Disney’s Final Package Film: The Making and Marketing of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

Introduction

Animation historians have long regarded Walt Disney’s 15th full-length motion picture, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, as a lesser light in the Disney animated canon. From the start, the coupling of half-hour treatments of two very different texts was an uneasy alliance. At a moment when wartime demands disabled the studio’s staff and facilities, it took eight years to assemble and produce the film.

Part one of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a trimmed-down adaptation of what, in 1941, prior to America’s entry in World War II, Disney planned as a stand-alone feature based on Kenneth Grahame’s children’s story, The Wind in the Willows (1909). Part two, derived from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), was conceived in 1946 not as a mate to Toad, but as one of a handful of cartoon versions of American folktales to be used as segments in as yet untitled package pictures. As a unifying device, and in order to boost their appeal to movie-goers, two entertainment personalities came on board as narrators, heard but not seen in the confines of a library briefly filmed in live-action: Basil Rathbone for Toad, and Bing Crosby for Ichabod. Each defends his national literary tradition, British or American, in arguing for which has produced the most ‘fabulous’ character. ¹

From the time of the film’s release at the Mayfair Theatre in New York City on 8 October 1949 and at the London Pavilion on 18 May 1950, up to the present, the pairing of the two subjects has confounded many viewers. The film critic in The Observer regretted ‘the marriage of convenience that Walt Disney has arranged between two books lying idle on his hands … No attempt has been made to consummate the union, except that a copy of each classic is thrust at the spectator in a de luxe binding’ (Lejeune, 1950). In 1988, Disney historian John Grant lamented what he called the ‘somewhat desperate and half-hearted attempt’ to unite two dissimilar stories, claiming that ‘one leaves the cinema slightly frustrated’ (p. 230). In a recent analysis of the literary origins of each narrative in the film, Brian Sibley (2016: 357–359) likewise describes the Irving–Grahame cinematic pairing as a ‘mismatch’. Like the British press before him, he has reservations about the animation of the human characters and Crosby’s vocal performance.

Other complaints include Daniel Kothenshulte’s (2016: 353) reference to the production as ‘clearly a stopgap measure to keep the Disney name on cinema marquees’. Leonard Maltin (1995: 92) notes a more tangible deficiency: the character design of the female lead, Katrina van Tassel, is derived from the buxom blonde figures of Grace Martin in ‘The Martins and the Coys’ and Slue Foot Sue in ‘Pecos Bill’, from Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948), respectively.

These various failings – real or perceived, fairly or unfairly – have fueled a broad consensual feeling that Ichabod and Mr. Toad represents a final misstep by Disney in a decade, the 1940s, marked by economic distress due to the impact of the war. The seven preceding package films, with their live-action sequences, hybrid animation, stylistic diversity and frequent experimentation, had failed to engage fully with audiences. ² According to conventional wisdom, it was Cinderella, which premiered in 1950, that heralded a return to traditional form. Not successful enough for the company’s standard seven-year rerelease cycle, Ichabod and Mr. Toad did not enjoy a subsequent theatrical release.

Despite these criticisms, two scholars have struggled to reverse prevailing opinion by seeking common ground between the two stories. Douglas Brode (2004: 184) posits ‘Disney’s fascination with the potential for death in life … (both title characters undergo near-death experiences)’, and Walter Squire (2015: 82) investigates the literary sources, claiming that ‘texts which produce pleasure are contrasted with those that produce suffering’. Ultimately these arguments fail to convince.

Thus I have three goals in this article: first, to provide a detailed history of the film’s development to account for radical differences in storytelling between the two parts; second, to show how the color and styling conceived independently for the two halves, based on English book illustration for Toad and 19th-century American painting for Ichabod, resulted in a deliberate contrast; and third, to investigate the film’s release in the context of standard theatrical presentations in the late 1940s, when the double feature consisted of an A picture and a B picture. I introduce new evidence in the form of a revised chronology of the development phase, the marketing campaign, and critical reviews published upon the initial release in America and Great Britain.

Development of the two halves

Looking ahead, even before Disney’s first full-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was a wrap, Walt sought out stories for future projects. Snow White was a fairy tale in the public domain, but now, even though the studio was cash-strapped, Disney was willing to pay for modern material. He purchased the rights to Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by the Austrian author Felix Salten, in April 1937 for Bambi, his fifth feature film, and The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf in October 1937 for the Oscar-winning one-reeler, Ferdinand the Bull. He had received a copy of The Wind in the Willows as a gift in 1934 and acquired the rights in June 1938 (AFI website; Ghez, 2013: 32). Walt was not yet sold on the story, which he felt was ‘awful corny’ (Barrier, 2008). In response to a fan request, he said, ‘We have never considered it particularly well suited for cartoon material’ (Gabler, 2006: 458).

