The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg is a 1936 Rainbow Parade cartoon featuring Felix the Cat. This is the first Felix cartoon in color. It was produced by Van Beuren Studios and distributed to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 7, 1936.
Plot[]
In a small, ancient coastal village, Felix the cat runs a charity where, from a counter overlooking the street, he serves each needy person a batch of gold coins. This gold comes from eggs laid by a yellow-feathered goose named Goldie. As each egg is laid and falls down a spiral gutter, she lets out a cry and counts it with a mechanical calculator. Felix passes each egg through a sort of mincer that cuts it into gold coins.
A dog, Captain Kidd, disguises himself as an old woman and mingle with the poor. Through the window, he discovers the source of the gold: Goldie. Despite his disguise dress, which keeps falling down, he knocks on the door and pretends to be poor to get in. But his dress falls down again, revealing his belt and pants. Felix realizes this, recognizes the pirate leader with his wooden leg, and barricades his door with a horizontal bar. The goose hides under a pillow (or at least, under his head). The pirate breaks down the door, which rotates around the block of wood, expelling Felix. The cat demands that he open the door. Then, the pirate violently swings the door around the bar again, with Felix clinging to it. The pirate, in space, grabs the struggling goose and places it in the pillowcase. Felix ends up being thrown onto Kidd. He wants to fight to save the goose, but the pirate stabs its tail with his dagger and sends it to the bottom of a clock. Felix, tied to two clock springs, leaves and returns like a cuckoo. He grabs onto a lamp and falls. The lamp also falls, but on top of him, and he finds himself carrying the candle.
Captain Kidd goes to his ship with the goose. There, he finds his crew, consisting of dogs and a fox, clinking glasses and singing. He announces that he has captured the goose that lays the golden eggs. With a cut of his saber, he opens a barrel of rum and pours its contents down their throats. The pirates weigh anchor: two fish kissing at the anchor are surprised and flee. Felix arrives too late. He paces back and forth, searching for a solution, while the pirate leader threatens the goose with his saber to make it lay its eggs. Felix discovers a cannon and this gives him an idea. He rips off his cat's tail to make it lay its eggs. He curls up inside the cannon until the explosion sends him flying toward the pirate ship. He arrives at the crucial moment when Kidd is ready to cut Goldie in two with his saber. Felix uses a halyard to swing toward the pirate and knocks him down. The pirates respond by throwing their mugs at Felix, but they get stuck in the cannon's mouth. The cat shoots at them, and the mugs cover their snouts. Goldie takes the opportunity to cut another halyard, causing the sail to fall onto the struggling, gagged pirates. Felix fires another shot from the cannon with a harpoon as a cannonball. The harpoon "sews" the edge of the sail, which transforms into a bag full of pirates. A cannonball from the cannon pushes and traps the bag at the top of an opening in the hold; a second cannonball knocks the bag inside and seals the access immediately after.
Kidd, having recovered from the shock, challenges Felix. Felix retreats and falls into a bottomless barrel. He uses it as armor, with one arm holding the saber through an opening. Kidd manages to destroy the barrel, but Felix continues to fervently defend his cat skin. During the duel, the two clashing sabers heat to a white glow; they eventually stick together. The blades fall and burn the deck. Captain Kidd grabs another saber and chases Felix through the ropes to the yardarm where the lookout barrel is located. Kidd threatens the cat with his saber. But the more agile cat takes refuge in the barrel. Kidd pierces it several times, cutting it in two, but sees no cat. Felix has slipped into the folds of the attached sail. Seeing it briefly appear, Kidd cuts sections of the yardarm where he thinks he will find it, until he cuts on the wrong side and begins to fall. He is momentarily caught in his fall by a hook. Felix descends by a rope. He sees Kidd fall again; He rushes to open the access to the cellar where Kidd fell and closes it again. Felix finds his beloved goose, who takes command of the boat, while sending all the pirates' gold to the town using the cannons. The shower of gold coins is collected by the delighted villagers with sacks and sheets. A street cleaner scoops up the gold with his shovel. A dog tries to retrieve some gold with his hat, but since it has a hole in it, the gold falls out, and a pig retrieves it in his pants. Felix and Goldie are carried in triumph by all the jubilant townspeople.
Songs[]
Trivia[]
- Besides the obvious addition of technicolor, the animation is much more lavish and polished than the B&W Felix cartoons.
- Felix is portrayed as a much younger character in this film than in the B&W cartoons.
- While not the first cartoon overall where Felix spoke, it's the first one where he actually speaks consistently and with intelligible dialogue.
- The story is a loose adaptation of the Aesop's Fable of the same name.
- Due to Van Beuren going belly up in 1936, the cartoons copyright has been expired for a long time. This and the other two Van Beuren Felix cartoons ended up becoming bargain bin VHS tape staples as a result of this.
- An unlicensed game based on the short released in 1998 for Famicom by Chinese bootleg video game company Dragon Co. See more here for information.