I'm not sure if I ever saw this in its entirety in my childhood or not, but I've certainly seen most of it, it leaves an impression and I wanted to talk about it. Previously I wasn't aware of some of the background on this film, apparently there were major labor problems at the Disney studio at the time, in fact the animators were on strike by the time this movie premiered. The film appears to have been produced in part to respond to a great deal of curiosity about how animation at the Walt Disney studio worked, and also as a kind of theatrical place holder, when other fully animated products weren't quite ready for release yet.
The film centers on actor and humorist Robert Benchley, here playing a version of himself, nagged by his wife into visiting the Disney studio's to pitch an idea for a cartoon. Benchley is escorted around the studio by a bland page, but he periodically escapes and wanders around the studio on his own, visiting various departments, sound, storyboard, ect. and learning how a Disney cartoon is made. Much of the material in the film was later recycled and used in other Disney productions, television specials ect, Disney has always been big on re-using existing material. Benchley is an inherently charming host and the behind the scenes elements still fascinating. The film features several Disney shorts within it, one presented in a "limited animation" storyboard style that's charmingly different. The feature short, the one that Benchley has ostensibly come to get Disney to make, but which ironically he learns they have already made, is of course The Reluctant Dragon, which features a very fay Dragon.
At the time I'm sure this was creative and new, but now it just drips of nostalgia, and ironically that's a large part of why I like it. A testament to the kind of risks Walt Disney would take and a time when the studio was more interested in experimenting then they were with formula. ***
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