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| Don't lose your head |
Shortly after the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney was pitched a possible full-length animated film treatment of Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 story The Wind in the Willows. Despite Walt’s reservations that such a film couldn’t live up to Snow White (or the other productions in the works, Pinocchio and Fantasia,) the studio optioned the story in June of 1938, and a basic script was completed in early 1941. Though it was a budget production (like that year’s Dumbo,) Walt nevertheless had some of his best animators at work on the film. More than half an hour of animation was completed when production stalled, following the closure of overseas box-offices when World War II broke out. It was soon halted altogether, after the US military commandeered the studio following Pearl Harbor. In the following years, Disney released a series of inexpensively-produced “package films,” starting with Saludos Amigos in 1942. Already believing their Wind in the Willows adaptation to be below par, animators resumed production in 1945 with the intention of making it part of a package film. The hastily finished film was slated to be matched up with Mickey and the Beanstalk (which instead ended up in 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free) and an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins (which, despite being written with the intention of Disney adapting it, was soon abandoned) under the title Three Fabulous Characters. Around the same time, work had begun on creating a full-length adaptation of Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the animators behind that production were having trouble padding the story out to fill a feature's running time. In 1947 the decision was made to pair up the two wayward productions, and the composite film was named The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, to focus on the two central characters.
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| I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs! |
The abridged and re-arranged version of Grahame’s tale fills the first half of the composite film. It focuses on the exploits of wealthy gadabout J. Thaddeus Toad and his friend's attempts to clean up his various messes. The Mr. Toad character (voiced by prolific English character-actor Eric Blore) is one of Disney’s most memorable, though he seemingly gets by more from name recognition than anything else (and that's primarily due to the reputation of his theme park attraction, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride - but that's an article for another day.) An irresponsible rake, Toad’s various “manias” put himself, his friends, and his fortune in constant jeopardy. Yet his unabashed zeal for adventure does begin to grow on you as the film progresses. It sometimes feels as if the filmmakers are daring us not to like their animated anti-hero, like some kind of anthropomorphic Barry Lyndon (and yes, I just related the main character from a Stanley Kubrick movie to a talking frog; that's how I roll.) By the time we’ve reached the manic brawl at Toad Hall (not to be confused with the “rumble in the jungle”,) we can’t help but root for him and his put-upon pals to win the day.
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| The weasels practice their synchronized swan dive... |
The filmmakers’ concerns over the quality of their Wind in the Willows adaptation seems to be unfounded, as I found it to be both entertaining and extremely well made. In fact there are a handful of segments, such as the one set during a frosty Christmas Eve in a fog-drenched London, where the artwork could sit comfortably amongst some of the studio's finest output. The character animation, purposefully more cartoonish than realistic, rivals not only their ‘40s output but also much that would come in the following decade. And while the animators were obviously not going for the carefully shaded quasi-realism of Disney’s first three features, the kinetic energy on display breathes life into every character, both animal and human. Between the lively animation, frenetic pacing and a number of shared voice actors, Mr. Toad feels something like a run-up to 1951’s Alice In Wonderland (and personally, I find this to be a much more enjoyable film than that later, more fondly remembered one.)
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| A chill in the air... |
While this first portion is an underrated gem of animation, I can’t say that I feel the same about the back half of the film (with one exception, which we’ll get to shortly.) For most of it’s running time the Ichabod section carries on in a rather pedestrian manner, as the town’s uber-lanky new schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, avails himself of the townspeople’s goodwill and generosity (as well as much of their food.) Soon he falls for a shapely young woman named Katrina, who is the daughter of a wealthy farm-owner. His main rival for her affections is local town braggart Brom Bones (sort of a less-threatening Gaston prototype,) who is driven to jealousy by his repeated failed attempts to one up Ichabod. While it becomes fairly obvious that Katrina is playing Ichabod and Brom against one another, we are still not completely sympathetic to the schoolmaster, as his own intentions are shown to not be completely honorable, either (he has as much an eye for Katrina as he does for her father’s successful farm.) While it appears that Ichabod may end up the victor in their little contest, everything changes following the town’s annual Halloween party; there, Brom relates the local legend of the dreaded Headless Horseman that rides every year, seeking a new head to replace his missing one.
