Following the practice of the Studio, other storymen submitted suggestions
for the prepared cartoon as well as critical feedback. The most important
were those of Dick Creedon, co-author of the script for the unproduced
cartoon, «Morgan's Ghost». Creedon's major criticism was that
Barks had departed too drastically from previous shorts by making
Tanglefoot, not Mickey, the hero. In a memo to Barks he wrote, "Rather
than making the horse very clever and a hero (save by accident), I'd leave
the smart stuff and heroics for Mickey. You'll get more comedy out of both
Mickey and the horse if the horse becomes the chief obstacle to the rescue
(like the drunken horse in 'Steeplechase')"
Barks left Mickey relatively undeveloped and as a consequence his parody of
the heroic rescue often fell flat. Creedon: "We need business that will make
Mickey look
The strength of Disney animation was that its humor derived from the
establishment of distinctive personalities. However, Barks did not develop
Mickey sufficiently as a character to make him funny. Creedon: "There is
little in the board which builds Mickey's do-or-die determination to get
his man and rescue Minnie. He just keeps sitting on his horse. Could you
think of any quick situations where Mickey, thwarted, calls on his courage
and resourcefulness to keep him going? The gag of crossing the chasm on the
log is in the right direction."
Creedon noted that Barks overemphasized the chase and rescue sequences, and
did not sufficiently establish the personality of his characters beforehand,
noting that "I'm usually a bit skeptical, pessimistic, about the possibility
of getting belly laughs out of a chase or
Creedon suggested a number of ideas for embellishing the characters'
personalities before the chase sequence, such as establishing Pete as a
terrible menace to heighten the drama afterwards; showing Mickey's romance
with Minnie to make his later ardor comprehensible; and developing the
exaggerated affection between Mickey and his horse to augment the parody of
the Mountie hero.
Barks himself has criticized «Northwest Mounted» for having too
many wild and implausible gags. Because he was unfamiliar with animation he
had not yet learned how to "gag" a cartoon in a plausible way. In October 2,
1983 notes written for The Carl Barks Library, Barks said: "At the time I
thought Mickey was an interesting character and practically unlimited in the
impossible things he could do. I was new to cartoon comedy and had seen only
a few movie cartoons up to that time. I didn't know how much of a character's
actions should be justified or made logical, or whether any sort of inkwell
trick was acceptable. Mickey and Black Pete were almost strangers to me. I
assumed they could do anything, as long as it translated into amusing
action."
Barks recalls one sequence in particular that was criticized for its
implausibility. In the first version of the story Pete, Mickey, and
Tanglefoot confront each other, and Pete makes his move: he slips a knife
from behind the hood of his parka and throws it with a deadly "ZIP!" It
barely misses Tanglefoot, clipping the end of his tail. This is immediately
followed, zip, zip, zip, with a series of knives, one after
The audience at this point would surely think there would be no more knives.
The last one, in fact, strikes Tanglefoot's saddle, scaring him into kicking
a barrelful of frozen codfish with a mighty "CRAK!" The barrel hits Pete
headlong and, with a resounding "SPLAT", breaks open, showering him with
frozen fish. Pete rises in anger and points his arms straight out like
cannons once
Forty-seven years after drawing this longish sequence Barks still remembered
being criticized for it. In an 1982 interview by Bruce Hamilton in the Disney
Archives, Barks wryly commented: "They didn't think much of it." Walt Disney
himself was critical of such gags. In the October 2, 1983 notes written for
The Carl Barks Library, Barks said: "My ideas were pretty wild and too
illogical for Walt's taste, so he had me put into a story room with Harry
Reeves, who had much experience in what could and couldn't be used in animation
comedy."
By making Tanglefoot the hero, Barks further undermined Mickey's role as protagonist. As mentioned previously, Tanglefoot, not Mickey, defeats Pete, and by the end of the fight the Mountie is relegated to the role of a bystander who orchestrates his horse's actions from the sidelines. For instance, Mickey motions to Tanglefoot, who kicks the helpless Pete into the Mountie's outstretched handcuffs and we see the manacled villain slumped on the ground in defeat, crying like a baby. Mickey has become relatively gratuitous at this point, supplanted by his horse who has become both the hero and comedian of the story.
The result of this unusual reversal of roles between a cowboy and his horse is less a parody of the hero than a subversion of his traditional role, as is clearly seen in the ending. Most Mickey films conclude by showing Minnie's rescue by Mickey and her reward of a kiss. Barks radically departed from this convention by shifting the focus to Tanglefoot. Instead of the Mickey-Minnie cliché, we see Tanglefoot, a flapjack hanging from his mouth, listening to the mice kiss offscreen. Then Tanglefoot sucks the griddle cake into his mouth like spaghetti and the story ends with an "iris in" on the horse's contented smile as he chews the flapjack. By focusing on Tanglefoot's mania for food and disinterest in heroics, the ending of the story seems to offer a comment on the ridiculous juxtaposition of Mickey's rescue of and romance with Minnie and his horse's love of flapjacks.
In Tanglefoot, there's a glimmer of the ambiguous and very human character
Donald would later become: foolish and self-centered, but also loyal, brave,
and
In 1938, Barks attended a story conference for another unproduced cartoon, titled «Tanglefoot». Barks was probably called in because of his previous work on the character in «Northwest Mounted».
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