Considering the lavish treatment Disney gives to its
animated features, it’s a little shocking how little respect they often pay
their short films. After all, these are the primary showcases for Mickey,
Donald, Goofy and the gang, iconic characters that these days turn up mainly in
consumer products if they turn up at all. Warner Bros. doesn’t often know what
to do with their stable of Looney Tunes
characters in modern times, either. But at least they’ve done a good job
keeping the original shorts in the public eye, first on DVD and now on Blu-ray.
For years, Disney’s biggest use for their animated shorts
was as Disney Channel filler, hacked up and re-edited to suit whatever fad was
popular at the time (anybody remember DTV?).
There were, of course, mountains of VHS and Betamax releases but they were a
bit haphazard. They did a better job with their Archive Collection series of laserdiscs (in general, Disney
produced some utterly gorgeous laserdisc sets) but they only scratched the
surface of what they could have done with their shorts.
It wasn’t until DVD came along that Disney finally took a
real interest in showcasing these classics. In 2001, they launched the Walt Disney Treasures line, limited
edition two-disc sets packaged in handsome tins that promised a truly special
release. Hosted by Leonard Maltin, the sets were beautifully presented and full
of outstanding bonus material. In many ways, they were superior to the Looney Tunes Golden Collections (and
later Platinum Collections on
Blu-ray) by virtue of being more focused and better organized. There were
specific collections devoted to Mickey, Donald, Pluto, Goofy, Silly Symphonies, early rarities and
more. Naturally, the series was too good to last. It sputtered to a close in
2009 with the release of the Zorro TV
series. So far, there seems to be no great hurry to convert the Treasures titles to Blu. If you can find
a copy of the DVDs on the second-hand market, expect to pay north of a hundred
bones for it.
I have some but not all of the Treasures sets, enough that it annoys me that I don’t have the
rest. While I wouldn’t really want to part with any of them, The Complete Goofy in particular is one
you’ll have to pry from my cold, dead hands. Goofy might not be my favorite
Disney character. Donald Duck is pretty hard to beat. But the Goofy cartoons,
especially the series of “How-To” shorts, are among Disney’s most inspired and
funniest.
The character that would evolve into Goofy debuted in the
1932 short Mickey’s Revue, although
Dippy Dawg had a ways to go before he’d be the Goof we know today. He began to
come into his own once he was teamed with Mickey and Donald in such classics as
Clock Cleaners and Lonesome Ghosts. (As an aside, I had Lonesome Ghosts on one of those Fisher Price
Movie Viewer cartridges and was fairly obsessed with it as a kid, examining it
frontwards, backwards and frame by frame.)
Goofy was deemed ready for solo stardom in 1939 with the
release of Goofy And Wilbur, a
pleasant but fairly standard cartoon with Goofy, ever the sportsman, using his
pal, the super-smart grasshopper Wilbur, as bait on a fishing trip. The name in
the title suggests that Disney may have had visions of stardom for little
Wilbur too but, alas, it was not to be. (Although according to The Disney Wiki,
this cartoon was later edited into a vacation-themed episode of Disneyland and
Wilbur was retroactively made Jiminy Cricket’s nephew.)
Ironically, Goofy didn’t really come into his own as a solo
star until he lost his distinctive voice. After Pinto Colvig left the studio, a
now silent Goofy was placed into a series of “How-To” shorts beginning with The Art Of Skiing in 1941. With John
McLeish providing stentorian and often pretentious narration and freed of the conventions
of trying to tell an 8-minute narrative, these cartoons were more innovative
and entertaining than most of Disney’s shorts during the period. Colvig
eventually returned to the character but the change in Goofy’s personality
remained.
As time went on, Goofy continued to change, even more than
the other characters in the Disney stable. Goofy actually evolved into his own species,
with Goofs of different sizes, genders and personalities populating entire
opposing teams, their fans, and whole cities. A loyal American, Goofy
contributed to the war effort during WWII and the post-war effort in the 1950s.
Unlike most cartoon characters who had nephews or, infrequently, nieces, Goofy
actually had a wife and son (Goofy Jr., later Max). Goofy may have seemed naïve
and childlike at times but in many ways, he was the most adult character Disney
had.
Disney essentially got out of the business of making short
subjects in the 1960s. The final official Goofy cartoon, Aquamania, was released in 1961. But the character made a most
welcome comeback in 2007 with a new short, How
To Hook Up Your Home Theater. This title is available on the recently released
Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films
Collection Blu-ray. The studio has also released two outstanding
collections of shorts from Pixar. But none of the studio’s classic shorts have
yet made the jump to high-def. I hope they will although Disney’s inconsistent commitment
to the format doesn’t fill one with hope. These films and characters are really
the foundation that Walt Disney Studios was built upon. It’d be a shame if they
were left behind where only deep-pocketed collectors can get ahold of them.
