The lessons learned in Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, the idea of “slow and steady wins the race,” have remained applicable as our world seems to get faster and faster.
This ancient fable of The Tortoise and the Hare was adapted popularly ninety years ago by Walt Disney and his artists in their 1935 Silly Symphony.
Directed by Wilfred Jackson, the short opens with animals gathering in the woods for a “Big Race: Tortoise vs. Hare,” a banner exclaims, and the two competitors are announced. One is Max Hare, who emerges from his training quarters wearing a robe with “The Blue Streak” emblazoned on the back. The other is Toby Tortoise, who has “Slow But Sure” emblazoned on his robe.
Max is cocky and confident; Toby is slow and innocent. Max takes off when the gun is fired for the race, while Toby retreats into his shell and requires a few bullets from the starter gun to get him going.
Max is so sure he will win that he even pretends to nap for a few moments under a tree. Not long after this, Max meets up with a quartet of female bunnies at a girl’s school and takes time to show off for them (including, at one point, racing an arrow to a bull’s eye and even taking the time to place an apple on his head).
However, taking the time to do this, Max hears the crowd cheering as Toby nears the finish line. Max races toward them, but just as he is going to cross, Toby sticks his neck out over the line and is the winner.
Director Jackson, a Disney Legend, was instrumental in developing the method for timing sound and animation for Steamboat Willie (1928) and would go on to direct some of the studio’s most potent moments, such as the “Night on Bald Mountain” in Fantasia (1940). He brought a different type of power, in terms of humor and creative staging to The Tortoise and the Hare.
This can especially be seen in the kinetic, concluding moments of the race, as Max Hare, his legs a whirling blur, to the sound of a siren on the soundtrack, eventually comes to a screeching halt, flopping head over heels, as Toby lumbers over the finish line.
Additionally, along with his team of animators, including several of the Nine Old Men, Les Clark, Ward Kimball, and Eric Larson, Jackson also crafts memorable personalities of the two characters during The Tortoise and the Hare’s brief running time.
This is especially true of Max Hare, who, with his arrogance and annoying laugh, emerges distinct from his first minutes on screen.
Another Disney Legend, writer Larry Clemmons, who would later work on such Disney features as The Jungle Book and even worked for a number of years as a writer for Bing Crosby’s radio show, helped craft a story that made The Tortoise and the Hare so memorable. One example of the rhyming dialogue in the short is when one of the bunnies says to Max, “Don’t you think you’d better go? The Tortoise has the lead!” Max replies, “I’ve got lots of time to play. My middle name is speed.”
The Tortoise and the Hare was a hit for Disney and would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon. The short was so popular with audiences that the characters of Max and Toby were featured in merchandise at the time, such as story books from the Whitman Publishing Co. The two characters were also included alongside Mickey and the other Disney characters in comics and the Studio’s promotional images.
A sequel, Toby Tortoise Returns, was released by Disney in 1936, and it revolved around a boxing match between Max and Toby.
Ninety years later, The Tortoise and the Hare is a nice snapshot in time at the Disney Studio when Silly Symphony short subjects and those starring Mickey and the gang were the focus of Walt’s world. Please check out Devon Baxter’s breakdown of the animators for this film – posted here. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was still two years away, and things would change with full-length features, but as this Aesop’s fable taught us: “slow and steady wins the race.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Still more proof of the importance of this cartoon came when it seemed like a few other studios had to have their own tortoise and hair race, including most notably, Warner Brothers with the Bugs Bunny and Cecil turtle race. There was also famous Studios with Tommy tortoise and mohair! Each of these characters had their own popularity around them, but you have to admit it was this cartoon that started it all! This was especially true with the follow up to the silly symphony, “Toby tortoise returns“, taking place in a boxing ring. Nearly the same subject was tackled with the Tommy tortoise and mohair cartoons. Bugs Bunny had two different boxing matches, but not with a turtle.
This was one of the first Silly Symphonies that I came to know well. Disney released it on VHS in the 1990s along with “Three Little Wolves” and “Father Noah’s Ark”, and although I felt it was a bit of a cheat to put fewer than thirty minutes’ worth of cartoons on one videotape, I made the most of it, watching these three cartoons over and over and giving the pause button on my remote a real workout. Eventually I gave the tape away to a friend who was expecting a baby and wanted to decorate the nursery with a Noah’s Ark motif, and I thought Disney’s take on that subject might give her some ideas. I now have the complete Silly Symphonies on home video, but “The Tortoise and the Hare” remains a favourite.
Paul Terry’s interpretation of the fable, “Slow But Sure”, was released in June 1934, a full seven months before Disney’s. Here the race is staged as an intercollegiate sporting match in a stadium filled with each school’s pennant-waving partisans and all-male cheer squad. As in the Disney version, snails run rings around the tortoise early in the race, the hare dallies with a cute bunny in a short skirt, and the tortoise reaches the finish line first by extending his neck. However, Devon Baxter’s breakdown shows that production had already begun on the Silly Symphony before the Terry cartoon ever reached the theatres.
One admires Max’s athletic ability and cocky self-assurance, but Toby is the real hero of this cartoon. As Jenny Wren, channeling Mae West, says to him in its sequel: “I like a man who takes his time!”
It’s interesting to note that Disney developed a fully-formed rabbit character well ahead of the earliest appearance of the Warners prototype that would morph into Bugs Bunny–who later had his own series of takes on the Tortoise and Hare fable. The character development on Max and Toby is quite remarkable for those early days of animation, and the “Tortoise and the Hare” is among the finest cartoons ever made. This strongly exemplifies Disney’s high standards and his determination to make his product stand out in the animation marketplace.
Also to be commended is the use of color, as by this time Disney had acquired the exclusive right, for a time, to the three-strip Technicolor process–another masterstroke that caused his work to rise above the competition. The colors in TTATH are vivid and brilliant.
Though Walt Disney expressed a disdain for sequels, “Toby Tortoise Returns” is one exception to that rule, and it serves as a culmination or tribute to the Silly Symphony series by bringing together memorable characters from previous shorts such as “The Three Little Pigs” and “Cock Robin.” An early example of the characters inhabiting a Disney Universe, which would later manifest in the “House of Mouse” TV series and more recently in the hundredth anniversary short “Once Upon a Studio.”
It’s 90 years old and we are still talking about it. Which proves the potency of Disney animation! Thanks for this post!
How was it that Tortoise And The Hare qualified for the 1934 oscars when it was a 1935 release?
The Tortoise And The Hare went into general US release on January 5th 1935, but was screened in Los Angeles on December 31st 1934 (at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood) to qualify for the Academy Award that year.
This practice continues to this day. The new Looney Tunes movie (The Day The Earth Blew Up) opens officially in February 2025 – but was screened publicly in Los Angeles in December to qualify for 2024 Oscars.
One of the greatest cartoons ever made, and I’m shocked it’s 90. Toby Tortoise returns never had the It Factor like the original, but the Ward Kimball parts are great!