Robert Benchley (played by himself) is told by his wife to go to the Walt Disney studios to pitch a new cartoon idea to Walt Disney himself. Reluctantly Robert agrees to take on this task. After receiving a pass at the front gate Robert is met by a Boy Scout-esque young man named Humphrey (Buddy Pepper). It did not take long to understand that there are many wonderful things to see and experience at the studios, so at every opportunity Robert ditches Humphrey.
Robert gets a personal tour of the drawing school, with real life models; watch how they do sound effects with recording devises; he learns the methods of a story board; he gets to watch them mix paints, and build clay models for the animators. During this last stop of the clay model studio there are some shots of a naked female centurion, which will come back later in the show (??!).
Eventually Humphery catches Robert and escorts him into a viewing room with Mr. Walt Disney himself. They sit down and view a new cartoon. Come to find out, it is the cartoon that Robert came to pitch to Walt called the Reluctant Dragon. (Finally, a cartoon, which was an entertaining short film itself.)
The Reluctant Dragon movie was a quick filler for the Disney Studios as the world headed into a second world war, it was a commercial disaster at the time because the public felt cheated with such a short cartoon, instead of the likes of Dumbo or Bambi which were to proceed and follow this film.
1 comment:
interesting- I had never heard of this one- thank you for educating me.
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