The first Woody Woodpecker cartoon was in 1940, a year before
the honeymoon story...

http://www.toonopedia.com/woody.htm

I saw a Walter Lantz special where he recounted this tale,
but it may be just that... kind of like Newton and the apple.

>
> In a Los Angeles Times obituary (Wednesday, March 23, 1994) by staff
> writer David E. Brady, he mentions how Lantz and his new bride were on
> their 1941 honeymoon when inspiration came for one of his most popular
> cartoons of all time. He quotes Lantz describing how the Woody
> Woodpecker character came into existence. "We kept hearing this knock,
> knock, knock on the roof," Lantz told the Los Angeles Times in 1992.
> "And I said to Gracie, 'What the hell is that?' So I went out and
> looked, and here's this woodpecker drilling holes in the shingles. And
> we had asbestos shingles, not wood. So, to show you how smart these
> woodpeckers are, they'd peck a hole in the asbestos shingles and put
> in an acorn. A worm would develop in the acorn, and a week later the
> woodpecker would come back, get the acorn and fly away, letting out
> this noisy scream as he flew away." Gracie Lantz suggested adapting
> the bird as a cartoon character, although her husband later admitted
> he was skeptical of its potential."
>
> --
> Joseph Morlan, Pacifica, CA 94044: mailto:jmorlan at ccsf.org
> California Birding, mystery birds: http://fog.ccsf.org/~jmorlan/
> California Bird Records Committee: http://www.wfo-cbrc.org/cbrc/

--
Mike Patterson When I despair, I remember
Astoria, OR that all through history
celata at pacifier.com the way of truth and love have always won.
There have been tyrants, and murderers,
and for a time they can seem invincible,
but in the end they always fall.
Think of it...always.
- Mahatma Gandhi

http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html