Following the astounding popularity of their 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass decided to go for the silver screen in 1965 with their first “Animagic” theatrical feature, Willy McBean and His Magic Machine. Five more would follow, with only Mad Monster Party (1967) and The Last Unicorn (1982) really being memorable.
The other four, including Willy McBean, well…even the best animation studios don’t hit a home run every time up. Sixty years later, though, Willy McBean is an interesting enough film to merit some examination.
Note: the title is misleading. It wasn’t Willy McBean’s magic machine (a time-traveling device) in the first place. He got hold of stolen plans of someone who had already built one and then copied it. But let’s not get snarky, right?
Let’s dive in. We open in the creepy castle of Rasputin Von Rotten, as the egotistical madman berates his pet South American monkey, Pablo, and curses the great figures of history for being more famous than he. “But tonight, I shall change history!” (evil villain laugh). We segue into the peppy theme song played over the opening credits, courtesy of Edward Thomas. Johnny Marks, Jim Polack, and Gene Forell also contributed songs.
A lightning bolt blows Pablo out of his locked cage. Cut to the bedroom of Willy McBean, visually a distant cousin of Moral Orel, who would rather tinker with rockets than waste his time with History homework. Pablo, who sounds like the Frito Bandito by way of Speedy Gonzales, knocks on his window. Pablo presents Willy with a copy of Von Rotten’s plans for a time machine. After perusing them, Willy is certain that he can build a time machine too! Pablo shows him a list of the drastic changes Von Rotten is planning, and Willy agrees to help Pablo stop him.
The film was, like “Rudolph”, animated in Japan by lead animator Tad Mochinaga.
When R.V. Rotten shows up, dressed as Jack Palance and challenges B.B. to a gunfight. It predictably goes poorly, even with R.V.R cheating, since Sitting Bull plonks an arrow in R.V. R’s keister and avoids Arthur Rankin having to show gunplay. But wait – the dastardly dog is off to Spain to take Christopher Columbus’ place as the discoverer of America.
Willy and Pablo get there first. Willy convinces Columbus that the world is round. Columbus sees that he now has a path to China and launches into the song “Gotta Go West to Get East”, losing his accent in the process. Now to convince the queen, which they do. But Von Rotten is going to slip aboard C.C’s ship disguised as a Chinese translator (the NEXT big stereotype in this film), singing “I Am For Hire.” Later he will bribe the crew into mutiny, be outed, and escape just in time from walking the plank where sharks await.
I have now detailed roughly half the movie and will no longer deep-dive into the trips to Camelot, Egypt, and 40,000 years into the past. Suffice it to say that Willy and Pablo stop Rasutin Van Rotten from claiming Excalibur and meet an amazing dragon. They prevent R.V.R. from building the Great Pyramid of Gaza, or “discovering” fire and the wheel. Pablo gets a girlfriend in the mists of prehistory, R.V.R.’s time machine gets eaten by a T-Rex, and he nearly does, too, but Willy rescues him. The evil scientist reforms and becomes a teacher whose only time machine is a movie projector. And the world looks just the same, and history ain’t changed, and no, that line isn’t in the film; I swiped it from Pete Townshend.
The 94-minute film had much in common with its predecessor Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, even though the director was Arthur Rankin Jr. rather than Larry Roemer. The animation, patented as “Animagic,” was produced by MOM Productions in Japan under the supervision of Tadahito Mochinaga. Puppet design was under the supervision of Anthony Peters (who also co-wrote the script with Rankin). Peters ensured visual continuity with the R/B “look.” Many of the puppets have a stylistic resemblance to some characters seen in Rudolph.
The voice tracks, as in Rudolph, were recorded in Canada under the management of Bernard Cowan. Of the ten credited actors, seven of them also performed beside a certain red-nosed reindeer. Roll call:
Larry D. Mann (Professor Rasputin R. Rotten) was Yukon Cornelius
Billie Mae Richards (Willy McBean) was Rudolph
Alfie Scopp (Pablo/Dragon) was Charlie-in-the-box
Paul Kligman (Christopher Columbus/Sitting Bull) was Reindeer Coach
Bernard Cowan (King Tut) was the Abominable Snow Monster
Corinne Conley (Nefertiri) was Mrs. Donner and the depressed Doll
Paul Soles (King Ferdinand) was Hermey the Elf
Other interesting voice notes, since this IS Cartoon Research:
Mann was originally slated to play Sam the Snowman, but Burl Ives was subbed in.
