Free Willy Cartoon
Courtland Boland
Chilly Willy is a cartoon character, a diminutive penguin. He was created by director Paul Smith for the Walter Lantz studio in 1953, and developed further by Tex Avery in the two subsequent films following Smith's debut entry. The character soon became the second most popular Lantz/Universal character, behind Woody Woodpecker.[2] Fifty Chilly Willy cartoons were produced between 1953 and 1972.[3]
Chilly Willy was inspired by mystery writer Stuart Palmer, according to Scott MacGillivray's book Castle Films: A Hobbyist's Guide. Palmer used the Lantz studio as a background for his novel Cold Poison, in which the cartoon star was a penguin character, and Lantz adopted the penguin idea for the screen.[4] The character Pablo the Penguin from the 1945 Disney film The Three Caballeros was the inspiration for Chilly Willy.[5]Paul J. Smith initially based Chilly's design on a separate penguin character from Lantz' 1945 cartoon Sliphorn King of Polaroo, but would later be redesigned by Tex Avery in his second appearance, I'm Cold in 1954.[6]
Chilly Willy appeared in 50 theatrical short subjects produced by Lantz from 1953 to 1972, most of which involve his attempts to stay warm, and often meeting opposition from a dog named Smedley (voiced by Daws Butler). Smedley has a large mouth and sharp-pointed teeth (which he shows off when yawning), but is never shown viciously trying to bite Chilly or anyone else with them. There were times, however, when Chilly and Smedley got along, as they did in Vicious Viking and Fractured Friendship, but Chilly never referred to Smedley by name. Most times that Chilly was in opposition with Smedley, it wound up with the two of them being friends at the end. Chilly was more of a nuisance to Smedley than an enemy, often showing up where Smedley is working, usually for some mean employer. Many times, the notion of a plot was extremely weak, appearing to be a random collection of loosely related gags as opposed to a coherent story.
Two of Chilly's friends in the later cartoons were Maxie the Polar Bear (voiced by Daws Butler) and Gooney the "Gooney Bird" Albatross (voiced by Daws Butler impersonating Joe E. Brown). Maxie has appeared with Chilly more than Gooney has. There have been only two cartoons in which all three characters have appeared together: Gooney's Goofy Landings (where Chilly and Maxie try to perfect Gooney's landings) and Airlift a la Carte (where Chilly, Maxie, and Gooney go to the store owned by Smedley).
In some episodes, Chilly Willy also deals with a hunter named Colonel Pot Shot (voiced by Daws Butler) whom Smedley has been shown to work for in some episodes. Pot Shot would give orders in a calm controlled voice, and then would explode in rage when he told Smedley what would happen should he fail in his objective. Also, two episodes had Chilly Willy outsmarting Wally Walrus when Chilly Willy comes across his fishing projects.
Paul Smith directed the first Chilly Willy cartoon, simply titled Chilly Willy, in 1953. The initial version of Chilly Willy resembled Woody Woodpecker, except with flippers and black feathers, but he was redesigned in to his more familiar form in subsequent cartoons.[7]
Chilly was mute in most of his 1950s cartoons and early 1960s cartoons, although he was voiced by Sara Berner in the initial entry. The next time he spoke was in The Woody Woodpecker Show Halloween special Spook-A-Nanny in 1964, with Daws Butler providing Chilly's voice until the end of the series in a style similar to his Elroy Jetson characterization. The character always speaks in the comic book stories based on the character. Also in the comic book stories, Chilly had two nephews named Ping and Pong, similar to how Woody Woodpecker is uncle to twins Knothead and Splinter.
When the Lantz cartoons were packaged for television in 1957 as The Woody Woodpecker Show, Chilly Willy was a featured attraction on the show, and has remained such in all later versions of the Woody Woodpecker Show package.
Chilly Willy is featured in The New Woody Woodpecker Show where he has no dialogue. Like the shorts, Chilly has gone up against Smedley. Later episodes introduce Sgt. Hogwash (voiced by Blake Clark) and Major Bull (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) who operate in an Antarctic military base that Chilly tends to trespass in. The Legend of Rockabye Point was also featured early on, dubbed "A Classic Chilly Cartoon".
