Meet Casey, Hiawatha and Other Greats in Walt Disney's Timeless Tales: Volume Three

I love classic Disney cartoons, so I was happy to find the Walt Disney’s Timeless Tales series on Netflix recently. Volume Three includes two Disney shorts I’ve long loved, along with four others that I think I may have seen once, or at least heard of, but that might just be because three of the stories were familiar and the other was similar to one of my favorite Mickey, Donald and Goofy shorts. That last one is the only one of the six that, as far as I can tell, is a wholly original story; the rest are based on established poems, folktales and American history (or, more to the point, fictional adaptations thereof). It’s a nice collection of cartoons from the mid-1930s to 1950; some of them do feel a bit dated, but they are a lot of fun to watch.

Casey at the Bat (1946) – Ernest Thayer’s tragi-comic ballad upon which this is based has always been a favorite poem of mine. I’m not big into sports, and I’ve never had any team loyalties beyond rooting for Penn State, but I do like baseball. I enjoy getting out to the ballgame at some point during the summer if I can, where I can watch the game proceed at its rather leisurely pace and usually have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I love all the elements that come together to make this an edge-of-your seat tale that’s at the same time pretty easy to memorize and bust out around the campfire or other appropriate occasion.

The Disney version features narration by Jerry Colonna and lots of visual humor depicting Casey as an overgrown oaf and everyone else at the fateful baseball game as pretty ridiculous in some way or another. An opening song includes a line about the ladies at the ballpark not knowing a hit from a strike, which I find a bit insulting; all the female fans are gussied up and swooning over the ballplayers but don’t have a clue what’s going on. Though I don’t know, in the thick of things, they seem pretty into it to me. The ball players themselves are a bundle of quirks, and all of them have a tendency to sweat profusely, a la Striker attempting to fly the plane in the comedy Airplane!. The short is just over eight minutes long and is a fun, pretty straightforward take on the classic poem; I know it also spawned a sequel in the 1950s, which I hope to see one of these days. I don’t know when I first saw this one, but it’s probably what introduced me to the poem in the first place and is a definite Disney classic.

Little Hiawatha (1937) – This was another short I’d seen many times, as we’d taped it once during a stint of taping old Disney cartoons during the Duck Presents program on the Disney channel. It uses bits of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about Hiawatha, but the majority of it is wordless and has little to do with the poem. In this short, Hiawatha is just a youngster who looks like he can’t be much more than five. He wants to appear fierce with his bow and arrow, but that’s tough when his pants keep falling down every time he turns around. There are some silly pratfalls here, but ultimately it becomes a story of compassion and cooperation as he manages to corner a young rabbit, then decides to let him go free, thus earning the loyalty of the woodland creatures, who come to his aid when a bear attacks him.

This is probably my favorite cartoon of the six. The animation is beautiful, and the interaction between Hiawatha and the animals is wonderful, both before and after his encounter with the rabbit. The choreography of the bear chase is especially well done and reminds me of playing the Jungle Book Super Nintendo game, where everything in the jungle has to be lined up just so in order for Mowgli to successfully continue on his journey. Talk about a community effort! And in this short, which came out around the same time as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it’s easy to see the similarities to Whistle While You Work. Three cheers for the woodland brigade!

The Wise Little Hen (1934) – I’ve always been a fan of the story The Little Red Hen, with the conscientious hen who can’t get any of her fellow farm animals to help her out with her planting project. This is a fun short as well, and it’s notable because it marks the entrance of Donald Duck, played by Clarence Nash. But it’s also just a bit grating. That’s because everybody is borderline incomprehensible. Donald always is, of course, and it’s part of what makes him endearing, but one of the reasons it works is because he’s almost always complaining about something. Somehow the quacking just fits really well. Pinto Colvig plays Peter Pig, whose voice is a strange combination of guttural oinking noises and a German accent. His voice annoys me more than Donald’s.

But the one that really bugs me is Florence Gill’s Wise Little Hen. I suppose that this is mostly because she does the vast majority of the talking – or, rather, singing various annoying verses of Help Me Plant My Corn. I’d be tempted to refuse her just so I wouldn’t have to listen to that voice – and because if I didn’t know the story, I probably would have no idea what she was asking. It’s a very cute cartoon. But boy, does a little of that clucking go a long way.

The Golden Touch (1935) – Another familiar story, though like the preceding cartoon, I can’t say for sure if I’d ever seen it before. It recounts the story of a greedy king (Billy Bletcher) whose only delight is in counting his gold coins like a proto-Uncle Scrooge. When a mischievous sprite comes along to tempt him with the Golden Touch, he succumbs immediately. In some versions of the story, it’s obvious that the supernatural being’s main aim is to teach Midas a lesson about what’s important in life. Here, that’s not so clear, since he stands to gain from the king’s realization that the Golden Touch isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The odd thing is that we don’t see how any of this affects anyone except the king’s poor cat, who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What exactly is this man a king of? He seems to live in complete isolation. And what happens to everyone in his kingdom after he trades away everything he owns to his mysterious visitor? Or maybe he’s only a king in his own mind… Still, it’s pretty entertaining to see him turning things gold left and right, especially during the dramatic dinner scene when he realizes what a problem this is going to be.

Morris the Midget Moose (1950) – An interesting story of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer variety. Except in this case, there are two “defective” creatures, and it’s their cooperation with each other that makes them able to thrive. Morris is tiny but has regular-sized antlers. When he meets Balsam, a regular moose with tiny antlers, they team up to defeat the ferocious Thunderclap, who is the established dominant moose in the group.

