Mechanical Man

Mechanical Man
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series
Screenshot
Directed by	Walter Lantz Bill Nolan
Produced by	Walter Lantz
Story by	Walter Lantz Bill Nolan
Music by	James Dietrich
Animation by	Manuel Moreno Lester Kline Ray Abrams Fred "Tex" Avery Vet Anderson
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	February 15, 1932 (1932-02-15)
Color process	Black and white
Running time	6:13
Language	English
Preceded by	Grandma's Pet
Followed by	Wins Out

Mechanical Man is a cartoon short by Walter Lantz that features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It is the 54th Oswald short by Lantz and the 107th in the entire series.

Plot

The cartoon begins inside a house. In there, Oswald and a living female rag doll were enjoying together, playing a piano. On their instrument are a dancing candle stand and two mice playing the accordion.

The scene moves to a laboratory a few miles away. A mad scientist was completing construction of a robot and activates it. To the scientist's dismay, the robot began swinging punches at him. Able to dodge all the robot's attacks, the mad scientist stopped the humanoid machine with a punch of his own. He soon learned that his creation needed one more thing, a heart.

Back in Oswald's place, the two friends decided to play hide-and-seek. Oswald was "it" and the doll became the one to hide. While the rabbit was counting, his playmate has yet to look for a hiding place. Without a warning, the doll gets captured through an opened window by the mad scientist who then leaves a sack inside, and flees. Convinced that the doll was hiding in the sack, Oswald approached and opened it. To his amusement, what came out was a marching flute player. Following that, the rabbit tried to look for his friend but could not. Hopefully, Oswald wasn't left without a clue when he noticed a strand of thread on the window sill. (The thread was actually the trousers of the mad scientist who will later appear in spotted shorts.).

At the laboratory, the mad scientist had the doll wedged in a vise and plans to perform surgery on her, i.e. take out her heart and put it in the robot. But before he could start, the nefarious inventor learns that someone arrived at his place. That someone turned out to be Oswald who reached the lab by following the strand of thread.

As Oswald knocked on the laboratory's front door, a trap was activated, causing him to fall into a shoot which leads to the basement. In an attempt to slaughter Oswald, the mad scientist waits for the little rabbit's arrival at other end of the shoot, planning to swing an ax. The mad scientist swings but misses. From there, the chase begins.

In looking for a place to hide, Oswald enter a door labeled "exit." Less than ten seconds later, he got out. Coming out of the door also was a disturbed skeleton who replaces the door sign with "private" and goes back in.

Running through the corridors of the laboratory, Oswald hoped he wouldn't be confronted by another bizarre creature. While approaching an intersection, he saw something white popping in and out of the left corner. For his defense, Oswald picks up a nearby urn. There was indeed a skeleton innocently standing by the left corner, but the mad scientist, who was coming from the corridor in that direction, pulled it away, and walks into the intersection. Upon seeing what entered his hallway, Oswald tosses the urn. The mad scientist was strucked right in head and was knocked cold. Oswald finds a rope and ties one end of it around his enemy's leg, the other end around a lion's tail. The lion ran in place and the mad scientist was held above the floor.

Oswald, at last, found the chamber where the doll was held. He loosens the vise and frees her.

Copyright status

The copyright for Mechanical Man expired in 1960. Therefore it is in the public domain.^[1] A number of Oswald shorts and other cartoons produced by Walter Lantz Production also ended up in similar status.^[2]

Adaptations

Other animators created their versions of this story. The characters that starred in those versions include: Mickey Mouse, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid and Flip the Frog.

See also

• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit filmography

References

1. ^ "The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia: 1932". The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia. http://lantz.goldenagecartoons.com/1932.html. Retrieved 2011-06-08. 
2. ^ "The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia: List of Shorts in the Public Domain". The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia. http://lantz.goldenagecartoons.com/publicdomain.html. Retrieved 2011-06-08. 

External links

• Mechanical Man at the Big Cartoon Database