James Doohan (“I kinna give you more power, Captain! She won’t stand the strain!”) played General Custer, Merlin, and Excalibur before Trekking off to greater fame. Claude Rae played Buffalo Bill and King Arthur.
Jack Davis did the poster art – in the style of his previous “Mad Mad Mad Mad World” campaign.
Differences from Rudolph: Johnny Marks and R/B musical go-to Maury Laws were not present. As noted, Rankin replaced Larry Roemer as Director. Superstar R/B writer Romeo Muller did not contribute.
Overall, Willy McBean is little-remembered today. The film was not widely released; even VHS tapes are rare, and it is not a TV standby like the R/B Christmas, Frosty, and Easter Bunny films. Willy’s overtly racist content probably has much to do with that. It’s a competently made, if overly episodic movie and a serviceable fantasy flick for very young kids. The tunes are only adequate, but Rogers and Hammerstein were not exactly available for this movie.
The “Animagic,” however, is stiff and the characters are inexpressive, a step down from the technique as seen in Rudolph. There are kaiju eiga films that do a better job synchronizing dialogue to mouth movements. R/B did not possess the technology of Aardman or LAIKA in 1965, and Willy Mc Bean is likely as good as it can be given the times.
You can see the entire film, ripped from VHS copies, on YouTube. Embed below is the rarely seen original trailer:
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
Let’s see, a kid who’s doing poorly in history class has to go back in time with his buddy to save the world…. Sounds like “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”!
I remember seeing “Willie McBean and His Magic Machine” on TV when I was around ten years old, or maybe a bit older. I’m pretty sure it was an afternoon movie, not a primetime presentation. By the 1970s, Rankin/Bass Productions had attained a high level of sophistication; “Wille McBean” was comparatively primitive, closer to “The New Adventures of Pinocchio” than to “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”. Still, I welcomed the opportunity to see an Animagic feature that I had never heard of, and I enjoyed the movie immensely.
I enjoyed watching it for a second time, just now. It’s more humorous, and far less sentimental, than the studio’s holiday specials. Biggest laugh: when Rasputin made the same joke about television commercials to Excalibur that Merlin made to Wart at the end of “The Sword in the Stone”. Second biggest: at the very end, when it occurred to me that Rasputin and the history teacher both sport the same flip hairstyle that was all the rage in 1965 — among girls, at any rate.
As stated above this particular movie or cartoon film is not fondly remembered for so many reasons and has not since surfaced, so somehow I completely missed this one.
It brings up a strange point; they say when you go back in time through history, you kind of cannot be part of history because that would change everything in the present. How do you do that? If any animated studio could conquer that, it would be quite interesting.
Well, you could say that PEABODY AND SHERMAN altered history (but everything worked out okay) and “Mr. Wizard” COULD have altered history with “Tutor the Turtle,” at times, but luckily for Tutor, it worked out okay, as well.
Actually the very first Mr. Peabody cartoon addresses that point, and others. On their first trip they can’t understand the locals in ancient Rome, so Mr. P adds translation. Next they can’t Ben Franklin to listen to them, so he makes further adjustments, changing it to a “what-should-have-been” machine. This is the only time this comes up in the series.
“Five more would follow, with only Mad Monster Party (1967) and The Last Unicorn (1982) really being memorable.”
I thought “The Daydreamer” was also pretty decent.
Plenty of catchy songs, always a strong point for Rankin-Bass, but not exactly the studio’s most original storyline. A kid and his foreign-accented talking animal sidekick use a time machine to set history right; making “Improbable History” you might say. Those cavemen look a bit familiar too, and I can’t help but see some similarities between their swishy dragon and another “reluctant dragon”.
Faint memory of seeing this in a movie theater. Still have a weakness for boomer kid matinee fare, evoking memories of buttered popcorn with petroleum aftertaste and late-period Walter Lantz cartoons. On revisiting a few years ago, I wondered if this started out as a TV serial like “New Adventures of Pinocchio”. Or perhaps cutting it into that format was a fallback plan.
This movie came out when I was (possibly) seven years old and somehow I’ve missed it all these years. I don’t remember seeing on TV, anybody renting it for a bunch of kids like me to see, or any later VHS release. I’m ASSUMING that it’s available to see somewhere?
Why isn’t this movie streaming?