There is no copy today of Ride ’em Plowboy, an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon released on this day in 1928, but fortunately production materials and storyboards survive. We turned to animation expert and Oswald enthusiast expert David Gerstein for his analysis of the short. “Ride ’em Plowboy is a classic farmyard story with Oswald as boss of a farm, managing hens, a rooster and a cow,” he says. “Some of its gags were reused from earlier Disney cartoons: When the rooster coaches a hen in egg-laying, he mimicked Julius the Cat as egg overseer in the earlier Alice’s Egg Plant. But Ride ’em Plowboy also included new gimmicks that Walt would reuse later. It featured the first Disney tornado scene, anticipating Mickey’s Band Concert. It also included scenes of characters performing farm tasks to music — even though Plowboy was itself still a silent cartoon. Another example of Walt always looking ahead.”
