Studio: Walter Lantz Productions
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Produced by: Walter Lantz
Short Synopsis
A stork flies into Fairy Land, a world in the clouds, with a sack full of small humanoid creatures with antennae on their heads, babies to be delivered. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who happens to be there, appoints himself the stork's salesman. A swallow turns the offer down, so does a weasel, and at last an old woman who lives in a giant boot agrees to take the sack; the creatures pour out of it by the dozen, far more than the sack could hold, and the old woman is delighted anyway. A huge, mischievous terrier spots the boot, grabs its lace and tries to drag it away, and the creatures evacuate in panic; Oswald has to deal with the dog, which he does with the usual rubber-hose ingenuity, and the babies are returned to their boot. The film survives in good copies and is in the public domain.
Why It Matters
- The film's dream logic, a sack that holds infinite babies and a nursery rhyme turned into a landscape, is the kind of thing the Lantz studio did without comment in 1932, and the terrier's assault on the boot is a well-built chase. It is one of the few Oswald cartoons whose plot is documented in detail.
- Making Good is the 57th Oswald made by Lantz and the 110th overall, counting the Disney and Winkler films, and it shows the character at the midpoint of his long life, a bland hero in a world of strange gags, surrounded by animators, Avery among them, who were more interesting than he was.
Notes and Trivia
- The copyright on the film was not renewed, which is why it circulates freely.
- The old woman who lived in a shoe is one of several nursery-rhyme figures to appear in Lantz's Fairy Land cartoons.
- See also: The Clown (1931), My Pal Paul (1930), Bowery Bimbos (1930).