Studio: Walter Lantz Productions
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Produced by: Walter Lantz
Short Synopsis
Woody Woodpecker, hungry and broke, is talked into buying a magic bean by a pitchman and plants it; overnight the beanstalk goes up through the clouds, and Woody climbs it to find a castle and a giant, and a giant's larder. The rest of the film is the Jack and the Beanstalk story as a chase cartoon: Woody raids the kitchen, the giant wakes, and the two race through the castle with Woody using the giant's size against him, hiding in his food, his clothes and his furniture, and getting in the licks that Woody always gets. The giant pursues him down the beanstalk, Woody chops it down, and the giant comes to earth hard. Documentation beyond the Lantz filmography is thin, and the account above is drawn from the cartoon itself.
Why It Matters
- It is a representative Dick Lundy Woody, from the period when Lundy, a former Disney animator, slowed the woodpecker down and polished the drawing, and it is the last Woody Woodpecker cartoon distributed by Universal before Lantz moved to United Artists in 1948, a change that nearly ended the studio.
- The film's copyright status is uncertain. No renewal appears for it in the Catalog of Copyright Entries for 1974-76, which points to non-renewal and public domain status, but the Woody Woodpecker filmography names Pantry Panic as the only unrenewed Woody short, so the question is left open.
Notes and Trivia
- Lantz closed his studio in 1949 for lack of money and reopened in 1950 with Universal again.
- Ben Hardaway, who co-wrote, also voiced Woody until Grace Stafford took over.
- See also: Pantry Panic (1941), Jack and the Beanstalk (1933), Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945).