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What A Cartoon! - Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Patreon)

Published:
2019-10-14 04:01:00
Imported:
2026-06
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Thanks to the generous patronage of Devin Hoffarth, this week's episode of What A Cartoon! features a Halloween classic that just celebrated its 70th birthday! Making up one half of the oddly named package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Disney's adaptation of the classic Washington Irving story drove generations of children to madness with its terrifying depiction of the Headless Horseman. But while most people remember these vital eight minutes of the film, most forget the preceding antics featuring a hungry (and thirsty) schoolmaster that play out more like a Popeye short than anything Disney ever made. Listen in and prepare to relive childhood trauma as we shine new light on a cartoon classic!

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TomP

Great Podcast I have to recommend again the podcast The Disney Story Origins which has an episode comparing the history, origins and differences of the Sleepy Hollow story and the Disney feature.

Alex Irish

Great episode as always. Thought I'd chime in with some extra behind the scenes tidbits and trivia. - All of the Disney "9 Old Men" worked on the Sleepy Hallow short in some capacity. I can identify Frank Thomas supervised the animation on Ichabod, Milt Kahl did the heavy lifting on Brom Bones, especially during the headless horseman song ("He swears to the longest day he's dead"), and Ward Kimball did the scene where Ichabod is laughing at his own fears when he sees the "galloping" is just cattails on a log. -I'm surprised neither of you picked up that Katrina looks 1000% like Cinderella. And this package movie came out mere months before that feature came along to save the Disney studio from certain financial doom. -The composer behind the musical score is one Oliver Wallace, who has an extensive resume of Disney features, including Cinderella in fact. In listening to the short's music, I notice a lot of compositional and melodic similarities between the two projects, coincidental given thanks to their close release proximity. -The animation here gets super ambitious for a 30 minute featurette, especially during the climax. So much so, several Disney animators quit the studio following its completion, having hated the intensity of the workload.

Boomer Spacely

In 1986 my mom recorded a crapton of style at the time tv specials and stuck them on one tape. It included DTV Halloween (it really is just AMV and peak Disney really doesn't have money), A Disney Halloween (1983), Its Grinch Night (1972), Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and The Great Pumpkin. My siblings and I watched well into our teens. My sister has the tape now and watched it this year. Anyway, my take of that take is the tracking would always crap itself during the Ichabod Crane songs second verse. I still find it jarring to hear that song not go cuckoo. I also think there's a bit of a Mandela effect on the ending of this short. On the tape/broadcast version it's implied and shown that Ichabod was so scared he left town and lived happily ever elsewhere but I swear the version that got rolled into classrooms had Ichabod disappear forever. Though that just might be the years since seeing it school messing up memories. Oh well.

Devin Hoffarth

Great podcast guys! Really liked it and thanks for doing my request! I wanna emphasize just how messed up this short made me because as you said, it's like a Popeye cartoon for the first 80% of it. You're a little kid and you watch something that's funny and wacky and you think "oh haha this is so wacky like my Bugs Bunny cartoons." But then the scary stuff starts to happen and it pulls the rug out from under you. Much like Henry I was a sensitive and anxious child and this cartoon definitely made me change the channel in panic. Thankfully I'm adult now and I have much more reasonable things to be afraid of. Like... well uh... yea...

Thad Komorowski

Will listen to this soon, but Freddie Moore animated most of Katrina. There are a few drawings where you can tell that he was at the peak of an alcoholic bender when he drew them.

Devin Hoffarth

Oh also you wanna know something crazy about the conjoined film? It's explicitly stated that the climax of Wind in the Willows takes place on Christmas, even though the film really has nothing to do with Christmas at all. NOW THIS IS TOTALLY AN INSANE TINFOIL HAT THEORY... but I think Disney intentionally threw in a couple bits about it being "Christmas" in Wind in the Willows so they could sell this film as a double Christmas/Halloween feature. JUST LIKE THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS YEARS LATER.

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Like Henry (and probably most people who watched this as a kid), I remembered nothing but the musical sequence and the subsequent appearance of the Headless Horseman, so revisiting this to see the nature of it being a prank, and all the added context you guys brought to the table was super fun. Unlike some opinions I've seen on the internet about how it's such a short story that trying to revisit it to mine for my, I think there's enough there that is super interesting and am glad it's become sort of a staple of pop culture. I watched the Tim Burton version years ago and liked it then, and thought I'd probably hate it now, but I rewatched it a few weeks ago, and actually still think it's really well done. It's not Beetlejuice or Ed Wood, but it's pretty damn good.

Joe Hodgson

I just wanted to add a minor note on the history of Disney and the division of labor. Women were allowed in the door at Disney, but only in specific roles. Their ink and paint department was all women, but the company refused to consider women for animating. It's just another example of Disney's complicated role in labor since it was hard for women to get into the workforce. The company was likely viewed as progressive for its era, though now we'd view their practices as discriminatory (and rightly so). EDIT: Of course, you can ignore all of that since you did indeed cover that info later in the podcast. This film might be Disney's best package film, though it still lags behind most of the features. I prefer The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment to The Wind in the Willows and, yeah, it's pretty much all because of the chase sequence. The lead up to that is a necessary evil, but it is dull and Bing Crosby has just always struck me as the height of corn when he's performing. I have yet to show this my own kids (my oldest being 4) as I'm not sure how it will be received. I don't mind spooking them a little, but it might be a little too intense. I suppose if it is they can always hide under a blanket.

