Fun and Fancy Free is a package film that contains two segments, Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk. Jiminy Cricket makes an appearance as a narrator who introduces the stories. This film is significant in Disney animation history as Walt Disney had always voiced Mickey Mouse up until halfway through production of this film. He then passed on the honor to sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald who voiced the famous mouse for the next 30 years.
Premiered: September 27, 1947
Directed by: William Morgan (live action); Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, and Hamilton Luske (animation)
Produced by: Walt Disney
Based on:
Little Bear Bongo written by Sinclair Lewis
Jack and the Beanstalk by Benjamin Tabart
Sequels: None
Cast:
Edgar Bergen
Dinah Shore
Luana Patten
The King’s Men
The Dinning Sisters
The Starlighters
Anita Gordon – Golden Harp
Cliff Edwards – Jiminy Cricket
Clarence Nash – Donald Duck
Billy Gilbert – Willie the Giant
Walt Disney – Mickey Mouse
Jimmy MacDonald – Mickey Mouse
Directing Animators:
Ward Kimball
Les Clark
John Lounsbery
Fred Moore
Wolfgang Reitherman
Music by:
Charles Wolcott
Oliver Wallace
Paul Smith
Eliot Daniel
Songs:
“Fun and Fancy Free”
“I’m a Happy-go-Lucky Fellow”
“Lazy Countryside”
“Too Good to be True”
“Say it With a Slap”
“My, What a Happy Day”
“Eat Until I Die”
“Fee Fi Fo Fum”
“My Favorite Dream”
Academy Awards: none
The Story:
The opening credits are set to the song “Fun and Fancy Free.” Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Jiminy Cricket are listed as part of the cast in the credits.
The opening scene shows a small pond and Jiminy Cricket appears in a little leaf boat. He is paddling around using his umbrella and singing “I’m a Happy-go-Lucky Fellow.” The shot zooms out a bit and shows that Jiminy was actually in a garden planter inside a house. He jumps off the planter and onto a nearby bookshelf. He is still singing his song about having a positive outlook on life and looking at the different books when he falls off and almost lands in Cleo’s fishbowl.
Jiminy finds a newspaper and shows how most of the articles are reporting negative news but keeps on singing about being optimistic. A cat appears and chases Jiminy. He tells the cat to take it easy and not be bundle of nerves. Jiminy slips under a door and starts to bark at the cat to scare the cast away.
The new room Jiminy is in is quite dark and he accidently knocks over a doll. He sits her back up and notices another toy, a stuffed bear. Both of the toys look very sad and Jiminy tries to convince them to cheer up. He decides to play them some music and jumps up onto a record player.
The first record he finds is titled “Bongo; a musical story sung by Dinah Shore.” Jiminy rolls the record onto the player and tells Dinah to take it away. She starts off by saying that this is a story of three bears. Jiminy thinks he knows this story and says that it must be about a mama, a papa, and a baby bear. But as if in response, Dinah laughs and says that it is not that expected story. It is actually a love story and about Bongo the Circus Bear. Dinah goes on to list all of Bongo’s different circus acts.
Bongo is always locked up as soon as the show is over. He is not treated with respect and is always kept in a cage. He dreams of a life far away from the circus but his life is just a routine of living on the circus train in between cities and then doing his circus acts.
One day he tries desperately to escape the train because Bongo has had enough. Finally, the door to his cage opens and he rolls out into the forest on his unicycle. He goes exploring throughout the woods and tries to climb a tree. The chipmunks laugh at him and Bongo decides to just enjoy the flowers in the meadow instead. He starts to make friends with the forest critters.
At night, Bongo is very excited to sleep in the peace and quiet of the woods and under the stars, but the sounds of the nocturnal animals are so loud and scary! A coyote howls at him and a thunder storm starts to pour down on him.
After an awful night’s sleep, Bongo wakes up with a cold and is all stiff and cranky. He is discouraged that he does not know how to act like a real bear. Bongo is so hungry and tries to catch a fish in the stream with his hat but is unsuccessful.
Bongo hears a laugh and sees a pretty girl bear staring at him. He can’t believe his eyes and thinks that he is either dreaming or hallucinating from hunger. But he pinches himself and realizes that she is real. The girl bear playfully runs away and Bongo chases her. He falls in love with her and dreams about floating on the clouds with little bear cherubs flying around.
A crowd of bears appear and notice the new couple but run away scared when they hear another bear approaching. This bear is named Lumpjaw and he is a villain of a bear. Lumpjaw is very jealous of Bongo and starts to growl at him. Bongo tries to be friendly and shows him newspaper clippings of the circus to show Lumpjaw who he is. The girl bear stops Lumpjaw from attacking Bongo and introduces herself to Bongo as Lulubelle. She slaps Bongo and he is so confused at the sudden change of character. She tries to slap him again but accidently hits Lumpjaw. Lumpjaw completely softens up and falls madly in love with Lulubelle. Bongo sadly leaves and thinks that Lulubelle was too good to be true.
The other bears start dancing around to the song “Say it with a Slap.” Bongo did not realize that the wild bears show their love with a slap and Lulubelle was trying to tell him that she loved him. The other bears are all slapping each other as Bongo watches from a hill above. Lulubelle then sneaks off and goes to find Bongo. Lumpjaw also finds Bongo and attacks him. Bongo attacks back and a big fight results. Bongo uses his unicycle to his advantage and rolls all over Lumpjaw. Both of the bears end up falling off a cliff and into a lake below. They jump onto a log which is about to go over a cliff. Lumpjaw is swept down into the river below and Lulubelle thinks that Bongo is gone as well. All of the other bears start to cheer when they see that Bongo has made it back safely. They bring Bongo over to Lulubelle who shows his love with a slap. She then climbs a tree and the forest critters help Bongo climb up the tree as well and this ends the first short.
