Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: United Artists
Short Synopsis
Three pig brothers each build a house. Fifer Pig throws one together from straw and Fiddler Pig from sticks, so they can get back to playing music. Practical Pig builds his slowly and solidly from bricks, and warns his brothers about the Big Bad Wolf. They laugh at him and sing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", until the Wolf appears and they bolt home. The Wolf blows down the straw house, then, disguised as a sheep, the stick house, and both pigs run to Practical's. The Wolf comes knocking as a door-to-door brush salesman, then huffs and puffs until his clothes fly off, but the bricks hold. Finally he climbs on to the roof and slides down the chimney, straight into a pot of boiling water laced with turpentine that Practical has put on the fire. He shoots back up the chimney and flees howling, and the three pigs sing in triumph.
Why It Matters
- Chuck Jones said it was the first time anyone had brought cartoon characters to life through personality: three pigs who look alike but move and behave differently. The difference between the two carefree brothers and the fussy, hard-working Practical is shown entirely through posture and timing, a lesson every later character animator learned.
- It was an enormous hit. It cost about $22,000, earned $250,000, ran in some cinemas for months, and its song became an anthem of the Depression. It won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject, was voted number 11 in The 50 Greatest Cartoons in 1994, and was added to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Notes and Trivia
- In the original, the Wolf's brush-salesman disguise was a Jewish peddler caricature with a Yiddish accent voiced by Pinto Colvig. Disney reanimated the scene in 1948, and modern prints use the revised version.
- See also: The Big Bad Wolf (1934), the first of three sequels;: Flowers and Trees (1932), The Tortoise and the Hare (1935).