Even without the higher budgets of the ‘40s, Lantz and his animators still try to wring some personality out of Woody. In this scene in Destination Meatball, he puts his hand to the side of his face. And then when he decides to get revenge on Buzz Buzzard, he pushes up his sleeves (or feathers, or whatever).
There’s no credited gag writer, so I don’t know who came up with this bit where Woody drips the invisible ink on his head and his head turns out to be full of nuts and bolts.
Maybe Lantz wrote the story. Woody and Buzz both whistle The Woody Woodpecker Polka. Got to get those sheet music sales up to add to the profits, you know.
Don Patterson, La Verne Harding, Paul J. Smith and Ray Abrams are Lantz’ sole animators, though I believe Joe Voght and Tom Byrne were assisting.
There ought to be a loose screw or two in with those nuts and bolts.
ReplyDeleteThe depicted sequence of this short was animated by La Verne Harding.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid I was intrigued by those cartoon gags involving invisible ink or "vanishing cream" rendering a character invisible... I wondered what exactly "vanishing cream" was and if there was such a thing. (It was probably a bleaching cream for lightening birthmarks or freckles, like Porcelana.)
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