What if Walt Disney had produced the Looney Tunes franchise?/Walt Disney Animated Classics/The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a 1952 American animated fantasy adventure comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel of the same name by Kenneth Grahame. It is the 16th Disney animated feature film and was originally released on February 10, 1952 by RKO Radio Pictures. It focuses on three anthropomorphised animals in a pastoral version of Edwardian England.

While the film received mixed reviews on its initial release, it was a box-office success and proved to be ahead of its time and has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest animated classics.

Plot
Fed up with spring cleaning, Mole ventures out of his underground home. He goes for a walk in the countryside and soon comes to a river where he meets and befriends Ratty (who lives there). Ratty takes Mole on a picnic, while he warns him of the Wild Wood and its inhabitants. Ratty then takes Mole to meet his friend J. Thaddeus Toad at Toad Hall, and Toad asks them to come with him on a caravan trip on the Open Road. Ratty really misses his home on the river but does not want to disappoint his friends. Later that day, a passing motor car causes the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Ratty threatens to have the law on the car driver, while Mole calms the horse, but Toad becomes entranced by the new machine, having been taken over by "motor-mania."

As time goes by, Ratty and Mole can do nothing but look on as Toad buys and then almost immediately crashes his cars one after another. In winter, Ratty and Mole are extremely worried and they decide to call on Angus MacBadger, a friend of Toad's late father, to see if he has any suggestions; if there's anyone Toad will listen to, it's MacBadger. But Ratty fell asleep, refusing to take Mole to the Wild Wood.

Mole then decides to go alone to the Wild Wood to see MacBadger. He asks a gang of weasels for directions to MacBadger's house, but they tells Mole the wrong way to go and he becomes scared and lost. His cry for Ratty echoed, and back at the river bank; it wakes him up. Ratty soon notices Mole's absence and finds a note written by Mole telling him where he has gone. Rat takes some pistols and a cudgel and hurries along to the Wild Wood to find him. After Ratty finds Mole, they literally stumble across MacBadger's house and knocks on the door. MacBadger, annoyed at his relaxing night being disturbed, opens the door and gets ready to tell off whoever it is who has interrupted his rest, but changes his mind and lets them in. They warm themselves in front of the fire and MacBadger offers them each a hot drink. They discuss Toad's careless driving, which MacBadger tell them he could not doing nothing about it, but he suggests Ratty and Mole they will to talk with Toad instead.

After they left MacBadger's house, Ratty and Mole turn up at Toad Hall and try to tell Toad that what he is doing is wrong, and attempt to make him promise that he will never go near a motor car again. But Toad won't listen them, which Ratty and Mole put him under house arrest until he comes to his senses. However, Toad still longs for the open road, and tricks Ratty and Mole into leaving him alone in the house. He secretly escapes his exile.

After realizing Toad's escape, Mole becomes homesick and he and Ratty visit Mole's house. Some singing field mice turn up and after they have finish their song, Ratty and Mole invite them inside for a feast, but when they leave, they don't have very good news to share. The field mice tell Ratty and Mole that Toad has been arrested and charged with car theft, which the duo were consumed with guilt for their friend.

At his trial, Toad represents himself and calls his horse Cyril Proudbottom as his first witness. Cyril testifies that the car which Toad was accused of stealing had already been stolen by a gang of weasels, who were later revealed to be the same ones who tricked Mole in the Wild Wood. Toad had entered a tavern where the car was parked and offered to buy the car from the weasels. However, since Toad had no money, he instead offered to trade Toad Hall for the car. The prosecutor and judge show disbelief toward the statement, so Toad then calls the Chief Weasel, the leader of the weasels, as a witness to the agreement; however, when told by Toad to tell the court what actually happened, the Chief Weasel falsely testifies that Toad had tried to sell the stolen car. Toad is found guilty on the spot and sentenced to twenty years in the Tower of London. Ratty and Mole make every effort to appeal his case, but with no success.

In prison, Toad realizes that he is done with his manias and decides to turn over a new leaf. Fortunately, the jailer's daughter takes pity on him and helps him escape in the guise of a washerwoman. At first hitching a ride on a train, Toad finds the police in hot pursuit but is aided in his getaway by the engine driver. His next reprieve comes from a barge possum, but when he bungles a load of laundry, he angrily reveals himself to the barge possum and releases her horse in reaction to being kicked out of the barge. Pursued by policemen, he runs accidentally into a river.

In the meantime, Mole discovers the weasels have indeed take over Toad Hall and are in possession of the deed, revealing Toad is innocent, at the same time, an old wayfarer visits Ratty and tells him all about the world beyond the riverbank. Overcome with wanderlust, Ratty follows him, but aborts his adventure when he finds Mole is lost in the woods while searching him. they encounter each other, ostensibly with the help of a mystical wood-spirit called Pan (which MacBadger had told Mole of).

When Mole talks with Rat, they found Toad, all wet by the lagoon in which he had fallen before, which Mole tells Ratty about the weasels taking over Toad Hall, then Ratty also realizes about Toad's innocence. Knowing that the deed bearing Toad and the Chief Weasel's signatures would prove Toad's innocence, the three friends sneak into Toad Hall and take the document after a grueling chase around the estate.

The film then ends with Toad exonerated and regaining his house while it is implied that the weasels have been arrested and imprisoned. As Ratty and Mole celebrate the New Year with a toast to Toad, who they believe has completely reformed, Toad recklessly flies past on a Wright Flyer, as he has not truly reformed and developed a new mania for airplanes, which Mole says "Good' ol Toad".

