The Case of the Elephant's Trunk

Inspector Willoughby, the famed criminologist and master of mystery, travels to India to aid a rajah whose favorite royal elephant has been abducted by an evil swami. Encouraged at the prospect of a large reward, our heroic sleuth is hot in pursuit of the princely pachyderm and his kidnapper. Willoughby discovers the thief's hideout quite accidentally when he hears an elephant's trumpet and inquires at a nearby home, "Pardon me, are there any stolen elephants in there?" The swami uses some ancient magic to dissuade the Inspector from his mission. Most notably, he performs the famous Indian rope trick, which Willoughby falls over, literally. Each time that the swami sends the rope climbing skyward, the Inspector follows and ends up crashing to the ground. The swami then conceals the elephant inside a small steamer trunk (quite a neat trick in itself), but Willoughby locates the royal pet by singing the elephant's mating call and is rewarded with a big, wet kiss from the animal's trunk. The swami succeeds once more in making off with the elephant, but his plan to feed Willoughby to a hungry alligator backfires, though, and the thief ends up in the reptile's jaws instead. In the end, the cagey Inspector tracks the elephant (with some help from a bag of peanuts) and returns him to his grateful master.

Characters[]

Notes[]

MeTV aired a NTSC master from the 90s of the cartoon on Saturday Morning Cartoons, which is the same one aired by CTC in Russia.
First and only Willoughby short under the "Universal Pictures" banner.
Final appearance of Inspector Willoughby.
Final Willoughby short directed by Paul Smith.
The final Lantz short that doesn’t star Woody Woodpecker (Woody does appear in this short, though it’s only a cameo), Chilly Willy, or The Beary Family.

Gallery[]

References[]

Cooke, Jon, Komorowski, Thad, Shakarian, Pietro, and Tatay, Jack. "1965". The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia.