“If you plant these beans in the light of a full moon, you know what will happen?”
“YES! WE GET MOON BEAMS!”
40 years ago today on 1/20/80 “Mickey’s Greatest Adventures” aired on “Disney’s Wonderful World”. A retitling of “The Adventures Of Mickey Mouse” from 1955, it hadn’t been shown in 25 years when the show was still in black and white on ABC.
The show begins with Gary Owens as our audible host, telling us about the vast career of the world’s most famous mouse, starting off with the cartoon “Squatter’s Rights” with Chip And Dale being the original tenants of a cabin that Mickey and Pluto go to stay at, and then on to “Mickey’s Trailer”, with Mickey, Donald and Goofy driving a trailer into the mountains, with the gang making the mistake of having Goofy be the driver (“Well, I got you down safe and sound!”). Then the almost 20 minute “Mickey And The Beanstalk” segment of “Fun And Fancy Free” is presented, telling the story with Mickey, Donald and Goofy as our heroes, and Willie the Giant as the villain (voiced by the wonderful Billy Gilbert). Finally “Alpine Climbers” has Mickey, Donald, and Pluto climbing the Alps, along with a St. Bernard that helps Pluto a little too much.
In the original broadcast Walt Disney was the host, so accordingly all those sequences wouldn’t be shown in 1980, the idea of having a host on the show having been abandoned after his passing. In that original showing the first cartoon shown was “The Band Concert”, then “Alpine Climbers”, “Squatter’s Rights”, and finally “Mickey And The Beanstalk”. At the end Walt is closing the show and Willie the giant lifts the roof of the room to look for Mickey, just as he had at the end of “Fun And Fancy Free” with Edgar Bergen, and afterward walks over the buildings of Los Angeles, finding the Brown Derby, and putting it on his head. Humorous lumbering music is used for his nocturnal walk (editing out the initial part of the walk where Jiminy Cricket is seen), while in the original film the reprise of the gorgeous, jaunty title song “Fun And Fancy Free” was used, not having quite the same joyous spirit of the original film.
The 1980 presentation removed “The Band Concert” for “Mickey’s Trailer”. A later syndicated show called “Adventures Of Mickey” only incorporated “Alpine Climbers” and “Squatter’s Rights”, along with a number of other cartoons, not really being like the original show with the exception of including those two cartoons.
Interestingly “The Adventures Of Mickey Mouse”, which aired on 10/12/55 at the beginning of the show’s second season, was not repeated again in the 50s, despite the fact that most of the episodes of the first few seasons would be broadcast three times each in the same season, mainly because there were only a number of things produced yet, and they had only made a few live-action theatrical films that could be shown on the anthology show to have more programming. Somehow it wouldn’t return for a quarter of a century, while “Bongo”, the other half of “Fun And Fancy Free” was also presented in 1955 on the anthology show as “Jiminy Cricket Presents Bongo”, and never presented again, not seeing the light of day until HBO presented it in the summer of 1982 (without Walt’s intros) in black and white, looking surprisingly quite stunning in monochrome as well.
The “Mickey And The Beanstalk” segment from “Fun And Fancy Free” was originally introduced and narrated by Edgar Bergen with his dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, telling the story to Luana Patton from “Song Of The South”, but for this presentation all the live-action footage and narration was rerecorded to have Sterling Holloway do the narration, something he’d been doing for some time at the studio, even by 1955. It works very nicely with Mr. Holloway as our guide, with the natural warmth he always brings to any production, but it is quite inspired, not to mention hilarious, with Edgar Bergen and the many jokes that are incorporated with his involvement which don’t totally make it over with the more sedate Sterling Holloway narration. The Holloway version is better for the telling of the story, with different humor being incorporated that is more with his style. The Bergen version is funnier with its free-form narration, with Charlie’s jokes punctuating many moments, like the run down location having been called Happy Valley, with Charlie saying the aside, “Now it’s Gruesome Gulch”.
The Sterling Holloway version would later air on “The New Mickey Mouse Club” in 1978, and in 1981 on “A Disney Storybook” (with “Dumbo”) on CBS, airing on all three networks during the run of the anthology show.
They would present “Mickey And The Beanstalk” later in 1963 as part of “The Truth About Mother Goose” with Paul Frees as Ludwig Von Drake and his bug friend Herman telling the story, again removing the original storytellers. Rather strangely they don’t mention in the title of the episode that “Mickey And The Beanstalk” is included, since it is literally half the episode. It also works fine and incorporates some Ludwig humor into the proceedings, even able to include the red barn that Mortimer mentions he painted in the original “Fun And Fancy Free” version. Considering that Edgar Bergen was the host of the first Disney TV show “One Hour In Wonderland”, it’s amazing how the original footage was never actually shown on the anthology show, or revived in any way until the VHS release in 1982.
At the beginning of the show on 1/20/80 they had a promo for the show, as the “Disney’s Wonderful World” titles aired. In that segment they used footage from “Mickey And The Beanstalk”, but the footage they used was from “Fun And Fancy Free”, with the original narration. This totally threw me at the time since I didn’t understand what the sounds were when Mickey is escaping the giant, with an, “OH!”, from Luana worried, and Charlie saying in a low voice, “Should have left well enough alone”, making for some odd sounds that don’t make any sense to someone not knowing their presence in the story. Not until they released “Fun And Fancy Free” in 1982 on VHS did I understand what that TV Spot had used as its source, the VHS being the first public release of the original film in 35 years in the United States.
Amazingly in watching “The Truth About Mother Goose” version of “Mickey And The Beanstalk” when that scene comes up when Mickey has to escape the giant, as he tries to tie his shoelaces together, there’s a jaw dropper in that they somehow left in that version the Luana Patton “OH!” as well, where it doesn’t make ANY sense, apparently an oversight from the editor who adapted the theatrical version to the Ludwig narration (they obviously used the theatrical version since they include the red barn joke, which isn’t present in the Sterling Holloway version). It is really bizarre to come across such a boo-boo, though most viewers won’t notice it.
“Mickey’s Greatest Adventures” would be shown again on 9/7/80, making a leap from 25 years to about 8 months for its next showing. Amazing.
As Walt said, “It all started with a mouse.”
“I want to eat, and eat, and eat, and eat, and eat until I die!”