Swing Shift Cinderella 1945

The short opens with the Wolf, Frank Graham in hot pursuit of the Big Bad Wolf, while the action briefly pivots to the comic misdirection of the moment: the chase involves Little Red Riding Hood, Sara Berner, who instantly calls out that they’re in the wrong cartoon. This meta-joke sets a playful, self-aware tone that nods to another Avery gag released earlier in the year, The Screwy Truant. The Wolf shoos her away and decides to go meet Cinderella, a figure voiced in this world by Imogene Lynn for the singing portion, and he heads off by taxi with a goofy determination to win her over.

Cinderella proves more than a match for him, calmly rebuffing his advances, and before long the constellations of trouble tighten as Cinderella phones for help. She summons her Fairy Godmother, a lively guide who arrives with dramatic flair. The Fairy Godmother, Sara Berner, wastes little time trapping the Wolf, then grants Cinderella a striking red evening gown and magically transforms a pumpkin into a Woodie so she can attend the ball—yet she makes the clock’s midnight deadline a strict condition. The Godmother’s exuberant charm becomes the cartoon’s engine, and her over-the-top personality quickly steals the spotlight as she schemes to keep the Wolf busy.

What follows is a rapid-fire series of comic antics. The Fairy Godmother shows up wearing an old-fashioned 1890s swimsuit—“Miss Repulsive 1898”—then switches into an elegant gown, all while trying to snuggle up to the Wolf on the couch. She chases him all around Cinderella’s house, but the Wolf cleverly slips away when he swipes her wand and turns Cinderella’s bathtub into a convertible. He gallops off to the nightclub where Cinderella is performing, with the Fairy Godmother in hot pursuit. In one hilarious mix-up, the Wolf kisses the Fairy Godmother, thinking she’s Cinderella, an odd moment that only deepens the Godmother’s own rampant infatuation and adds to the chaos of the chase.

On stage, Cinderella herself appears to perform a show dance and belts out a playful number, “Oh Wolfie,” sung to the tune of “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!” The Wolf roams the nightclub with a howling pursuit, while the smitten Fairy Godmother uses a variety of improvised tools—often a mallet—to keep him from spiraling out of control. The mood swings between slapstick and surreal as the chase swirls toward its crucial deadline.

When midnight finally looms, the Fairy Godmother warns Cinderella to depart, and the inevitable chase resumes as the Wolf presses the pursuit. This time, the Wolf’s ingenuity plays against the Godmother, who becomes the target of his own trickery in a reversal of roles. Cinderella rushes home just in time, and the twist lands with a wink: she is revealed to be Rosie the Riveter, and the reason she must be home by midnight is so she won’t be late for the night shift at Lockweed. Relief mixes with a touch of irony as the stage is set for the closing gag: a bus full of wolves pulls up, wolf-whistling and catcalling as the cartoon ends, leaving the impression of a world where fairy-tale logic collides headlong with modern hustle and cheeky self-awareness.