Staff members were more optimistic. Story man Ray Jacobs created tentative designs for Grahame’s characters in the style of the Silly Symphonies. ³ In an early use of the Leica reel format, two artists in the Character Model Department, James Bodrero and Campbell Grant, synchronized storyboard sketches with a temporary soundtrack that were wildly applauded at a staff viewing (Solomon, 1994: 186). Michael Barrier believes that an undated series of 17 storyboards, known from photos in the collection of John Canemaker, are the sketches used in the Bodrero–Grant presentation. ⁴ Certain sections of their Leica reel influenced the final version, such as the courtroom scene and the climactic fight for the deed of Toad Hall, the ancestral home of the film’s hero, J. Thaddeus Toad. Other sections were not used, like Rat and Mole’s visit to MacBadger in a ‘Nervous-Wreck Ward’, and Toad’s exchange with a prison charwoman named Gertie who provides his escape disguise. In the finale, a ‘reformed’ Toad shares a celebratory drink with his friends, while eyeing through a window his next mania, a biplane.

Ultimately, Walt gave the film the green light. Between February and June 1941, the Character Model Department prepared a series of model sheets (Canemaker, 1999: 68, 71). Story and music were underway by April, when Frank Churchill and Larry Morey, who wrote the music for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, penned five songs that were storyboarded. The first of these, ‘Tea-Time at Four O’Clock’, was meant to accompany the opening sequence with Rat and Mole indulging in that most English of pastimes: (Schroeder, 2007: 1: 94–99). This proposed action was a Disney addition, since the two characters do not take tea in the book, although they enjoy supper.

Another tune, ‘The Bells of St. Bartholomew’, was to be sung by animal children on Christmas Eve, and ‘Be a Stout Fellow’ was given to Gertie encouraging Toad. Even Toad’s faithful steed and companion, Cyril Proudbottom (a Disney creation, unimagined by Grahame), decked out with a boater and cane, was assigned a rousing English music hall-style number. ‘Galloping on Our Way’ featured Toad and Cyril crashing across the countryside in a canary-yellow gypsy cart.

The story men also proposed having Jiminy Cricket, voiced by Cliff Edwards, appear on-screen at the beginning of the film, to reprise the role he had performed in Pinocchio, opening the pages of a storybook and getting the narrative ball rolling. Jiminy was to make his Wind in the Willows entrance floating down a stream on a boat-like leaf, pointing out the homes of the river’s denizens (Schroeder, 2007, Vol. 1: 94).

By spring, animation started in earnest, and some 30 minutes of pencil tests were completed. But the bitter strike at the studio beginning in late May 1941 made for difficult working conditions. Six months later, with studio finances in jeopardy, Disney negotiated a US$3.5m loan from Bank of America, in exchange for which he agreed to restrict production to new shorts and the completion of three features then in the pipeline: Bambi, Dumbo and The Wind in the Willows (Gabler, 2006: 376).

Shortly afterward, the latter film was put on hold (pp. 376–377). The strike, the war, the loss of foreign markets and the constant threat of financial collapse all contributed to a decision, beginning with The Reluctant Dragon in 1941, to hold down costs by making a succession of 10 films combining live action and animation. Nonetheless, as early as October 1943, Walt thought a short version of The Wind in the Willows could be paired with a Mickey Mouse featurette, Mickey and the Beanstalk, or perhaps an animated treatment of Roald Dahl’s book, Gremlins (p. 407). A story treatment in November 1943 shifts from the idea of Jiminy Cricket in the leaf boat to Jiminy singing a number (not yet determined) as he peruses the bookshelves of a library, selecting the volume, The Wind in the Willows.

In 1944, Charles Wolcott, who became general music director after Frank Churchill’s death, created with Ray Gilbert a title song with lyrics describing a gentle breeze passing through willow branches, inciting reverie (Schroeder, 2007: 1: 111–113).

Inspirational drawings for the proposed title song show a lush, detailed vision of nature reminiscent of Fantasia’s ‘Nutcracker Suite’. Although it is unclear where it would have appeared in the action, the tune would have added a pastoral note that is strong in the book but absent in the finished movie. Wolcott also composed a Christmas carol, ‘Merry, Merry’. In the end, none of the songs listed here appeared in the film, aside from a few distant echoes, with one exception: a variation on ‘Galloping on Our Way’, called ‘The Merrily Song’, is the sole musical number, a spirited highlight of the Wind in the Willows segment of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

1944 also saw the publication of a key document in the planning of Toad: the children’s book by H Marion Palmer (pp. 62–69), Walt Disney’s Surprise Package, illustrated with storyboard drawings and inspirational sketches. A ‘package’ anthology, the book reveals the status of 12 animated features or shorts in the studio pipeline, including ‘The Wind in the Willows’, ‘Peter Pan and the Pirates’, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Happy Valley’ (Mickey and the Beanstalk).

