The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated feature-film by Walt Disney Productions. The film impacted the development history of the Haunted Mansion and is referenced in the attraction.
Summary[]
The film had the framing-device of an old library where two disembodied narrators tell the audience stories. The first story was Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows as narrated by British actor Basil Rathbone. This story followed an eccentric and aristocratic toad named J. Thaddeus Toad who gets into trouble due to his obsessive, "Mania" for motor-cars. The second story was narrated by American singer Bing Crosby and told Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, following the cowardly and amoral schoolmaster Ichabod Crane in the isolated New York village of Sleepy Hollow. On one Halloween night, Ichabod finds himself pursued by the legendary, "Headless Horseman" and is never seen again thereafter.
Haunted Mansion connections[]
Attractions[]
The Haunted Mansion[]
Deleted scripts[]
The Headless Horseman would have been a central character in an older version of the Haunted Mansion, scripted by Ken Anderson. Here, the horseman would have been a guest at the wedding of the deleted characters Monsieur Bogyman and Mlle. Vampire with a design emulating his appearance in the film. After Mlle. Vampire called off the wedding due to cold feet, the horseman would have attacked guests in the Grand Salon only for the mortals to be saved by their host.
The Haunted Mansion (Magic Kingdom)[]
This version of the mansion is Dutch-Colonial and set in a village of the Hudson River Valley. The fictional Sleepy Hollow was frequently cited as an inspiration behind the mansion's setting and Sleepy Hollow characters are referenced throughout Liberty Square. Outside this version of the Haunted Mansion is a Pet Cemetery with a tomb for Mr. Toad, the protagonist of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad's first segment. The tomb was placed as a tribute to the defunct Fantasyland attraction Mr. Toad's Wild Ride which was replaced by The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1998. Due to this, there is a popular cast-member saying that the epitaph on Toad's grave reads, "Here Lies Toad, it's sad but true. Not nearly as marketable as Winnie the Pooh".
Room for 1 More (40th anniversary event)[]
At the Haunted Mansion's "Room for 1 More" event, a statue of Mr. Toad could be obtained which also featured a "Deed of Departure" from Toad reading, "I hereby announce my departure from regions beyond to take a journey across the pond, merrily going nowhere in particular. So as to not be forgotten I tribute myself to you dear friend, for this is not the end. Farewell until we meet again at a later date".
Printed materials[]
Disney Kingdoms: The Haunted Mansion[]
The Sleepy Hollow segment may be briefly referenced in a montage where an old woman tells Danny Crowe that there's a headless horseman haunting the mansion.
Video-games[]
Epic Mickey[]
A portrait of the film's depiction of the Headless Horseman is framed in Lonesome Manor, this game's version of the Haunted Mansion.
Trivia[]
- The film marked the end of a trend where Disney only made re-releases and anthology films due to budgeting issues resulting from World War II. The film also has only two segments with extended length as opposed to the multiple shorter segments which other anthology Disney films of the 1940s had, and had both segments themed around classic children's stories leading into Disney's silver-age of animation.
- The wraiths in the Haunted Mansion resemble trees in the film which Ichabod Crane mistakes for ghosts. This design originates for Chernabog's minions from the Night on Bald Mountain of Fantasia (1940).
- Beheaded ghosts are a recurring motif in the Haunted Mansion. Notable instances include Madame Leota, the Hatbox Ghost, Constance Hatchaway's husbands, the removed beheaded friends tomb, the mayor of Phantom Canyon and the beheaded knight accompanied by an axe-wielding executioner.
Gallery[]
