The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
It’s October and Halloween is almost here, so it’s time to read something spooky. Last year we took our trick-or-treating rather far afield, to Pu Songling’s Chinese studio, but this time, let’s spend the season closer to home and head over to the Van Tassels' Autumn festivities, over by Sleep Hollow. We’ll check out both Washington Irving’s original “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Disney’s 1949 adaptation.
Oh, but Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a double feature, and it would be rude to pass by Toad Hall without stopping to at least say “Hello.” To modern audiences, the adaptation of The Wind in the Willows seems like an odd pairing with “Sleepy Hollow,” but double features were common at the time and there wasn’t really an expectation that each feature would be similar to the other. If anything, contrast was good because it cast a wider net among potential audiences. People have found common themes between the two movies, but really, one can find some commonality between any two works of fiction.
In any case, “Toad Hall” starts off with the whole film’s framing device, in which a narrator (Basil Rathbone for the first part) talks about who the most interesting character in English literature is, and introduces us to the setting and main characters. It’s a bit slow at first, I think - I never really care to hear about debts and financial matters in a cartoon, or anywhere else for that matter. The pace picks up once we meet Mr. Toad, though, the film gets more fun as it goes on. The trial has some funny moments, and the finale of Mr. Toad and friends trying to reclaim the deed to Toad Hall is exciting with a lot of good gags. The animation, in both “Toad Hall” and “Sleepy Hollow,” isn’t as lavish as in Disney’s other feature films, but still looks very good.
As an aside, I was a little surprised at the violence in this movie. Nothing out of the ordinary for Disney films of the era, of course, but seeing a bunch of weasels get drunk and try to kill people with knives and axes is a jolt when you’re used to shows like Bluey, where nobody drinks and violence tops out at the Nerf gun level.
Since children are the primary audience for this movie, I’ll mention that it kept my three-year-old’s attention throughout, but she actually preferred “Toad Hall,” which surprised me a little. “Sleepy Hollow” is the one that people seem to remember most fondly, but perhaps this is largely attributable to elementary school teachers showing only the second part when Halloween comes near.
Once “Toad Hall” concludes, narration is taken up by Bing Crosby, who brings us to Sleepy Hollow and our protagonist, Ichabod Crane. Crosby, by the way, does a lot of singing in this movie, which was (and is, honestly) one of its selling points. Crane’s character design looks great, a perfect cartoon version of how Irving describes him. The Headless Horseman is also iconic, and Brom Bones looks and acts like a proto-Gaston. It’s been a very long time since I last watched this movie, but the Headless Horseman overshadows the rest of the movie to the extent that I’d totally forgotten everything else about it. “Toad Hall” got more violent than I’m used to, and “Sleepy Hollow” brought in Crane’s womanising. It’s still G-rated, obviously, but again, I’m used to Bluey and Nihao, Kai-Lan.
Anyway, “Sleepy Hollow” has a lot of good gags throughout. I did expect Brom Bones and Crane to be more evenly matched in wooing Katrina Van Tassel, and a little more back-and-forth between them would’ve been a little more realistic and closer to Irving’s original. Perhaps Disney felt that Bones needed to be the underdog to sell the idea that he may have resorted to scaring Crane out of town, but I don’t buy proto-Gaston being the underdog to anyone in winning a woman’s affection, especially not to the gangly Crane.
Of course, the highlight of the whole film is the climax where Crane meets the Headless Horseman. I thought this scene might be a little too scary for my toddler, but there are enough gags throughout that it never gets too intense. She did, however, insist on staying close to her mother during this part each time she watched it. Disney leaves the identity of the Horseman ambiguous; is he a real ghost, or just Brom Bones in disguise? For this telling, I lean towards it being Bones in disguise, given that he introduced the Horseman story specifically to scare Crane and the visual cue of Bones throwing a pumpkin during the party in exactly the same manner (and framing) as the Horseman. There’s not really a definite answer, though.
Now, to Washington Irving’s original short story. The Disney adaptation follows the source material fairly closely, especially compared to many other Disney films, and is more of a condensed version than a total rewrite. Some of Crosby’s narration is even taken directly from Irving. The fun here, if you’ve seen the cartoon, is in the expansions and in Irving’s writing. He’s extremely good at character description especially - see, for instance, his introduction of Ichabod Crane:
In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
Even if you’ve only read the story and not watched any adaptations, you can immediately see this guy in your mind’s eye. The same is true for Crane’s rival:
Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox’s tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, “Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!” The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.
Some authors, especially more modern writers, will include only minimal physical descriptions of people and places. Perhaps the idea is to focus entirely on a character’s actions and ideas, or on the story’s themes. Often, physical descriptions aren’t strictly necessary. However, this is a mistake. Irving’s vivid descriptions of their appearances helps set up their rivalry by emphasising the contrasts between them, and draws the reader into the story. It feels more real because we can easily imagine these two men as real men, and not just abstractions.
Irving’s story, naturally, is less goofy than the cartoon, but much of it is still pretty funny. Some of the figures of speech above are tongue-in-cheek, but there are other points that made me smile. During the party at the Van Tassels', for instance, he describes some of the old Revolutionary War veterans:
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.
One thing about human nature that never changes is the irresistable temptation to embellish and exaggerate stories over time, especially if such embellishments make the speaker look better.
The final chase sequence is played straighter than in Disney’s version, though again, it’s not entirely serious. Irving leaves the question of the Horseman’s identity ambiguous. On the one hand, he writes that Brom Bones “was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.” However, he adds that, “The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means.” It’s possible that Bones laughed because of his victory for Katrina Van Tassel’s heart, but I’d put my money on him being the Horseman.
Overall, both versions of “Sleepy Hollow” have too much comedy to qualify as strict horror stories, so if you’re looking for something genuinely scary for Halloween you may want to look elsewhere. However, this type of light-hearted “horror” is, for me, perfect for the season. There’s a place for adult-oriented horror this time of year, but at its best, Halloween is about having fun with the weird and the spooky, and doesn’t lose its connection to childhood traditions like costumes and trick-or-treating. Something like The Shining or The Thing may be better horror stories, but “Sleepy Hollow” is a better Halloween story.
Halloween, as its generally thought of now, comes out of American culture, so by all means, enjoy this great holiday with a great American story as told by either of our greatest storytellers.