According to the title page, the author based the ‘Willows’ chapter on Grahame’s original, but the text and illustrations mirror the Disney version, then still in development. Four times in the story, Palmer repeats the motif of Rat and Mole at tea, derived from the ‘Tea-Time at Four O’Clock’ song, as a framing device to mark shifts in the narrative. Badger, identified as ‘Business Manager, Toad Hall’, does not appear in the sanitarium scene of the Leica reel, but has nevertheless taken to bed, ‘exhausted and sick from worry’, a detail eliminated from the film. Cyril aids in Toad’s escape from prison. In the conclusion of Palmer’s text, Toad is seen from Rat and Mole’s door, flying the biplane – with Cyril dancing out on the wing!

Story work on The Wind in the Willows continued, even as Walt moved his artists to other features. Revised model sheets were issued to animators, beginning in 1946. ⁵

Unlike the Toad project, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was not considered as a full-length feature. Story sheets in the Disney archives date from no earlier than 1946. ⁶ Music was composed in 1947, when the first, unused version of the country dance at the Van Tassel party, called ‘Whoop-Ta-Doodle-Dey’, was composed by Oliver Wallace in a manner evoking late 18th-century melodic lines common in the Hudson River Valley (Schroeder, 2008, Vol. 2: 300–305). Live-action reference was shot to aid the animation of the dance. Undated inspirational sketches reveal one major change during development. Tentative but unrealized drawings of ghosts and banshees rising from their graves, as described in Brom’s song, ‘The Headless Horseman’, derive from the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ sequence in Fantasia (Sibley, 2016: 359–361).

Finally, anticipating the last phase of the package films, on 17 November 1947 Disney announced the uniting of the Toad and Ichabod projects in the trade papers, which reported its forthcoming release under its original title, Two Fabulous Characters (Brady, 1947; Hopper, 1948). In June 1948, a third fabulous character, the cartoon short Casey Jones, was added to the mix, but it was released as a one-reeler in March 1950 (Brady, 1948). In November 1948, writers Winston Hibler and Ted Sears, who had been working on the Cinderella script, joined the Ichabod team.

Color and styling

The independent histories of the film’s components help to explain their strongly contrasting visual styles. Toad, begun in 1941, maintains the Disney Golden-Age realism characteristic of the early 40s films, whereas Ichabod, begun in 1946, is a product of the more adventurous, often surreal, flatter visuals of the package films. This contrast also owes much to the opposing styles of the chief art directors for the two halves – John Hench for Toad and Mary Blair for Ichabod – and to the visual sources they consulted for inspiration.

Although the package films progressively abandoned the stylistic realism of Pinocchio and Bambi, it returns in full force in Toad, where we find clean, brightly colored figures, delineated by clear outlines, placed in front of thoroughly representational backgrounds. This figural style accommodated Disney’s assembly-line process, proceeding from ‘ruff’ and clean-up drawings to inked and painted cels, while the richly textured backgrounds give a sense of depth and atmosphere.

The ‘illusion-of-life’ house style is well suited to the source material, especially since illustrations in early editions of Grahame’s book directly inspired the figures and backgrounds in Toad. The witty line drawings for the 1931 edition of The Wind in the Willows by Ernest H Shepard provided a starting point for character development. Shepard’s vigorous line, evocative of movement, appealed to the animators. Walt’s artists adopted the anthropomorphized design of the characters, following the tradition of the 19th-century French caricaturist J-J Grandville, in which animal heads are joined to clothed human bodies.

The transition from Shepard to Disney is visible in the illustrations within the movie’s live-action book. In the opening prologue, a sketch of Toad indulging his boating mania in ‘his brand new wager boat; new togs, new everything’ (Grahame’s words) is adapted directly from Shepard (Allan, 1999: 198–199). The background artists also borrowed from Shepard, for example, the exterior of Toad Hall, with its picturesque irregularity, bay windows and tall chimney, set back from the river across a broad lawn. When Toad escapes from Toad Hall by means of improvised knotted bed sheets, the Disney layout artists recreated ‘the central mullion of the handsome Tudor window which formed such a feature of his bedroom’, as described by Grahame and depicted by Shepard. Disney borrowed the design of the hijacked train and the canopy of the station from the book. And Shepard even influenced staging, as seen in the escape sequence, with Toad’s view back to the pursuing train loaded with policemen in their helmets, waving truncheons and revolvers.

Another pictorial source is Arthur Rackham’s lush pen-and-watercolor imagery for the 1940 edition of The Wind in the Willows. His detailed realism, with typical exteriors of gnarled tree limbs and charming Edwardian interiors, inspired the key stylist of the Toad segment, John Hench, and his colleague Don da Gradi. For example, in creating the outside of Rat’s home, where Mole arrives by rowboat early in the film, they borrowed numerous details from Rackham, like the cottage with its grassy roof and diagonally leaded panes, nestled at the base of a large tree trunk beside a marsh.

Although lauded as both a story man and Imagineer over a six-decade-long career with the Disney Company, Hench deserves greater credit for his prodigious output as an art director, background artist and book illustrator. ⁷ The dense, richly detailed interior settings in Toad, which provide space for the figures to move in, have their counterpart in Hench’s illustrations for the Big Golden Book that accompanied the release of the film, titled Walt Disney’s The Adventures of Mr. Toad (Walt Disney Productions, 1949). In both the film and the book, the domestic spaces, such as the great hall of Toad Hall, are warmly colored in red and gold, whereas the courtroom and prison interiors feature appropriately somber, grey tones.

