The Forgotten and Obscure One.
After the success, and relative inexpensiveness of Dalmatians in ’61, Disney’s animation department was saved. However, Walt clearly had his mind on other things; his live action films, for one thing; such as the Parent Trap and Pollyanna, which were proving far more successful than anything animated recently. And for another, the pre - production of a little known film called Mary Poppins, for which he was still battling author P.L. Travers for final script approval. Five years of teething issues and Disney was finally making money from crowd numbers and park merchandise. So Walt and Roy now turned their attention to what they called “the Florida Project” which was a planned second theme park. Where animation had once been their sole focus, it had become a kind of afterthought and Walt would only commit to releasing a new film once every three to four years.
Regardless, the animation team kept pitching new story idea after new story idea at Walt, hoping for something that might catch his attention, as well as that of the people. Way back in ’39, Walt bought the rights to The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White one year after it was published, but during WW2, of course, every planned film was shelved, and Sword in the Stone was shelved for twenty years. Though it was listed as “in development” all that time, despite no work getting done on it. After the success of Dalmatians, Walt decided to bring Sword in the Stone off the shelf in mid-1960 and put it in competition with another project in development called Chantecler, about a rooster on a voyage of self - discovery. But that project was shot down in a disaster of a pitch meeting with Walt where he said “you can’t make a personality out of a chicken”, I think my uncle might disagree, but no matter.
Meanwhile, Sword in the Stone was being written, again by a solo Bill Peet, because he was still riding high on the success of Dalmatians, which he also wrote on his own. Luckily, Walt had recently seen the Broadway musical of Camelot in 1960 with Julie Andrews as Guinevere, and he became determined to have her in the lead role of Mary Poppins. Clearly a fan of medieval things, the choice was obvious between Sword in the Stone and Chantecler of which project to green light.
Walt also recognized the strength of the content in Sword in the Stone and how it echoed many previous successes at the studio, especially the inclusion of anthropomorphic animals, like Lady & the Tramp and Dumbo did. And the fact that the narrative was deeply rooted in magic like Peter Pan and Cinderella were.
THE STORY
A legend is sung of when England was young, and knights were brave and bold. The good king had died and no one could decide who was rightful heir to the throne. It seemed that the land would be torn by war or saved by a miracle alone. And that miracle appeared in London Town. The Sword in the Stone. Though they tried for the Sword with all their might, no knight in all the land could draw the wondrous blade from it’s resting place. It's secret, they could not understand. The one who was meant to rule the realm, and worthy of a throne; he will seek the sword with a humble heart, and not for himself alone. He will be the one who was born to claim the Sword in the Stone.
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After Dalmatians, the guys were more experienced with the Xerox, which would save the studio hundreds of thousands. And this film would be produced on a shoestring budget of $3 million, which is half of what Sleeping Beauty cost, making it one of the most inexpensive films made since WW2. And to save further, animation was reused, which meant merely tracing over existing animation from the film, plus using the same shots multiple times.
In a departure from the studio, the cast was not the same slew of Disney regulars and famous actors it usually is. Newcoming director and Old Man Wolfgang Reitherman, also the first solo director on a Disney film, was forced to seek out actors outside the studio willing to work for the pittance the production budget allowed. For the key role of Merlin, 70 actors were auditioned but no one had the eccentricity that Wolfgang wanted, until TV actor Karl Swenson came in. Though he was auditioning for Merlin’s talking owl Archimedes, he was cast as Merlin instead. And for the lead role of Arthur, Wolfgang turned to 14 year old Rickie Sorensen, who had the unfortunate timing of going through puberty while recording his lines, so Reitherman was forced to cast his own two sons, Robert and Richard, to replace Sorensen.And rather than re-record Sorensen’s lines, Reitherman oddly used all three actors throughout the film, so Arthur’s voice obviously changes between scenes and sometimes even in the same scene. To say nothing of the fact that the difference between Sorensen’s voice and that of the Reitherman boys is OBVIOUS, which causes all sorts of continuity issues. Plus it becomes jarring for the audience, compounded by the fact that the boys are using their American accents in a film with almost exclusively British accents and a British setting.
MY VERDICT
So, I can see why Walt was personally not a fan of this one. The animation is crude, the narrative is less than interesting and the film itself is a bit mediocre. The one thing I will praise are the songs because all of them, written by the Sherman brothers in their first outing with animated Disney, are memorable and catchy and almost earworm like. I had one of them stuck in my head as I was writing this review.
Is the Sword in the Stone a Disney Classic? It’s a mostly forgotten film that leaves little impression unless you go to Disneyland and see the Sword itself and you think "Hey I remember this...". Other than that, it’s subpar animation and narrative fail to capture the true Disney. Perhaps it would have been better off as a TV series. A Disney Classic, it is not.
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