching TV. The ants clamber into their underground burrow, enjoying card games amidst tunnels lined with walls of corn kernels. The squirrel admires his storeroom, lined with alternating columns of walnuts and tin cans, with signs reading, “soup to nuts to soup to nuts to soup to…” All other birds in the woods pack their bags for fall migration, and one takes the time to knock on Woody’s door to suggest that he join them. But Woody is as usual too lazy to fly, envisioning only the negative sides of any suggested destination (hurricanes in Florida, and smog in sunny Hollywood). Settling down to sleep again, Woody awakens next morning, when the snow has grown to a depth of three or four feet everywhere. As his watch chimes, Woody prepares to zoom out the door – only to be buried in an avalanche of snow from the doorway. He clambers out of the ice, which has formed into the shape of an igloo inside his doorway, and seeks another way out through a window. Another column of ice slides in through the opening, extends over Woody’s head, then clunks him. The mercury in a wall thermometer drops to bottom, turns blue, and icicles form around the bottom of the glass barrel of the instrument, while a miniature snowstorm occurs within the glass. Woody looks down at himself, and discovers his torso is encased in an ice block – which he quickly pecks away with his beak. He opens his empty cupboard, and meets his old pal Starvation squarely in the face.

Woody’s had enough of his indoor confinement, and bores his way through the snow in his doorway, popping up outside. But where are his food sources? All holed up in their snuggly dens. All Woody can do is swallow his pride (if he ever had any), and show up at their doorsteps to beg for food. But his “pals” have been mooched from many times too often, and show Woody no mercy. The ants present Woody with a corn cob – cob only, devoid of con, smacked over his head. The squirrel provides Woody with nuts – of the metal variety that fit a screw. The beavers present Woody with a yummy-looking cake, complete with candle. However, its insides consist of ice cubes from the refrigerator, with a layer of frosting consisting of snow scooped up from outside the beaver den. Woody swallows the “cake” whole – then turns blue all over, as a cutaway view inside his stomach reveals it is so cold, even the fire on the candle goes out. Woody spends the entire winter frozen inside an ice block outside his home.

When spring thaw comes, the local animals emerge from their homes and exchange greetings, and the migrating birds return. The bird seen earlier is the first to notice Woody, whose ice block has not yet melted. The animals put their heads together to finally rescue the trapped nuisance, by tilting the block over so that Woody’s rear is facing one side, then attacking the ice with the heat of Woody’s own blow torch. The bird revives and zooms out a hole he bursts through the ice from the side opposite the torch, pausing to look at his now-sizzled tail feathers. Before Woody can even think about any lesson to be learned, his alarm watch goes off again. Reflexively, Woody returns to all the mooching activities he had utilized in the previous year, filling himself with the last stored food from each of his neighbors – and it is obvious as the cartoon ends that Woody, as usual, hasn’t learned anything, and will go on being – Woody.

Audrey the Rainmaker (Paramount/Famous, Noveltoon (Little Audrey), 10/26/51 – U. Sparber, dir.) – Famous steals from its crosstown rival Terrytoons – and from itself – for an episode which, while using no reused animation, consists of equal parts of derivation from Heckle and Jeckle’s “The Rainmakers”, discussed above, and from the previously-discussed Raggedy Ann Noveltoon, “Suddenly It’s Spring”. Just as did the magpies, Audrey views a rainy day with disgust, from a vantage point inside the window of her living room, as she can’t play outside. The storm has evidently spoiled a camping trip, as Audrey sits within a tent loosely pitched in the parlor, attempting to roast wieners on an indoor campfire. The smoke alerts housekeeper Mandy, who quickly snuffs out the blaze before the place is incinerated. Audrey makes the inevitable wish that it would never rain again, though Mandy cautions that this is a bad wish. No sooner wished than done, as sunbeams begin to pour in the window. But soon a newspaper headline declares nationwide drought in its 107th day. The mighty Mississippi is a dry river bed, with paddlewheel riverboats being towed across the dust by teams of four camels. A single drop of water falls over the edge of Niagara Falls, and far below, six fish, fanning themselves in the sun, fight to dive into the drop as it lands. In a sizzling back-street of the city, a parched man taps on a door of a former speak-easy with sliding eye-view panel. When the panel opens, he gasps, “Joe sent me”, and forks over a large bill of currency. “Okay”, growls the Jack Mercer voice that would become Rock Bottom of Felix the Cat, and a hand deposits a single drop of water from an eye-dropper on the man’s tongue. At Audrey’s house, her garden of lilies will soon need lilies of their own to place across their chests, as they cry agonizingly for water. Audrey races into the house for a secret stash, consisting of one glass of water kecpt securely locked in a wall safe. But as she runs outside with it, she stumbles over a rock, spilling the glass just inches out of reach of her flowers. In final desperation, Audrey opens the valve to the garden’s exterior piping as far as it will go, and shakes the pipe violently. All that comes out is one drop – which takes on a personality and a voice directly borrowed from Casper. The drop confirms it was Audrey’s wish that brought this all about, and that in order to make things right, she must see the Rainmaker. Showing her the way, the water drop produces in the sky a rainbow (odd since there should be no water vapor for the light to reflect upon), which is equipped with an internal self-service elevator. The conveyance lifts Audrey and the drop high up to a small island of palace and gardens, nestled atop a far-distant cloud in the heavens.

