Studio: Fleischer Studios (Color Classics)
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Spunky the burro, out with his mother Hunky, meets a thoroughbred colt from the stables on the other side of the fence, a sleek, haughty animal with a groom and a blanket who looks down his nose at the donkey and will not play. Spunky, hurt, tries to make friends and is snubbed again, and the colt shows off his paces and his pedigree. Then the colt gets into trouble, straying where his breeding is no help, and Spunky, who knows the rough country, goes after him and gets him out. The snob is humbled, the two become friends across the fence, and Hunky watches it all with a mother's satisfaction. Production notes on the film are thin, and the synopsis above is drawn from the cartoon itself.
Why It Matters
- It is a class comedy among animals, the stable thoroughbred and the common burro, told with the Fleischer Spunky series' usual gentleness; it is one of the last Color Classics, the thirty-fourth of thirty-six, and shows the series at its end as a vehicle for the burro characters rather than the fairy tales it began with.
- Its copyright was allowed to lapse, so it is public domain in the United States. Stanley Quackenbush and Arnold Gillespie, the animators, were among the staff who stayed on at the Miami studio through Mr. Bug Goes to Town and the Fleischers' departure in 1942.
Notes and Trivia
- Hunky and Spunky appeared in seven cartoons between 1938 and 1941.
- Arnold Gillespie later animated the Superman short Electric Earthquake.
- See also: The Barnyard Brat (1939), Hunky and Spunky (1938), A Kick in Time (1940).
