Woodland Café

Woodland Café is a Silly Symphonies animated Disney short film. It was filmed in Technicolor and released by United Artists in 1937 and was re-issued by RKO Radio Pictures in 1948. While it contained no on-screen credits, Wilfred Jackson was the director and Leigh Harline was the musical director.[2]

Woodland Café
Directed byWilfred Jackson
Produced byWalt Disney
Story byBianca Majolie
Music byLeigh Harline
Animation by
[1]
Color processTechnicolor
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
March 13, 1937
1948 (re-issued)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The setting is a nightclub staffed and frequented entirely by bugs. The cartoon is broken into three sections.

In the first, the patrons are shown arriving, putting their hats, gloves, and canes to the check-in counter, before getting to their tables and being served; the lighting is provided by fireflies; a jazz band is playing a number - with a brief instrumental battle with a tuba player and a trumpeter, a cellist shooing the leaf-eating bugs from chewing on his big cello, a trombonist having an itchy backside as he improvises a way to continue playing, and a drummer playing his full set, two groups of dancers with the male species almost ready to tussle with each other, a group of trombonists and trumpeters alternately their part of the music before the whole band followed up; and a centipede waiter served out some cherry wine to the patrons from a singular whole cherry.

The second features a performance of a French Apache dance as a good-girl fly resists the advances of a bad-boy spider until he gets caught in his own web and tangled himself up. The fly is now plays the bad girl at the end of the dance.

Finally, everyone jams the dance floor, including the old bee and his red ant partner as they were smoking the floor, even the snails dancing the section a little slower, as the orchestra plays (and sings) "Everybody's Truckin'" in the style of Cab Calloway on their instruments made of flowers.

Production

Development for the film, which the working title was Bug Carabet, began in March 1936. Bianca Majolie, a classmate at Disney's high school, was the story director, and was hired in February 1935, making her the first woman to join the story department. Layouts were done on summer of 1936 by Terrell Stapp and John Walbridge. By this time, Disney's cartoons were increasingly sumptuous due to continuing production on Snow White. [1]

One of the bugs eating the cricket's cello has red pants like Mickey Mouse.

In the edited version, part of the "Apache Dance" and "Everybody's Truckin'" were cut out due to racial stereotypes.

Reception

Motion Picture Herald wrote on June 26, 1937, "Gay and tuneful is this richly imaginative visit to a bug night club. Equal to the brightly tinted tones in which the comic business has been dressed in the sparkling mood of animated fun and nonsense which the subject creates. Simply an enumeration of some of the hilarious and musical moments that occur in this odd rendezvous of frolic and frivolity, the incidents depicted will perhaps have a stronger appeal for the adult and the teen-age spectator."[3]

Voice cast
  • Chorus voices: Clarrie Collins, Jimmie Cushman, Marie Dickerson, C.B. Johnson, James Miller, Thelma Porter, Eddie Printz, Duke Upshaw[2]

Home media

The short was released on the 2001 Walt Disney Treasures DVD box set Silly Symphonies.[2]

References
  1. Disney’s Silly Symphony “Woodland Cafe” (1937)
  2. Merritt, Russell; Kaufman, J. B. (2016). Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series (2nd ed.). Glendale, CA: Disney Editions. pp. 188–189. ISBN 978-1-4847-5132-9.
  3. Sampson, Henry T. (1998). That's Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900-1960. Scarecrow Press. p. 217. ISBN 978-0810832503.
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