Wally Walrus and his Ball

What starts out as Wally Walrus playing a practical joke escalates into an attempt at murder in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Wacky-Bye Baby” (1948). Wally shoves a convenient stick of dynamite into a rubber ball and rolls it at Woody. He’s forgotten something, though. It’s a trick ball that rolls back to where it started.

Wally closes his eyes and waits for the explosion. Then he opens an eyelid in a couple of drawings, there are some anticipation drawings and then a take. All the drawings are on twos, except the widest expression that director Dick Lundy holds for four frames. Let’s pick it up on the last eyelid drawing.












One wonders if the take might have worked better if Lundy had the animator use fewer drawings or animated on ones for part of the sequence.

Pat Matthews and Les Kline are the credited animators; I suspect Lantz used more than two per cartoon in the late ‘40s.