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!]