The Grasshopper and the Ants

Very good, one of the best shorts at Disney. With a great animation and fantastic morals. Highly recommend.

I give this animated short a 10/10. It's just so charming. I guess something about a grasshopper prancing around playing good fiddle music just warms the heart.

Despite the queen's warning, the ants accept the grasshopper out of the cold, showing their kind nature, something we should all strive for. The grasshopper also admits he is wrong, which is another important lesson. And when the queen says, "Now take your fiddle... and play!" that moment is perfect:

"I owe the world a living! I owe the world a living! I've been a fool all year long. Now I'm singing a different song! You were right; I was wrong!"

That just gets me all choked up.

Ya gotta love Disney.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

Winter is coming, but the GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS have very different ways of preparing for it. While the ants are diligently storing food, the Grasshopper is only dancing around & playing his fiddle. When the snows come, perhaps he'll play a different tune...

Aesop's Fables provided the source for this very enjoyable cartoon. The intricate labors of the ants give lots of interest for the eye. `Oh, The World Owes Us A Living', the Grasshopper's song, would eventually become, with a slight revision, the theme for Goofy; Pinto Colvig voiced both characters.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

A happy grasshopper dances into town (or undergrowth) playing his happy fiddle. A bunch of ants living in a nearby tree colony are busy syphoning off the treasures of a recently pilfered picnic as the grasshopper takes one of them aside to groom. The ant queen turns up and warns him not be such a carefree renegade as winter is coming soon.

Sure enough, winter does come very quickly and the happy grasshopper is freezing and starving in the snow before he comes knocking on the door of the warm, well-fed ant colony where they nurse him back to health.

Underlying message of the cartoon: if you fail at life just wait until someone gives you a handout.

Just watched this Disney Silly Symphony on YouTube. In this one, a grasshopper fiddles away singing, "The World Owes Us a Living" while the worker ants prepare for the winter storage. The queen of them warns the grasshopper of what will happen if the grasshopper doesn't prepare himself but he pays her no mind. Then the blizzard comes...If the voice of the grasshopper sounds familiar, that's because it's the same one that will voice the eventually popular Goofy: Pinto Colvig. He provides ample charm here despite his character being somewhat lazy in nature. And when he does learn his lesson, he changes the words to reflect that learning. I'm sure the Depression audience that watched this in theatres came away with that attitude as well and possibly whistled that tune going out. Uncle Walt himself probably liked it as well since it became-with a few note changes-Goofy's theme as well. So on that note, I highly recommend The Grasshopper and the Ants.