Charlotte's Web (1973 film)

Charlotte's Web
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
Story by Earl Hamner Jr.
Based on Charlotte's Web
by E. B. White
Starring
Narrated by Rex Allen
Music by
Edited by
  • Larry C. Cowan
  • Pat Foley
Production
company
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date
  • February 22, 1973 (1973-02-22) (Premiere-New York City)
  • March 1, 1973 (1973-03-01) (United States)
Running time
 94 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $2.4 million (rentals)[1]

Charlotte's Web is a 1973 American animated musical drama film produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions and based upon the 1952 children's book Charlotte's Web by E. B. White. The film, like the book, is about a pig named Wilbur who befriends an intelligent spider named Charlotte who saves him from being slaughtered. Released to theaters by Paramount Pictures, Charlotte's Web features a song score of music and lyrics written by the Sherman Brothers, who had previously written music for family films like Mary Poppins (1964), The Jungle Book (1967), and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). It is the first of only three Hanna-Barbera features not to be based upon one of their famous television cartoons, Heidi's Song (1982) and Once Upon a Forest (1993) being the other two.

Charlotte's Web was filmed in 1972 and released on February 22, 1973, to moderate critical and commercial success. The film has developed a devoted following over the following years due to television and VHS; in 1994 it surprised the marketplace by becoming one of the best-selling titles of the year, 21 years after its first premiere. No other non-Disney musical animated film has enjoyed such a comeback in popularity, prompting a direct-to-video sequel, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, which Paramount released in the US on March 18, 2003 (Universal released it internationally), followed by a live-action film version of the original story, which was released on December 15, 2006.

Plot

Early one morning, Fern Arable prevents her father John from slaughtering a piglet as the runt of the litter. Deciding to let Fern deal with nurturing the piglet, John allows Fern to raise it as a pet. She nurtures it lovingly, naming it Wilbur. Six weeks later, Wilbur, due to being a spring pig, has matured, and John tells Fern that Wilbur has to be sold (his siblings were already sold). Fern sadly says good-bye to Wilbur as he is sold down the street to her uncle, Homer Zuckerman. At Homer's farm, a goose coaxes a sullen Wilbur to speak his first words. Although delighted at this new ability, Wilbur still yearns for companionship. He attempts to get the goose to play with him, but she declines on the condition that she has to hatch her eggs. Wilbur also tries asking a rat named Templeton to play with him, but Templeton's only interests are spying, hiding, and eating. Wilbur then wants to play with a lamb, but the lamb's father says sheep do not play with pigs because it is only a matter of time before they are slaughtered and turned into smoked bacon and ham. Horrified at this depressing discovery, Wilbur reduces himself to tears until a mysterious voice tells him to "chin up", and wait until morning to reveal herself to him. The following morning, she reveals herself to be a spider named Charlotte A. Cavatica, living on a web on a corner of Homer's barn overlooking Wilbur's pig pen. She tells him that she will come up with a plan guaranteed to spare his life.

Later, the goose's goslings hatch. One of them, named Jeffrey, befriends Wilbur. Eventually, Charlotte reveals her plan to "play a trick on Zuckerman", and consoles Wilbur to sleep. The next morning, Homer's farmhand, Lurvy, sees the words, SOME PIG, spun within Charlotte's web. The incident attracts publicity among Homer's neighbors who deem the praise to be a miracle. The publicity eventually dies down, and Charlotte requests the barn animals to devise a new word to spin within her web. After several suggestions, the goose suggests the phrase, TERRIFIC! TERRIFIC! TERRIFIC!, though Charlotte decides to shorten it to one TERRIFIC. The incident becomes another media sensation, though Homer still desires to slaughter Wilbur. For the next message, Charlotte then employs Templeton to pull a word from a magazine clipping at the dump for inspiration, in which he returns the word RADIANT ripped from a soap box to spin within her web. Following this, Homer decides to enter Wilbur in the county fair for the summer. Charlotte reluctantly decides to accompany him, though Templeton at first has no interest in doing so until the goose tells him about all the food there. After one night there, Charlotte sends Templeton to the trash pile on another errand to gather another word for her next message, in which he returns with the word, HUMBLE. The next morning, Wilbur awakens to find Charlotte has spun an egg sac containing her unborn offspring, and the following afternoon, the word, HUMBLE, is spun. However, Fern's brother, Avery, discovers another pig named Uncle has won first place, though the county fair staff decides to hold a celebration in honor of Homer's miraculous pig, and rewards him $25 and a gold medal. He then announces that he will allow Wilbur to "live to a ripe old age".

