The Reluctant Dragon (1941) on Netflix
Approved19411h 14mAnimationComedyFamily
Humorist Robert Benchley puts off selling his dragon storybook to a studio head until his wife drives him to Burbank. There he dodges an officious guide and tours the animation departments.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.7/104,338 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Robert Benchley would rather shoot darts at toy ducks in his own pool than drive to Burbank, but his wife sends him to the animation studio to sell the rights to a gentle dragon story, and leaves him at the gate while she shops. Rather than follow the officious guide Humphrey, Benchley wanders the departments. He watches animators drawing from live models, listens to a voice session for Donald Duck and Clara Cluck, and sits in on a foley session that gives a cartoon train its voice. In the camera room the picture turns to Technicolor, and Doris shows him the multiplane camera. Other stops take in the ink-and-paint lab, the maquette sculptors, and storymen pitching Baby Weems, then a preview of a Goofy how-to cartoon.
Cast
- Buddy Pepperas Humphrey (Studio Guide)
- Florence Gillas Florence Gill
- Jimmy Luskeas Baby Weems Model
Show all 20 cast
- Truman Woodworthas Truman Woodworth
- Hamilton MacFaddenas Hamilton MacFadden
- Jim Luskeas Jimmy - Baby Weems Model
- The Staff of the Walt Disney Studioas Staff of the Walt Disney Studios
- Ernie Alexanderas Baby Weems' Father
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Reluctant Dragon (1941)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Reluctant Dragon opened in the middle of the 1941 Disney animators' strike; strikers picketed the premiere with signs attacking Disney over unfair business practices, low pay, lack of recognition and favoritism, and at one theater sympathizers paraded in a dragon costume reading "The Reluctant Disney".
- Alfred Werker, loaned out by 20th Century Fox to direct The Reluctant Dragon, became the first outside film director to use the storyboard, which Disney staff had developed from earlier illustrated scripts in the early 1930s.
- Ward Kimball animates Goofy on camera, and Benchley and the audience see a preview of the new Goofy cartoon How to Ride a Horse, the first of the many how-to parodies in the Goofy series.
