Fresh Laid Plans (1951)

Sponsors: Harding College
Production: John Sutherland Productions
Animation: Arnold Gillespie, Armin Shaffer, Pete Burness, Carl Urbano
Direction: George Gordon
Music: Paul J. Smith
Voices: Bea Benederet, Daws Butler, Pinto Colvig, Joseph Kearns
Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

A comedy of errors befalls a chicken community as a result of trying an owl-professor's "crackpot" ideas on price guarantees, farm payment, consumer subsidies, rationing, black market policing and taxation to pay the costs.

The main character of this animated short is the politically minded owl, Dr. Owsley Hoot. Brainchild of one time Disney employee John Sutherland, Fresh Laid Plans caused quite a stir when it was released, as many farmers saw it as knocking President Truman's Brannan Plan, which offered federal support of farm prices. Humanized fowl - a duck grocer, a rooster policeman, a hen housewife, all residents of Eggvill - are the characters. Into Eggville, where the feathered populace is complaining of high prices and low wages, comes Dr. Owsley Hoot, who talks himself into the mayor's job.

His "planned economy," he promises, will bring prosperity to all. The new mayor displays a portfolio filled with "plans" labeled WPA, subsidies, price control and other familiar alphabet combinations. When the execution of all these plans leads to disaster, the populace runs Mayor Hoot out of town. Apparently he is spared a worse fate only because he already wears feathers and a barrel of tar is not handy.