Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty keeps pigeons on the roof of her tenement, and she and Pudgy are trying to get the flock back into the coop. One bird will not come. Pudgy, who has been admiring a picture of a hunting dog, decides to catch it himself and sets off across the rooftops in pursuit, with the pigeon leading him from chimney to clothesline to flagpole, where the flag spanks him as he climbs. The chase takes him off the roof and out of the city into the woods, where, exhausted, he falls asleep under a tree. The pigeon, taking pity, picks him up and flies him home. Pudgy wakes on his own roof with no idea how he got there, and in his fury tears up the picture of the hunting dog.
Why It Matters
- The tenement rooftop, with its pigeon coops, washing lines and water tanks, is a New York setting the Fleischers knew from their own windows, and the cartoon's view across the chimney pots is a small record of the city the studio was about to leave for Florida; the pigeon's airlift home is a gentle ending.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, and it is a representative Pudgy cartoon of the Nolan and Waldman unit, with the puppy's ambition and defeat as the whole story and Betty, by now, reduced to a few lines at the start and finish.
Notes and Trivia
- Rooftop pigeon-keeping was a common working-class hobby in New York, later immortalised in On the Waterfront.
- Edward Nolan had been animating since the silent Felix the Cat films.
- See also: You're Not Built That Way (1936), Making Friends (1936), Ding Dong Doggie (1937).
