Studio: Walter Lantz Productions
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Produced by: Walter Lantz
Short Synopsis
Woody Woodpecker arrives at Tony Figaro's barber shop for a "victory haircut", but the barber is out for his Army physical. So Woody takes over. His first customer is a Native American who wants a quick shampoo; Woody's lather shrinks the man's feathered headdress into a badminton shuttlecock, and when the man threatens him, Woody knocks him out with a mallet and stands him outside a tobacco shop as a cigar-store Indian. The main customer is a burly Italian construction worker who asks for "the whole works". Woody burns off his hard hat with a blowtorch, then lathers his face, his mouth and even his shoes, singing Rossini's "Largo al factotum". He cranks the barber's chair up to the ceiling during an aria and lets the man crash down, then swings the razor so wildly that the terrified customer runs for his life. Woody chases him around the shop, doubling the tempo of the aria, corners him in the chair and gives him a shave and haircut at manic speed. Afterwards the man comes back for revenge, throws Woody out through the window, and Woody ends up stuck in the barber's pole.
Why It Matters
- The razor chase set to Rossini, accelerating with the music until the haircut becomes a blur, is one of the great musical sequences in Lantz cartoons. Culhane cuts it with a tempo and violence that animation historians have admired ever since.
- It introduced a new, more streamlined and appealing Woody design by Art Heinemann, and was the first Woody cartoon with the series' standard opening title. Animation professionals voted it number 43 in The 50 Greatest Cartoons in 1994, and it is generally regarded as the finest Woody Woodpecker short.
Notes and Trivia
- It was the first cartoon in which the writer Ben Hardaway voiced Woody.
- The Native American and Italian characters are period ethnic caricatures.
- See also: Notes to You (1941), which uses the same aria.