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Horton the Elephant

Horton the Elephant is a fictional character from the 1940 book Horton Hatches the Egg[2] and 1954 book Horton Hears a Who!,[3] both by Dr. Seuss. He is also featured in the short story Horton and the Kwuggerbug, first published for Redbook in 1951 and later rediscovered by Charles D. Cohen and published in the 2014 anthology Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories. In all books and other media, Horton is characterized as a kind, sweet-natured, and naïve elephant who manages to overcome hardships.

Horton the Elephant

Dr. Seuss

Gertrude McFuzz (Seussical)

Morton the Elephant-Bird (adoptive step-son and adoptive son)

In 1942, Warner Bros. made the animated short film, Horton Hatches the Egg, in which Horton is voiced by Kent Rogers.


In 1970, MGM Animation/Visual Arts made a 30-minute TV special of Horton Hears a Who!. Horton is voiced by Hans Conried, who also lends his voice as the narrator.


Horton is voiced by Jim Carrey in the 2008 computer-animated adaptation of Horton Hears A Who!, where he is shown as being eccentric and imaginative, and sort of absent-minded. Carrey had previously played and voiced the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, another Seuss adaptation involving the Whos.


Horton is also a character in the TV series The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, as performed by John Kennedy. Horton is also a principal character in Seussical (2000), which uses most of the two Horton books as its primary plot. Kevin Chamberlin originated the role of Horton on Broadway.

Mayzie: A lazy bird who convinces Horton to sit on her egg, while she relaxes on . When Horton and his egg (now part of a traveling circus) visit near Palm Beach, she demands it, until it hatches into an "elephant bird". In the Broadway musical production Seussical, her full name is given as Mayzie LaBird.

Palm Beach

Hunters: Three game hunters who planned to shoot Horton, but decided to sell him to the circus to display his ability to climb trees. In the Seuss book, they are illustrated as gentlefolk, but in the , they look more like Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd.

1942 cartoon

Morton the Elephant-Bird: A small animal resembling a winged elephant; hatched by Horton from Mayzie's egg and adopted and raised by Horton. In (), the elephant-bird hybrid is not given a name, but Gertrude McFuzz offers to help raise him.

Seussical

Stories[edit]

Horton Hatches the Egg: Mother bird Mayzie lays an egg, but becomes weary of incubating it, and persuades Horton to take her place. As Horton spends months at this, he suffers rainstorms, snowstorms, and the mockery of the other animals, while Mayzie relaxes abroad. When the three hunters approach him, Horton defies them to shoot him, while refusing to leave the nest. The hunters, realizing they have found a rare attraction - an elephant sitting on a nest - dig up the tree and sell him to a circus. When the circus arrives in Palm Beach, Mayzie goes to Horton demanding the return of her egg, but when the egg hatches, it produces the hybrid 'elephant-bird', who returns with Horton to the wild.


Horton Hears A Who!: Horton is bathing in a pond when he hears a speck of dust emit cries for help, and places it on a red clover for safety. Upon investigating, he learns that the speck of dust is a microscopic world named Whoville, inhabited by a microscopic species called Who's. When he talks to the Who's, the Sour Kangaroo and her son brand Horton as insane to the entire animal kingdom. When Horton retains the Who's, the Wickersham Brothers steal the clover and request Vladikoff to dispose of it, whereupon Vladikoff discards the clover among a field of identical plants. After a day of searching, Horton locates Whoville, but Mother Kangaroo arrives with an army of monkeys, to imprison him and destroy the clover. When the Kangaroos fail to hear a chorus of Who's announcing their presence, the monkeys attack Horton, who shouts at the Who's to prove themselves, but all their efforts fail until the Who child 'Jojo' shouts the syllable "YOPP!", breaking the sound barrier. The monkeys and Kangaroo apologize to Horton and promise to cooperate with him in protecting Whoville.


Horton and the Kwuggerbug: Horton walks through the jungle when he meets a Kwuggerbug, who tells him about a Beezlenut tree and offers to give him half the nuts if he brings him there. Horton, wanting the Beezlenuts, agrees. However, the bug turns out to be rude and demanding, and forces Horton to swim across a lake infested with crocodiles and climb a treacherous mountain to get to the tree on top, where he is then forced to stretch over a ledge to the tree to allow the bug to get to the nuts. When the bug gets the nuts, he cracks them, then points out that half of every nut is the shell, and he intends to give Horton the shells while he gets the insides. He jams the shells into Horton's trunk. Horton, in anger, and in pain from the shells in his trunk, sneezes, blowing the bug so far away he can never get back to the Beezlenut tree.

Horton Hatches the Egg was made into a for Looney Tunes in 1942 created by Bob Clampett. This was the first cinematic adaptation of a Dr. Seuss book.

10-minute cartoon

Horton Hears a Who! was made into a directed by Chuck Jones, two short films produced in Ukraine and Russia respectively, and a 2008 CGI feature film by Blue Sky Studios.

1970 animated TV special

Both Horton books are part of the main plot in the 2000 musical . Horton is one of the main characters.

Seussical

The character lent its name to the company , founded in 2011.[4][5]

Hortonworks

at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. From the original on February 5, 2016.

Horton the Elephant