Woodland Café

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

This cartoon portrays a typical evening at the WOODLAND CAFÉ, that popular insect hot spot. A wide assortment of ugly bugs are kept entertained by apache dancers (a spider & a fly) and dancing to Big Band music.

A delightful little cartoon. The Disney animators show their versatility once again in their depiction of all things buggy. The film is also a spoof of Swing in general & Cab Calloway in particular.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.