Golden Age of American Animation - Walter Lantz Productions

Walter Lantz Productions

In 1929 Walter Lantz replaced Charles Mintz as producer of Universal Studios cartoons. Lantz's main character at this time was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whose earlier cartoons had been produced by both Walt Disney and Charles Mintz. Lantz also started to experiment with color cartoons, and the first one, called Jolly Little Elves, was released in 1934. In 1935 Lantz made his studio independent from Universal Studios, and Universal Studios was now only the distributors of his cartoons, instead of the direct owners.

In the 1940s Oswald began to lose popularity. Lantz and his staff worked on several ideas for possible new cartoon characters (among them Meany, Miny, and Moe and Baby-Face Mouse). Eventually one of these characters clicked; his name was Andy Panda, who aired in Technicolor. However successful Andy was, it was not until the character's fifth cartoon, Knock Knock that a real breakthrough character was introduced. This was none other than Woody Woodpecker, who become Lantz's most successful creation.

Walter Lantz Studio closed at the end of 1948 due to financial problems. It opened again in 1950 with a downsized staff, mainly because Lantz was able to sign a deal with Universal (by this time now known as Universal-International) for more Woody Woodpecker cartoons, starting with 1951's Puny Express. The character would continue to appear in theatrical shorts until 1972, when Lantz finally closed his studio. Luckily for Lantz Woody Woodpecker's survival was lengthened when he started appearing in The Woody Woodpecker Show from 1957 to 1958, from which it entered syndication until 1966. NBC revived the show twice—in 1970 and 1976, and finally in 1985 Lantz sold all of the Woody Woodpecker shorts to Universal, then part of MCA.