Little Red Walking Hood

Little Red Walking Hood is a 1937 Merrie Melodies cartoon supervised by Fred Avery.[1] The short was released on November 6, 1937, and features Egghead, the early character who later became Elmer Fudd.[2]

Little Red Walking Hood
Directed byFred Avery
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
Story byCal Howard
StarringElvia Allman (uncredited)
Mel Blanc (uncredited)
Tedd Pierce (uncredited)
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Animation byIrven Spence
Virgil Ross (uncredited)
Paul Smith (uncredited)
Cecil Surry (uncredited)
Sid Sutherland (uncredited)
Backgrounds byJohn Didrik Johnsen (uncredited)
Color processTechnicolor
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
Release date
  • November 6, 1937 (1937-11-06)
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The cartoon features the basic plot of Little Red Riding Hood, with a few twists and oddball Tex Avery-like gags, such as Red displaying a Katharine Hepburn persona, or Grandma ordering a case of gin, while the wolf waits impatiently for her to get off the phone so he can chase her again.

The cartoon opens with the wolf playing on a vintage pinball machine. He notices Red walking by outside the window and drives after her along the sidewalk in his car. His advances fail and he decides to take a shortcut to her grandmother's house after being given the route by Egghead. As soon as the wolf arrives at grandma's house he knocks on the door and imitates an impression of Elmer Blurt from The Al Pearce Show. The grandma tells him to stay away but the wolf decides to burst through the door. This proves unsuccessful when he subsequently crashes through all the doors in the house and ends up in the backyard with his hat over his feet. He pulls the back doors knob and in a pinball reference, the door opens. He chases grandma around the house until she hops on a chair and crosses her fingers declaring King's X. She uses the phone to make a grocery order while the wolf waits impatiently for her to resume the chase. As the characters begin chasing each other again, grandma hides in the closet and the wolf asks her for her clothes as Red is at the door. The wolf hops into bed and asks Red to come closer. When Red exclaims, "Oh Grandmother, what large teeth you present" the wolf lunges at her and they start fighting in the corner of the room. Two silhouettes of patrons who are late to the screening show up and the wolf asks Red to wait for them to get seated. They resume fighting until Egghead shows up a sixth time and hits the wolf over the head with a mallet. As the "iris" comes back Egghead is shown repeatedly kissing Red.

Home media

Notes
  • "Little Red Walking Hood" is notable for being the first appearance of a prototype Granny.
  • This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on August 17, 1946.
  • The running gag and ending are both in a similar style to one of Tex's MGM cartoons called "Wild and Woolfy".
  • Instead of watercolors, the backgrounds for this cartoon were rendered in colored pencil.
  • This was the first cartoon to begin the 1937-38 animation season, evident from the yellow target rings, a blue WB shield, and a black background.

References
  1. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 64. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  2. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 77-79. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-08-11. Retrieved 2016-09-12.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)


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