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.[2] It was produced in black and white by Walt Disney Studio and was released by Pat Powers, under the name of Celebrity Productions.[3] The cartoon is considered the debut of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, although both characters appeared several months earlier in a test screening of Plane Crazy.[4] Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but it was the first to be distributed, because Disney, having seen The Jazz Singer, had committed himself to produce one of the first fully synchronized sound cartoons.[5]
Music for Steamboat Willie was arranged by Wilfred Jackson and Bert Lewis, and it included the songs "Steamboat Bill", a composition popularized by baritone Arthur Collins during the 1910s, and the popular 19th-century folk song "Turkey in the Straw".[6] The title of the film may be a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928),[7] itself a reference to the song by Collins. Disney performed all of the voices in the film, although there is little intelligible dialogue.[a]
The film has received wide critical acclaim, not only for introducing one of the world's most popular cartoon characters but also for its technical innovation. The short is often considered to be one of the most influential cartoons ever made. Animators voted Steamboat Willie as the 13th-greatest cartoon of all time in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and in 1998, the film was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.[9] The cartoon entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2024, as the work was published in 1928.
Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character that was created by the Disney studio but owned at the time by Universal Pictures.[10] The first two Mickey Mouse films produced, silent versions of Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, had failed to gain a distributor. According to Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney was inspired to create a sound cartoon after watching The Jazz Singer (1927). Disney believed that adding sound to a cartoon would greatly increase its appeal.[11]
Despite being recognized for it, Steamboat Willie was not the first cartoon with synchronized sound.[12] Starting in May 1924 and continuing through September 1926, Dave and Max Fleischer's Inkwell Studios produced 19 sound cartoons, part of the Song Car-Tunes series, using the Phonofilm sound-on-film process. However, the Song Car-Tunes failed to keep the sound fully synchronized, while Steamboat Willie was produced using a click track to keep his musicians on the beat.[13] As little as one month before Steamboat Willie was released, Paul Terry released Dinner Time, which also used a soundtrack, but Dinner Time was not a financial success.
In June 1927, producer Pat Powers made an unsuccessful takeover bid for Lee de Forest's Phonofilm Corporation. In the aftermath, Powers hired a former DeForest technician, William Garrity, to produce a cloned version of the Phonofilm system, which Powers dubbed "Powers Cinephone". By then, de Forest was in too weak a financial position to mount a legal challenge against Powers for patent infringement. Powers convinced Disney to use Cinephone for Steamboat Willie; their business relationship lasted until 1930 when Powers and Disney had a falling-out over money, and Powers hired away Disney's lead animator, Ub Iwerks.[citation needed]
Mickey Mouse is piloting a side-wheeler paddle steamer, cheerfully whistling "Steamboat Bill" and sounding the boat's three whistles. Soon, the captain, Pete, appears and orders Mickey off the bridge. Mickey blows a raspberry at Pete. Pete attempts to kick him, but Mickey rushes away in time and Pete accidentally kicks himself in the rear. Mickey falls down the stairs, slips on a bar of soap on the boat's deck, and lands in a bucket of water. A parrot laughs at him and Mickey throws the bucket on its head.
Pete, who has been watching the occurrence, pilots the steamboat himself. He bites off some chewing tobacco and spits into the wind. The spit flies backward and rings the boat's bell. Amused, Pete spits again, but this time the spit hits him in the face, to his dismay.
The steamboat makes a stop at "Podunk Landing" to pick up a cargo of various livestock. Mickey has trouble getting one of the slimmer cows with a FOB tag onto the boat attached to a harness. To solve this, Mickey fills the cow's stomach up with hay to fatten the slim cow into the harness. Just as they set off again, Minnie Mouse appears, running to catch the boat before it leaves. Mickey does not see her in time, but she runs after the boat along the shore calling out Mickey's name. Mickey hears Minnie's calls and he takes her on board by hooking the cargo crane to her bloomers.
Landing on deck, Minnie accidentally drops a ukulele and sheet music for the song "Turkey in the Straw", which are eaten by a goat. After a brief tug of war with the goat over the eaten ukulele, Mickey accidentally lets go of it. The goat goes dizzy over the use of force, and the two mice begin using the goat's body as a phonograph, which they play by turning its tail like a crank. This makes the two mice laugh. Mickey uses various objects on the boat as percussion accompaniment and "plays" the animals like musical instruments. This includes pulling the tail of a cat, stretching a goose's throat, tugging on the tails of baby pigs, playing with the teats of their nursing mother pig, and using a cow's teeth and tongue to play the song as a xylophone.[14][15][16]
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