Similarly, for inspiration regarding character design and staging in the Ichabod sequence, the Disney artists consulted illustrated editions of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. For example, in a 1939 edition of the tale, Gordon Ross created memorable images of the lanky pedagogue at his desk, as well as the Headless Horseman in hot pursuit (Irving, 1939: 360, 386).

However, the visual design of Ichabod poses a sharp contrast with that of Toad. Hench’s subtle illusionism gives way to flat stylization, patterned textures, bold coloring and skewed perspectives, immediately recognizable as the work of the principal color stylist, inspirational artist Mary Blair (Johnson, 2017: 186–188, 208–209). Extant paintings by Blair show that her influence was pervasive, and that the background artists, notably Claude Coats, were faithful to her vision. For the daylight scenes, she conceived landscapes and villages in the spirit of American folk paintings of the same era as the story, visible for example in the moment when Ichabod descends a hill into Sleepy Hollow (Canemaker, 2003: 24). Blair responded to rising interest in naïve art in the 1940s, spurred by collectors and writers like Jean Lipman, who published a seminal book, American Primitive Painting (1942). Blair’s work represents the modernist tendency of Disney animation that critics had praised in the 1930s as being inherent to the medium: the subversion of the realist aesthetic.

The landscape is an important aspect of Disney’s Ichabod, particularly the contrast between the bright, fresh scenes in the first half and the foreboding nocturnes that follow. Blair’s inspirational sketches influenced establishing shots, close-ups and unusual camera angles (Sibley, 2016: 361). Her palette for the climactic chase is based on midnight hues of deep blues and greens, underlining Ichabod’s melancholy loneliness; they change surrealistically into an acid red when the fearful Horseman bursts onto the scene. She designed the foreboding sky and landscape, such as the clouds forming hands that conceal the moon. The critic writing for The Spectator, despite mixed feelings about the film as a whole, praised the visuals: ‘The film shows new experiments in color and design which are always ingenious and often completely successful’ (Cinema, 1950). In February 1950, Ichabod and Mr. Toad received a Golden Globe for Best Use of Color in a Motion Picture, effectively a tribute to Blair’s work.

In addition to folk art, I suspect that two well-known 19th-century American paintings illustrating Irving’s story influenced elements of the film. The Disney artists surely knew the ‘naïve’ composition by William John Wilgus, Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman of c. 1855 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). Its strong stylization, sharp, flat colors and motifs like the Horseman’s steed breathing down Ichabod’s neck – a detail drawn from the text – were used to considerable effect in the climactic chase scene.

A second, more naturalistic painting of the same subject by Washington Irving’s friend, John Quidor, The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, emphasizes the threatening landscape through which the riders charge, a motif developed further by the Disney artists (1858; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC). In Irving’s text the Horseman rises in his stirrups before hurling his ‘head’; Quidor, however, heightens the drama by having the black horse rear on its hind legs as the phantom’s red cape flares outward. The Disney artists used this startling image at peak moments in the chase sequence to express the terror experienced by the schoolmaster. It is also repeated at the very end of the narrative, as an illustration in the live-action book, and it appeared in the advertising campaign. It should be noted, however, that these two 19th-century paintings reveal Brom Bones to be the Horseman brandishing a pumpkin, with his upper body disguised in a cloak. Disney is truer to the Irving text by not exposing the deceit: before the climactic chase begins, Disney’s Horseman holds a skull-like head with glowing eyes. Only at the covered bridge does he hurl the jack o’ lantern.

Contemporary critics acknowledged that Ichabod and Mr. Toad presented a feast for the eyes, and that a selling point for the film was the contrasting visuals of the two halves. As Variety put it:

They are handled in widely differing but equally effective styles … The tinting of both yarns is skillfully keyed to the tone of each yarn. While “Mr. Toad” is drawn in soft pastels, the Ichabod yarn is swept in full contrasty colors … Together they comprise a solid package of varied entertainment. (Film reviews, 1949)

A double bill

The structure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad resembles that of Disney’s earlier film, Fun and Fancy Free, released in September 1947. Combining live-action with animation, Fun and Fancy Free fuses two narratives, both developed as full-length pictures but put on hold during the war and then united as shorter units within one 73-minute feature: Bongo, based on Sinclair Lewis’s 1930 tale, and Mickey and the Beanstalk, a variation of the classic fairy tale.

Jiminy Cricket introduces the movie. His entrance in the opening sequence, floating downstream on a leaf as he addresses the audience, was recycled from the shelved storyboards for the feature-length Wind in the Willows. In yet another instance of recycling, here, in Fun and Fancy Free, he sings ‘I’m a Happy Go Lucky Fellow’, a tune originally written for Pinocchio. As the camera pulls back, we see that the pond on which the cricket sails is actually part of a potted plant in a genteel home library. Springing to the shelves, he comments on the titles of the leather-bound volumes. The library setting connects the two narratives as a dramatic device and accentuates their literary origins. Ichabod and Mr. Toad opens in a library as well, although the scene is not animated, but filmed in live-action. The books are real and, unlike Jiminy Cricket, the narrators, Rathbone and Crosby, are heard, not seen.

