What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a 1952 American animated fantasy comedy-drama adventure film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel of the same name by Kenneth Grahame. It is the 13th 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 was critically panned on its initial release, the movie 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. Ratty starts to warn Mole of the Wild Wood and its inhabitants. Ratty then takes Mole to visit their 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 Badger. 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 on seeing that it is Ratty and Mole outside, he lets them in. They warm themselves in front of the fire and Badger 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 suggets Ratty and Mole they will to talk with Toad instead.

After they leave 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 Mole into leaving him alone in the house. He secretly escapes his exile.

When Ratty comes, he explains Mole what happened, but Mole beings crying, since he becomes homesick and he and Ratty visit Mole's house, and spend Christmas there. Some Caroling field mice turn up and after they have finish their song, Ratty and Mole invite them inside for a Christmas feast, but they don't have very good news to share. When the field mice tells Ratty and Mole that Toad has been arrested and charged with car theft, they 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 was the very same one that had already been stolen by a gang of weasels (who were 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. Toad then calls the Cheif 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 Cheif 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.

Fortunately for Toad, 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 finds himself back on the road with Cyril. Pursued by policemen, he runs accidentally into a river.

In the meantime, Mole discovers the weasels have take over Toad Hall and are in possession of the deed, revelaing 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 searching him. they encounter each other, ostensibly with the help of a mystical wood-spirit called Pan (which MacBadger told Mole of).

When Mole beigns talking with Rat, Toad appears, which Mole tells Ratty what happened, which Ratty says sorry to Toad for thinking he was the true theif. Knowing that the deed bearing Toad and the Cheif Weasel's signature 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 regaining his house while it implied 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 fly past on a Wright Flyer, as he has not truly reformed and developed a mania for airplanes, which Mole says "Good' ol Toad".

Cast

 * Colin Campbell - Mole
 * Claude Allister - Ratty
 * Eric Blore - J. Thaddeus Toad
 * Leslie Dennison - Judge, Weasel #1
 * Edmond Stevens - Weasel #2
 * J. Pat O'Malley - Cyril Proudbottom, the Cheif Weasel, Policeman, Unseen Paper Boy
 * John McLeish - Prosecutor
 * Campbell Grant - Angus MacBadger
 * Luana Patten - The Jailer's Daughter

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 of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 children's book The Wind in the Willows. Bodrero and Grant felt that The Wind in the Willows, with its anthropomorphised animals, could only be produced using animation. Disney was skeptical, however, and felt it would be "corny" but acquired the rights in June that year.

By early 1941, a basic script was complete, along with a song written by Frank Churchill called "We're Merrily on Our Way". Although it was intended to be a low-budget film (much like Dumbo), Disney hired many animators from the prestigious Bambi (which was nearly complete) and production began in May that year. Within six months, 33 minutes of the film had been animated. However, the studio's ability to produce full-length feature films had been drastically diminished, because World War II had drafted many of their animators into the military and had cut off their foreign release market. Thus, in October 1941, Disney put the production of The Wind in the Willows on hold.

Then in December 1941, the United States became embroiled in the war after Pearl Harbor was attacked. The US government then asked the Disney studio to produce several propaganda films to help rally support for the war effort. 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 decided that The Wind in the Willows would be better off being part of a package film.

Under the title Three Fabulous Characters they tried to pair it up with Mickey and the Beanstalk and The Gremlins. 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 under the title Fun and Fancy Free which was eventually released in 1947. Other segments were chosen for the 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 and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow being shown on Melody Time, while The Brave Engineer was released as its own short.

In 1948, after the studio returned to the production of full-length features with Cinderella, it started up the production of The Wind in the Willows again as a full-length. While the production progresed, Walt Disney and his team made some changes, such as Mr. Badger as a minor character. Also, in the original story, Toad steals a car and escapes from jail. This wouldn't do for the animated feature, since Walt felt the audience would lose sympathy for Toad. Finding they couldn't get the movie made while following the original story, they changed it to make Toad framed for stealing the car by the weasels instead. Also all the humans from the novel were re-animated as anthropomorphised animals in order to match the main characters.