The Reluctant Dragon Source Material

I've now read Kenneth Grahame's original version of The Reluctant Dragon and learned that the parallel bathing to introduce the dragon and the knight was totally the invention of the Disney story department, as was the dragon playing the flute.

Furthermore, the knight in the original is St. George. Perhaps the Hays office, the movies' self-censorship body which was closely alligned with the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency, objected to a cartoonified St. George. Or perhaps Disney made the change before they could object.

In any case, St. George in the book is not a poet either, so Disney's story department was not shy about reshaping the material to make a stronger film. They invented enough visual business so that the animators always had something to work with. While the film is fairly dialogue heavy, it doesn't feel that way because the characters are always doing something when they talk. That's a lesson we seem to have forgotten over the years.

A Little More on The Reluctant Dragon

Before leaving these excerpts, I do want to talk a bit about story. I haven't read Kenneth Grahame's original, but it's interesting how there are parallel sequences for the boy meeting the dragon and Sir Giles. In each case, they're bathing. That lets us know there's an affinity between the dragon and the knight before we find out that they each write poetry. And the parallel is driven home by the scenes of the boy looking at illustrations of a dragon and a knight in his book and then lowering the book to see the real versions in front of him.

Very little of the dialogue refers to bathing, so whether the idea comes from Grahame or Disney, it gives the animators some concrete actions to perform while the dialogue takes care of character exposition. Similarly, when the boy sees the dragon for the second time, none of the dialogue relates to music, but the dragon has physical business with his flute - playing it and using it as a baton - that gives him something to do while interacting with the boy. The birds add an additional visual element to the scene.

The boy's physical business all relates to the book that he carries. He riffles through the pages, stares at pictures and in one of Moore's scenes, ends up leaning on it.

If today wasn't Canada Day, I'd be in a library checking out Grahame's original to see if these physical bits were adapted or invented by the Disney story artists. I'm guessing that if the film was done today, the dialogue would carry these scenes and the the characters would just be gesturing at each other rather than performing specific actions. That would make the animator's job a lot tougher.

If anyone is familiar with the original, please comment. If not, I'll get back to you on this.

More on The Reluctant Dragon

This film doesn't get the attention it deserves. It was released between Fantasia and Dumbo, though it resembles Dumbo more in its unpretentiousness. The animators were at the top of their game during this period and this film contains some beautiful comedic acting.

Before getting to that, though, I want to mention some interesting layout. Paul Teolis wrote me about Zach Schwartz teaching the dragon's introductory sequence at Sheridan and talking about how free the layout artists were with changing geography as needed. If you look at scene 20, you can see that the mound that the boy is sitting on is near a rock formation that forms a shower. Yet when the dragon dances past the boy in scene 43, that rock formation has vanished! In fact, once the dragon leaves the shower, the backgrounds are some of the sparest you'll find in a Disney feature.

Director Ham Luske definitely cast the animators by character here. In sequence 12.2, Woolie Reitherman does all of the dragon scenes and in sequence 12.4, the dragon is entirely by Ward Kimball. We usually associate Kimball with broad, comic animation, but the truth is that Reitherman's work here is far broader. Reitherman gets the honor of introducing the dragon and absolutely nails the character's personality. We thoroughly know this dragon by the time Reitherman gets done with him.

Reitherman had sort of a split personality as an animator. On the one hand, he was known for realistic, powerful action while doing characters like Monstro in Pinocchio and the dinosaurs in the "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia. On the other hand, he often animated Goofy, such as Goofy attempting to surf in Hawaiian Holiday. This dragon is much closer to Goofy than the Fantasia dinosaurs.

By contrast, Kimball's dragon is much more subtle. It's true that the dragon stays seated in one spot for the whole sequence and the dragon's nonchalance has to contrast with the boy's panic, but it's interesting that somebody chose to put Kimball on this sequence. His animation works fine, but his opportunites are fairly limited.

Paul Murry does a few scenes of the boy. I know that Murry has many fans of his comic book work. For years, he did the Mickey serials at the back of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Here's an example from issue 185 from 1956.
I have to admit that I'm not a fan of Murry's comic book work. It always seemed lumpy and ungainly to me. He handles the animation of the boy well, but seems to have trouble with the boy's hair. It's not a great hair design, but in Murry's scenes it sometimes looks a little like a loose wig. I do have to say, though, that the boy turning around in scene 25 is a lovely piece of animation.

Walt Kelly's scenes of the boy provide him with better acting opportunities than the Mickey shorts I covered in earlier entries. Kelly seems to have some trouble with the boy's hair as well, but he does keep it rooted. Scene 23 is an original solution to the motion of sitting down. The acting in scenes 35, 41 and 42.1 is very nice. Kelly had a real talent for posing in the Pogo comic strip and it appears that it was developed while he was at Disney.

One interesting thing is that Kelly's runs and walks are lacking. The run in scene 15.1 is weightless and the walk in scene 26 puts more effort into slamming the lead foot onto the ground than in pushing off with the rear foot.

Kelly definitely showed promise as an animator, but the strike cut his career short and he went into comics for the balance of his life. He did try his hand animating one more time late in life when he and Selby created the Pogo animated short We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us around 1970. By that time, Kelly's timing was rusty and some of the animation could have used more inbetweens, but Kelly's animation skills hadn't deserted him.

Last, and never least, is Fred Moore. Moore does the excellent work you'd expect from him on the boy (though even Moore seems to struggle with the hair), but the revelation here is Moore's Sir Giles. We associate Moore with round, soft shapes, whether mice, pigs or girls. Giles is thin and angular. As a design, he doesn't play to Moore's strengths, yet Moore clearly has fun with Giles lanky form. In scene 21, he gets some great poses out of Giles bathing in the tiny bucket. In scene 27, when Giles says "Preposterous!" Moore really pushes the facial expressions for comic effect.

Moore nails Sir Giles and the boy the way Reitherman nailed the dragon. And in this sequence between the two of them, Moore plays them off each other beautifully. Ham Luske knew what he was doing when he assigned these two animators to the three star characters' entrances. By the time this sequence is finished, we know there's a confrontation coming and we can't wait to see how it plays out.

Excerpts from The Reluctant Dragon

Courtesy of Hans Perk, here are animator identifications for sections of The Reluctant Dragon. The film is available on the DVD Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio, an essential item for anybody interested in Disney history and technique.

I'll have more to say about this in a future entry.