August 9, 1946 – The Donald Duck Short Film Wet Paint is Released to Theaters
“Why, that dirty…”
On August 9, 1946, the Donald Duck short film Wet Paint was released to theaters. It was directed by Jack King, with story by Roy Williams.
A beautiful day finds Donald painting his car a nice red color. As he turns to get more paint, a bird flies by, accidentally catching her string on the car’s hood ornament. She flies down to retrieve it, and gets her feet stuck on the paint of the car. As she walks away, she leaves a trail of footprints behind. Donald notices and irritably paints over the prints, accidentally painting his windshield and not realizing he’s leaving his own marks. The bird watches Donald curiously, and Donald chases after it before angrily realizing that he’s left hand prints all over the new paint job. The bird gets her string caught in the car’s antenna, which hits Donald and ends up with him tied on the car. Donald gets out and throws a paintbrush fill of paint at the bird, who cleans herself off in the paint remover before shaking herself dry over the car, ruining the new paint job. She grabs a string from a hole in the front seat and flies off, but pulls out all of the stuffing in the process when Donald tries to grab the string back, giving the car a final “sheepdog” look.
Donald manages to remove the stuffing from the car, but finds the bird in the tailpipe. The bird spies another string, but Donald prevents her from taking it. The string, however, is an exposed wire, which shocks Donald and sends him bouncing among the paint cans. His tail covered in paint, he ends up giving the car a splotchy tie-dye paint job. Fed up, he chases after the bird once more, and accidentally sends the car zooming across the yard, where it crashes and loses its paint job. The bird finally takes a string from Donald’s hat, unraveling it. Angered, he chases after her with an axe and begins to chop down her tree, when she sees her nest and babies. Softened, he lets her keep the string, and the birds congregate on his head.
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