The Ash Creek Papers

This is really a deceptive title. What follows is not about Movies that are purely great, nor is it really a quiz.

It’s just that one day I got to thinking about memorable lines in film… lines that have crept into our lexicon like “play it again, Sam…” And after I scribbled down a few entries (films and parts, really), I pledged myself to find the actual words… I didn’t want to leave it to my memory (which of recent has turned to mush).

Then I thought it might be fun to throw a few lines and see if someone could guess the film. I tested a couple of favorites on Zack. He scored 100%. He knows film. He knows his Dad.

So what can I say? I found the exercise fun.

Then I spent several days in “assemblage”… dredging up from memory movies, roles, scenes & voices that have made a lasting impression on me. I sourced the correct words from the net, and for your consideraton I have selected 45 passages. 45 “lines” that for one reason or another that I enjoy.

You will find these listed below. And if you are of the mind… guess the film… guess the actor… and for “extra credit” give me the name of the character in the film. The titles of the films and the actors are listed conveniently in alphabetic order, the lines themselves are scrambled to further confuse you.

But before you proceed, this you should know: I am not really trying to stump you.

You may note that in a certain film there maybe several lines worthy of inclusion. I have made a choice. There is only one film that is represented with two lines. There are two actors with two lines, and one actor with three (all from different films).

You will also note… I have not included my favorite line in film… Bette Davis’ “Fasten your seat belt, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Ladies and Gentlemen, I adore that line… but the force and meaning of it depends too much on the previous action and visual… Bette as Margot Channing in All About Eve, descends the staircase, Martini in hand… learning that her love interest has been diverted to another lady, gulps down her Martini, reaches for another from the tray of a serving girl, drains that Martini, and then reaches for a third… “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Also note… some of the best lines in film occur in “repartee”. And those lines have been excluded. Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on first?” is not here, nor any of the countless hilarious Marx Brothers’ dialogues.

I did put a line in from a Mae West/W.C. Fields exchange. I just couldn’t help myself. I went looking for a specific Fields line… from memory it went like, “Milton, sit outside Mrs. Twilly’s door while I seek out the nearest purveyor of gin…” I couldn’t pin down the specific words. However, my research uncovered another gem that I simply could not pass up. It is included herein.

As I say… this is really not a quiz… I am just sharing a few snippets with you. So do not think of this as a definitive compilation… I couldn’t find all the ones that I went looking for… but overall, I am thoroughly pleased and sated by this exercise…

I feel like I have just finished two pieces of New York cheese cake. Now it’s time to digest.

THE LINES

1. “Playgoers, I bid you welcome. The Theatre is a temple, and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy. Tonight, I am pleased to announce a comedy. We shall employ every device we know in our desire to divert you.”

2. “You don’t throw away a whole life just ’cause he’s banged up a little.”

3. “I know how you feel. I know you don’t believe me, but I do. I’m going to tell you something I learned when I was your age. I had prepared a case. Mr. White asked me, ‘How did you do.’ I said, ‘I’ve done my best.’ He said, ‘They don’t pay you to do your best. They pay you to win.’ That’s what pays for this office. And that’s what pays for the pro bono work that we do for the poor. And for the kind of law that you want to practice. And that’s what pays for your clothes and my whiskey, and the leisure that we have to sit back and discuss philosophy. As we’re doing tonight. We’re paid to win the case. You finished your marriage. You wanted to come back and practice law. You wanted to come back to the world. Welcome back.”

4. “The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.”

5. “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax… You’re goddamn right I’m living in the fucking past!”

6. “You can’t hunt, you can’t ride, you can’t shoot, you can’t fence! What kind of a marriage is this?”

7. “On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse – bassoons and basset horns – like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly – high above it – an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing a voice of God.”

8. “The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.”

9. “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in ****** felt free.”

10. “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”

11. “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”

12. “Labiche! Here’s your prize, Labiche. Some of the greatest paintings in the world. Does it please you, Labiche? Give you a sense of excitement in just being near them? A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape. You won by sheer luck: you stopped me without knowing what you were doing, or why. You are nothing, Labiche — a lump of flesh. The paintings are mine; they always will be; beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it! They will always belong to me or to a man like me. Now, this minute, you couldn’t tell me why you did what you did.”

13. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

14. “I’ve been thinking. Tomorrow it will be twenty-eight years to the day that I’ve been in the service. Twenty-eight years in peace and war. I don’t suppose I’ve been at home more than ten months in all that time. Still, it’s been a good life. I loved India. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men’s careers. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy; but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time.”

15. “Well, Jones, at least you haven’t forgotten how to show a lady a good time.”

16. “I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city. That was the first time I ever saw by brother, but I knew him and I knew I would disobey the party. Perhaps it was the tie of blood between us, but I doubt it. We were only half-tied anyway. Indeed as a policeman I would say, get hold of a man’s brother and you’re halfway home. Nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn’t think he was the better man. Besides, I’ve executed better men than me with a small pistol.”

17. “Who are those guys?”

18. “My father, the most beloved gynecologist in Vienna, before they took him away on a morals charge for indecent exposure at the State Opera House, said, and I quote: ‘Please do not take me away, I will not do it again.'”

19. “Here is your king’s scepter, and here is your kingdom, with the scorpion, the cobra, and the lizard for subjects. Free them if you will. Leave the slaves to me.”

20. “Thank you Mr. Acavano!”

21. “In telling the story of my father’s life, it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn’t always make sense and most of it never happened… but that’s what kind of story this is.”

22. “There’s an old joke – um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life – full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly. The… the other important joke, for me, is one that’s usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud’s ‘Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious’, and it goes like this – I’m paraphrasing – um, ‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.’ That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.”

23. “Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.”

24. “That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability… you’re an improbable person, Eve, but so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love or be loved, insatiable ambition – and talent. We deserve each other.”

25. “Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.”

26. “My story starts at sea… a perilous voyage to an unknown land… a shipwreck… the wild waters roar and heave… the brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned… all save one… a lady… whose soul is greater than the ocean… and her spirit stronger than the sea’s embrace… not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story… for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name… Viola.”

27. “Flower Belle, what a euphonious appellation. Easy on the ears and a banquet for the eyes.”

28. “Lisa, I don’t need this. I swear to God, I do not need this right now, okay? I’ve got a judge that’s just aching to throw me in jail. An idiot who wants to fight me for two hundred dollars. Slaughtered pigs. Giant loud whistles. I ain’t slept in five days. I got no money, a dress code problem, AND a little murder case which, in the balance, holds the lives of two innocent kids. Not to mention your BIOLOGICAL CLOCK – my career, your life, our marriage, and let me see, what else can we pile on? Is there any more SHIT we can pile on to the top of the outcome of this case? Is it possible?”

29. “But one must never drive one’s enemy to despair; it makes him strong. Gentleness is better politics, it saps virility. A good occupational force must never crush. It must corrupt.”

30. “He’s a fountain of misplaced rage. Name your cliche; Mother held him too much or not enough, last picked at kickball, late night sneaky uncle, whatever. Now he’s so angry that moments of levity actually cause him pain; give him headaches. Happiness, for that gentleman, hurts.”

31. “Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything… How to sleep, how to eat… how to work… how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, ‘How did this tradition get started?’ I’ll tell you. I don’t know. But it’s a tradition… and because of our traditions… Every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”

32. “I find you very attractive. Your assertiveness tells me that you feel the same way about me. But ritual remains that we must do a series of platonic actions before we can have intercourse. But all I really want to do is have sex with you as soon as possible.”

33. “That gives us exactly… forty minutes to get the fuck out of Dodge. Which, if you do what I say when I say it, should be plenty. Now, you’ve got a corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it.”

34. “There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He’s the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand? I think you do. There’s another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there’s two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut.”

35. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

36. “You see that fella in the red sweather over there? His name’s Donnie McCoy. Works a few of the protection rackets for Cunnaro when he’s waiting for something better to happen. Donnie and I have known each other since we were six. Take a good look at that face, Floyd. Because if he ever finds out I can be beat by one lousy grifter, I’ll have to kill him and every other hood who wants to muscle in on my Chicago operation.”