As I indicated earlier, as protagonists, Ichabod and Toad – like Bongo and Mickey – have struck many viewers over the years as incompatible, even though a case can be made for commonalities that unite them, in particular their extreme self-absorption. Rather than decry the pairing as a ‘marriage of convenience’ or strain to find common themes, it may be more useful to consider Ichabod and Mr. Toad in the context of the standard practice of theatrical billing in that era: the double feature combining an A picture preceded by a B picture. By offering two features for the price of one, the twin bill was a proven means of attracting movie-goers of limited means during the Depression and the 1940s (Schatz, 1997: 72–78). Thematic unity was not expected; indeed, contrasting genres were likely to sell more tickets.

Although the line separating the two categories was not set in stone, generally the A films had a bigger budget, were longer and boasted a cast of major stars. On account of their expense and complexity, musicals, for example, fell into the A category. B films usually cost less to make and utilized the talents of second-tier actors, directors and production staff, although such differences did not necessarily mean a B would be of lesser quality or be less successful at the box office.

In fact, many contemporaries considered Ichabod and Mr. Toad a double feature, with Toad, the lead-in, as the B picture, and Ichabod the A. The writer for the News Chronicle (1950) acknowledged: ‘An extraordinary contrast in style and approach is demonstrated in the new Walt Disney double bill, “Ichabod and Mr. Toad”.’ The Spectator concurred: ‘Two stories divide the bill’ (Cinema, 1950). Time labeled the film ‘an uneven doubleheader’ (New pictures, 1949). The British trade paper Kinematograph Weekly, aimed at theater owners, labeled the film an ‘outstanding “double bill”’, whose ‘box-office value’ was enhanced by its being ‘made up of two contrasting films’; ‘each offering is clever in its own particular way’ (Billings, 1950).

The Narrative: Toad

The two halves of Ichabod and Mr. Toad differ in similar ways to A and B live-action productions. As we have seen, initially the Toad segment was conceived as a full-length A picture – provisionally titled The Wind in the Willows – in a mode reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with set-piece musical numbers and leisurely character development. But in feature-length cartoons like Snow White (and, later, Cinderella) Disney routinely introduced subplots to flesh out the story line of a relatively simple tale, whereas for Toad the story men took the opposite approach.

They condensed the source material and eliminated secondary characters for the sake of clarity. In its pared-down version, Toad lost every storyboarded song but one, and, like a successful B picture, it gained impact through swift and tightly controlled action. What made the adaptation click was an astute decision to focus on the six chapters (out of twelve) in the book in which Toad is the central figure. By emphasizing Toad, Disney was following the precedent of AA Milne’s stage adaptation, Toad of Toad Hall (1929), the rights to which Walt attempted to buy (Geer, 2010: 220–222; Sibley, 2016: 357). However, as the British critics acknowledged, the book, not the stage-bound play, served as the source. The Observer noted, ‘Disney, quite permissibly, has gone back to the original “Wind in the Willows” for his impulse. His film sticks remarkably close to Kenneth Grahame’s story, and as a piece of cartoon-work is frequently ingenious’ (Lejeune, 1950).

Compacted into a mere 34 minutes, the economical story line, in which every detail counts toward the overall effect, is enhanced by visual richness each step of the way. Newspaper headlines, a frequent device in live-action B pictures, are used to great effect to streamline and clarify the action and provide transitions from one sequence to the next. The result is a beautifully staged narrative whose pacing is varied and whose content tugs at many emotional chords.

British critics approached the film cautiously, but were completely won over, as in the review in The Graphic:

Pedants, purists and patriots may smart at the mere thought that Mr. Walt Disney should attempt a film of Mr. Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’ – but … unless they are abominably prejudiced and pig-headed they must, I think, admit that ‘The Story of Mr. Toad’ is completely delightful … I find nothing at all in it to cavil at and can only, hand on heart, thank Mr. Disney for half an hour or so of purest pleasure. (EG, 1950)

In a comparison with the Ichabod half, Fred Majdalany (1950) of The Daily Mail said:

It is the Toad half that matters. This is not only Disney at his best but Toad at his best. The whole of this splendid character is there. Toad the terrible enthusiast, the spendthrift, the ineffable gent, the demon motorist, the tireless experimenter – vain, lovable, jolly, sly, lecherous Toad, whose enthusiasms are permanently doomed to disaster.

