Woody Woodpecker

Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the short Knock Knock on November 25, 1940. The cartoon ostensibly stars Andy Panda and his father, Papa Panda, but it is Woody who dominates. The woodpecker constantly pesters the two pandas, apparently just for the fun of it. Andy, meanwhile, tries to sprinkle salt on Woody's tail in the belief that this will somehow capture the bird. To Woody's surprise, Andy's attempts prevail, and Woody is taken away to the psychiatric hospital— but not before his captors prove to be crazier than he is.

The Woody of Knock Knock was designed by animator Alex Lovy. Woody's original voice actor, Mel Blanc, stopped performing the character after the first three cartoons to work exclusively for Leon Schlesinger Productions (later renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons), producer of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies after signing a loyalty contract. At Leon Schlesinger's, Blanc had already established the voices of two other famous "screwball" characters who preceded Woody, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. Ironically, Blanc's characterization of the Woody Woodpecker laugh had originally been applied to Happy Rabbit, a Bugs Bunny predecessor, in shorts such as the aforementioned Elmer's Candid Camera and was later transferred to Woody. Blanc's regular speaking voice for Woody was much like the early Daffy Duck, minus the lisp. Once Warner Bros. signed Blanc to an exclusive contract, Woody's voice-over work was taken over by Danny Webb, followed by Kent Rogers. Ben Hardaway later became Woody's voice after Rogers was killed in a plane crash during World War II, and would voice the woodpecker for the rest of the decade. This makes Woody Woodpecker one of the very few cartoon characters originally voiced by Mel Blanc to be voiced by someone else during Blanc's lifetime. Despite this, Blanc continued to voice Woody on a Mutual Network radio show[12] and in recordings for Capitol Records from 1948 until 1955,[13] while his laugh would continue to be used in the shorts until 1951.

Audiences reacted well to Knock Knock, and Lantz realized he had finally hit upon a star to replace the waning Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Woody starred in a number of films. With his brash demeanor, the character was a natural hit during World War II. His image appeared on US aircraft as nose art, and on mess halls, and audiences on the homefront watched Woody cope with familiar problems such as food shortages. The 1943 Woody cartoon The Dizzy Acrobat was nominated for the 1944 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), which it lost to the MGM Tom and Jerry cartoon The Yankee Doodle Mouse. Woody Woodpecker's debut also marked a change in directing style for Walter Lantz studio, since the character was heavily inspired by Tex Avery-created Looney Tunes character Daffy Duck at Warner Bros, and thus Woody's cartoons tended to have a hint of Tex Avery's style and influence in terms of humor, and that's what gave Walter Lantz studio its fame. Curiously enough, Avery himself never directed a Woody Woodpecker short while at the Walter Lantz studio.

Woody Woodpecker and his captive client in The Barber of Seville (1944), directed by Shamus Culhane.

Animator Emery Hawkins and layout artist Art Heinemann streamlined Woody's appearance for the 1944 film The Barber of Seville, directed by James "Shamus" Culhane. The bird became rounder, cuter, and less demented. He also sported a simplified color scheme and a brighter smile, making him much more like his counterparts at Warner Bros. and MGM. Nevertheless, Culhane continued to use Woody as an aggressive lunatic, not a domesticated straight man or defensive homebody, as many other studios' characters had become. The follow-up to The Barber of Seville, The Beach Nut, introduced Woody's original chief nemesis, Wally Walrus.

Woody's wild days were numbered, however. In 1946, Lantz hired Disney veteran Dick Lundy to direct Woody's cartoons. Lundy rejected Culhane's take on the series and made Woody more defensive; no longer did the bird go insane without a legitimate reason. Lundy also paid more attention to the animation, making Woody's new films more Disney-esque in their design, style, animation, and timing. Lundy's last film for Disney was the Donald Duck short Flying Jalopy. This cartoon is played much like a Woody Woodpecker short, down to the laugh in the end. It also features a bad guy named "Ben Buzzard" who bears a strong resemblance to Buzz Buzzard, a Lantz character introduced in Wet Blanket Policy (1948), who eventually succeeded Wally Walrus as Woody's primary antagonist.

In 1947, contract renewal negotiations between Lantz and Universal (now Universal-International) fell through, and Lantz began distributing his cartoons through United Artists.[14]^:161 The UA-distributed Lantz cartoons featured higher-quality animation, the influence of Dick Lundy (the films' budgets remained the same).[14]^:172–175 Former Disney animators such as Fred Moore and Ed Love began working at Lantz, and assisted Lundy in adding touches of the Disney style to Woody's cartoons. Despite the Disney style added for the later cartoons, Woody's cartoons still try to maintain a good dose of slapstick and madcap humor from the pre-Lundy cartoons.

Wet Blanket Policy, directed by Dick Lundy, introduced Woody's new adversary Buzz Buzzard and featured Woody's Academy Award-nominated theme song, "The Woody Woodpecker Song."