37. “I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?”

38. “And who are you? So full of hate that you have to fight everybody, because you’ve been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain’t dying. And dying’s been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now, dying by the thousands, dying for you, fool. And all this time I keep askin’ myself, when, O Lord, when gonna be our time? Gonna come a time when we all gonna hafta ante up and kick in like men, LIKE MEN! You watch who you callin’ nigger! If there’s any niggers around here, it’s YOU, just a stupid-ass, swamp-runnin’ nigger! And if you not careful, that’s all you ever gonna be!”

39. “James, earn this… earn it.”

40. “I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he’d rather I’d shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted – if I could hit ’em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in the corncrib, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.”

41. “God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.”

42. “In this Regiment Sergeant Major we dance with our hands held high!”

43. “Now we’ll talk all day if you want to. But, come sundown, there’s gonna be two things true that ain’t true now. One is that the United States Department of Justice is goin’ to know what in the good Christ – e’scuse me, Angie – is goin’ on around here. And the other’s I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in muh briefcase.”

44. “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.”

45. “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

THE MOVIES

Absence of Malice
All About Eve
Amadeus
Annie Hall
A Beautiful Mind
Becket
Big Fish
Big Lebowski
Bridge on the River Kwai
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Casablanca
A Christmas Carol
Con Air
Dr. Zhivago
Fiddler on the Roof
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Glory
The Godfather
Lion in Winter
Magnum Force
Man For All Seasons
My Cousin Vinnie
My Little Chickadee
North By Northwest
The Producers
Pulp Fiction
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Sea Biscuit
Shakespeare in Love
Shawshank Redemption
Star Wars
Start the Revolution Without Me
The Sting
Ten Commandments
The Train
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tunes of Glory
2001 Space Odyssey
The Verdict
What’s New Pussycat?
Wise Guys
Working Girl

THE ACTORS

F. Murray Abraham
Karen Allen
Woody Allen
Humphrey Bogart
Marlon Brando
Yul Brenner
Wilford Brimley
Richard Burton
Steve Buscemi
Chris Cooper
Russell Crowe
Billy Crudup
Danny DeVito
Keir Dullea
Clint Eastwood
W.C. Fields
Joseph Fiennes
Morgan Freeman
John Goodman
Cary Grant
Melanie Griffith
Alec Guinness
Tom Hanks
James Earl Jones
Harvey Keitel
Kenneth Mars
James Mason
Zero Mostel
Liam Neeson
Paul Newman
Peter O’Toole
Gregory Peck
Joe Pesci
George Saunders
Paul Scofield
Peter Sellers
Robert Shaw
Alastair Sim
Rod Steiger
Topol
Gene Wilder

Catching a snowflake on your tongue on a February morning, rolling down a grassy hill on a warm spring afternoon, cannonballing your best buddy on a hot August day, jumping into a leaf pile on an autumn Sunday… saving the cherry on your hot fudge sundae ’til the last… squishing your toes in mud…

You know I could continue this list… maybe for days… each would describe an activity or sensation of our youth.

Don’t kid yourself, these are fun things (& don’t be concerned who is watching)… To lose your taste for what is youthful is to lose your taste for life.

Losing touch with youth is something that concerns me not. A couple of indications of my retaining a youthful outlook: I have never allowed my face to entirely clear up and, more germane to this exposition, I am completely committed to the excellence of feature length animated Disney films (and for the sake of brevity, hereinafter referred to simply as “Disney’s“).

I can’t pin point my first Disney. I’m going to guess that it was either Lady and the Tramp or Peter Pan… and I am also guessing that Lynn took me to the theatre with, or without Mom.

Yes, I loved watching cartoons on TV. I was a big fan of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. But those cartoons were merely three minutes in length, and while good, they were hors d’oeuvres to a kid who craved an entree.

Disney’s? They were the complete dinner… soup to nuts as they say…

Small “cartoon novels”, really.

And when I was a kid, the only time you could catch a Disney was in the theatre…

This was before “Walt Disney Presents” or “The Wonderful World of Disney” on TV.

This was before VHS and DVD.