One reviewer called Rat ‘Disney’s best achievement in the film’, and another praised Rat as ‘a wonderfully correct and dapper little Englishman’ (Kennedy, 1950; ‘New Films in London’, 1950). Paul Dehn (1950) of The Sunday Chronicle singled out ‘a Mole of such plump, Pickwickian, benevolent ineptitude that I solemnly consider him to be Disney’s masterpiece’. He called the film ‘the best Disney picture since Snow White, which I adored; [it] boasts the most loveable set of characters since Dumbo first lent us his enormous ears.’ The reviewer in the Sunday Pictorial announced that Toad – ‘daffy, delirious, delightful’ – had replaced Pinocchio as his favorite piece of ‘Disneyania’ (DR, 1950). In the same vein, the writer in The Daily Express exclaimed boldly, ‘Here are characters to take their place with Mickey and Donald Duck’ (A new Disney, 1950). The strongly positive British response to Toad is particularly notable because the critics were already wary of Disney’s upcoming treatments of two further children’s classics, Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953) – which ultimately were not as well received.

The narrative: Ichabod

While the British enthused over Toad, many American critics preferred Ichabod due to its greater familiarity at home (Box-office slant, 1949; Hendricks, 1949; Hints from Hollywood, 1949). The Disney story men had an easier task with Ichabod since it is based on a short story published in Irving’s collection, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The 32-minute length suits the source material: in comparison, the Will Rogers silent feature of 1922, The Headless Horseman, was criticized for the addition of scenes to pad the plot (Parish, 1994: 172). Disney’s segment is faithful to the original, focusing on the love triangle set within the landscape of the Hudson River Valley. It is instructive to follow the film in tandem with the text, to see how the choice of words and images sharpens and focuses the narrative.

Ichabod’s status as an A picture is confirmed by its conception as a full-fledged musical. Disney went outside the studio to hire Don Raye (who had written numerous hits, including ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ for the Andrews Sisters) and Gene de Paul. The narrative is structured around three songs, one for each of the main characters. The tune ‘Ichabod Crane’ introduces the schoolteacher in all of his vanity and eccentricities. The song ‘Katrina’ establishes the object of rivalry between Ichabod and the town prankster and ruffian, Brom Bones. Katrina is more fully developed as a character in the movie, as her increasing flirtation with Ichabod escalates Brom’s jealousy. Finally, Bram sings (in Crosby’s voice) the song dedicated to his alter ego, ‘The Headless Horseman’, in a successful attempt to awaken Ichabod’s superstitious fears.

In the orchestral score for the film, house composer Oliver Wallace also privileged Ichabod as the A. The catchy tune underlying the opening credits, to which the choir repeats the words ‘Ichabod and Mr. Toad’, turns out later to be the song ‘Ichabod Crane’ developed and extended with full lyrics. Leitmotifs accompanying the action in Toad also reappear in a more pronounced way in Ichabod, particularly the trumpeting horns in the brass section. Musical phrases link the climactic scenes in each half: whereas they provide humorous accompaniment for the slapstick battle for the deed of Toad Hall, they then turn sinister during the pursuit by the Headless Horseman.

Irving’s text describes the Headless Horseman as a prankster who frightens the locals. In the Disney version, the lyrics of Brom’s song make the mythical Horseman a deadly threat on Halloween night, when he seeks to exchange his head with that of a fresh victim.

Thus instead of the autumn harvest celebration described by Irving, Disney changes Baltus van Tassel’s evening party into a Halloween frolic. The present-day American holiday was unknown to Irving, having developed only in the late 19th century. Vincente Minnelli immortalized a nostalgic version of Halloween in Meet Me in St. Louis, released one year before Ichabod. Originally Disney intended a strong modern flavor in the party sequence by commissioning the song ‘Trick or Treat’, written by Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. Rejected, as perhaps anachronistic, it was used in 1952 as the title song of a Donald Duck short (Schroeder, 2008, Vol. 2: 300).

While singing the song, Brom tosses a flaming jack o’ lantern into the fireplace, an action repeated at the end of the chase, when the Horseman flings his ‘head’ – a flaming pumpkin – at Ichabod in a point-of-view shot that threatens both the schoolmaster and the audience. The motif of the pumpkin flying toward the camera first appeared in the Will Rogers movie. Former Disney animator Ub Iwerks repeated it in his 1934 cartoon, The Headless Horseman. The Disney crew evidently studied Iwerks’s short, borrowing this and other details, such as the design of the country schoolroom, Ichabod’s pre-party toilette reflected in a broken mirror, the two suitors’ rivalry during the dance and the shot of church bells chiming Katrina’s wedding.

Ichabod’s A status is also evident in the introduction of costly special effects that enhance both comedy and drama. For example, Brom, hit on the head by an errant horseshoe, experiences the double vision of Ichabod’s light-footed prancing with himself. During the final chase, supernatural highlights gleam on the contours of the Horseman’s body and cape. Most important, the multiplane camera, virtually mothballed since the days of Bambi and Fantasia, was put back into action to add a visual punch to four brief shots. As an establishing shot before the party, the camera zooms toward the night-time exterior of Van Tassel’s home, lit by a huge harvest moon. Then, immediately following the frolic, Crosby’s narration (loosely based on Irving) sets the eerie mood of entrapment in Sleepy Hollow, as Ichabod travels homeward. The spoken dialog is expressed visually in three multiplane shots intercut with the action: a tall vertical pan from the sky down into the dark glen; a shot of a claustrophobic bramble closing in on the schoolteacher; and a view of clouds, like giant hands, enfolding and obscuring the moon.