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| Now I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger... |
Much about the “Sleepy Hollow” segment differs significantly from Mr. Toad, pointing to the stitched-together nature of the film. For one thing, Toad and his co-stars are all voiced by individual actors, whereas here the limited speaking parts are all covered by the narrator, velvet-voiced crooner Bing Crosby. Otherwise, much of the story is portrayed in pantomime. Crosby’s involvement with the film was obviously a big selling point: witness his name writ large upon the original release poster, tempting audiences to “Hear Bing Sing!” And sing he does, as Ichabod includes three Bing-belted ballads, compared to the single lightweight “Merrily On Our Way” from Mr. Toad. Crosby’s even allows to get in a few of his trademark “bah-buh-buh-buumms” during Ichabod’s singing-lessons, delivered to a group of swooning village girls. The narration itself, much like the boogie-woogie styled songs, is somewhat more laid back and of-the-moment than that from Mr. Toad (which is provided by British actor and Hollywood's preferred Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone,) with Crosby referring to the main character as “ol' Ichy” a few times.
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| HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! |
While the segment feels as if it would’ve been perfectly at home as a portion of 1948’s Melody Time (or even as an extended short-feature,) in it’s penultimate scene Ichabod suddenly elevates itself to one of the pinnacles of Disney’s early animation. The main reason The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is remembered today (and the entire point of discussing the film right before Halloween) is for the climactic scene of Ichabod’s flight through the Hollow. Not since their 1937 Silly Symphony short “The Old Mill” have Disney’s artists been able to achieve such a sense of intangible dread as they do when Ichabod nervously makes his way home through the moonlit woods - the slow clip-clop of his horse’s hooves echoing amidst a growing chorus of nocturnal animal cries. The character’s growing unease turns to panic as every sound and shadow seems to hide unseen horrors, relief coming briefly as he realizes that what he thought was the sound of an approaching rider was merely cattails smacking against a log. Then suddenly the real Headless Horseman appears, a vision of dead-serious animation meant to scare the bejeezus out of both Ichabod and the audience. The sense of foreboding from moments ago turns to sheer terror, as Disney lets loose the closest their animated films have ever gotten to pure gothic horror. While several moments in the ensuing chase are played for laughs (mostly due to Ichabod’s frantic, bug-eyed horse,) the overall impression left by this sequence is one of edge-of-your-seat fright as Ichabod makes a desperate charge toward the covered bridge (which marks the limit of the Horseman’s haunting grounds.) The whole nail-biting sequence comes to a startling end as, upon crossing the bridge, Ichabod turns back just in time to see the Horseman’s jack-o-lantern head flying towards him (towards us!), engulfing the screen in flames as it presumably smashes against it’s target.
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| Pumpkin spice hype gets more aggressive every year... |
The following closing scenes reveal that Brom and Katrina end up marrying each other, which seems to suggest that the Headless Horseman was actually Brom in disguise (though it's left wonderfully ambiguous.) It's also heavily implied that Ichabod survived his ordeal, likely settling down with a wealthy widow someplace - but audiences could hardly care less. The sudden and unrelenting nature of the “Headless Horseman” scene is what sticks with one the most. The sight of the terrifying rider hoisting his flaming jack-o-lantern skyward while careening through a darkened cemetery is an instantly iconic image, and has burned itself into many an impressionable young Disney fan’s mind. Thanks to repeated showings of the film around Halloween (or sections of it, since The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was more often than not presented as two separate features until the DVD age,) including as part of perennial TV favorite Disney’s Halloween Treat, generations have been terrified by the adaptation of Irving’s short story.
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| A bad moon a-risin' |
Though Walt Disney Productions is often remembered as going through a slump during the 1940s, it’s through memorable and masterfully-realized moments like this that the legendary animators showed what great heights their art form was still capable of achieving - even on a limited budget.
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