Cast

 * Bing Crosby - Mole
 * Claude Allister - Ratty
 * Eric Blore - J. Thaddeus Toad
 * Ollie Wallace - the Chief Weasel
 * Leslie Dennison - the Judge, Weasel #1
 * Edmond Stevens - Weasel #2
 * J. Pat O'Malley - Cyril Proudbottom, Policemen
 * John McLeish - the Prosecutor
 * Campbell Grant - Angus MacBadger
 * Luana Patten - the Jailer's Daughter
 * June Foray (uncredited) - the Barge Possum
 * Mel Blanc - Sea Rat
 * Sebastian Cabot - the Narrator
 * The Rhythmaires - Additional Voices

Production
In 1938, shortly after the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, James Bodrero and Campbell Grant pitched to Walt Disney the idea of making a feature film based on Kenneth Grahame's 1908 children's book The Wind in the Willows. Bodrero and Grant felt that Wind in the Willows, with its anthropomorphized animals, could only be produced using animation. To persuade Disney to approve the film, Bodrero and Grant prepared a Leica reel, which combined storyboard stills with rough dialogue performed by members of the animation staff. Disney was skeptical, however, and felt it would be "awful corny", but acquired the rights in April that year.

After some delays due to story rewrites, James Algar was appointed to direct the film. By April 1941, work on The Wind in the Willows had begun as animators and writers had come off from Bambi, which was nearly complete. When the Disney animators' strike was finished in October 1941, Joe Rosenberg of the Bank of America issued an ultimatum in which he would permit an absolute loan limit of $3.5 million, and in return, he ordered the studio to restrict itself to producing animation shorts and to finish features already in production — Dumbo, Bambi, and The Wind in the Willows — but no other feature film would begin work until they had been released and earned back their costs. In response, the studio's feature film production, including early versions of Alice in Wonderland and Lady and the Tramp, were heavily scaled back while The Wind in the Willows was kept in production as animation work had already begun. However, after reviewing the animation footage, Disney decided to shelve the project deciding that "the quality was too far below the standard necessary to be successful on the market."

The Wind in the Willows resumed production in 1946. Following his military service in World War II, animator Frank Thomas was assigned to direct additional footage for Wind in the Willows alongside James Algar in hopes of salvaging the project.

During this time, much of Disney's feature output was made up of so-called "package films". Beginning with Saludos Amigos in 1942, Disney ceased making feature films with a single narrative due to the higher costs of such films, as well as the drain on the studio's resources caused by the war. Walt Disney and his artists felt that the animation of the cartoony anthropomorphized animals in The Wind in the Willows was far below the standards of a Disney animated feature. They then believed that The Wind in the Willows could be better off being part of a package film.

Around this same time, there were plans developed to combine The Wind in the Willows with Mickey and the Beanstalk and The Gremlins, an original story developed by author Roald Dahl, into a package film titled Three Fabulous Characters. However, after The Gremlins failed completely to materialize, the title was changed to Two Fabulous Characters. Then Mickey and the Beanstalk was cut from Fabulous Characters in favour of pairing it with Bongo and The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins under the title Fun and Fancy Free which was eventually released in 1947. Other segments were chosen for the supponsed package film including Pecos Bill, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Brave Engineer with the retitled film All In Fun, but these three segments were later released separately with Pecos Bill being shown on Melody Time, while The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was shown on The Adventures of Ichabod and Sara Crewe and The Brave Engineer was released as its own short.

In 1948, after the studio's financial health started to improve again and it had made the studio returned to the production of full-length features with the pre-productions of Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, Walt decided started up the production of The Wind in the Willows again as a full-length feature film.

Writting
While the production progressed, Walt Disney and his team made some changes, such as Mr. Badger, who was renamed "Angus MacBadger", being a minor character and appearing only in the Wild Wood sequence, despite he was originally intended to be Toad's bookkeeper, until Walt decided he was instead a minor character instead due to his fewer appearances in the story. Also, in the original story, Toad steals a motorcar and escapes from jail. This wouldn't do for the animated feature, since Walt felt the audience would lose sympathy for Toad. Finding most part of the story chronicle Toad's daring escape from prison, the team changed it to make Toad framed for stealing the car by the weasels instead. Also all the humans from the novel were reimagined as anthropomorphised animals like the main characters in order to better simplify the storyline. In addition, an human character named Mr. Winkie, who was originally intended to be the leader of the weasel gang, was removed from the story, making the weasels as the central villains.

Transcript
If you want to see the transcript, click here.

Other appearances
Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad and the weasels made some cameos in some episodes of Looney Tunes Works. Toad, Ratty, Mole, Mr. MacBadger, Cyril, the Chief Weasel and one of the other weasels also made an appearance in the Christmas featurette A Looney Tunes Christmas Carol, as Scrooge's old employer Fezziwig, the two Charitable Gentlemen asking for donations for the poor, an attendee of Fezziwig's party, Donald Duck's horse and two gravediggers, respectively. Mr. Toad also made a cameo appearance (as a fireman) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, while Judge Doom's weasel henchmen were modeled after the weasels from the film.

Live-action remake
Disney, with the collaboration of Allied Filmmakers, later made a live-action remake of the film, which it was written and directed by actor Terry Jones, and produced by Jake Eberts and John Goldstone. The film stars Steve Coogan as Mole, Eric Idle as Ratty and Terry Jones as Toad. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 18, 1996. In this version, all the characters are portrayed as humans with animal characteristics.