{"id":71192,"date":"2022-04-06T00:01:31","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T07:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=71192"},"modified":"2022-04-04T11:26:50","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T18:26:50","slug":"flights-of-fancy-part-16-beyond-the-blue-horizon-is-a-rising-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/flights-of-fancy-part-16-beyond-the-blue-horizon-is-a-rising-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Flights of Fancy (Part 16): Beyond the Blue Horizon is a Rising Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

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Although VE day would not be realized until May 8th, 1945, the attention of many animation studios in the waning year of the war seemed to be turning away from the Third Reich, and concentrating more upon the nation that had directly drawn us into the hostilities in the first place – Japan, and its rising sun. Those remaining wartime episodes to be discussed in this article follow such trend. But more importantly, animators were seeing increasing opportunity to return to their roots, forget the politics and patriotism that had driven their films for a good few too many years, and present comedy – and aviation – in a timeless, peacetime setting, with no agenda except pure entertainment and keeping up with the competing studios. Thus, we find a mixed bag of offerings for this wrap-up of the war years, still providing some education to the troops and a bit of propaganda here and there, but beginning to serve again the most basic need of the civilian audience – the chance for a good laugh.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Plastics Inventor<\/strong> (Disney\/RKO, Donald Duck<\/em>, 9\/1\/44 – Jack King, dir.) – Plastics were a new thing on the scene in 1944. Hard for modern minds to imagine, but there was a time when virtually every useful object was fashioned from metal, wood, rubber, or stone. The discovery of chemical blends to develop artificial hardening substances of durability was a tremendous breakthrough, and, while many feel that the quality of objects created with it was \u201ccheapened\u201d and dramatically lessened as compared to objects made of the original materials, they made possible mass production that could only be dreamed of in days before, and drove overall production costs down so that objects previously costing many dollars might now be found in the five and dime. And, with the newest developments in finding more and more materials from which to blend these mixtures, it must have literally seemed like alchemy- fiving the impression that a usable plastic could be concocted out of almost anything. This film would not be the only pop-culture reference to be handed down upon the subject: witness the lyrics of a 1945 song hit for Helen Forrest and Dick Haymes, \u201cI\u2019ll Buy That Dream\u201d. envisioning a post-war world with the couplet, \u201cWe\u2019ll settle down in Dallas, in a little plastic palace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Donald Duck has taken up the craze of this phenomenon, which, in the fantasy world of Duckburg, has developed into a home industry. In the manner of a cooking show, a Professor Butterfield hosts radio\u2019s \u201cThe Plastic Hour\u201d, providing junior inventors with the latest recipes for use of the material. Today\u2019s broadcast serves up the tasty prospect of baking an airplane – out of junk. Donald has obviously been following this show for a good long time, as he has outfitted his basement like a foundry, with boiling cauldrons, crane, ovens, custom cookie cutters, blueprints, and other industrial paraphernalia to assist in his projects, as if he were a junior Lockheed. For raw material, he has a two-story high pile of \u201cjunk\u201d, including numerous mattresses and sofas, a chest of drawers, a battered piano, washboards, army boots, and half of a Model T. On the professor\u2019s command, he dumps all of this mess into the pot, and stirs \u201cuntil a rich, creamy texture is attained.\u201d (With the varying melting points of all those errant objects, you\u2019d think he\u2019d be waiting until doomsday.) He then pours the \u201cbatter\u201d into a giant metal mold pre-shaped for the fuselage, wings, propeller and tail, and waits for it to bake. While the station entertains with music from all plastic instruments, Donald rolls out an additional batch of batter with a rolling pin, and uses his custom cookie cutters to stamp out engine gears and a gearshift. He takes the remaining dough and compresses it into a cake decorating tube, squeezing it out as if it were icing upon a baking pan to form the shape of a steering wheel. As these simmer in another oven, the film commits a continuity error, as the professor asks \u201cIs your tail assembly toasting? Well, don\u2019t let it burn.\u201d Two tail stabilizers pop out of a giant toaster, and Donald uses a butter knife to scrape off a bit of excess charcoal. (However, he never uses these parts, as the plane\u2019s master mold already has a fully assembled tail.) The appropriate time has elapsed, and the master mold has done its work. Donald steps on a foot pedal, ejecting the \u201clight as a feather\u201d plane body from the mold, which he can push along in the air with the touch of a finger. This plastic is amazing stuff, as out of a single batter, the finished plane comes pre-colored in bright orange for its body and silver for its prop and exhaust pipes! \u201cI\u2019ll bet you forgot to bake your helmet\u201d, the professor reminds. Donald grabs a last handful of batter, and smears it over the top of his head, down to his beak. He jabs two fingers in it to open two holes for his eyes (wouldn\u2019t you think he\u2019d need clear plastic there to complete his goggles?), and then runs to place his head under a quick-heating hair dryer. A few seconds, and the plastic again hardens into a two-color helmet and goggles set – still with his eyes presumably entirely unprotected by any transparent shields.<\/p>\n