Exhausted from laying eggs and writing words, Charlotte tells Wilbur she will remain at the fair to die. Not willing to let her children be abandoned, Wilbur has Templeton retrieve her egg sac to take back to the farm, just before she dies. Once he returns to Homer's farm, he guards the egg sac until the winter. The next spring, Charlotte's 514 children are hatched, but leave the farm, causing Wilbur to become saddened to the point of wanting to run away. Just as he is about to do so, the ram points out that three of them did not fly away. Pleased at finding new friends, he names them Joy, Nellie, and Aranea, but as much as he loves them, they will never replace the memory of Charlotte.

Voice cast

  • Henry Gibson as Wilbur, a pig who was almost killed due to being a runt. Over time, however, he grows so much that one would never have known he was once a runt. When he learns of his fate of being slaughtered, Wilbur instantly breaks down into tears, until Charlotte tells him that she will do whatever it takes to save him. Wilbur is a friendly pig, but also prone to anxiety.
  • Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte A. Cavatica, a spider who lives on a web in a corner of Homer's barn above Wilbur's pig pen. She is very loving and motherly, but sometimes grows frustrated at Wilbur's anxiety issues. At the end of the film, she dies after laying 514 eggs, but three of them decide to stay with Wilbur.
  • Paul Lynde as Templeton, a care-free, egotistical rat who lives at Homer's farm. He helps Charlotte get new ideas for her webs on the condition that he is promised food. At the end of the film, as well as the sequel, he has four bratty children of his own: Henrietta, Lester, Ralphie, and Junior.
  • Agnes Moorehead as the Goose, an unnamed goose who is the one that encourages Wilbur to speak for the first time. Her seven goslings later hatch, although there were actually eight eggs (one was rotten). In the sequel, she was named Gwen.
  • Don Messick as Jeffrey, a young, undersized gosling whom Wilbur befriends shortly after his birth. He initially lives, eats, and sleeps with Wilbur rather than his mother and siblings. At one point, Avery remarks that he sounds more like a pig than a gosling, which pleases Jeffrey. When Wilbur is loaded into a crate destined for the fair, Jeffrey casually walks in to join him, amusing the humans but they still remove and restrain him nevertheless. International VHS releases show a deleted scene in which Jeffrey is briefly seen riding with Avery in the back of the Arables' truck, until it stops so Avery can set him down in the middle of the road. Distressed at being separated from Wilbur, Jeffrey tries to catch up with the truck to no avail, leaving him heartbroken. His mother gently directs him to the pond to join his siblings. Despite his previous insistence that they be friends forever, Jeffrey does not reunite with Wilbur when the latter returns from the fair nor does he appear in the rest of the film.
  • Herb Vigran as Lurvy, Homer's farmhand who is the first to notice the messages in Charlotte's webs.
  • Pamelyn Ferdin as Fern Arable, John's daughter who convinces him to spare Wilbur's life.
  • Martha Scott as Mrs. Arable, Fern's mother who first tells her of what was going to happen to Wilbur.
  • Bob Holt as Homer Zuckerman, Mrs. Arable's brother and Fern's uncle.
  • John Stephenson as John Arable, Fern's father. He was about to "do away" with Wilbur until she intervened.
  • Danny Bonaduce as Avery Arable, Fern's older brother.
  • William B. White as Henry Fussy, a boy of about Fern's age, whom she soon starts spending time with while Wilbur is at the fair.
  • Dave Madden as the Ram, one of the first animals Wilbur meets at Homer's farm. He is the first to tell Wilbur that it is a pig's fate to be slaughtered and turned into smoked bacon and ham. Madden also voiced other characters in the film.
  • Joan Gerber as Edith Zuckerman, Homer's wife. She comes up with the idea of giving Wilbur a buttermilk bath. Gerber also voiced Mrs. Fussy, Henry's stern mother who never lets him have fun.
  • Rex Allen as the Narrator