The narrators

In a handful of Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony shorts, Disney incorporated caricatures of Hollywood stars in order to appeal to a broad audience. He lampooned Crosby’s vocal style, as the first of the crooners, in Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935). Walt also employed celebrity narrators and singers in the package films. The two men chosen as narrators for Ichabod and Mr. Toad further confirm my designation of Toad as a B and Ichabod as an A. In 1949, Bing Crosby was one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, whereas Basil Rathbone was in decline, having left Hollywood a few years earlier.

Somewhat forgotten today, Crosby was once ‘the most famous man in the world’ (Macfarlane, 2001: 320). His name on a film property guaranteed success. The trade paper Variety underlined this fact when it predicted that the Sleepy Hollow segment ‘will probably be the pic’s major b.o. [box-office] draw, chiefly because of Crosby’ (Parish, 1994: 2). He won an Oscar in 1944 for his performance in Going My Way and appeared in some 80 films, including two movies in 1949 that preceded the Disney release: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Top o’ the Morning. Much admired as a morale booster to American GIs during the war, the crooner consistently held a place at the top of the pop music charts throughout the late 1940s. In the days before television, his singing voice, which dominated radio broadcasts, was familiar in every American household. He and Disney were acquainted, since Walt was a guest on Crosby’s popular Kraft Music Hall broadcast.

Crosby’s A status was further reinforced by his exceptional contractual arrangements with Disney. Instead of a salary, his family would receive 5 percent of the film’s gross revenue, up to US$200,000 (AFI website). According to a New York Times article with the headline ‘Crosby and Disney close movie deal’, the singer negotiated to have his four sons, Gary, Dennis, Phillip and Lindsay, appear in a live-action introduction to the segment; they would appear in a Halloween scene, listening to their father’s narration on the radio (this concept was not used) (Crosby and Disney close movie deal, 1948).

Crosby did the voice recordings in March 1948 (Macfarlane, 2001: 362). The new conversational singing style he all but invented was ideally suited to the Ichabod section, which lacks character dialogue, like Irving’s text. Crosby moves effortlessly from narration into song and back again, cast first as Ichabod, then as Brom, telling the tale of the Horseman. ⁸ The frequent ba-ba-booing, combined with the 1940s colloquial retelling of Irving’s story (he refers to Ichabod as ‘old Icky’), was calculated to appeal to a contemporary American audience. As advance publicity put it, ‘Although he doesn’t actually appear on the screen, he infuses his full familiar personality into his vocal role’ (RKO Radio Pictures, 1949: 4).

In June 1949, Crosby recorded the Decca record album, Walt Disney’s Ichabod (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), which takes some curious liberties with both Disney and Irving (Macfarlane, 2001: 384). On 29 October, shortly after the film’s premiere, he performed ‘The Headless Horseman’ on his Chesterfield radio show. The song, released as a single with the full lyrics, had the potential to become a holiday classic, like Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. As one reviewer noted, ‘The “Headless Horseman” song is seen by some persons in the trade as a likely holiday fixture for Hallowe’en, which now is without a dedicated song. Orchestras take to it easily’ (Carmichael, 1949: 18). It failed to achieve this status, perhaps being too closely tied to the film. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, among others, sang ‘Katrina’ on various radio shows (RKO Radio Pictures, 1949: 14).

Rathbone was not Disney’s first choice for Toad. British comedian Gracie Fields had originally agreed to narrate and sing the story; later Charles Laughton was sought. The essence of British civility, Rathbone divided his early stage career between London and New York. In Hollywood he created a series of memorable roles as a sword-wielding villain in such movies as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He became so closely identified with the character of Sherlock Holmes, whom he played in 14 films and innumerable weekly radio installments beginning in 1939, that when his Hollywood contracts expired in 1946, he sought to reinvent his career by moving back to New York. He appeared in such projects as the stage version of The Heiress, for which he won a Tony award in 1947. That was, however, ‘the last major success of the performer’s career’, according to biographer Michael B. Druxman (1975: 84, emphasis in original).

Thus Rathbone had fallen to B status when Ichabod and Mr. Toad premiered. Nonetheless, his Toad narration is superb, and Disney provided a subtle homage to Rathbone’s Holmes by means of Rat’s deerstalker and pipe. British critics were thrilled by ‘the impeccable British accents’. Said one, ‘Basil Rathbone’s charming commentary and the excellent dubbing by an all-British cast allow for no Americanisms in this most English of children’s classics’ (News Chronicle, 1950). Reviewers loved the ‘fruity voice’ and ‘vintage-port tones’ of character actor Eric Blore as the voice of the irrepressible Toad (Kennedy, 1950; The Star, 1950). Pat O’Malley’s voicing of Cyril also received special praise (Tinée, 1949).