\"\"The first flight of the new invention. \u201cThis little number will do anything\u201d, says the professor\u2019s voice from the transistor radio, placed on the seat next to Donald in the cockpit, as the duck takes the craft into the wild blue. \u201cClimbs like a rocket…and dives like a comet.\u201d Donald tries these maneuvers, but briefly blacks out on the re-entry from the stratosphere. He pulls back on the controls just in time to avert a crash, passing so close to a leafless tree that the vacuum caused by his passing sucks all the tree\u2019s spring foliage and blooms out months ahead of schedule. \u201cDoes the plane have any faults?\u201d asks an announcer on the program. \u201cYes, one fault\u201d, responds the professor. \u201cIt melts in water.\u201d \u201cUh oh\u201d, quacks Donald, and with good reason. He is flying straight into a storm system. To ensure he will be able to continue to listen to the broadcast for any helpful information, Donald safely tucks the radio under the seat, then concentrates on what is about to befall him. \u201cIs your nose running? Well wipe it off\u201d, suggests the professor, as gobs of gooey plastic begin to drip from around the engine cowling behind the propeller. Donald steps out onto the hood, desperately attempting to roll back the plastic with his hands. \u201cAre your pants slipping?\u201d Donald looks down to find the wheel wells – sometimes referred to as \u201cpants\u201d – dissolving and falling off from below, leaving him with no landing gear. One wing transforms into a wavy sea of goo. Donald grabs a rolling pin and flattens the dough out into wing shape again, using a knife to cut away excess beyond the area flattened, Approaching a range of high peaks, Donald attempts to steer and decelerate – but his foot pedals in the cockpit dissolve into sticky messes like gum stuck to his feet, and his steering wheel transforms into a pretzel. The planes slip-slides over the mountain slopes as if made of putty, leaving behind its last tire from the tail wheel, which breaks out of circular form to slither down the hill in a line like a snake. The engine starts to run away from the rest of the plane, and Donald has to grab it back, while the wings sag in the middle, unable to hold up the fuselage\u2019s weight. <\/p>\n

\"\"Donald nearly falls out when his control stick stretches to the limit during a dive, but the plane\u2019s fuselage also stretches backward to catch him. Donald\u2019s helmet is next to go, unraveling into two trails behind him which take the shape of braided hair, which Donald trims with a quick scissors cut. The exhaust pipes soften and inflate like balloons, then sprout holes everywhere, emitting the sounds of bagpipe music. The plane finally reaches the limits of its tolerances, and Donald is deluged in a sea of orange waves, sinking into the fluid substance. \u201cIf you keep flying plastic planes, you\u2019ll be in the dough\u201d, comments the professor. The entire plane dissolves, forming the shape of an orange parachute, with Donald suspended below like a marionette from sticky strands of the material. Below is his own front yard, where a small patch of garden greenery is bordered by a circle of wire, and a flock of birds picks at the soil. The plastic plops down over the circular patch, taking the shape of a pie crust, from which emerge \u201cfour and twenty blackbirds\u201d from underneath. The last bird to emerge is Donald, red with rage, as the still-intact radio concludes, \u201cDid your plane fall apart? That\u2019s funny. You know it always happens to me that way too. Tune in again next week, and I\u2019ll have a new recipe.\u201d It\u2019s all Donald can stand, and he grabs from his lawn a watering can, and, now knowing the plastic\u2019s weakness, pours it liberally on the radio. The radio, of course, turns out to be plastic, too, and the professor\u2019s voice distorts into an underwater blubble, as the radio dissolves into a puddle. <\/p>\n