Woody Throws It Away

Some of the Walter Lantz cartoons in the 1940s featured bits of perspective animation, with a character or object moving to and from the camera.

Here’s a brief example in Woody the Giant Killer, directed by Dick Lundy and released in 1947. Woody (voiced by Bugs Hardaway) gets conned into buying “magic” beans by Bucky Beaver (played by Harry Lang). He shakes the box of beans into the dug-out ground.



Woody then throws the box away in perspective. Lundy holds the first drawing for three frames, the second for two frames, then the others are one frame each.



Woody has some good expressions in this cartoon. Not outrageous ones, but you know what he’s thinking. La Verne Harding and Ed Love are the credited animators. Pat Matthews is here, too; my guess is the final scene is one of his.

Writers Webb Smith and Hardaway make fun of the post-war housing shortage by mixing it with the beanstalk fairy tale.