There is a part of me that wants to say that I have seen this before, yet as the movie begins, I remember nothing. This film is comprised of two segments that have nothing more in common than that they each featured a male lead who goes through a life changing event. As with the previous \u201cpackage film\u201d segments, these were stories that were in development at the Disney studios to become full length features. As with a few of the other \u201cpackage films\u201d, this film featured noted celebrities of the day to provide the narrations of the stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Wind in the Willows<\/em> The short version of the story is about Mr. Toad, the heir of Toad Hall who has been ignoring his fiscal responsibilities and distracting himself with chasing the latest fads of the day. He has a core group of friends that want him to be the good person that they know he can be. When Mr. Toad\u2019s pursuit of a horseless carriage leads to the loss of Toad Hall to a con artist, the friends ban together and trick the tricksters out of the deed they stole. As far as I can gather, this film adaption is relatively faithful to the source material with the exception of the ending. While Mr. Toad is remorseful for his misbehavior over the course of the story at the end, it shows him chasing a new fad \u2013 an airplane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Legend of Sleepy Hollow<\/strong><\/em> Bing Crosby is the narrator of this segment, and doing a casual search about this segment on the Internet it was released as a standalone feature in the late 1950\u2019s and seems to have been a staple for Halloween for a number of school children of the 1980\u2019s. The telling of the story is faithful to the source material and maintains one of the defining characteristics of the story of the time \u2013 leaving intact the mystery of what really happened to Ichabod Crane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is this comment I found I wouldn\u2019t doubt to be far from the truth regarding the production of this film:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/em>This film is narrated and the voice wasn\u2019t familiar to me at all. It made me crazy enough that I stopped the picture to discover that it was Basil Rathbone. I was ashamed, since I should have known that having seen some of the films in which he was known (The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and as Sherlock Holmes). The characters that start the Wind in the Willows segment are more familiar to me as the co-stars in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. The more the story progresses, the story itself is less familiar to me. I guess I never had the pleasure of reading the Wind in the Willows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time I think of Washington Irving, I think of the segment on \u201cAssume the Position with Mr. Wuhl\u201d where he talks about how Washington Irving was a \u201crock star\u201d of his day. (Meaning that whatever he wrote about was something that would sell). It\u2019s also a nod to the Disney studio\u2019s fascination with early American stories and folklore. (See final paragraph in the Melody Time post.) I think that it\u2019s worth noting that Washington Irving was a champion of the American writer at a time when America was still young and trying to establish its identity to the rest of the world. This continues to fit in with the overall patriotism that seems to bubble under the surface of the ‘package films’ of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n