Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty sends Pudgy out into the world with a song of advice: go out and make friends with the world, and the world will be your friend. Pudgy takes it literally. In the woods he introduces himself to one animal after another with a wag and a paw: a skunk, which ends badly; a porcupine, which ends worse; a turtle that bites; a beehive whose occupants do not want a friend; a frog that leads him into the pond; a woodpecker that uses his head. Each encounter leaves him more battered and more puzzled, since he is only doing what he was told. At last he finds animals willing to play, and he comes home scratched, stung and happy, with a trail of new friends behind him, to a Betty who has no idea what she started.
Why It Matters
- The cartoon is a catalogue of animal gags strung on a song, and the Fleischer animators make each creature a distinct small character, the skunk and the porcupine especially; Pudgy's bewilderment, as his good intentions are punished one by one, is the series' running joke done at its most concentrated.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and is one of the last Betty Boops made in New York before the studio's move to Miami in 1938 began to be planned; the Lokey-Waldman Pudgy, with his round body and anxious eyes, is at his most finished here.
Notes and Trivia
- The song's title phrase was a Depression-era commonplace, used in self-help books of the time.
- Hicks Lokey left for Disney in 1937 and animated on Fantasia.
- See also: You're Not Built That Way (1936), Training Pigeons (1936), Be Human (1936).
