The Woody Woodpecker Show

History

By the mid-1950s, movie theaters could drop cartoons from their programs without losing audiences, which hurt the short-film animation business. In 1956, only seven studios were still making animated shorts, and by the end of the decade that number fell to three. Walter Lantz and Universal Pictures saw that selling their cartoons to television was the only way to cover the rising costs of new productions. Norman Gluck, from Universal’s short-subjects division, worked out a deal with the Leo Burnett Agency, which handled Kellogg’s cereal account. Lantz then met with Kellogg’s representatives and signed a contract. He later said he only went into TV because he was forced to, and that theatrical cartoons were dying out.

The Woody Woodpecker Show first aired on ABC on October 3, 1957, on Thursday afternoons, taking over the first half-hour of a shortened Mickey Mouse Club. Lantz mixed his old cartoons with new live-action footage to give the show a fresh feel. These live-action and animated segments, called “A Moment with Walter Lantz,” showed how his cartoons were made and how writers came up with stories and characters. Jack Hannah, who had just done similar work for Disney’s TV show, directed these segments. After its first year on ABC, the show went into syndication until 1966. The “A Moment with Walter Lantz” segments were later swapped out for “Woody’s Newsreel” and “Around the World with Woody,” which used Universal Newsreel footage and had voiceovers from Lantz and Woody Woodpecker.

In 1970, the show returned to network TV on NBC with 26 new episodes put together by Lantz. It ran until September 2, 1972, the same year the Walter Lantz Productions studio closed down. The show was revived again on September 11, 1976, featuring cartoons from 1935 to 1972, and its network run ended on September 3, 1977. Local stations kept airing The Woody Woodpecker Show for several more years.

Home media

During the early 2000s, Columbia House offered The Woody Woodpecker Show on mail-order VHS and DVD sets. Each volume included "cartunes," bumpers, and either "A Moment with Walter Lantz" or "Newsreel" segments, following the show's 1957–1977 format, though volumes 11 through 15 contained very few of those segments. Many buyers complained about the condition of the cartoons, which varied from fully restored, intact prints to heavily trimmed TV versions. In 2007, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment put out The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection, adding six behind-the-scenes clips from the show and a 1964 episode featuring "Spook-a-Nanny" as extras. The next year saw Volume 2, which included twelve behind-the-scenes segments and two pilot cartoons, "The Secret Weapon" and "Jungle Medics," from the series.