''All in a Nutshell'' is a
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
animated
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...
short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
produced by
Walt Disney Productions
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
and originally released on 1949 by
RKO Radio Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orphe ...
in
Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...
.
Plot
In this short,
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
is the sole-proprietor of a roadside
nut butter
A nut butter is a spreadable foodstuff made by grinding nuts into a paste. The result has a high fat content and can be spread like true butter, but is otherwise unrelated. Nut butters include:
* Acorn butter
* Almond butter
* Cashew butter
...
stand called "Don's Nut Butter". The stand is in the shape of a giant walnut that looks actual. Donald begins the day by placing a bucket of nuts into a hopper that will extract the nut from the shell and crush the nut into a butter. The machine starts a conveyor belt of jars and as they pass under the hopper, the jars are filled. Donald is waiting at the end of the line to label and cap the jars and place them on his shelves commenting that, "These will sell like hot cakes". Donald soon realizes his machine is out of nuts and he must go out to gather more.
As he leaves through a backdoor he notices
Chip 'n' Dale
Chip and Dale (also spelled Chip 'n' Dale) is a cartoon duo of anthropomorphic chipmunks created in 1943 by The Walt Disney Company.
Concept
The characters were first drawn by Bill Justice and introduced in the 1943 Pluto short ''Private P ...
gathering nuts for the coming winter season. Donald observes the tree they store the nuts in, knocks on the tree to see if anyone's there, then drills a hole in the trunk which fills up his bucket. Donald then happily returns to his stand to start the process again. Chip and Dale fall through the drilled hole only to see their nuts scattered along the ground that Donald spilled as he left. As they gather back up their nuts, Dale sees Donald's stand and faints at the sight of this gigantic nut. Chip revives his friend and he himself marvels at the colossal nut, believing it to be an actual one. The two can only imagine at all the meat waiting inside the shell and set about different ways to crack it. Finally the duo get a boulder to roll down hill and crack the top of the stand which alerts Donald who runs out the backdoor looking for the source of the sound.
The chipmunks then peer in through the hole in the top and observe Donald's process. They remove a jar from a shelf and, after sampling the butter, quickly decide to take all the jars for their harvest. As they start removing the jars, Dale notices the hopper filling more jars. He removes a jar and sits on the conveyor belt allowing it to fill him with butter. After doing this several times he rides to the end of the line where Donald absent-mindedly labels him and puts a lid on him. Chip removes him thinking he is a jar and bops him on the head for playing around. The two return to removing more jars until Dale forgets to pick up one which falls onto Donald alerting him of the theft.
He sticks his head through the opening at the top where the chipmunks trap him by the neck with branches. Donald watches Dale use his conveyor belt to remove finished jars of nut butter from his stand. Donald then gets angry and frees himself as the chipmunks make their escape. Donald gives chase evading several hazards placed in his way. Eventually Chip and Dale make it back to their tree which Donald runs into, knocking himself out in the process. Using nutshells as helmets, the two chipmunks run outside and peel Donald off the tree. Donald becomes stiff and they carry him to a fallen tree overlooking a cliff. They load him into the tree as if they were loading an army gun of the era. Dale uses a stick that looks like a
sword
A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed ti ...
to cut a
hornet's nest which falls into an open hole in the tree. Both then cover their ears as a simulated "firing" of the gun blasts Donald out over the cliff. The chipmunks run to the end of the tree and watch Donald fall into the river, with a "
Goofy yell" added for effect. They then remove their nut shell helmets and bow their heads for a moment of silence before laughing and dancing in victory.
Voice cast
* Donald Duck:
Clarence Nash
Clarence Charles "Ducky" Nash (December 7, 1904 – February 20, 1985) was an American voice actor. He was best known as the original voice of the Disney cartoon character Donald Duck. He was born in the rural community of Watonga, Oklahoma, and ...
* Chip:
Jimmy MacDonald
* Dale: Dessie Flynn
Home media
The short was released on December 11, 2007, on ''
Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald, Volume Three: 1947-1950''.
References
External links
*
{{Chip 'n' Dale in animation
Donald Duck short films
1940s Disney animated short films
1949 animated films
1949 films
Films directed by Jack Hannah
Films produced by Walt Disney
Films scored by Oliver Wallace
Chip 'n' Dale films