Five members of the cast (Henry Gibson, Paul Lynde, Agnes Moorehead, Danny Bonaduce, and Dave Madden) had previously appeared on the ABC television sitcom Bewitched (1964-1972).[2] Hanna-Barbera also animated the opening credits of the show. However, Bonaduce and Madden are better known for their roles on another ABC-TV sitcom, The Partridge Family (1970–1974), which was still in production when the film was made. Ferdin and Lynde also both appeared on The Paul Lynde Show, another ABC sitcom created to fill the contract of Bewitched.[3] Bonaduce, Lynde, Gerber, Messick, and Stephenson had previously worked for Hanna-Barbera in their television shows: Lynde appeared in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (uncredited), Bonaduce and Gerber were stars in Partridge Family 2200 A.D., and Stephenson and Messick were Hanna-Barbera regulars who regularly lent their voices to many of their shows.

Production

After the studio decided to make the film in 1972, Joe Barbera visited E. B. White in Maine. White highlighted parts of the book he did not want to change, and parts "subject to discussion."[4]

Barbera wrote that Debbie Reynolds called him and said that she was willing to join the project even without being paid.[4]

Czech painter Mirko Hanák produced unused artwork of the film before dying of leukemia.[5]

Release

The film was released to theaters on March 1, 1973, by Paramount Pictures in the United States. It had a limited release on February 22, 1973, in New York City, and also released in West Germany on March 30, 1973, as well as August 11 in Sweden, August 25 in Japan, and September 4, 1981, in Australia.

Home media

Charlotte's Web VHS release, 2001

The film was first released on VHS in 1979, followed by three more re-releases in 1988, 1993, and 1996. It made its DVD debut in 2001. A second DVD release of the film was released in 2006.

Reception

Charlotte's Web received generally positive reviews. Review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes reported that it has a 76% approval rating based on 21 reviews, with an average score of 6.6/10.[6] Craig Butler of All-Movie Guide criticized the animation and the musical score, but called it a faithful adaptation, noting that "no attempt has been made to soften the existential sadness at the story's core".[7] Dan Jardine criticized the songs and the "Saturday morning cartoon quality" of the animation, but also says that Hamner "retains just enough of White’s elegant prose in the dialogue and narration to keep the film from being simply a painfully well-intended experiment."[8] Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com stated that the animation is sometimes "downright bad", but that White's classic fable needs little to make it come to life.[9] TV Guide reviewed the film with generally positive remarks, stating that "The voices of Reynolds, Lynde, Gibson, and all the rest are perfectly cast, and the songs by the Sherman brothers are solid, although none of them became hits like those they wrote for such Disney movies as MARY POPPINS."[10] When it was reissued on DVD it was awarded an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award.[11]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

E.B. White's reaction

Despite assisting in helping keep parts of the story, White was still very displeased with adaptation. According to Gene Deitch, White wrote the following words in a 1977 letter, "We have never ceased to regret that your version of 'Charlotte's Web' never got made. The Hanna-Barbera version has never pleased either of us ... a travesty ..."[13] White himself wrote of the film, "The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don't care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney World, with 76 trombones. But that's what you get for getting embroiled in Hollywood."[14] White had previously turned down Disney when they offered to make a film based on his book.[15] According to the film's writer, Earl Hamner Jr., White — who sometimes offered advice and suggestions to the filmmakers — would have preferred the music of Mozart in the film, rather than the music of the Sherman Brothers.[16]

Sequel

A direct-to-video sequel titled Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure was released in 2003. The sequel centers on Wilbur's relationship with a lonely lamb named Cardigan and also shows Charlotte's children as adolescents. Reviews for the sequel were generally unfavorable, with critics panning its animation and plot.

