June 20 - The Reluctant Dragon

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1941, RKO Pictures released the Walt Disney Production of The Reluctant Dragon to theaters. Dragon is based on a story of the same name by Kenneth Grahame, who also wrote The Wind in the Willows, which would also be adapted by the studio several years later. The movie is the first of the so-called package films Disney released during World War II. The war hadn’t reached America’s shores yet, but it was raging in Europe and the foreign revenue stream had all but dried up. Dragon is also the first Disney film to contain a significant portion of live action footage; almost half of its 74 minutes lack any kind of animation at all.

The plot of The Reluctant Dragon is kind of a weird take on a meta-reality theme. It stars Robert Benchley, a popular humorist of the era. For some reason Robert has a nagging need to sell the movie rights for Kenneth Grahame’s Dragon story to the Disney studio (it’s unclear why Robert would be able to sell the rights to someone else’s work, but that’s what is happening). His wife drops him off at the studio on her way to do some shopping (what else do wives do in 1941?) so he can get the deed done. He brushes off his official greeter and begins wandering around the place, unaccompanied (except for the massive camera crew, of course), visiting all the different departments, learning about how animation is produced. Along the way he (and therefore the audience) watches a clip of Casey Jr. in Dumbo as it goes through the Foley sound process, a story reel of rough animation for a new short called Baby Weems, and the first of Goofy’s infamous How to… sports shorts, How to Ride a Horse. Robert’s greeter finally catches up with him and delivers him to Walt’s side. Walt invites Robert into a screening room to watch a film the studio has just finished, which turns out to be the very story Robert was stopping by to sell the rights to, The Reluctant Dragon. When his wife picks him up on her way home, she berates Robert for missing out on selling Walt the rights to Dragon (which he clearly didn’t have the authority to do anyways) causing him to do an impression of Donald Duck’s famous retort, Phooey!

Image copyright Disney

The Reluctant Dragon was not well received. Part of that was due to the fact that it was released during the bitter animator’s strike at the studio. Part of it was because it wasn’t a new full length feature but a series of seemingly unrelated shorts strung together which confused audiences. It did, however, make money, earning $960,000 on a $600,000 budget. That fact alone set things up for the string of package films Disney released over the next several years. Since its initial release, it’s rare to see Dragon in its entirety, although it was released on both VHS and DVD with limited availability. How to Ride a Horse was rereleased as a standalone short in 1950 and, with the advent of television, both it and the extended Dragon short have been shown numerous times (and included in numerous home video collections) by themselves. One final note about The Reluctant Dragon: it is the only feature film that Walt appeared in. He had appeared on the big screen before, as part of the promotional ads for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Dragon would be his only acting gig until the studio’s anthology series came out on television.