morrison-dylan-fan With having found Walt Disney's 1921 Laugh-O-Grams to be surprisingly fun,I decided that with a poll being held on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best films of 1934,that I would take a look at a short from that year.Getting caught completely by surprise,I found out that Disney had made a short in 1934,which featured Donald Ducks debut! This led to me getting ready to find out how wise this hen could be.The plot:Gathering up all of her chick-lets,a hen begins walking round town,hoping to find someone who will help her farm the corn,so that she can have dinner with her chick-lets tonight.Visiting Donald Duck & Peter Pig,the hen is sad to find both of them suddenly becoming "ill" when she asks for their help.With their being no one else around,the hen and her chick-lets decide that they must farm the corn themselves.View on the film:Delivering the first of his landmark performances as the character,debuting Clarence Nash shows that he is far ahead of the animators (who make Donald's head a size 0!) by giving a superb performance which hits all of the wild notes that Donald would soon become famous for.Along with Nash, Florence Gill gives a strong performance as the Wise Little Hen,with Gill showing a remarkable skill in saying the dialogue sung.Giving the hen a sweet,rosy appearance,director Wilfred Jackson creates a wonderful atmosphere by using acrylic colours to give the film a forgotten nursery rhyme feel,and also keeping things lively with sight guys such as Donald Duck & Peter Pig dancing round the "Idle Hour" building,which leads to this being a wise hen,and a very wise film.

TheLittleSongbird This is a gem. The animation is beautiful, with lovely colourful backgrounds and the character animation is very good. The music was brilliant, very playful and jolly, and the theme tune somewhat reminds me of that for Peculiar Penguins. The characters are engaging, with the exception of Peter Pig, whose presence seemed unnecessary at times. The hen of the title is fun, the chicks are ADORABLE(I know I keep using this word, but most of the silly symphonies are), but what makes this short for me is the presence of Donald Duck, voiced by the one and only Ducky Nash. Everything else was fine, but my favourite duck's presence elevates this gem to a greater level.Two words for this- wonderful gem! 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

Shawn Watson The 'Silly Symphony', The Wise Little Hen feels more like one of those huge, books with thick cardboard pages you read to infants in order to help them learn basic words and morals. It may be notable for the first appearance of Donald Duck (in a supporting role) but the rest of it is mainly annoying.I seriously do not like the Peter Pig character and I do not ever want to see him again. He was fat and rude with a rubbish voice. And the mother hen had this irritating gimmick of clucking out certain words.The story goes that the Hen and her chicks need help planting her corn. Pete and Donald pretend to be ill but once the corn grows (no thanks to them) they feel well enough to eat it. Too bad the hen is only serving them Castor oil.Hope the lesson isn't too subtle.

Ron Oliver A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.Worried about having enough food to feed her family come Wintertime, THE WISE LITTLE HEN decides to plant a field of corn. Her idle friends, Peter Pig & Donald Duck, decline to help with the planting or the harvesting - leaving the little chicken to plan her sweet revenge...This is a very fine adaptation of the childhood story, with a strong, self-reliant title character (voiced by Florence Gill). But the reason this is a landmark cartoon is because it was the debut of the irascible, anti-social, temperamental, infuriating & utterly lovable Duck, a character so strong he would soon eclipse Mickey Mouse himself. With voice courtesy of the inimitable Clarence Nash, Donald would become one of the world's most popular personalities & a source of never-ending fascination for those who study anti-social behavior and its consequences.Fate would not be so kind to Peter Pig. Although his debut was just as conspicuous as the Duck's, he lacked that certain intangible quality which would set him apart from the common swine. Hollywood can be a cruel place & Peter's attempts to build a movie career - he worked for a while as Porky Pig's stunt double - proved a failure. When last heard of, Peter Pig was living in a small apartment over a garage in Pomona, California.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.