The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a 1987 American animated musical television film directed by Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, co-founders of Rankin/Bass Productions in New York, New York. It is an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows. Set in a pastoral version of England, the film focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters (Moley, Ratty, Mr. Toad, and Mr. Badger) and contains themes of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie. The film features the voices of Charles Nelson Reilly, Roddy McDowall, José Ferrer, and Eddie Bracken. The screenplay was written by Romeo Muller, a long-time Rankin/Bass writer whose work included Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Frosty the Snowman (1969), The Hobbit (1977), and The Flight of Dragons (1982), among others. The film's animation was outsourced to James C.Y. Wang's Cuckoo's Nest Studios (also known as Wang Film Productions) in Taipei, Taiwan. This was the last project produced by Rankin/Bass before the company was shut down on March 4, 1987. The film was finished in 1983 and released on video in the UK in November of that year, but its US television premiere was delayed several times, before finally airing July 5, 1987 on ABC. In this version, the horse pulling the barge is the same horse who pulls Mr. Toad's caravan, Portly is Badger's nephew, and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Wayfarer's All chapters are included, although the events of Wayfarer's All occurs before the events of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Ratty actually leaves the Riverbank, only to be found later by Mole (alongside Portly). Rankin/Bass had previously produced a television show with the Wind in the Willows characters in 1970, The Reluctant Dragon & Mr. Toad Show, with the voices of Canadian actors Paul Soles, Donna Miller, Claude Rae and Carl Banas, the production artwork of Paul Coker, Jr., and the animation of Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production in Tokyo, Japan. Plot The "well-known and very popular" Mr. Toad of Toad Hall (voice of Charles Nelson Reilly), a conceited and impulsive animal, embarks on a madcap river voyage in a paddleboat, nearly shipwrecking his friend Ratty (voiced by Roddy McDowall) who is out for a leisurely row. At the same time, Toad whelms the entrance to the subterranean home of Moley (voice of Eddie Bracken). So disturbed, Moley comes above ground for the first time in his life, and is positively amazed by the surface world.