Walter Lantz (1899-1994) is best known for creating the popular cartoon character Woody Woodpecker. Lantz’s first cartoon creation to star in his own series, Dinky Doodle, was introduced in 1924. Like Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series, the Dinky Doodle films hinge on the interaction between an artist (played by Lantz himself) and his cartoon characters: a scampish boy named Dinky Doodle and his anthropomorphic pet dog Weakheart (a pun on the name of 1920s canine film star Strongheart). Although their surreal humour was reportedly popular with contemporary audiences, the series proved short lived. In the penultimate film, The Magician, Dinky Doodle and Weakheart (or Pipifax and Knurr, as they’re called in the surviving German print) must evade a wicked witch, after Lantz abandons them in the countryside as a punishment for their pranks. Censors’ records indicate that the German distributor falsely credited Felix the Cat creator Pat Sullivan as animator of the Dinky Doodle films, thus explaining why Lantz’s on-screen character is confusingly named “Pat Sullivan” here.

Oliver Hanley