In devising a publicity campaign for the American release of the film, distributor RKO constructed text and visuals that privilege Irving’s story over Grahame’s, perhaps due in part to greater familiarity with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the pre-Halloween release date. The dominant image in posters and print ads is the ominously swelling cape of the Headless Horseman, whereas Mr. Toad’s portrait is so small as to be negligible. The name Ichabod dwarfs the rest of the text. Crosby’s name is twice the size of Rathbone’s, and bold captions announce ‘Bing and Walt Wake up Sleepy Hollow with a Bang’, or ‘Bing and Walt Team up on the Headless Horseman’, emphasizing their collaboration. The ads favor the music in the Ichabod segment, with wording like ‘Hear Bing sing three hummy new hits!’ while advance publicity boasted, ‘fine musical numbers by Don Raye and Gene de Paul are featured in the Ichabod sequence of the picture’, omitting reference to the ‘Merrily’ song in Toad. Tie-in publicity was provided by the release of sheet music, albeit for the three Ichabod songs only. The set of eight lobby cards offered to theatres includes only one frame from Toad. Logically, print ads for the London release reversed the A and B emphasis, putting Mr. Toad’s name in the larger typeface and privileging images of Toad.

Conclusion

Both halves of the double bill benefit from the work of Disney’s finest animators, at the height of their powers in the late 40s. Ichabod’s climactic homeward ride and flight from the Headless Horseman, in particular, combine first-rate animation, art direction and sound to create ‘one of the most thrilling chases ever invented’, according to one reviewer (Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949). Despite some moments of slapstick humor, critics agreed that the sequence was genuinely frightening: The Spectator (1950) warned, ‘The episode culminates in a spectacular Hallowe’en ride, executed with great skill and cumulative horror, and guaranteed to give any child nightmares for a week.’ A British reviewer called the sequence ‘as powerful as the death of the animals in “The Rite of Spring” [Fantasia] or the forest fire in Bambi’ (JH, 1950). Indeed, none of the eight Disney feature films released between Bambi in 1942 and Ichabod and Mr. Toad in 1949 includes animated sequences with such sustained, emotionally diverse narratives.

Although the previous package films responded partly to postwar circumstances and partly to Disney’s own desire to expand the medium, audiences were left wanting, as one writer put it:

For far too many recent years Walt Disney, the only real genius films possess, has to my mind been stumbling around … There was that dismally highbrow effort ‘Fantasia’, which fortunately few of you saw. It was followed by courageous but, to my mind, foolhardy efforts to fuse cartoon characters with human beings on the screen. (Hodgson, 1950)

Ichabod and Mr. Toad broke away from this trend. The New York Times reviewer lauded the film with these words:

As a craftsman who had strayed slightly from his chosen field, Walt Disney is to be congratulated on his return to the realm of pure animation … Mr. Disney … has fashioned a conclave of cartoon characters, which, by and large, have the winsome qualities and charm of such noted creations as ‘Mickey Mouse,’ ‘Dumbo,’ et al. (W[eiler], 1949)

A British reviewer agreed: ‘Walt Disney has recovered all of the happy genius that has been missing from his recent pictures’ (Majdaleny, 1950). Reservations aside, a British commentator celebrated ‘a Jolly Good Film. It is quite some time since I said that’ (Evening News, 1950). Another remarked, ‘Free of the over-lavish sentimentality and the vulgarity of many of the feature-length cartoons, it even has a suggestion of the wonderful, inventive fantasy of those unforgettable silly symphonies, The Country Cousin [and] Three Little Pigs’ (Films, 1950).

Acknowledging upcoming Disney projects, the reviewer in the News Chronicle (1950) enthused, ‘What with “Ichabod and Mr. Toad” already thriving in town, and “Treasure Island” and “Cinderella” on their way, we seem to be in for quite a Disney renaissance.’ Another wrote, ‘I am indeed delighted to announce that Walt Disney has entered upon his second childhood – at the comparatively tender age of 49’ (Hodgson, 1950). Despite these critical raves, the film struggled to find an audience. Only a modest financial success, Ichabod and Mr. Toad continued Disney’s postwar trend of diminishing box office returns. It would take the huge success of Cinderella to ensure the economic future of Disney animation. Thus, like the other package films, Ichabod and Mr. Toad was not deemed suitable for the company’s schedule of periodic rereleases. Divided into two halves, each retitled after the original texts, it subsequently aired in two installments on the Disneyland TV show – ‘The Wind in the Willows’ in the first broadcast season (February 1955) and ‘The Legend of Sleeping Hollow’ in the second (October 1955). The halves remained independent featurettes until full restoration of the whole on Laserdisc (UK 1991, USA 1992). Nonetheless, currently enshrined within the Blu-ray format and still a fan favorite after 70 years, the film, by virtue of its prolonged genesis, varied art direction and promotion as a double bill, continues to delight and astonish audiences.