Wide Open Spaces is a Donald Duck cartoon that was originally released on September 12, 1947.
Synopsis[]
The show opens with Donald traveling through the countryside in the middle of the night. Tired of driving all day, he pulls up at the "Hold Up Motel" to get some rest. His tiredness makes him initially accept sleeping outside on a cot on the porch after the Motel owner tells him that there are no rooms left, up until the man states that using the cot would cost $16. This shocks Donald and so he angrily knots the Motel owner's arm, only to get kicked back into his car by him.
Without shelter, Donald drives his car to a spot in the wilderness where he decides to set up an air mattress and finally get some sleep. After a few struggles to pump up the mattress, Donald inflates it by blowing on it before he lays down to sleep. As soon as he does that, a lump bumps up on his belly, which is caused by a small rock beneath the mattress. Angered, he grabs the rock and throws it away on the top of a pinned hill, but while falling down the rock causes a chain reaction which ultimately sends a huge boulder towards Donald, who gets in his car and tries to drive away, but the boulder crashes the vehicle against a tree comically turning it into a vintage car-looking wreck. Donald lays on the mattress and falls asleep, only to drag himself by his beak and drop to the bottom of the river where he momentarily sleeps with a large fish that draws his head near its jaws every time it inhales, before waking up and rushing back to the surface, much to the fish's astonishment.
Towards the end of the night, Donald finally gets some sleep, when he's annoyed by the springy branch of a nearby pine that keeps hitting him. Frustrated, Donald blocks the branch by vertically inserting a dry stick and falls asleep on the mattress with no more hassles. Just when everything seemed settled down, the dry branch springs its grip unblocking the pine's branch, which wobbles up and down violently while hitting the handle of the pump (which hose was still connected to the mattress' valve), causing Donald's mattress to get excessively inflated and it floats up until disconnecting from the pump and deflating away in the air while Donald is still sleeping.
As the air mattress deflates in mid-air, it propels back to the Hold-Up Motel landing right on its porch's cot. The owner comes out and believing that Donald has spent the entire night on the cot, he asks him the $16, which Donald absently gives. Right after paying, the time for using the cot expires so the Motel owner kicks Donald out of the porch making him lie down on a nearby cactus. Despite being embraced by the cactus' prickly arms, Donald continues to sleep.
Characters[]
- Donald Duck (voiced by Clarence Nash)
- Owner of Motel (voiced by Billy Bletcher)
Releases[]
Films[]
- Donald Duck Goes West (1965)
Television[]
- Walt Disney's Mickey and Donald, episode #19
- Donald Takes a Holiday
- Donald's Quack Attack, episode #37
Home video[]
VHS
- Walt Disney Cartoon Classics: Volume 2 - Here's Donald!
Laserdisc
- Walt Disney Cartoon Classics: Here's Donald! / Here's Goofy!
DVD
- Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald, Volume 3
Trivia[]
- The $16 stay at the porch back in 1947 converts to $199.42 in the year 2021.
- Donald's post-wreck car looks like a 1910s Ford Model T.
Gallery[]
