Afraid Not, Woody

Cartoon woodpeckers don’t usually milk cows, and there’s a reason.

The censor says they can’t.

Walter Lantz ran into problems with censors in the ‘40s when he was told his “Miss X” (who appeared in two cartoons directed by Shamus Culhane) was too sexy, so he removed her from the screen. But he also had to deal with restrictions on his biggest star, Woody Woodpecker.

Night and Day magazine of November 1948 published a two-page spread with some very attractive drawings of Woody indulging in some theatrical no-nos. It’s all ultra-tame stuff today, and probably was then, too. They were accompanied by the text below.

THOU SHALT NOT MR. WOODPECKER
ANIMATED CHARACTERS HAVE RIGID CODE, GET EDUCATORS ELUSIVE OKAY.
BACK in November 1940, Walter Lantz created an aggressive bird-like character who was to match popularity strides with Disney’s fabulous Donald. In 1948 the “Woody Woodpecker Song” broke all kinds of records as did parents who wouldn’t care if they heard the ditty again. However, Woody himself and Mr. Lantz were grateful; and the same parents, who were shy by a few bars of becoming raving things, are all behind the Woodpecker who has brought back to movie cartoons the originality and imagination once so prevalent, recently so scarce.
“Every breed to its own code,” advised an insalubrious, simple censor. The movie industry (Hollywood division), is composed of many breeds. It just happens that the humans are in the majority; so their language is spoken, and they rule the roost. Not a self-trusting breed, they devised a code to limit their own promiscuous nature. The inanimates, if they were only capable of thinking and speaking for themselves, would surely have done everything they could to preserve their dignity by protesting to the last that censorship, self-imposed or otherwise, was a ridiculous, distasteful thing. In our opinion, Woody and other animated characters are capable of producing, day in and day out, decent, realistic, or fantastic comedies and tragedies without having to submit their products for an okay to anyone.
We hope that someday soon young children will not be prevented by censorship from learning that milk does not grow in bottles.