There *is* a potential consistency here -- perhaps Walter and
Gracie were at the cabin together well *before* their honeymoon.
He couldn't resist telling the story, but had to make it sound
respectable.

If this juicy story shows up in the tabloids, you didn't get it
from me...

Jim McCoy
jfmccoy at earthlink.net
Redmond, WA



-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Patterson [mailto:celata at pacifier.com]
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 9:35 PM
To: ipaulsen at krl.org; BIRDCHAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Cc: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [BIRDCHAT] Woody Woodpecker (fwd)


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