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Goofus: a Latin declension of the middle-class Disney mutt, best known for his unbuttoned longjohns and his stammering, guttural dim-wittedness. McPherson: the lovesick, necrophiliac cop played by Dana Andrews in Laura. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Walt Disney hired Otto Preminger to remake his own noir as a cartoon, a sort of animated True-Life Adventure. Or that Otto Preminger, opting for an animated remake himself, farmed out part of the work to the Disney studio, which took it upon itself to undermine the class status of Detective Lt. Mark McPherson by turning this gumshoe into a bourgeois fall guy and a dumb-ass canine to boot, meanwhile converting the Vincent Price character into some version of Lumpjaw the Bear, who was even dumber than Goofy, and which suggests refashioning Gene Tierney in the title role of the sweet missy as Lulabelle.
So what role would Lydecker have play in the life and adventures of Goofus McPherson? I’m afraid the project never even reached that stage. One might even say it was a genuine case of Goofus interruptus. What caused the whole thing to be shelved was an acrimonious debate that arose during one story conference regarding whether or not McPherson would be allowed to have a pet dog. This brought up the ongoing Disney taboo against conflicting paradigms, whereby Goofy and Pluto were forbidden to appear in the same cartoons. Allowing Pluto, an unclothed house pet on all fours with no command of English, to appear alongside Goofy, a clothed, English-speaking, two-legged and even property-owning canine, would raise all sorts of difficult class and race issues. (By significant contrast, Tex Avery‘s Droopy, the cool eye in the center of a hurricane, always appears highly civilized, whether clothed or unclothed.) Furthermore, Goofy, as we’ve just noted, was permitted to smoke, while the very prospect of allowing Pluto to do the same—or even of lighting up a cigarette for him, assuming that his paws couldn’t handle the task—would have been unthinkable. Even obscene.