Once a year a Disney would play in the theatres. Of course I always thought they were “new”… Snow White, Bambi, Dumbo, Cinderella, Peter Pan… how did I know that Snow White was first released in 1937.

The first Disney that I saw when I was “older than a kid” was when Lynn and I took Andy and Lisa to see the Jungle Book. In our family this event became legendary, not for the viewing of the film; but for Lisa, aged 4, striding down the aisle of the theatre, before the curtain was raised, and declaring to the audience, in a rather loud voice & with a thrust of her arms for emphasis, “I am Jewish!!”. Why she did this, like where the elephants go to die, will be a mystery left for all time.

But I digress…

My love for Disney’s would experience a full renaissance once my kids came on the scene. Now I could re-experience films of my youth; but their new films (really new films like Little Mermaid) released nearly every year — and there was also Walt Disney Presents on TV which periodically ran old Disney’s… and there was VHS & DVD so you could see your favorites time and time again. Access to Disney’s seemed unlimited.

And when my life guttered, when a combination of forces weighed down on me (some of it self inflicted), when I faced a crushing sleep debt, I would look forward to a tiny wedge of time on a late Sunday afternoon when I would retreat to the couch… put on Beauty and the Beast… and lulled by the narrator’s introduction & the background theme, I would drift to sleep even before Belle sang “Bonjour“… my kid’s knew I called this interlude my “Disney nap”.

Of my three kids, I think Zack has inherited my “Disney chromosomes”. And so it happened in a phone call we shared between Round 2 and the Sweet 16, and when other sports or music news seemed less pressing, that Disney’s came up.

You know how it is… rank your favorites, which had the best music, favorite character… that sort of thing. I rattle off my top 3, thinking mainly music: Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid & Sleeping Beauty… He counters: Jungle Book, Aladdin & The Lion King… although the music is key for me, Zack feels it’s secondary…Then he tosses down the gauntlet to me, “and my Parrot trumps your Crab!”

Well… we’ll see about that!

In an unprecedented move I have decided to list my 10 favorite Disney’s in a specific order… each film listed is accompanied with a few articulate observations and enlightening details. Bear in mind, I’m not a movie critic… and who knows, next year I might change my mind & besides, you can never tell what new magic Disney may produce.

On the other side I will add some concluding remarks. Please hold your applause to the end.

1. BEAUTY & THE BEAST (1991)
I think I have seen this film more times than Casablanca, and that alone is reason to secure this Disney in my top spot. From the opening sequence when David Ogden Stiers intones the “back fill” to the story, to the ending credits when Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson sing their version of the title track, I am in my glory.

Above all, I love the music… and in particular the staging of the initial musical number with Belle walking into town… interacting with the locals.

And then, more spectacular, the waltz scene has a “state of the art” 3D quality and plays to Angela Lansbury’s more vulnerable version of the title track… a version I actually prefer to the ending track.

There is more, also memorable is the ensemble rendition of “Something There” which is well presented with the music simply backing the sequence when Belle’s tenderness for the Beast emerges.

Other Disney story lines maybe superior… but this is simply my favorite… and when I need 40 winks, I will seek out a couch, get comfy & wait for the music to ease me… tale as old as time…

2. SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)
When “Disney naps” became a feature of my life, this film got its major boost into a top 10 slot. Unlike other Disneys that feature original songs and scoring (songs, by the by, that often are Academy Award winners), Sleeping Beauty’s score is predominately adapted from Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Suite of the same name. And I love Tchaikovsky — Nutcracker, Swan Lake & Sleeping Beauty. I have never tired of their main themes.

And as much as I love the music, Sleeping Beauty features one of my favorite “bad guys” (but in this case the “bad guy” is a lady): the powerful sorceress Maleficent.

And for humor, I love the scene in the cottage when Fauna, Flora & Merryweather get busy making a cake and special dress for the Princess Aurora’s Birthday.

But when all is said and done… for me, it’s about the music.

3. THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)
I love the opening sequence showing the wooden ship pitching in the rolling sea… we listen to Fathoms Below and then follow the path of a fish that escaped from the deck of the ship to the undersea world of Triton, King of the Mer-people, Ariel his daughter & a terrific villianess, Ursula the Sea Witch (wonderfully drawn with a fabulous voice over by Pat Carroll).