This cartoon reminds me quite a bit of the 1937 Mickey / Donald / Goofy cartoon Moose Hunters, mostly because in both shorts, we see two moose ferociously fighting each other by locking antlers and tossing each other to the ground. Things don’t end so well for our intrepid hunters on that occasion. Thankfully, Morris and Balsam get a rather happier conclusion. This short also marks the last appearance of the wise character Bootle Beetle. A bit odd, perhaps, that a beetle is telling stories about a moose… But I guess he’s been around enough to have experience with plenty of species beyond his fellow insects. A cute cartoon.

Ben and Me (1953) – Twice as long as the next-longest cartoon on the DVD, this one is based on a book by Robert Lawson. The basic idea is that Ben Franklin was not such a brilliant American after all. Rather, he just happened to get together with an ingenious mouse. This humble fellow named Amos is voiced by Sterling Holloway, best known as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, and the lilting, relaxing quality of his voice is just as present here. I just love listening to him speak. Charles Ruggles provides the voice of Ben, who comes off as entirely addled. I also got a kick out of hearing the voice of Hans Conried, who I know best as the voice of Thorin Oakenshield in the Rankin and Bass version of The Hobbit, playing Thomas Jefferson.

While it’s nearly 60 years old, this short is still the most recent thing on the DVD, and both that and the fact that it is set in such a definite time period make it feel like the least dated of the cartoons here. If it were made today, I’m not sure that too many things would have changed. There’s excellent attention to detail as we see Amos and Ben in Revolutionary times and watch as history gets just a bit skewered. Here, Amos has a humble hand (or paw) in the creation of the Franklin stove, bifocals, The Pennsylvania Gazette and even the Declaration of Independence. A very clever and comical little ode to an important chapter in American history probably best appreciated by slighter older kids, as 21 minutes is a bit on the long side and it’s funnier if you know some of the background already.

You can watch all six of these in one sitting as I did or dole them out one at a time. Either way, while some of these shorts show their age just a bit, Walt Disney’s Timeless Tales: Volume Three is a great collection for any fan of classic Disney cartoons.

Stunning Animation and Tender Relationships Make Brother Bear 2 a Worthy Sequel

Back when Brother Bear came out, I was wowed by the beauty of the previews and figured it would be the most visually appealing Disney movie since Pocahontas. The sweeping panoramas of unspoiled wilderness certainly didn't disappoint, but I wondered if such care would be taken with Brother Bear 2.

This sequel may have been direct-to-video, but I found it just about as enthralling as the original. If you can get past the premise of a guy turning into a bear, it's a fun, romantic romp with breathtaking scenery and well-written songs. While the story is largely about Kenai (Patrick Dempsey) and his "adopted" kid brother Koda (Jeremy Suarez), the primary focus is on Nita (Mandy Moore), Kenai's childhood sweetheart.

After Kenai saved her from drowning when they were children, he gave her an amulet to represent the depth of their friendship. Unsurprisingly, the two lost touch when he became a bear, and now he's a distant memory to her, but a reunion becomes a necessity when her attempt to enter into an arranged marriage is unsuccessful because the powers that be consider her already committed because of the necklace. Her task? Find Kenai, and go with him to the spot where the amulet was given so that they can destroy it together during the Vernal Equinox.

Nita is aided in her mission by the temporarily bestowed gift of being able to communicate with animals. With the speech barrier gone, other challenges separating her from her old friend seem much more surmountable. The real issue is that once Nita and Kenai reunite and begin to fall into their old rhythm, it's clear that affection between these two runs very deep. Is breaking that bond really the best course of action?

There are plenty of adventurous scenes to keep youngsters entertained, including a thrilling pursuit through a racing river and a treetop battle with a troop of raccoons that recalls Jane's troubles with monkeys in Tarzan. There's also plenty of comic relief from moose pals Rutt (Rick Moranis) and Tuke (Dave Thomas), who are fixated on securing the admiration of a pair of female moose who couldn't be less interested. Back in the village, Nita's squabbling aunts also provide a few laughs, and spirited Koda feels a bit like wise-cracking Donkey, with Kenai and Nita as Shrek and Fiona.

But the movie is more about heart than humor, from the sensitive songs by Melissa Etheridge to the dynamics among the main trio and Nita's relationship with her tender, widowed father (Jim Cummings). As Kenai finds himself torn between his self-appointed duty as caretaker to Koda and his desire to return to his former life with Nita, it becomes fairly easy to guess at the unconventional ending, but that doesn't prevent it from being a touching conclusion to a sequel that was obviously handled with great care.

A Moose and a Snail Form an Unusual Friendship

James Marshall is famed for stories featuring a wide array of colorful creatures, from hippos and bears to foxes and pigs. In The Guest, we get a marvelously mismatched pair: a moose and a snail.

The moose, oddly enough, is gray, which isn't a color I imagine on a moose. Not only is she gray, her antlers are gray, which threw me off so much that I couldn't be sure of her species until I peeked at the summary on the page containing publication information. However odd her coloration, then, Mona is a moose, and one day her life changes drastically when a tiny snail named Maurice with a gray body and pink shell comes to call. Although they are vastly different in size, Mona and Maurice enjoy one another's company so much that the snail sticks around.

Marshall shows us several pages of Maurice trying to take part in Mona's moosey activities. Mostly he manages remarkably well, helping her to bake, answer the telephone, mow the lawn... But his favorite job is playing hide and seek with her, a game at which he certainly has the advantage. Yes, Mona and Maurice make a great pair. But one day, Maurice simply isn't there for breakfast in the morning, and Mona doesn't know what to do. Can her friend really be gone for good?

The Guest is a cute story, if not quite as laugh-aloud funny as many Marshall books. The silliness comes in with the illustrations, which show just how ill-suited a tiny hand-less snail is to the pursuits of a much larger creature. When compared with George and Martha, Mona and Maurice are just a bit bland, but their tale of friendship, with Marshall's distinct drawings and terse narrative style, is still one worth reading.