In 1947, Woody got his own theme song when musicians George Tibbles and Ramey Idriss wrote "The Woody Woodpecker Song", making ample use of the character's famous laugh. Kay Kyser's 1948 recording of the song, with Harry Babbitt's laugh interrupting vocalist Gloria Wood, became one of the biggest hit singles of 1948.[15] Other artists did covers, including Woody's original voice actor, Mel Blanc. Lantz first used "The Woody Woodpecker Song" in Wet Blanket Policy (1948), and it became the first and only song from an animated short subject to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1948 but it lost out to “Buttons and Bows”.[16] Lantz soon adopted the song as Woody's theme music, and due to the song's popularity, Woody Woodpecker fan clubs sprang up, theaters held "Woody" matinées, and boys got the "Woody Woodpecker" haircut.

"The Woody Woodpecker Song" and the Woody Woodpecker cartoons made extensive use of Woody's famous laugh, upsetting the man who created it, Mel Blanc. (He first used the laugh, in a different recording, for the seminal pre-Bugs Bunny character in 1938's Porky's Hare Hunt.) Although Blanc had only recorded three shorts as the voice of Woody, his laugh had been recorded as a stock sound effect and used in every subsequent Woody Woodpecker short up until this point. Blanc sued Lantz and lost, but Lantz settled out of court when Blanc filed an appeal. Although Lantz stopped using Blanc's Woody Woodpecker laugh as a stock effect in the early 1950s, Blanc's voice was still heard saying "Guess who?" at the beginning of every cartoon for the duration of the Woody Woodpecker series.

Financial problems at United Artists during the aftermath of the Paramount case affected Lantz. By the end of 1948, Lantz had shut down his studio;[14] he reopened it in 1950 with a downsized staff.

Beginning with the 1950 feature film Destination Moon, which featured a segment of Woody explaining rocket propulsion, Woody's voice was assumed by Lantz's wife, Grace Stafford. According to the Lantzes, Stafford slipped a recording of herself into a stack of audition tapes, and her husband chose her without knowing her identity.[14]^:185–186 Lantz also began having Stafford supply Woody's laugh, possibly due to the court case with Mel Blanc. Stafford was not credited at her own request until Misguided Missile (1958), as she felt audiences might reject a woman performing Woody's voice. Stafford also did her best to tone down the character through her voice work, to appease Universal's complaints about Woody's raucousness.

Lantz signed again with Universal (now Universal-International) in 1950, and began production on two entries that director Dick Lundy and storymen Ben Hardaway and Heck Allen had begun before the 1948 layoff. These shorts have no director's credit, as Lantz claimed to have directed them himself. Puny Express (1951) was the first to be released, followed by Sleep Happy. These shorts marked a departure from past dialogue-driven shorts. Though Stafford now voiced Woody, her job was limited, as Woody (and other characters) rarely spoke in the first dozen or so shorts. It was because of these entries that Woody became popular outside the English-speaking world, thanks to the lack of a language barrier. (The Pink Panther shorts of the 1960s and 1970s also enjoyed worldwide popularity due to this pantomime luxury.)

Nine more Lantz-directed Woody cartoons followed, before Don Patterson became Woody's new director in 1953. The bird was redesigned again, this time by animator LaVerne Harding. Harding made Woody smaller, cuter, and moved his crest forward from its original backwards position. (The small Lantz Studios logo seen at the start of every cartoon — Woody as an armored knight on horseback carrying a lance — continued for a while to display Woody with his former topknot.) For 1955's The Tree Medic, one last makeover was given to the woodpecker, making Woody's eye a simple black dot and taking away the green/hazel iris he'd had since his beginnings. However, Woody's eyes were not changed in the cartoon's intros, and they remained green for the rest of the shorts' production run. During this time, the intro was changed as well. Instead of having Woody's name on screen and Woody pecking a hole in the screen to introduce himself, Woody now pecked his way onto the screen, greeting the audience with his iconic "Guess who?", then carved out his name on either a brown or gray wood background and jumped around the screen while laughing.

By 1955, Paul J. Smith had taken over as primary director of Woody's shorts, with periodic fill-in shorts directed by Alex Lovy and Jack Hannah, among others. With Smith on board, the shorts maintained a healthy dose of frenetic energy, while the animation itself was simplified, due to budget constraints.

Woody in 1961's The Bird Who Came to Dinner, directed by Paul J. Smith. This cartoon was made several years after Woody's last redesign.