But the character who steals the show is Sebastian the Crab. His lilting “island accent” sets the tropical tone of the film… and I don’t whether Samuel E. Wright, Sebastian’s voice, sounds like that naturally or if the accent is staged. No matter, he is a perfect and he leads two songs that both get nominations for the Academy’s Best Song Award: Kiss the Girl and Under the Sea… which is why the “crab” takes Aladdin’s “parrot” hands down.

4. THE LION KING (1994)
This is an original Disney story line and one of their best. The Disney artists went to town on the sweeping backgrounds in Africa. And no surprise, another Academy Award winning song, Can You Feel the Love Tonight? penned by the talented team of Tim Rice and Elton John.

I can think of no finer list of voice characterizations… Matthew Broderick as Simba, James Earl Jones as Mufasa (you know, give me ten bucks, James Earl Jones’ voice should be in Smithsonian), Jeremy Irons as Scar is my second favorite voice for Evil (he loses out to George Sanders), Robert Guillaume as Rifiki, two of the best hyenas of your life: Cheech Marin and Whoppi Goldberg.

And I have saved the best for the last: Ernie Sabella as Pumba and Nathan Lane as Timon are simply hysterical… their interplay is magnificent and perfectly timed.

But my favorite scene is when the Lion King Mufasa takes his young cub Simba to a grassy knoll on a starry night… Mufasa tells Simba that each star represented previous Lion Kings and that one day it would be Simba’s turn to be King… and that he was to remember and never forget who he is and where he came from.

5. Aladdin (1992)
This made Zack’s top three list and Shaina slotted it at five, and both cited Gilbert Gottfried’s characterization of the Parrot Iago as being one of Disney’s best… and I agree that he is a top “second banana”.

But the true star of this film is the Genie & the talented Disney animators who followed Robin Williams’ improvisations and voice impersonations. Williams’ effort here merits perhaps higher placement for Aladdin… but I never took to the drawing of Jafar (I can think of many Disney bad guys who I enjoyed more) nor did I take to the Monkey’s role as side kick & the story line and the locale didn’t really grab me.

Again a Disney song, A Whole New World, wins the Academy Award…

Still,all in all, a Genie/Robin Williams tour de force is truly amazing and a treat in every way.

6. THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH (1977)
This Disney is actually a compilation of three short films released earlier: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and a Blustery Day (1968) & Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too (1974).

My love for this film stems from my love of the A.A. Milne book of the same name. And while I don’t recall hearing the Winnie stories when I was a kid, I loved reading the stories when it became my kids turn to hear stories.

And while E.H. Shepherd’s original line drawings had a wonderful charm, I actually preferred the softer and rounder look to the Disney animated characters.

Sterling Holloway’s voice over for Winnie the Pooh is perfect (he can also be heard as Mr. Stork in Dumbo, Flower in Bambi & the reptilian Kaa in The Jungle Book). And the music is well matched to the lyrics that Milne had already put into his stories. And my favorite tune by far is “Little Black Rain Cloud” …and ev’ryone knows that a rain cloud never eats honey, no, not a nip… You got to love Winnie the Pooh.

7. THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967)
This Disney has a real good story line and another all-star cast of voices. My favorite voice is George Sanders as the Tiger Shere Khan. I have a real soft spot for Sanders… his role as the supreme cad Addison DeWitt in All About Eve combined the elegant sophisticate with the low gutter snipe. In Shere Khan he brings that lofty patrician Lloyd Harbor tone combined with the menacing sense of evil.

Then there is Sterling Holloway, one of my Disney favorites, this time in the guise of Kaa the Snake.

Phil Harris as Baloo the Bear is lovable and hugable… I just have a hard time squaring the Disney image with his public persona of the hard boozing, heavy smoking reprobate of Vegas lounge acts.

Louie Prima as King Louis is top stuff, too. As is Sebastian Cabot’s Bagheera.

