Thoughts on Melody Time

These Little Toot storyboard drawings were sold last year through Heritage Auctions...

Having gone through the entire draft of this film in a week, and eagerly awaiting comments, I do have a final thought regarding the order by which the film was put together. let's have a look at the dates of these final drafts:

2052 2/20/47 Little Toot Geronimi
2059 11/5/47 Bumble Boogie Kinney
2056 12/12/47 Pecos Bill Geronimi
2058 2/9/48 Johnny Appleseed Jaxon
2055 2/24/48 Once Upon a Wintertime Luske
2060 4/8/48 Blame it on the Samba Geronimi
2054 5/5/48 Trees Luske
2061 5/6/48 Titles&Inserts Jaxon

Interestingly enough, the draft for Little Toot predates all but Bumble Boogie and Pecos Bill by a year or more. No wonder that its intro sequence in the first part of the draft is scene 1 - and its production number is the lowest. I would think that Johnny Appleseed and Bumble Boogie were next in the pipeline, and they became scenes 2 & 3, and so on and so forth. Why the intro for the relatively short sequence Trees - with the one-before-lowest low production number - is numbered before Pecos Bill while the final draft is dated five months later is curious to me. Maybe I do attach too much value to these dates - who knows! Here are the sequences again as listed in the first pages.

Page 1, scene 1 & 1.1 - Little Toot intro (2052)
Page 1, scene 2 & 2.2 - Johnny Appleseed intro (2058)
Page 2, scene 3 & 3.1 - Bumble Boogie intro (2059)
Page 2, scene 4 - Once upon a Wintertime intro (2055)
Page 2, scene 5 - Trees intro (2054)
Page 3, scene 6 - Blame it on the Samba intro (2060)
Page 3, scene 7 & 7.1 - Pecos Bill intro (2056)
Page 3, scene 10 & the entire page 4 - Opening credits & intro
Page 5, scene 40 - End title