In the last of the I-Didn’t-Know-This-Was-A-Movie package film series is 1949’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Based off Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows this is another feature that is more famous to my generation has being two separate cartoons as opposed to one film. The tale of the Headless Horseman seems to be the more famous of the two shorts. Most likely because it’s one of the few outright spooky and dark cartoons that Disney produced and it became a staple of Halloween viewing. For those of you who don’t know, I spent a decent chunk of my career as an Attractions Host in Disneyland’s Fantasyland and you’d be surprised how many times I would hear people wonder who Mr. Toad was when I operated his beloved attraction. Most people didn’t know he had a film (not to mention an entire work of literature written about him).
Setting the tone of the film is a disembodied narrator in a lush library. The Wind in the Willows is the first story we hear, narrated by Basil Rathbone. J. Thaddeus Toad Esq. is our lead character, a wealthy toad with a penchant for anything new and trendy, in this case Automobiles. He sells the deed to his mansion to a sleazy bartender named Winky in exchange for a stolen car. Toad is falsely accused of the car theft and the resulting trial is absolutely hilarious as it parodies the justice system. Toad’s horse Cyril is a scene stealer as he recaps the events. Speaking of the horse, one oddity in this short is the scale of the characters. Toad is the size of a toad, so Cyril, being a horse, towers over him. The world is inhabited by humans, so they are much larger than our animal cast. You’d think it’d look strange but the color pallet and general madcap style make it work. Anyway, Toad gets incarcerated and breaks out of prison. It’s up to his friends Ratty, Moley, and MacBadger to help get Toad Hall back from Winky and his band of Weasels. It’s obvious that this Mr. Toad was supposed to get a full feature as the story is a bit rushed. The frantic pace sort of works in its favor, but I would have liked it to be slowed down to learn more about the characters. Ratty and Moley seem like they’re good people and their relationship is adorable, but I could have used more time with them. A full 90 minute feature could have fixed that.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was always meant to be a short and it shows. The story is much tighter and flows much better. The tale of Ichabod Crane is narrated by Bing Crosby and what’s pretty cool is that it’s all done in song and pantomime, none of the character have any dialog. We mostly follow the daily life of the new schoolmaster as he takes advantage of most of the women in town. He may be lanky and pretty socially inept, but he’s quite the lady’s man. What struck me the most when viewing this was what a jerk Ichabod was. We normally see him has this frail victim, but he’s just not here. When he meets his eventual demise you don’t exactly feel sorry for him. Back to the plot, he falls for one of the riches women in town, Katrina, for her looks and her money. Local bully Brom Bones is jealous and regales superstitious Ichabod the legend of the Headless Horseman, riding the night woods at night looking for replacement heads. The legend comes true as Ichabod rides home and he comes face to face (?) with what is possibly one of the most scary villains in Disney history. His laugh still gives me chills. The mood set during the chase is great as the atmosphere is dark and heavy, but the action is more often funny and fast paced. In the end we don’t see if Ichabod survived as all that is found is his hat.
This is the final of the anthology films of the 40’s and as much fun it was to revisit this series of films the second Golden Age of Disney Feature Animation couldn’t come soon enough. The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad isn’t the strongest of the package films, but it’s not the worst by any measure. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is strong and the best version of the story I’ve seen but there is a want for a single narrative film. And that want is more than met in 1950 when a curtain scullery maid makes her entrance to the ball.
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