The Sword in the Stone ( 1963 )

Back in the days shortly after the death of Unther Pendragon, King of England, there appeared in London a magic sword protruding upright from the center of an anvil. It bears an inscription proclaiming that whosoever shall remove the sword from the stone would be crowned the new king of England. 

Young Arthur (aka Wart) is an orphan who was raised in Sir Ector's castle. Sir Ector's son, Sir Kay, desires to venture to London to joust in the countrywide competition shortly before Christmas Day. Arthur aspires to be this knight's squire, but while on a hunting trip in the woods with Sir Kay, he falls into the hut of the wizard, Merlin. This kindly old man can see the future as well as the past and, knowing the young lad is fated to draw the sword from the stone, decides to take Arthur under his wing and "give him an education" prior to his crowning as the illustrious King Arthur. With the help of Archimedes the Owl, Merlin teaches Arthur to believe in himself and to use wits over brawn.

The Sword in the Stone is a delightful animated feature from Walt Disney Studios. It features an amnesiac "whiz-bang whizard of whimsy", an engaging young hero and, in place of the usual villain, there is Madam Mim, a rival to Merlin.

The story is based on the Arthurian novels of T.H White's known as "The Once and Future King" series. Walt Disney enjoyed the first book - "The Sword in the Stone" - and purchased the film rights to it the same year it was published: 1938. Unfortunately, the project was not picked up until 1949 when some preliminary storyboards were created. Then there was another long hiatus before story artist Bill Peet re-worked it into this film. 

While this version of The Sword in the Stone is entertaining, it would have benefited greatly from having a stronger villain, some character in the vein of Maleficent ....preferably Morgan le Fay or Vivien, the enchantress who proved to be Merlin's downfall. Madam Mim is an unworthy opponent to both Merlin and Arthur while Sir Ector and his son Sir Kay are more comical than villainous. 

Like 101 Dalmations released two years earlier, The Sword in the Stone implemented Disney's time-saving process of xeroxing the animation cels instead of retracing each cel. Because the Xerox copy machines were only capable of black lines, all of the lines around the figures were inked in black. Some critics feel this technique made the films look inferior to Disney's animated pictures of previous years but, personally, I liked the look. 

Richard and Robert Sherman penned some linguistically clever - albeit forgetful - tunes to The Sword in the Stone, including the delightful "Higitus Figitus", sung by Merlin. 

The Sword in the Stone was released in theaters on Christmas Day in 1963 and proved to be a box-office smash, reaping in nearly $20 million dollars in profit. 

Tintin et le Temple du Soleil ( 1969 )

Tintin, the beloved comic book creation of Belgium illustrator Herge, was transferred to the big screen as a fabulous full-length feature film in 1969 - Tintin et le Temple du Soleil. It was based upon one of Tintin's most famous escapades, his search for the missing Professor Calculus and a band of archeologists who are under the spell of an ancient Incan curse. The film took the two-part adventure ( from the books The Seven Crystal Balls and The Prisoner of the Sun ) and condensed it into one 77-minute film.

This was a French production from Belvision studios and the animation is spot-on, matching Herge's style as closely as if the artist himself painted each cel. This isn't surprising, considering Raymond LeBlanc was the producer of the film. LeBlanc was the publisher of the original Tintin magazine series, as well as the founder of Editions du Lombard and Belvision Studios. He was a giant in the Belgium animation industry, much like Walt Disney was here in the States. 

In 1957, Belvision brought the Tintin stories to television as an animated serial of five-minute episodes which covered seven of Hergé's most popular books. The success of this series made the studio attempt two animated feature-length films: Asterix the Gaul ( 1967 ) and Asterix and Cleopatra ( 1967 ), both featuring the comic strip character Asterix. These films were great successes and it led them to bring Tintin to the screen. 

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun differs only slightly from Hergé's original story, with a few additional scenes added and Thompson and Thompson ( the twin detectives ) getting a much larger role. Like the book series, however, it is filled with adventure and plenty of opportunities for Captain Haddock to lose his temper..."Ten thousand thundering typhoons!!"  Beautiful music by François Rauber also enhances the picture. 

Three years later Tintin returned for Tintin and the Lake of Sharks which featured many of the same actors voicing the characters. Both pictures are available on DVD in their original French language version and dubbed in English. 

Marc Davis - Walt Disney Imagineer

Marc Davis was a veteran animator and storyteller whose career at the Walt Disney Studios spanned over 45 years. He is probably one of the most famous of the "Imagineers" at the studio and justly so, because he contributed greatly to Disney’s animation classics as well as to many of Disneyland’s themed attractions. Bambi, Cinderella, Tinker Bell, Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, Cruella de Ville, Brier Rabbit and dear little skunk Flower were all characters created by Marc Davis.

Born on March 30, 1913 in Bakersfield, California, Marc traveled across most of America with his family before settling back in California where he attended various art institutes honing his love for drawing. During his years at college he would spend hours visiting the local zoo to sketch the animals and this practice came to good use later when he began work at Walt Disney Studios in 1935 as an apprentice animator for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and later for the exceptional character studies he created for Bambi.

