The Loose Nut
The Loose Nut is the 16th animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on December 17, 1945, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures.[1]
| The Loose Nut | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | James Culhane |
| Produced by | Walter Lantz |
| Story by | Ben Hardaway Milt Schaffer |
| Starring | Ben Hardaway Lionel Stander |
| Music by | Darrell Calker |
| Animation by | LaVerne Harding Emery Hawkins Pat Matthews Grim Natwick Les Kline Paul Smith |
| Backgrounds by | Terry Lind |
| Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date | December 17, 1945 |
Running time | 6' 53" |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The cartoon is noticeable for its climatic sequence of Woody running over Bull Dozer with a steam roller. Tom Klein noted that scene and the explosion in the end of the cartoon, are representations of modern art, and called the sequences “the convergence of animation and Soviet montage.”[2]
Plot
A man named Bull Dozer is cementing a sidewalk and is pretty proud of himself. Meanwhile, Woody is playing golf in a tree. He putters the ball which lands in the wet cement. The man, furious, gives Woody his golf ball back. It turns out, that Woody made foot tracks in the cement, the man forcing the bird to smooth them out. He takes two of the spreaders and put on his feet like ice skates. Woody skates out the tracks he made. The man soon makes a ball of wet cement and throws it at Woody, causing him to crash. Woody then emerges from the ball, takes a mallet and putters the ball of cement into the man's face. The man is now trapped in the wet cement. Woody then skates back over to the man and hits repeatedly hits him with a shovel.
Woody then tries to run the man over with a steamroller. The man runs in fear from the crazy woodpecker and is chased out of the cement. He chased into the construction office and hides, only to open the door and get rundown. The man is completely flat and Woody rolls him up. He then takes him over to an advertisement for the gym with a picture of a fat woman on a billboard and pastes him on there like sticker, making fun of his weight. The man emerges from the billboard, but with the backside of the fat woman.
The man tries to grab Woody's golf club, only to be accidentally knocked underground. Woody discovers the ball in the man's mouth. He putters it anyway and sends the man's dentures flying. The man chases Woody up a ladder, but is hit in the head by Woody with a mallet. The guy falls down and Woody drops a barrel on the man. He replaces Woody's golf ball with a bomb that looks the same as one and blows up both of the characters. Woody is now featherless, yet he still holds a high spirit. He is chased down by the man.
References
- Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 157–158. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7.
- Cieply, Michael (2011-04-10). "That Noisy Woodpecker Had an Animated Secret (Published 2011)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-07.