November 20, 1942 – The Pluto Short Film Pluto at the Zoo is Released to Theaters
On November 20, 1942, the Pluto short film Pluto at the Zoo was released to theaters. It was directed by Clyde Geronimi.
Pluto is walking happily down the street, holding a small bone in his mouth, when he passes by the zoo. He sees a massive bone sitting idle next to a sleeping lion, and his mouth starts to water. Throwing his tiny bone into the trash, he sneaks into the zoo in the hopes of stealing the bone from the lion. As he grabs it, the lion sleepily moves his paw on top of the bone and Pluto, and Pluto struggles to get free with the bone. As he makes a break for it with the bone, he nearly wakes up the lion. Although he avoids waking the lion, he struggles with how to take it out of the cage, until he decides to dig his way out under the wall. Unfortunately, he ends up waking the lion after tunneling out, and escapes into the kangaroo pen.
After the joey steals Pluto’s bone, he uses it to attack the dog
In the kangaroo pen, Pluto is about to chew on the bone when it suddenly disappears. He suspects the sleeping kangaroo, unaware that it was the joey in her pouch that stole it from him. The joey keeps hitting Pluto with the bone, and he tries to retrieve it while the joey laughs. Pluto accidentally wakes up the kangaroo, and is kicked over the fence – with the bone – into the gorilla cage. Pluto faints at the sight of the gorilla, and the gorilla tries to revive him, but ends up having more fun playing with Pluto, treating him like a toy. Pluto is then sent into the pond nearby, and comes face to face with an alligator. He narrowly escapes being eaten, and runs back inside the zoo so fast that he removes the feathers from a peacock and the stripes from a tiger. In the end, he ends up back in the lion’s cage, and uses the bone to stop the lion from eating him, retrieving his tiny bone from the trash on his way home.
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