Friday 28 February 2014

carriage-and-four

Gentle readers, I could not even begin to reconstruct the daisy-chain of thoughts that made me think of the tale of Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue-Bonnet, a short animated musical from 1946 produced by Disney animators, but suddenly the lilting and wistful tune was in my head.

The vignette tells of two fancy hats that fall in love in a department store display case, who are sold separately to two different human owners who do not do much to foster their courtship and rather dash it. The fedora's owner eventually tosses Johnny out as old and tattered, but when all seems lost, a coach driver saves Johnny from the dust-bin and paring out two holes along the brim for ears and outfits his horse. The snazzy happy ending happens when a despondent Johnny realises that the nag trotting beside him is proudly wearing Alice. I don't know where exactly the memory came from but it brought a smile to my face the other day and was happy to find that others recall this too.