Soundtrack

  1. "There Must Be Something More"
  2. "I Can Talk!"
  3. "Chin Up!"
  4. "We've Got Lots in Common"
  5. "Deep in the Dark/Charlotte's Web"
  6. "Mother Earth and Father Time"
  7. "A Veritable Smorgasbord"
  8. "Zuckerman's Famous Pig"

"Zuckerman's Famous Pig"

"Zuckerman's Famous Pig" is the title that saves Wilbur from being slaughtered in the story. It is the theme of the finale song in the film. It was written by the Sherman Brothers and arranged as a barbershop quartet by Irwin Kostal , in keeping with the time and place of the story.[17] It was covered by the Brady Kids and was chosen for release on their first single taken from The Brady Bunch Phonographic Album by producer Jackie Mills.[18]

2018 CD Release

In March 2018 the Original Cast Soundtrack was released on CD by the Varèse Sarabande record label. This is the first time the soundtrack had enjoyed any re-release (digitally or otherwise) since its original pressing.[19]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1973", Variety, January 9, 1974, pg 19.
  2. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057733/fullcredits#cast
  3. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068118/
  4. 1 2 Barbera, Joseph (1994). My Life in 'toons: From Flatbrush to Bedrock in Under a Century. Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing. pp. 228–29. ISBN 1-57036-042-1.
  5. ↑ Gene Deitch (2001). "How to Succeed in Animation: Chapter 30: Charlotte's Web Graphics". Animation World Network. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Charlotte's Web (1973) - Rotten Tomatoes". Flixster. Retrieved February 4, 2012.
  7. ↑ Butler, Craig. "Charlotte's Web: Review". All-Movie Guide. Macrovision Corporation. Retrieved January 28, 2009.
  8. ↑ Jardine, Dan. "Charlotte's Web". Apollo Guide. Apollo Communications Ltd. Archived from the original on December 6, 2008. Retrieved January 28, 2009.
  9. ↑ Null, Christopher (2001). "Charlotte's Web (1973)". Filmcritic.com. Archived from the original on February 12, 2009. Retrieved January 28, 2009.
  10. ↑ "Charlotte's Web - Movie Reviews and Ratings". TV Guide. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Early School Years: Feature-Length Films". Oppenheim Toy Portfolio. Archived from the original on October 26, 2011. Retrieved April 22, 2009.
  12. ↑ "AFI's 10 Top 10 Nominees" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
  13. ↑ Gene Deitch (2001). "How to Succeed in Animation: Chapter 28: A Tangled Web". Animation World Network. Retrieved September 27, 2008.
  14. ↑ Burr, Ty (December 10, 2006). "Bard of the barn". The Boston Globe. Retrieved September 27, 2008.
  15. ↑ Clark, Beverly Lyon (2003). Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 178. ISBN 0-8018-8170-6.
  16. ↑ Holleran, Scott (December 22, 2006). "Interview: Earl Hamner". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 16, 2008.
  17. ↑ Richard Chigley Lynch (June 26, 1989). Movie Musicals on Record. ISBN 978-0-313-26540-2.
  18. ↑ Kim Cooper; David Smay; Jake Austen (June 1, 2001). Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth. ISBN 978-0-922915-69-9.
  19. ↑ "For The First Time On CD, Varese Sarabande Records To Release The Charlotte's Web Soundtrack". top40-charts.com. T4C. Retrieved 9 March 2018.
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