Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Donald Duck is a farmer, feeding his animals while singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". Then he goes to milk his cow, Clementine, whom he finds up a tree eating leaves. He coaxes her down, sets the bucket under her and starts milking. A fly arrives. It lands on Clementine, who swats it with her tail and catches Donald instead; then it buzzes round Donald's head until he hits himself trying to swat it. He hides under his hat, and the fly crawls in through the holes. While he chases it, he milks into his hat by mistake, swaps it back, and puts on a hat full of milk. He squirts milk at the fly, which hides in a jug, and Donald gives it a direct hit. The fly takes revenge by biting Clementine, who lifts Donald with her tail, swings him round in the bucket and kicks him into the stable, where he ends up wearing a feed sack. Furious, Donald finally goes after the fly with everything he has, and the battle ends with Donald defeated and the fly triumphant.
Why It Matters
- The fly is the perfect Donald antagonist: tiny, impossible to hit, and always laughing. The film is built almost entirely on one long duel between them, every escalation feeding Donald's rage, with Clementine as an innocent bystander who keeps ending up on the fly's side.
- It comes from Donald's busiest year at Disney, when the studio's Donald unit, with Jack King directing and Carl Barks and Jack Hannah writing, was producing a stream of tightly built, one-situation comedies that turned his temper into the studio's most reliable comic engine.
Notes and Trivia
- The opening song is the traditional nursery song "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", which gives the cartoon its title.
- While milking, Donald also sings "Oh My Darling, Clementine", and "Turkey in the Straw" plays in the background, as it did in Steamboat Willie.
- Frames from this short have been used repeatedly to show how animation works, first in The Reluctant Dragon (1941) with Robert Benchley and later in Disney television specials.
- See also: Early to Bed (1941), Donald's Vacation (1940).