Thad Komorowski

Here’s my usual essay following a classic cartoon discussion… Ironically, this was one of the few I didn't see as a kid, only in my teen years, when I could truly appreciate the artistry. I think Ichabod & Mr. Toad's contrast balance each other splendidly and the lengths are perfect. Easily one of my very favorites. You may be overselling how “patchwork” Mr. Toad is. While there was some animation therein that was definitely done much earlier than the rest of the picture (I don’t know which scenes offhand), most of it was indeed all done at one time, when it resumed production in 1946. But a long period of preproduction was fairly typical at Disney’s. Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp were all gestating a good ten to twelve years each before real, REAL work started. The strike was definitely one of Walt’s lowest points, but his HUAC testimony was largely considered useless since they were well aware of the main name he named, Dave Hilberman (a leader in the Disney strike) and his Communist ties - it was the actual act of Walt doing that and shitting on basic American rights that should be (rightfully) criticized. I am glad that you balanced it, though, that he was unlike today’s completely uncreative evil corporate overlords, really did start out with basically nothing. And unlike a lot of other “creatives”, it’s definitely a fact that Walt’s opinion and input did result in better films very often. For what it’s worth, Dumbo’s lead animators were either strikers (Bill Tytla and Art Babbitt) or strike sympathizers (Ward Kimball and Freddie Moore), so I think the clown stuff was intentional self-ribbing. Lee Blair, Mary’s husband, was an animator and artist at Disney’s and got her the job there. She was at MGM in the late ‘30s and was coming home daily upset because Joe Barbera was making passes at her. The great walks of Ichabod at the beginning were by John Lounsberry. Swooner Crooner is Frank Tashlin’s classic. I think everyone was VERY aware of the sexuality involved in crooning - that’s the whole point of the cartoon(s). And that’s why Porky lays eggs too as the end gag. Freddie Moore animated most of Katrina solo. There are a few drawings that look as though he was at the peak of one of his alcoholic benders while drawing them. Dance is a mix of many animators. Ollie Johnston animated Ichabod and Katrina dancing in the first half; Milt Kahl did most of Brom Bones and the plump girl; Frank Thomas did a lot of crowd shots. And yes, the Ichabod-Brom Bones stuff is essentially out of a Famous Popeye cartoon.

KaiserBeamz

Since you guys brought up Bing Crosby parodies from the Golden Age of Animation, I feel the need to mention a time when Warner Bros took a bridge too far with their parodies. In 1936, Bing Crosby, along with Paramount Pictures for some reason, sued Warner Bros Cartoons for making cartoons that portrayed him in a defamatory light and tried to get them pulled from distribution. The first was “Bingo Crosbyana”, a Merrie Melodies short about a titular Spanish fly with Crosby’s voice and mannerisms who swoons all the bug ladies at a party. However, when a giant spider invades the party, Bingo flees and hides. Crosby objected to this as he felt it portrayed him as a vainglorious coward. The second was “Let It Be Me,” another Merry Melodies short about a Bing Crosby-expy rooster who seduces a bright-eyed, star-struck chicken named Emily with his singing. However, when he takes her to a nightclub, the Bing rooster immediately starts hitting on other chickens while literally kicking Emily to the curb while she’s in tears. Obviously, Crosby objected to this as he felt like it portrayed him as an unfaithful cad. The lawsuit wasn’t successful. We don’t know if it went to court and they lost the case or if it was thrown out by judge. The only thing left to say is that both shorts were directed by Friz Freling, with “Let It Be Me” being one first projects to have on an uncredited Rod Scribner.

Thad Komorowski
>>27928067

I don't think Scrib was a full-animator at that point. What's your source? Bing was also depicted as a dick in Art Davis' much later "Catch as Cats Can", with him as a parrot enlisting a dopey, non-lisping Sylvester to knock off a Sinatra canary for "vitamins". The film ends with Sly eating Bing and adopting his "buh-buh-boo", hat, and pipe. "Ah there's nothin' like vitamins." (The original ending was supposed to pan to the backyard with Bing's tombstone: "Came in before his horse." Which is why it fades out abruptly.) One of my all-time faves. You just know Friz was paying attention and wanted Davis for his unit once he saw the way Art staged cat-canary gags.

KaiserBeamz
>>27928067

You're right. That was my mistake. He was only an assistant in various departments at that point. Should've known better than to trust the Looney Tunes Wiki for giving me all the facts. And yeah, "Catch as Cats Can" is one of those really funny Looney Tunes that rarely seems to be talked about or even shown in any capacity. Probably because it was one of those shorts that never got a reissue.

John Simon

Listening to the jazzier parts of Ichabod ... dunno if this this in the pipeline or not but, y’all really REALLY need to cover “Over the Garden Wall” for Halloween next year.