Short Subject: Early to Bed (1941)

“Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” 

That’s the proverb Donald quotes and is it any wonder he spends the rest of the short getting no sleep at all?  Now this came out the very same year as ‘A Good Time for a Dim’e and also has Donald as a one man show and yet I enjoyed this short so much more, why is that?  I think first off there is a greater variety of gags here than in the other short.  There is the malfunctioning machines again with the alarm clock, but there is also a broader range of animation with Donald yanking the strings of the exercise straps trying to and get the clock out after he’s showed it, and then going straight through the wall where we get a visual gag of Whistler’s Mother.  The bed also malfunctions, but again that is enhanced by Donald turning the light on and off so we hear the sound effects of the bed breaking before we see what happened.  Beyond things malfunctioning though we get the pillow exploding in feathers and Donald hitting his head on the top of the bed.  Also I like that Donald is in a night shirt and cap for this short, sometimes just providing a change of wardrobe for a character is enough to peak my interest. 

I have to say the only negative for this short is the ending.  Not that the joke of Donald’s bed exploding and the blanket, sock, and what’s left of the mattress forming a snake charming get up isn’t funny it is, it’s just that it’s immediately followed by the iris out and the short is over. It’s seems it didn’t so much end as it just stopped.  If the ending with pieces of the alarm clock coming together to go off, as it did here, but then it was revealed that Donald had been up all night trying to go to sleep I think it would have fit better.  Still since I like 90% of this short I’m going to call it good even if I think the ending should have wrapped up the short more as opposed to being so abrupt.