The land of the Rainmaker abounds in water nearly everywhere, fashioned in the form of a marble Grecian palace with ever-flowing fountains. As Audrey approaches, other water droplets pouring from the fountains recognize her as the girl who made the world-changing wish. They encircle Audrey, linking arms to perform a taunting dance to the rhyme, “Rain, Rain, Go Away”, then stick out their tongues at Audrey. The drop who has led Audrey here dismisses the jeerers, responding “Beat it, drips. You’re all wet.” The drop conducts Audrey to the Department of Rains, advising her to take an umbrella before entering. She passes through flows of three varieties of downpour within: a “spring shower” (consisting of bouncing mainsprings), “raining cats and dogs”, and “raining pitchforks” (both the usual visual puns dating back to Paul Terry). The Rainmaker is found reclining atop a Grecian couch at the top of a tall staircase. He is a huge fellow, both in height and in girth, designed in the fashion of a Greek god, with golden yellow skin, and plenty of it. In fact, he wears nothing but a necklace of flowers and a belt consisting of a green vine with floral buckle (but supporting no trousers). It becomes apparent that flowers are his one weakness, as he sniffs and attends to several potted plants along a railing, by grabbing a small cloud out of the sky and squeezing it over the plants to water them. Audrey climbs the stairs and appears before him. Hardly giving her the time of day, the Rainmaker merely responds with condescension, “Oh, it’s you.”

Audrey apologizes for her thoughtlessness in wishing for no rain, but the Rainmaker is in no mood to change the situation. “Tish, tish. A wish is a wish.” The water drop suggests that Audrey tell him about her flower garden. “My flower need showers”, Audrey begins. While still attempting to ignore her, the Rainmaker pauses briefly at the mention of flowers to sniff again at the blooms around his neck. Much as Raggedy Ann had charmed the icy heart of Zero, Audrey pours on the sentiment, breaking into a full-verse rendition of Al Jolson’s famous hit, “April Showers”. The rainmaker becomes more and more receptive and overcome when he hears the words, “flowers”, “violets”, and “daffodils” in the song’s lyric. By the song’s second line, vocalist Mae Questel is throwing in some remnants of Jolson phrasing, and Audrey adds to the Jolson effect by performing her singing down on one knee. By the third line, she is giving it the “Hearts and Flowers” effect by sentimentally self-accompanying herself with gypsy-style bowing on a violin. By line four, she and the water drop are peeling onions under the Rainmaker’s nose – guaranteed to open the floodgates of the Rainmaker’s eyes. It does the trick. The touched, overwhelmed Rainmaker begins bawling like a baby. His sheer massiveness ensures that when his tears begin to flow, they will be a torrent. Their flow trickles, then gushes down the staircase, overflows the cloud, then soars off and over the cloud’s edge like a waterfall. Audrey and the water drop follow in the flood waters, Audrey using her umbrella as a parachute to slow her fall as she lands gently back on earth, in front of her home. There, the earth is receiving all the rainfall it could want, and her revived flowers are cupping their leaves to catch the falling moisture and lapping it up with gusto. Audrey concludes the film with comment to the audience, “Love that rainmaker”, as the water drop hangs on to the edge of her umbrella and gives Audrey a congratulatory high-sign, leading to Audrey’s laugh and the iris out.

