Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (IX) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 14.0 - Introduction of the Giant

Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/12/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Animation by John Lounsbery (Giant, Donald), John Sibley (trio of Mickey, Donald, Goofy), Hugh Fraser (Giant, Mickey), Hal King (trio), Les Clark (Mickey), Hal Ambro (Mickey). No indication of effects animators...

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (VIII) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 13.0 - Discover Harp

Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/12/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Hal King animated the trio, to Jack Campbell's Harp.
And then we cut to live action.

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (VII) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 10.0 - Dragonfly

Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/12/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Animation by Bob Carlson (All), Ken Muse (Mickey), Don Towsley (All), Charles "Nick" Nichols (All), John Sibley (Goofy), Marvin Woodward (All), Harry Holt (All), Judge Whitaker (Mickey/Donald), Woolie Reitherman (Goofy) and Jack Campbell (Harp).

With Ken Muse on the job, this sequence must clearly date from before the 1941 strike, as Muse left for MGM then and there did the work he is best remembered for, on the Tom and Jerry series...

One of my favorite bits is Goofy with the peas and landing on the jelly - by Sibley. Classic!

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (VI) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 08.0 - Early Morning

Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/8/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Animation by John Sibley and Bob Carlson.

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (V) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 07.0 - Beanero

Of course, the title is a pun on the fact that it is a "Bean Bolero..."Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/8/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Basically an effects sequence, the animation is by Josh Meador, Ed Aardal, John Reed, Dan MacManus, Art Palmer, Les Clark (Mickey), Frank McSavage and G. Miller.

George Howell Miller (1895-1969) is one of those "workers" that we hardly ever hear of. In 1940 he was classified as Assistant Animator. He started with Walt in the early 30s, had a stint with Harman/Ising and returned in 1938. But his start was in Kansas City at the Film Ad in the early 1920s, and I believe he may even be pictured in the famous Feb/Mar 1921 Film Ad photo with Walt (two places to the right of A.V Cauger himself)! That is the reason he is shown on this photo of the Film Ad reunion in Hollywood in 1944, reprinted in Funnyworld:

Find George Miller under the red arrow! (Yes, there were missing a few names below the photo. Mike corrected them in a later issue.)

There is no explanation for why he was often referred to as George W. Miller...

Addition: a Twitter user, ibcf has uploaded a video clip of this sequence with the animator assignments overlaid! Very interesting!

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (IV) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 05.0 - Opera

I said we are going to take this slowly...
Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/8/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Animation by Phil Duncan, Harvey Toombs, Bob Carlson and Marvin Woodward.
A sequence that enjoyed lots of exposure through the years...

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (III) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 03.0 - Starvation

Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/6/1946 by "Toby" Tobelmann.

Animation by Woolie Reitherman, John McManus, Ward Kimball, Milt Neil, Bob Carlson, Harvey Toombs and Marvin Woodward, with effects by George Rowley.
What I do NOT understand is the credit for Blaine Gibson on scene 19! Should this not have been credited to M.R.?

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (II) - Prod. 2043 - Seq. 01.0 - Opening - Happy Valley

We take it slow: we go one sequence at a time. As I said yesterday, even though Bongo is first in the film, Mickey and the Beanstalk is first in the draft, so we go in draft order. This is Seq. 01.0 of Prod. 2043, which is Mickey and the Beanstalk; it does not carry the Fun and Fancy Free production number 2057 which was not attached to the whole film until the two parts were combined.
Directed by Bill Roberts assisted by Mike Holoboff.
Layout by Al Zinnen.
This FINAL draft dated 11/6/1946 by Eloise Ann "Toby" Tobelmann, with Disney since 8/14/1935.

Animation by Jack Campbell (Harp), John McManus (Birds and effects), Ted Bonnicksen, Les Clark, George Goepper (cow), John Sibley (cow and bull), Woolie Reitherman (crows), with effects by George Rowley, Dan MacManus and Josh Meador.

For those of you who see the label M.R. for the first time, it means Music Room and is used for scenes that needed timing but no animation. The Music Room was room with a piano, occupied by the director and the musician, and together they timed the sequence or film. This also illustrates the importance of music to the timing of the films as discussed here.

Prod. 2057 - Fun and Fancy Free (I) - Seq. 01.0 - Titles and Inserts

The first seven pages of this draft are the scenes that are not part of Bongo or Mickey and the Beanstalk. They are the opening bits with Jiminy Cricket, and the animated scenes between those two main "halves" of this movie, except for the bubble over Snerd's head in the live action just before the Mickey and the Beanstalk part.Directed by Ham Luske, assisted by Jack Atwood. Layout by Ken O'Connor. This FINAL draft dated 8/6/1947 by Ruth Wright.

