The early Woody Woodpecker

[barnyarddawg]

The original Woody was a very ugly character. Who here would know who was responsible for designing such a grotesque looking character (Was it Lantz himself?), and who reworked him into the more appealing look of the mid forties, and then into the cuter fifties design?

[J Lee]

Lantz, Alex Lovy and (to a lesser extent) Ben Hardaway are credited with the original Woody design. He was redone by director Shamus Culhane and layout man Art Heinemann shortly after their arrivals at Lantz from the Chuck Jones unit over at Warner Bros in 1943.

In the late 1940s, Dick Lundy made some more refinements to the character, and the 50s Woody was basically a combination of the designs used both by Lantz in his early `50 toons and by Don Patterson after that (Paul Smith's Woody maintained the same design, but threw size contanuity out the window more and more as the 50s wore on, though as was mentioned in another thread, Lundy did the same thing in "Drooler's Delight")

[Sogturtle]

Hey Craig~

J.Lee's answer was very good. However he didn't go into the difficulties of properly assigning credit for the original Woody design. Orrrrr even for his real creation. The story that Walter Lantz LOVED to tell publicly was that Woody was inspired by an obnoxiously insistent woodpecker during his honeymoon with Grace Stafford... As others have pointed out before, said wedding and honeymoon occured AFTER the creation of the first Woody cartoon "Knock, Knock". So Lantz's story must be taken as a lovely piece of romantic fiction.

From there it gets murkier yet as to creation and initial design... The reason why is that with his brief closure in early 1940 (or thereabouts), Lantz had no directors on staff, thus was forced back to directing full time himself. This is an established fact. However animation historian Mike Barrier (he who picks most cartoons to pieces) refuses to accept the Lantz direction of "Knock, Knock". This despite Barrier's having had private access to the original records and animation art of the Lantz studio, all of which plainly labelled Walter Lantz as being THE DIRECTOR of "Knock, Knock". For the single reason of drawing style, Mike Barrier is adamant that Alex Lovy was the sole director of that cartoon, and hence the principal designer of Woody! (I have NO clue what Alex Lovy had to say on the situation). So the design aspect is murky...

Now having said that it's time to shake things up a little!!! The one good thing that Barrier said about all this, is that Ben Hardaway wrote the script for "Knock, Knock" while FREELANCING... (Lantz hired him full time in Aug. 1940). The cartoon came out in November 1940... Assuming a six month production period, puts start of production in May or even April 1940. Iffffff Hardaway left Schlesinger/Warners in January 1940 then there is a narrow legal window open between January and April/May 1940. Why the fuss here about dates??? Simple... Leon Schlesinger had ironclad clauses in everyones contracts stating that any and all things created while in his employ were HIS PROPERTY (even if created at home on the person's own time!!!).

Ifffff Ben "Bugs" Hardaway wrote so much as even an outline of "Knock, Knock" or created the character while still employed by Leon Schlesinger, then Woody Woodpecker LEGALLY would belong to AOL-Time-Warner!!!! Even if the finished script of the cartoon bears a date after Hardaway's leaving the "House of Leon" it wouldn't prove anything, as it would merely be the date of the final version of the script. Iffffff somewhere Ben Hardaway's first draft exists with a date then it would make or break this whole argument (and maybe send Woody packing over to Warner Bros.!!!) Hmmmmm maybe I should give this to Warner's lawyers to work on!!! ;)

[Bobby B]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
Hey Craig~

J.Lee's answer was very good. However he didn't go into the difficulties of properly assigning credit for the original Woody design. Orrrrr even for his real creation. The story that Walter Lantz LOVED to tell publicly was that Woody was inspired by an obnoxiously insistent woodpecker during his honeymoon with Grace Stafford... As others have pointed out before, said wedding and honeymoon occured AFTER the creation of the first Woody cartoon "Knock, Knock". So Lantz's story must be taken as a lovely piece of romantic fiction.


They just ran this story in a recent issue of Toy Shop as if it was the gospel truth.

[Bobby B]

Originally posted by barnyarddawg
The original Woody was a very ugly character. Who here would know who was responsible for designing such a grotesque looking character (Was it Lantz himself?), and who reworked him into the more appealing look of the mid forties, and then into the cuter fifties design?


I read somewhere (maybe in Joe Adamson's "The Walter Lantz Story") that LaVerne Harding was the one responsible for the 1950's version.