Hanging Wolf

Walter Lantz’s contribution to the “wolf’s side of the three little pigs story” cartoons was The Hams That Couldn’t Be Cured (released in 1942).

The story by Lowell Elliott and Bugs Hardaway has Algernon Wolf, about to be hanged for harassing the pigs, explaining how he was just a kindly music teacher whose happy home was destroyed by the jiving pigs.

The wolf changes his voice from an Eddie Robinson hoodlum type to quiet and gentle in relating his tale of woe. The old West-style sheriff in charge of the hanging believes him and orders an instant posse of townspeople to capture the pigs.

Wolfie laughs “Did those saps fall for it! And what a bunch of....” His self-satisfaction is quickly snuffed out as he accidentally leans on the lever that opens the trap door on the hanging scaffold.



The final scene has the wolf crying for help. There’s perspective animation as the wolf swings in mid-air.



Don’t ask how the rope went from the wolf’s neck to his tail. Same as you shouldn’t ask why in one of the music scenes, a harp sounds like a piano and a tuba sounds like a bassoon.

Alex Lovy and Ralph Somerville are the credited animators but Lantz didn’t have units then and it was all-hands-on-deck when it came to making a cartoon. There may have been seven or eight animators on this short, possibly including La Verne Harding, Frank Tipper, Bob Bentley, Hal Mason, George Dane and Les Kline. (Today’s trivia: when the Lantz studio temporarily shut down at the end of the 1940s, Kline worked as a packer at a wholesale tomato operation).

The same kind of plot was done (better in my estimation) at Warners in The Trial of Mr. Wolf (Freleng, 1941) and The Turn-Tale Wolf (McKimson, 1952).

The ill-fated Kent Rogers provides the voice of the wolf and sheriff. The dialogue includes the wolf emulating FDR’s Fireside Chats by saying “My friends,” to the assembled townsfolk awaitin’ the hangin.’