But my favorite character is Pat O’Malley’s Colonel Hathi of the Elephant Dawn Patrol. He executes an near perfect parody of the aging British Officer serving out his time is some Colonial backwater, re-living memories & glories of “Chinese” Gordon and Khartoum.

And I love the concluding scene when Mowgli is returned to the “man village” and he catches sight of a lovely young girl come to fetch water for her Mother. He melts at her appearance. Yes, I can remember that look. Bravo Disney for capturing it.

8. FANTASIA (1940)
For some one who loves music (and “Disney naps”), the inclusion of this Disney should come as no surprise. But rather than the music being the background to the story line, in Fantasia music is the film… the animation comes after. It is interesting to see how the Disney animation team interpreted and translated classical pieces of music into film.

To enjoy Fantasia maybe it helps to like the pieces that Disney chose to represent.

And even without a clear story line, this Disney makes my list because I love “The Nutcracker”, “The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” purely for the music, I love the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” for how Disney chose to interpret it…

And of course, not that I loved the piece of music… I loved the dinosaur scenes in the evolution piece.

If I recall, I snookered Zack, at a very young age, into seeing this Disney on the “big screen” based on the dinosaur scenes.

And even without a story line, this Disney is a favorite.

9. PINOCCHIO (1940)
This is one of my favorite Disney story lines, and more than anything I love how the characters are drawn… I don’t like cats but Figaro is a cat you want to cuddle, only Disney artists could create a flirt in the form of Cleo the goldfish, and Monstro as the whale frightened me when I was a kid… but my favorites in the cast were Stromboli the “impresario” and Lampwick the juvenile delinquent.

And yes, I have a soft spot for Jiminy Cricket, too. You got to love “small folk”. And his rendition of When You Wish Upon a Star garnered an Academy Award for the Best Song.  

n.b. The voice for Honest John’s side kick Gideon is Mel Blanc. His voice would flower in Warner Brothers cartoons as every character under the sun.

10. ROBIN HOOD (1973)
I guess it starts with the story line. So this is easy, I have always enjoyed the Errol Flynn film & this Disney pretty much sticks to that script. But this movie makes the Top Ten because of the strong vocal cast.

My favorite is Pat Buttram as the Sheriff of Nottingham… he sounds like he could be Sheriff of Mayberry or Dodge City. Then, Carole Shelly gives Lady Kluck (the ample Hen) a delightful Brogue.

The rest of the cast includes Phil Harris as Little John, Andy Devine (Roy Rogers’ old side kick) as Friar Tuck, Ken Curtis (Festus Hagen on Gunsmoke) as Nutsy, George Lindsay (Goober on Andy Griffith/Mayberry RFD) as Trigger, Roger Miller as Allan-a-Dale… and rounding out the cast with Terry Thomas as Sir Hiss and Peter Ustinov as both King Richard and Prince John (too bad they couldn’t get Claude Rains to reprise his role as the usurper Prince John).

I also enjoyed the little rabbit children… each well drawn… and their mannerisms were a perfect match for would be human counterparts.

Good stuff.

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I guess that’s ten. I should quickly say that there are at least another ten that I could add and rank. Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Rescuers come immediately to mind.

Although I ranked these films in specific order, do not look for a detail explanation as to why I put Little Mermaid ahead of Lion King… it just ain’t happening. And besides… I could change my mind.

I should also note that the nature of animation is changing… in addition to traditional cartoons (which are the only ones described here), there is “claymation” and “pixalar” (?). The latter technology behind Finding Nemo.

Zack and Shaina have both mentioned Nemo, and I love it, too… my allegiance is to the animated classics.

Prior to writing I canvassed my kids regarding their favorites and the like… Zack’s top four: Jungle Book, Aladdin, Lion King and Nemo. Shaina: Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Mulan and Lion King. Suzy was less committal… although she said that she enjoyed those Disney’s that featured a “Princess”: Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Little Mermaid and Snow White.

But Suzy also noted our mutual love of the English claymation version of Wind & the Willows (which is not a Disney)… and while Disney has a version of this classic child’s tale, we still prefer the English version.

Alright… Look to the left and right (and behind)… no one is looking. What is your favorite Disney? Go ahead… I promise not to tell anyone.