Once
again I’m happy to be hosting an evening of vintage Disney features, shorts,
and television episodes on Turner Classic Movies this Wednesday (Oct. 28) beginning at
8pm EST/5pm PST. Any opportunity to see goodies from the Disney vault is cause
for celebration as far as I’m concerned. With Halloween in mind, the TCM lineup
includes The Adventures of Ichabod and
Mr. Toad (1949), the two-part animated feature comprised of the witty “The
Wind in the Willows” and the spooky “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which used to scare
the bejeezus out of me when I was a kid. One look at the Headless Horseman and
you’ll understand. Then you’ll meet the original ghostbusters—Mickey Mouse,
Donald Duck, and Goofy—in the 1937 short Lonesome
Ghosts and encounter a creation that could only have come from the
imagination of Tim Burton: Frankenweenie. This is the original 1984 live-action
short subject, not the recent animated remake. (Burton was a recent graduate of
the animation program at Cal Arts when he got the opportunity to make two short
subjects at the studio, but after a change of regime, the people in charge
didn’t know what to do with them!)
I
was no longer a kid when the Disney studio made Escape to Witch Mountain in 1975, but youngsters of that generation
have great fondness for this adaptation of Alexander Key’s novel, which stars
Hollywood veterans Ray Milland and Eddie Albert as well as Kim Richards and Ike
Eisenman.
From
October of 1956 comes an episode of the Disneyland TV series called The Plausible Impossible, in which Walt
Disney shows us some of the tricks of animation and explains its history as
well. It’s one of my all-time favorite installments of the television program
and the kind of show that inspired my lifelong interest in animated cartoons.
There’s
lots more, including three different cartoons featuring the Three Little Pigs,
the groundbreaking mood piece The Old
Mill (1937), and in the wee hours, some Disney product from the 1970s and ‘80s.
There will be more Disney evenings to come, including a Christmas show in late
December… so stay tuned.
