While this was being made, the Walt Disney Studios were in the middle of a pretty snarly labor dispute. The image of the studio as one big happy family was therefore not the most accurate one ever painted. A lot of the other stuff about the movie, though, isn’t completely wrong, and if you want a child’s-level view of how animated cartoons are made, there are worse ways to go. And, apparently, it helped keep the Walt Disney Studios afloat during one of their financially risky times, so it has that value if that’s something you care about.

Minor celebrity and humorist Robert Benchley is in his pool, being read to by his wife (Nana Bryant). She decides that the book she’s read him would make an excellent Disney cartoon, and tells him that he needs to go tell Walt that. He’s not enthused about this prospect, but okay; he goes to the studio. He’s assigned a tour guide, Humphrey (Buddy Pepper), whom he ditches as often and as promptly as possible. He wanders around the studio, seeing most of the departments necessary for making an animated cartoon. In the process, he acquires a few drawings of himself by various animators and a full-on clay maquette. Eventually, he meets Walt and sees a screening of nothing but the selfsame cartoon his wife sent him to suggest.

Walt looks different in this. I’m mostly familiar with him from The Wonderful World of Disney, and he looks considerably younger here. But it isn’t just that; there’s something else different about him. I’m not sure what. I think his face is thinner.

One thing you should appreciate about this, I think, is that it shows more aspects of making a cartoon than just drawing a few pictures. The women of the Ink and Paint Department get a look in. We see Foley guys hard at work. The orchestra. The voice actors. Character design. Art lessons. Drawing from a live model and learning how to adapt that to a more cartoonish style. The enormous and elaborate layered camera used to create depth in movies. It may be a simplified view, but it’s not bad for a film lasting about an hour, including the ten-or-so-minute cartoon that ends it and the first Goofy “How To” short.

Of course, it’s dated. As a child, I had no idea who Robert Benchley was. I actually assumed he was a character, not least because the wife figure was such an obvious over-the-top Movie Wife. Knowing that he was a person makes the fact that everyone seemed to know him make sense, though it still does have a bit of a “Levar Burton knows everyone” feel to it. As tedious and deliberately obnoxious as Humphrey is, he’s still more believable than the idea that anyone, even a minor celebrity, would be allowed to wander the studio lot getting in everyone’s way.

As to the eponymous cartoon itself, it’s amusing enough. It’s the story of a dragon who doesn’t want to fight, who instead writes poetry, and the little boy who arranges for him to battle a knight after all. It’s a charming story of subverted expectations. I can see why you’d think Disney would be a good fit for it. I also wonder if that stereotypical wife character appeared in more Robert Benchley stuff; I still haven’t seen much of his work.