Wide Open Spaces (1947 film)

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Wide Open Spaces
Wide Open Spaces (1947 film).jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Jack King
Story byMacDonald MacPherson
Jack Huber
Produced by Walt Disney
Starring Clarence Nash
Billy Bletcher
Music by Oliver Wallace
Animation by Don Towsley
Paul Allen
Emery Hawkins
Sandy Strother
Layouts byDon Griffith
Backgrounds byHoward Dunn
Color process Technicolor
Production
company
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures
Release date
  • September 12, 1947 (1947-09-12)
Running time
6:30
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Wide Open Spaces is a 1947 Donald Duck short cartoon, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Jack King for Walt Disney Productions and RKO Radio Pictures. [1]

Contents

Plot

The short opens late at night in front of the "Hold-Up Motel" where Donald, exhausted and looking for a place to sleep, pulls his car over to spend the night. The motel owner informs him that all the beds are occupied and the only option he has is sleeping outside on the cot on the porch. Donald accepts, but before he can hop on the cot, the motel owner adds that it costs 16 dollars (equivalent to $210in 2022 [2] ), causing Donald to angrily refuse and tie the man's arm into a knot. In response, the motel owner kicks Donald, sending him flying into his car.

Donald drives deeper into the woodland and finds a spot to sleep on an air mattress. After struggling to get the mattress inflated (failing twice with a floor pump before blowing it up himself), Donald gets ready to rest but is bothered by a rock underneath the mattress. He throws the rock away sending it up to a hill, where it causes a chain reaction that sends a huge boulder towards Donald, who is woken up and panics trying to escape in his car. The boulder catches up and crushes him against a tree, causing Donald's vehicle to crunch into the shape of a 1910s Ford Model T.

Donald returns to bed and falls asleep. As he snores, however, the mattress balloons, putting Donald in a vertical position sustained by his opening and closing beak, which leads Donald over a cliff and into the river below. Donald continues to slumber underwater next to a large sleeping fish that draws Donald's head near its jaws each time it inhales. Donald realizes where he is only after he and the fish struggle for the blanket and swims back to shore.

The springy branch of a nearby pine tree bothers Donald in his sleep and he is smacked back by it when he tries to shove it away. Angered, Donald fixes a fallen tree branch under the pine's branch to keep it away. However, as Donald sleeps, his exhalations cause the tree branch to lose hold of the pine's branch, causing it to hit the air mattress pump (with the hose still attached to the mattress valve) and wobble up and down with the handle, pumping fast and strong. This causes Donald's mattress to get excessively inflated until it pops off and takes flight, deflating rapidly in mid-air while Donald continues to sleep.

As the mattress deflates, it propels Donald all the way back to the Hold-Up Motel, landing right on the porch cot. The owner comes out, believing that Donald has spent the entire night on the cot, and asks him the 16 dollars, which Donald hands over in his sleep. Immediately after paying, the motel owner notifies Donald that his time is up and shoves Donald off of the porch and into the arms of a cactus. Despite his uncomfortable new sleeping arrangement, Donald continues to slumber as the cartoon ends.

Voice cast

Home media

The short was released on December 11, 2007 on Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald, Volume Three: 1947-1950 . [3]

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References

  1. ↑ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 74–76. ISBN   0-8160-3831-7 . Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  2. ↑ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–" . Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  3. ↑ "The Chronological Donald Volume 3 DVD Review". DVD Dizzy. Retrieved 13 February 2021.
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