Back in the room Jiminy stops the record and the doll and bear are now smiling at each other. Jiminy leaves and finds a party invitation addressed to a Miss Luana Patten which is for “tonight at the house across the way.” Jiminy invites himself and leaves through the window and heads to the house across the way.
The next scene is live action and takes place in the living room of the house across the way. Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen is hosting a birthday party for Luana Patten with his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. He starts to tell a story and Jiminy settles in for the tale.
The story takes place in Happy Valley where everyone is happy and Edgar gets Luana, Charlie, and Mortimer to try and imagine what Happy Valley would look like. Happy Valley is very beautiful and very lush with vegetation. There is a castle on top of the hill and in the castle lives a magical, golden harp. She sings “My, What a Happy Day” and all of the animals around are singing along.
One day a mysterious shadow creeps over the valley and steals the golden harp. Without the magic of the harp, Happy Valley turns into a dusty and miserable place. All of the plants die and the valley turns very gloomy. The laughing brook no longer flows and the valley is now known as Gruesome Gulch.
A little cottage is home to three humble peasant farmers, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. They have only a cow that can no longer produce milk. The three share a sad loaf of bread that is cut into such thin slices that they can see through the slice. They also share one bean. Donald goes crazy from hunger and starts to eat the plate. Goofy and Mickey calm him down but then Donald gets crazy eyes and grabs an axe. He heads outside to kill the cow but Mickey yells at him and takes the axe away.
Mickey goes to the village to sell the cow for food. Goofy and Donald are back at the cottage singing “Eat Until I Die” and are already dreaming of the food that Mickey is going to bring home. Mickey comes back with magic beans instead of food. Donald is so mad that he throws the beans and they fall down a hole in the floorboards. Since the beans were planted in the light of the full moon, a beanstalk starts to grow all throughout their home. The stalks then break open the roof and grow upwards. The farmers sleep right through the entire ordeal, even as the entire cottage is swept up with the beanstalk.
In the morning, the three farmers awake to stare at a huge castle. There are giant bugs all around them and they get attacked by dragonflies because Donald made them angry by pretending to shoot them. They reach the castle and climb up the giant steps; they are so excited about the adventure that they forget all about their hunger and fear. Once they reach the door, Mickey knocks but no one answers so they sneak under the door crack. The castle is very quiet and they see a giant table with lots of food on top. The trio race up to the top of the table to start to stuff their faces with all the food.
The farmers find the golden harp locked up in a chest and she tells them that she was kidnapped by a giant. The giant, named Willie, then comes downstairs and is singing “Fee Fi Fo Fum” and changing into different shapes and sizes. He smells the farmers and tries to find them around the table. Willie finds Mickey in his sandwich and Mickey pretends to read his palm and tells the giant that his palm says that Willie can change into anything. Mickey tries to trick him into changing himself into a fly so the farmers can swat him with the fly swatter. Willie changes himself into a pink bunny instead and sees that the trio have a flyswatter and figures out their plan. The giant locks Goofy and Donald up in the chest but Mickey manages to escape. Willie puts the key in his pocket. The harp starts to sing which puts the giant to sleep so Mickey can go get the key. Mickey uses a spool of thread to slide down into the pocket. He grabs the key but Willie has a small chest of pepper in his pocket which Mickey accidently opens. He sneezes and wakes Willie up. Willie sneezes as well but falls back asleep with the harp’s singing. Mickey takes the key and frees Donald and Goofy.
As they sneak off with the harp, Mickey tries to tie the Willie’s shoelaces together but this wakes him up and Willie chases them out of the castle and down the beanstalk. Donald Goofy cut down the beanstalk and Willie falls down to his death.
With the return of the golden harp, Happy Valley becomes happy again.
Edgar wraps up the story and explains that Willie was a figment of imagination did not really die. But then Willie himself opens up the roof of the house and asks if anyone has seen a little mouse. Edgar faints with fright and Willie quietly sneaks away through Hollywood.
Trivia:
- Honest John Worthington Foulfellow and Gideon from Pinocchio were originally going to be in the film as the folks who swindled Mickey out of his cow for the magic beans.
- There was also an unfinished sequence of Mickey trading his cow to Princess Minnie, who thinks that the cow is a gift. Mickey is too smitten to correct her that the cow is actually for trade. She gives him the magic beans as a thank you for his generosity.
- Each separate segment were originally intended to be their own full length feature film.
- One thought for the story of Bongo was for it to be a follow up to Dumbo and include the same circus and some of the same characters such as the gossipy elephants.
- Bongo was going to have a chimpanzee valet that joined him for his adventures.
- Edgar Bergen describes Willie the giant as Phantasmagoria, meaning a sequence of imaginary images such as a dream. This is where the name Fantasmic! comes from.
- In the “My, What a Happy Day” song, the crows from Dumbo make a cameo and sing along.
- The song “I’m a Happy-go-Lucky Fellow” was originally written for Pinocchio.
- Later versions of Mickey and the Beanstalk were narrated by Sterling Holloway or Ludwig Von Drake.
Representation in the Disney Parks:
In Disneyland, Bongo and Lulubelle were meet and greet characters until the 1990s.
In Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom there is a shop called Sir Mickey’s that is themed around Mickey and the Beanstalk. There is a beanstalk “growing” through the shop and Willie the giant is peaking down through the roof.
Check out the other films of Disney’s Package Era:
Leave a Reply