During the 1940s he was busy doing more of the same work on such features as Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free, So Dear to My Heart, and later on Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations, as well as working on many of the animated shorts released through Disney during the 1950s and 60s.

Marc Davis also played a key part in the development of Disneyland’s most famous attractions. In 1961 he became an Imagineer after Walt realized that a man with his creative blend of humor and storytelling skill was greatly needed at Disneyland, even more so than at the Studio. This came about one day when Walt asked his top character designer to take a trip to the park and “take a good, hard, critical look” at the Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland ride to see what the ride was lacking and how it could be improved. Marc did just that, and came back thoroughly disappointed with not only that ride but with most of the other attractions at Disneyland too. He gave his report to Walt and then, with his approval, took his trusty little pencil and began to redesign all of the attractions to include what he thought they strongly lacked – a compelling story and humor. 

To this day his distinctive use of comical characterizations and visual “sight gags” can be seen throughout Disneyland and are the reason that many of the famous attractions are as beloved as they are now. The Jungle Cruise, The Enchanted Tiki Room, The Pirates of the Caribbean ride, The Haunted Mansion and many, many others all bear the stamp of the inventive genius of Marc Davis.

In 1978 he retired from the Walt Disney Studios and only occasionally returned to work as consultant on major projects the Imagineers were developing such as Epcot and Toyko Disneyland.  He was later honored, in 1989, with the Disney Legends award which is the highest achievement for a Disney artist. Marc Davis passed away in January 2000. 

The Reluctant Dragon ( 1941 )

After the immense critical and box-office success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney Studios was bombarded with requests from his fans to show how these cartoons were created. The brass at RKO Pictures were also keen to see how the cartoons that they were distributing were made, and so Walt Disney decided to create a film that combined a series of short cartoons ( in the same vein as Fantasia ) interspersed throughout a Technicolor live-action segment that featured a host giving a guided tour of the Disney Studios. This host was none other than the delightful satirist Robert Benchley. 

The idea was clever and, with the films relatively low budget ( $600,000 ) it was expected to bring in a substantial return, but once audiences saw the final production, many felt they were cheated. This was due in no small part to the film's misleading title - The Reluctant Dragon. Having enjoyed the richness of Disney's previous features, audiences were simply not expecting the casual documentary style film that followed. 

The Reluctant Dragon was in no way different than any of the behind-the-scenes segments which later appeared on television during The Mickey Mouse Club, and it gave us a most entertaining look at the process involved in the making of a Disney motion picture - even though it uses actors in the roles of animators, musicians, and cameramen ( with the exception of an appearance by one of the Nine Old Men, Ward Kimball ). Frank Faylen, Nana Bryant, Frances Gifford, and Alan Ladd are some of the actors playing Disney personnel. Keep your eyes peeled for a young John Dehner in his feature film debut too.

Three animated sequences act as interludes on Benchley's tour and these include Baby Weems, a Goofy short - How to Ride a Horse - and one of our all-time favorite cartoons - the titular Reluctant Dragon, which tells the tale of a dragon who prefers picnics to fighting. 

The cartoon begins with an intellectual young boy discovering that a real dragon was seen in his village. He ventures to take a peek at the fabled creature only to find himself greatly disappointed. He was imagining a fierce beast with fire flaming out its nostrils, instead he meets a silly blue creature that doesn't look at all monstrous ......worse yet, it's a tea-drinking poetry spouting coward! 

"Punk poet! Punk poet!"

An even greater disappointment to the boy comes when he visits the knight, Sir Giles, who does not look or act at all like the knights in the books he reads. In place of the strong hero is a Quixote-like old man with frightfully skinny legs. 

Sir Giles and the Dragon get on capitally during their first encounter for Sir Giles is also a great admirer of picnics and poetry. They begin to exchange verses they wrote ( Radish so Red, Ode to an Upside-Down Cake ) when the boy reminds them that they are supposed to fight. The town expects it of them. And so they agree to stage a battle that will have the knight declared victor. 

Critics of Walt Disney's animated cartoons often claim that The Reluctant Dragon was one of the weaker shorts, but we feel just the contrary. It holds up marvelously well after numerous viewings and features some preposterously cute animation. 

Radish so Red

by Sir Giles

"Radish so red, radish so red, 

plucked from the heart of your warm little bed, 

sprinkle with salt on top of your head, 

~ crunch! ~ delicious."

Sir Giles is the epitome of the veddy-British stereotypes with his curling mustache, skinny neck and ever-present monocle. He's an upper-crust gentleman, a true knight who wouldn't dare fight an unarmed dragon, while the dragon itself is just what one wouldn't expect a dragon to be - a sissy. 

The Reluctant Dragon was based upon a story by English author Kenneth Grahame, whose "The Wind in the Willows" Disney also cartoonized in 1949. Two British ex-pats Barnett Parker and Claude Allister voiced the part of the Dragon and Sir Giles ( Allister would later do the part of Rat in The Wind in the Willows ).

When The Reluctant Dragon was first released on VHS it was paired with another one of Disney's rarer animated classics - Morris the Moose ( 1950 ), which is worth taking a look at too. 

This post is our contribution to the One of Our All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon, be sure to head on over to Movie Movie Blog Blog to check out all the other great posts on the cartoons of yor.