The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad / Fun and Fancy Free

This Disney two-fer pairs 1949's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad with 1947's Fun and Fancy Free. The first leads off with the classic short “The Wind in the Willows,” based on Kenneth Grahame's beloved children's novel featuring the mischievous Toad and his faithful friends Badger, Mole, and Rat. Narrated by Basil Rathbone, the story finds the manic Toad salivating over a motor car…and winding up in jail. Contemporary viewers may be surprised at the amount of alcohol, knives, and guns on display here. Toad's misadventure is followed by the Bing Crosby-narrated “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” adapted from Washington Irving's tale about pedagogical schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, who has a fateful meeting with a headless horseman one evening. The masterful climactic chase sequence still manages to send chills down the spine. Hosted by Jiminy Cricket, Fun and Fancy Free—also featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd—serves up two more animated shorts. “Bongo,” narrated by Dinah Shore, follows a young circus bear who breaks out of captivity and finds love in the forest (although the love will sit strange with today's audiences because of the courting song “Say It with a Slap,” which features the lyrics “give her a slap / give her a cuff”). Bergen narrates “Mickey and the Beanstalk,” a take on the classic fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” with Donald Duck and Goofy (this was the last film with Mickey Mouse in which he was voiced by his creator, Walt Disney). Although the Blu-ray transfer looks a bit soft in places, it is solid overall, and absolutely sparkles on the excellent bonus feature: 1941's The Reluctant Dragon, a live-action / animated film in which radio comedian Robert Benchley receives an eye-opening behind-the-scenes tour of Walt Disney Studios (look for a young Alan Ladd in the storyboard department), culminating in a screening of the titular short film. Recommended. (R. Pitman)