In addition to Lantz's wife Grace Stafford providing Woody's voice, which returned the cartoon to being more dialogue-driven again, voice talents during this period were generally split between Dal McKennon and Daws Butler. Several of Woody's recurring costars were also introduced during this era, such as Gabby Gator (voiced by Daws Butler in an Ozarks voice, a slightly different southern dialect than he used for Huckleberry Hound). Gabby first appeared in Everglade Raid (as "Al I. Gator"). Other films paired Woody with a girlfriend, Winnie Woodpecker (voiced by Grace Stafford), and a niece and nephew, Splinter and Knothead (both voiced by June Foray). Other antagonists that Woody has dealt with were Ms. Meany (voiced by Grace Stafford) and Dapper Denver Dooley (voiced by Dallas McKennon).

As Lantz was struggling financially, Woody's longevity was secured when he made the jump to television in The Woody Woodpecker Show on ABC. The half-hour program consisted of three theatrical Woody shorts followed by a brief look at cartoon creation hosted by Lantz. It ran from 1957 to 1958 then entered syndication until 1966. NBC revived the show in 1970 and 1976. In addition, the woodpecker was no longer dishing out abuse to his foils, but was instead on the receiving end. The first significant short to feature Woody as a serious, put-upon character was 1961's Franken-Stymied. Woody's popularity had been based on his manic craziness, but by 1961, this had all but been eliminated in favor of a more serious Woody, a straight man trying to do good. This was due in part to Woody's large presence on television, which meant Lantz had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's television. Though production continued until 1972, the cartoons were a definite notch lower than in the 1940s and 1950s.

Woody appeared in new theatrical shorts until 1972, when Lantz closed his studio due to rising production costs. His cartoons returned to syndication in the late 1970s. Lantz sold his library of Woody shorts to MCA/Universal in 1985. Universal repackaged the cartoons for another syndicated Woody Woodpecker Show in 1987. A year later, Woody made a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, voiced by Cherry Davis, near the end of the film.

Woody Woodpecker reappeared in the Fox Kids series The New Woody Woodpecker Show, which ran on Saturday mornings from 1999 to 2002, voiced by Billy West. For this series, Woody was redesigned more like his mid-1940s look (1944 to 1949), pushing back his crest and making his eyes green again. Winnie Woodpecker, who had debuted in Real Gone Woody (1954), became a semi-regular character as Woody's primary love interest. Like Woody, Winnie was redesigned to look almost exactly like Woody did from 1950 until 1972, the obvious differences being that she was a female woodpecker and had blue eyes. Woody's primary antagonist was Wally Walrus, who became Woody's neighbor (Woody lived in a tree house in Mrs. Meany's front yard, and Mrs. Meany's house was next door). Buzz Buzzard often appeared, as did Mrs. Meany and several other older characters.

In 2018, Universal Animation Studios announced a new series of Woody Woodpecker cartoons exclusively for YouTube. The result, titled simply Woody Woodpecker, began airing on December 3, 2018.[17]

Woody and Winnie Woodpecker, as seen at Universal Studios Florida

Walter Lantz and movie pioneer George Pal were good friends. Woody Woodpecker cameos in nearly every film that Pal produced or directed—for example, during the 1966 sequence in The Time Machine (1960), a little girl drops her Woody Woodpecker doll as she goes into an air raid shelter. In Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), Grace Stafford cameos, carrying a Woody Woodpecker doll.

In the Baltimora song, Woody Boogie. The song uses the laughter of Woody Woodpecker throughout the song.

Woody was number 46 on TV Guide's list of the 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time in 2002 and 2003. He came in at number 25 on Animal Planet's list of The 50 Greatest Movie Animals in 2004. The character has been referenced and spoofed on many later television programs, among them The Simpsons, American Dad!, South Park, The Fairly OddParents, Family Guy, Seinfeld, Robot Chicken, Three's Company, and Flash Toons.

Woody Woodpecker is the official mascot of Universal Studios. In 1998 and 1999, Woody appeared on the nose of the Williams Formula One Team, and in 2000, he became the official team mascot of the Honda Motorcycle Racing Team. A Woody Woodpecker balloon had been a staple of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1982 until 1996.

In Brazil the character is a hugely popular and iconic cartoon character in the country.[17]

See Woody Woodpecker filmography

• Let's All Recycle with Woody Woodpecker (1991 – PSA Video)

• Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, cameo)

In the early 2010s, Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment planned a Woody Woodpecker feature film. John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky (King of the Hill) were in talks to develop a story,[16] but the project was canceled.[30] In October 2013, Bill Kopp announced that Universal Pictures had hired him to direct an animated feature film with three interwoven stories.[31]

On July 13, 2016, Cartoon Brew reported that Universal 1440 Entertainment was filming a live-action/CGI hybrid film based on Woody Woodpecker in Canada. The film is being directed by Alex Zamm and stars Timothy Omundson of Galavant and Psych fame and Brazilian actress Thaila Ayala. Filming began in June 2016, and ended later in July of that year. The film was released theatrically in Brazil on October 5, 2017 and was scheduled for release on April 1, 2018 worldwide. The film had a straight-to-video release in the United States on February 6, 2018.[32]