Henpecked

Henpecked
The bear tells Oswald to not make any noise.
Directed by	Walter Lantz Bill Nolan
Story by	Walter Lantz Bill Nolan
Produced by	Walter Lantz
Starring	Pinto Colvig Walter Lantz
Music by	James Dietrich
Animation by	Bill Nolan Ray Abrams Manuel Moreno Clyde Geronimi Pinto Colvig
Color process	Black and white
Production company	Walter Lantz Productions
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	August 11, 1930 (1930-08-11)
Running time	6:34
Language	English

Henpecked is a 1930 animated short produced by Walter Lantz that features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.^[1]

Oswald is playing piano in his apartment room, singing a swing song. A bear from another room, who has been disturbed by the music, comes in and confronts him. When the bear opens the door, he sternly drags Oswald off the piano, choking him while his fingers are stuck on keys, and tells Oswald to quit playing and ensure silence. Oswald hesitantly agrees to the demands. A moment later, a frog from a glass bowl jumps out and lands on some piano keys before leaping out of the scene. In this, the bear picks up the piano and tosses it out of the window. Before the bruin leaves, he gives Oswald a reminder.

Hours later, Oswald receives a phone call. Speaking to him is a stray kitten who is a friend of his. The kitten is looking to visit Oswald and to bring in a pack of other stray kittens. Oswald rejects the offer because of the deal he made with his grumpy neighbor. Nevertheless, the stray kittens march and jump with joy (the movement of the jumping animation is mixed between two different frames of the jump, and a frame of the marching) on sidewalks and roads as one of the kittens in Walter Lantz's voice told the other strays to follow him.

To Oswald's dismay, they jump with joy and march inside the apartment and begin rough-housing. They jump on beds while yelling "whoopie" (as they later broke the bed making bed bugs, gibberish in chipmunk voices scramble out of the bed), perform acrobatics on chandeliers, catapult Oswald around with a blanket, and even one of the kittens opened Oswald's mouth by using his ears and another one puts an umbrella inside his mouth, making him acting like a balloon in the hallway. The umbrella was later hooked, and drags Oswald down to the ground making the umbrella come out of his mouth. As they are having their wild fun, one of them decides to play a prank on the bear by putting a clothes iron in the latter's trousers. Oswald tries to intervene but to no avail. The bear twitches in pain and frantically runs around before sitting in a bucket filled with water.

Minutes afterward, one of the stray kittens plays a trombone. As the tiny cat performs, the slide of his instrument starts striking the ceiling, and its impact is felt by the bear who is bathing straight upstairs. Eventually, the floor of the bathroom crumbles and collapses. The bruin plummets to the floor below and figures that this is the last straw.

Learning that they are in hot water, Oswald and the stray kittens lock themselves in an apartment room. Immediately, the bear comes up with a successful method of sucking them all under the door using a vacuum cleaner—including a mouse waiter who is holding some food with a cover on a plate, and Oswald (acting like Oswald's tongue goes through his body). The bear removes the vacuum bag and dumps it outside, where somehow it opens automatically. Although they are excluded, the stray kittens have had a good time and Oswald cannot believe it. When the stray cats see Oswald feeling dazed (moving his head all around in a circle), the stray cats sing Oswald's short theme to Oswald.

• Pinto Colvig as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit / the Bear
• Walter Lantz as the stray kittens

The second edition of Jeff Lenburg's Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons mistakenly mentions Hen Fruit as the working title for this short. Hen Fruit is in fact a 1929 Oswald cartoon. As a result, references to Henpecked were removed in the third edition.^[2]

• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit filmography

• Henpecked at the Big Cartoon Database
• Henpecked on YouTube