Yankee Doodle Donkey
About Yankee Doodle Donkey
Spunky the donkey turns up to enlist with the WAGS, an army unit made of dogs. The tests wash him out. When fleas overrun the dog corps, the reject is the one who deals with them.
Cast & crew
More about Yankee Doodle Donkey
Isadore Sparber directed this Noveltoon for Famous Studios. Paramount released it on 27 October 1944. Jack Mercer and Jack Ward wrote the story. Nick Tafuri and Tom Golden animated. The MPAA number is 3601. It is in Technicolor, with RCA sound, and runs about seven and a half minutes.
Themes
Background
Paramount put the short out in October 1944, while U.S. forces were still in Europe. The joke is a reject who is useful only when the trained dogs are overrun.
Music
Sammy Timberg arranged the score. The title points at "Yankee Doodle," which the cartoon uses as its march.
Preservation
Technicolor 35mm. A print timed at 7:27 is logged by the Internet Animation Database.
Notes
- Spunky had already been the donkey child in Fleischer's Color Classics. This short puts him in uniform.
- Sammy Timberg arranged the music, not the Winston Sharples scores of later Famous shorts.
- The Internet Animation Database times a print at 7 minutes 27 seconds. Wikidata rounds the short to 8 minutes.
- It sits in the Noveltoons series between Suddenly It's Spring and Gabriel Churchkitten on the 1944 release sheet.
- A public-domain Noveltoons collection on the Internet Archive includes the short, under the site identifier noveltoons-pd.
Scenes
- Spunky tries to enlist with the army dogs and fails the tests.
- Fleas hit the dog corps.
- The donkey who was turned away is the one who clears them.
Also available
- Noveltoons Original Classics (DVD)
- Wikimedia Commons (Isadore Sparber - Noveltoons - Yankee Doodle Donkey (1944) (raw HD version).webm)