Out of Scale (Disney/RKO, Donald Duck, 11/2/51 – Jack Hannah, dir.), pits Donald against the chipmunks once again. This time, Donald’s penchant is model railroading (a favorite pastime of Ward Kimball, who undoubtedly provided the inspiration for this plot). The important thing to his elaborate ride-on railway set up in Donald’s back yard is that everything in it be in perfect scale to one another. Donald thus begins planting small miniature trees alongside his track – until he remembers that there is a real tree in his yard, which is miles too big to match the props of the railway. Seeking a shovel to uproot it, Donald leaves the scene for a moment – allowing us to discover that the tree is inhabited by Chip and Dale, who are loading it up with nuts obtained from the next yard. As the chipmunks disappear in search of another load, Donald returns, digging up the tree’s roots and encasing them in a large bag, then setting the whole tree upon a flatbed-car of his train for removal. Chip and Dale return, and find themselves climbing a newly-installed prop tree only a few inches tall. As the two chipmunks bicker over what became of their large one, Donald reveals himself, insisting that the chipmunks are out of scale and too big, then chasing them away. The chipmunks retreat into the center of Donald’s layout, where Donald has built an entire suburban community matching in size with Donald’s railroad. To their surprise, the chipmunjs discover houses which are perfectly sized to let them walk in the front door, rest on the sofa and easy chair, utilize kitchen dishes and utensils, and basically behave exactly like human occupants of a full-sized residence. They immediately take up housekeeping, with Dale assuming the role of the missus by dressing in the clothing of a housemaid.

Donald spots smoke coming from the chimney of the small home, and by peering in the windows gets the idea of what is going on. With a ruler, he measures one of the chipmunks as he passes through the door, and realizes they are perfect scale for the home. Donald starts to play along with the gag, dressing as a milkman and delivering miniature bottles of milk for the chipmunks’ breakfast. “He gave them to me”, says Dale, as they realize a tenuous peace has been struck with their duck landlord. But as the chipmunks bed down in nightshirts for a rest, Donald faces a lull in the fun – and decides to liven things up by playing a prank to pass the time. Obtaining a heat lamp, a sprinkler hose, a sheet of aluminum, a fan, and a grater from which to sprinkle soap chips, Donald begins to manipulate the “weather” to scale, leaving the front gate unlatched, then producing a fake rain and snowstorm, in which the front gate blows back and forth in the wind to keep the chipmunks awake. Chip sends Dale outside to lock the front gate, bundling him up with scale snow hat, scarf, winter jacket, boots, etc. Dale proceeds outside – but now Donald has stopped his storm antics, and focuses the warmth of the heat lamp on Dale. Dale begins to perspire, then looks around to find nothing but bright sunshine. He angrily returns to Chip, complaining that it’s sunny outside. Chip points out the window – and it is snowing again!

Dale bundles up once more, but Donald again puts the heat upon the chipmunk as he emerges. This time, Chip takes a glance outside after Dale – and spies the spotlight effect of the lamp’s light focused upon Dale as he walks. Looking up, Chip spots Donald, and puts an end to his fun by pulling the plug on Donald’s heat lamp. Wising Dale up to Donald’s little game, Chip decides they’ll never get along with the duck in this way, and declares “Let’s get our tree back.” While Donald fusses with his lamp to determine the cause of its malfunction, the chipmunks hijack Donald’s locomotive and its cargo. As the locomotive proceeds at full speed, it encounters a tunnel. The tree is knocked off the flat car, takes a flip through the air ahead of the train, and lands with a thud across the track ahead. The train collides with the tree trunk, carving a large square hole through its middle. As the chipmunks abandon the locomotive, returning to the relative safety of the tree, Donald jumps on the locomotive, and switches the train onto a loop of track, reversing directions to return to the tree. As he shouts curses to the chipmunks above, Dale comes up with an unexpected solution to everyone’s problems. He produces a sign which he hangs over the hole carved in the trunk of the tree, reading “Giant Redwood”. The hole provides a natural tunnel for the train to pass, in the same manner as real trees in Yosemite and Sequoia National Park contain carved tunnels allowing cars to pass through. And the hole is in perfect scale to the train. “Okay”, Donald agrees to the arrangement – and allows the real tree to co-exist in his scale world as a new prop tunnel, while the chipmunks shake hands in success, for the iris out.

What do we do with the dew-dew-dew of ‘52? Find out next week.