Take Off, Wolf

What’s more delicious than roast wolf? Or fried woodpecker?

Walter Lantz tried to answer those questions in several cartoons in the mid-1940s, as Woody Woodpecker and the cleverly-named Wolfie Wolf tried to eat each other (the wolf name is from model sheets).

One is Who’s Cookin Who, another cartoon where a personified starvation is staring Woody in the face. The first one is Pantry Panic (1941) and, in a way, this short is a reworking of that cartoon by writer Bugs Hardaway (who gagged the earlier one), cohort Milt Schaffer and director Shamus Culhane.

Since it is now the mid-‘40s, Culhane’s pacing is quicker than the earlier short. In one gag, it takes a handful of frames to get the wolf flying out of the scene.

The first drawing below, the wolf is held while Woody and his bellows boost a fire. Then the wolf realises he is being roasted and leaps up and out of the scene. It takes Culhane six frames. The cross-eyed drawing is held for two frames (as well as the smoke, fire and bedsprings), with only Woody and the bellows moving in the second frame. The next four drawings are consecutive.



You can see the wolf’s head jerking toward the camera (great DVNR, huh?). Culhane liked doing this in his Woody cartoons, sometimes with part of the head out of the frame. You can’t see it unless you freeze-frame it, but you get the feel of it watching the animation.

Showmen’s Trade Review reported on July 7, 1945 the cartoon was being animated, while the Hollywood Reporter of November 8 said Darrell Calker was about to write the score. The cartoon was finally released June 24, 1946.

Les Kline and Grim Natwick are the credited animators, and La Verne Harding and Paul Smith were also at the studio at the time. Terry Lind provided backgrounds.

The almost-expressionless voice of Woody is provided by Hardaway. Will Wright is the voice of Wolfie, while Keith Scott has confirmed Jack Mather has a line as a grasshopper.