We find Jiminy Cricket animation by Eric Larson, Rudy Larriva, Judge Whitaker, Don Lusk (of course with goldfish), Harvey Toombs, Bob Youngquist, Bill Justice, and then, between Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk, more crickets, but by Phil Duncan, Hal King and Ollie Johnston.

As always, my "Standard Disclaimer" applies:

"Animation drafts were never meant to be historical documents. They were meant as go-to documents, showing the responsible artist for a certain scene, who might be able to help in case there would be any need for this further on in the production line. Therefore we often see e.g. that animators who left have been replaced by others, often their assistants, in later versions of a draft. Also for this reason it is most often the actual animator, not the supervising animator, who is mentioned (*. The drafts may also be directly inaccurate - showing early assignments where the animator actually changed when the scene was finally handed out. Keeping all this in mind, though, the drafts can give us some sort of hands-on insight into the inner workings of the production of some of the most iconic motion pictures of all time."

*) As a very special treat, the Bongo part of this draft also has indications for the supervising animator, something sadly missing on all other drafts!

Full of Fun and Fancy Free....

The inside cover of my Fun and Fancy Free draft has this index:How time flies, especially when you are busy! In less than a month, my old mentor Børge Ring will be 97. A few years ago he wrote an intro for me for the upcoming draft of Prod. 2057, Fun and Fancy Free, which comprises of Prod. 2043, Mickey and the Beanstalk and Prod. 2048, Bongo, though not in that order in the film. In his intro, Børge specifically addresses the first part of the film, Bongo.
I translated his text to English as close to his original as I could, incl. punctuation, and I hope it passes muster. Here goes:

BONGO
A bricked-in circus artist.

"Fun and Fancy Free" is generally considered a substandard Disney movie. "A rather thrown-together construction."
Right.
Try, just for fun, to imagine removing all of the construction except for BONGO. What do you have left?????????????????..................

You have a treasure chest filled with some of Walt's very best animation committed by some of his very best animators at the apex of their careers.
The film is SO VERY reminiscent of the wonderful shorts of the 30's, and it's filled with animation highlights.
To name a few examples:

Marc Davis delivers a whole Davis minute (58 seconds) of an optimistic BONGO preparing for his first night in raw nature without the protection of a circus tent.
Marc wanted most of all to animate things that would make theatergoers laugh, like his opening scene in "The Wind in the Willows." But ever since BAMBI he has often had to draw animatable princesses with distinguished appearance because he was good at it.

Ward Kimball presents us with a long festive dramatic sequence in which Bongo duels with Lumpjaw for the favor of Lulubelle. (Lumpjaw is animated as caricature of Bambi-director David Hand).

Milt Kahl offers a Corps de Ballet of clumsy bears dancing a pasteurized mating dance in the primeval forest.

Freddie Moore charms (and impresses) with his animation of Bongo's and Lulubelle's first meeting and beginning courtship.

Art Babbitt tells us (as virtuously as in 'The Country Cousin") of Bongo's life as traveling circus artist in chains and about his flight into freedom in Survival Forest.
Later in the film he animates a courtship fantasy on Bongo and Lulubelle. Since all other bears in the film are big doofuses, Babbitt chose to play B and L as two small children.
Bongo lets Lulubelle ride his unicycle while gallantly holding her hand. But the contraption runs amok with her on it.
Bongos saves her with circus virtuosity, rotating, childish and loving.
That part of the scene is the nicest animation of small children I have ever seen. Nowhere is there a single unauthentic note.

Hans (Perk) and I were sharing a meal in Amsterdam in the sunshine with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and their wives Jeanette and Marie. During desert, I said:
"Ollie, I have a recurring daydream"

"So what are you dreaming?"

"I dream of owning the animation draft of "Bongo the Circus Bear"

Ollie sent a glance to the Van Gogh Museum and two seagulls. Then he said:
"If you will make do with "Bongo" and not ask for "Mickey and the Beanstalk" also, I'll go over to the studio and copy it for you while it is still possible"

27 mornings later I found the draft on my door mat.

Børge Ring
2014

PS. BONGO is directed by my versatile pen-pal Jack Kinney. Some time after "The Band Concert" (where Kinney animated Horace Horsecollar), Walt took him off animation and into the story department because he kept getting bonuses for submitted ideas accepted. As a jazz drummer, Jack Kinney was on familiar terms with music.

[Of course, Børge's Bongo draft went up in smoke when his house burned to the ground in 2013. Over the following days I will share my copy here on my blog. But first the inserts and Mickey and the Beanstalk, of course, for we are going to do this in draft order!]