November 8 - Robin Hood

On this day, in 1973, Walt Disney Production's twenty-first animated feature, Robin Hood, made its debut. The idea to make a feature based on the legends of Reynard the Fox date all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was looked at and shelved several times during Walt's life, actually getting an extensive work up once for an unproduced film called Chanticleer and Reynard. In 1970, writer Ken Anderson pitched a plan to merge the anthropomorphic animals from Reynard with the legend of Robin Hood.

As production proceeded on the movie, it ran into several time consuming roadblocks. Anderson wanted to set the movie in the deep south. Disney executives, uncomfortable with comparisons to Song of the South, insisted it stay in England. Then the initial actor cast as Robin Hood, Tommy Steele, couldn't sound heroic enough for the producers and a search for a new lead had to be undertaken. They finally settled on Brian Bedford, a name familiar to fans of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. There was even lengthy discussions over the legends Merry Men. Anderson felt they were essential to the movie, the producers wanted more of a buddy movie. Little John is the only merry man to make the cut. All these seemingly little delays added up and put production way behind schedule. In order to make up some time, several sequences from earlier films were reused in Robin Hood. The one that is pointed out most often is a scene of Maid Marian dancing just like Snow White did in her movie but dances from The Jungle Book and The Aristocats were also recycled.

The rest of the cast is just as good as the title character ended up being. Phil Harris makes his third Disney appearance as Little John. Peter Ustinov gives a marvelous performance as the villainous Prince John and his more virtuous brother, King Richard. Pat Buttram as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Terry-Thomas as Sir Hiss, Monica Evans as Maid Marian, Roger Miller as the singing narrator, Alan-A-Dale, the list goes on and on.

The initial reviews of Robin Hood were mostly positive, calling it a decent movie with great casting if not quite up to the standards of earlier Disney fare. Reviews since then have dwelt on it's use of recycled material and been somewhat less kind. It was a financial success, taking in 32 million dollars on a budget of 5 million. It even garnered an Oscar nomination for the song "Love," but lost out to The Way We Were.