Goliath II is an animated short released on January 21, 1960 in a double bill with Toby Tyler. The narrator is Sterling Holloway, who later provided the voice of Kaa in The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Plot[]
The short film is about an elephant named Goliath II, who is no bigger than his father's toenail. In contrast, Goliath I is the biggest elephant in all the jungle. He's not satisfied with his son because Goliath II is small. However, Goliath II's mother loves him very much. She also protects him from many dangers, like Raja, the crafty tiger, who has always wanted to taste an elephant, a crocodile (resembling Tick-Tock), and being stepped on.
One day, while marching through the jungle, Goliath II gets lost following a snail. As Goliath II's mother looks for him, Raja does too. She finds Goliath II stuck in a small hole. As Raja is about to grab ahold of him, Goliath II's mother sucks him with her trunk and saves him. She then scolds Goliath II for wandering off like that and is then put in a nest on a tree as punishment.
Goliath II doesn't like this treatment, so that night, he sneaks away, vowing to never return. As he walks on a plant, it tickles Raja awake. As Raja grabs him, Goliath II calls for his mother who comes to the rescue. She grabs Raja by the tail and flings him into the crocodile, never to be seen again.
In the morning, Goliath II gets a more severe punishment from his mother by being spanked by her with a branch and is deemed a scoundrel, a rogue, and a traitor as an elephant who deserts the herd is considered one according to the elephant law, and worst of all, Goliath II disgraced his father.
The next day, as the other elephants march, they run in terror when they cross paths with a mouse. The elephants all hide in a lake as the mouse laughs at them. Goliath's mother (the only one hiding on top of a tree branch) was so terrified of the mouse, that for the first time ever in her life, accidentally forgets about her son and leaves him alone to face the horror of the mouse.
Then the mouse sees Goliath II looking at him. Goliath II is not scared of the mouse as they are the same size. The mouse gives Goliath II three seconds to run away, and threatened to tear him to shreds if he’s not gone. But Goliath II refuses to run away, they fight, with Goliath II coming out on top. He holds the mouse by the tail over a ledge, slowly loosening his grip to feed him to the crocodile. The mouse then tells Goliath II that he's the champ, in which he accepts, and spares the mouse’s life, much to the crocodile's disappointment.
Following the mouse's defeat, the elephants march with Goliath II on his father's head, being shaded as a reward for his extraordinary bravery. He is now the most important elephant in the herd and they wouldn't lose him for anything in the world.
Cast[]
- Sterling Holloway as the narrator
- Kevin Corcoran as Goliath II
- Barbara Jo Allen as Goliath II's mother
- Reta Shaw as Eloise
- Paul Frees as Goliath I and the Mouse
- Jimmy MacDonald as Raja and Tick-Tock the Crocodile
Releases[]
Television[]
- The Wonderful World of Disney, episode #16.21: "Nature's Strangest Oddballs"
- The New Mickey Mouse Club, episode D-061, April 10, 1978
- Disney's Salute to Mom
- Disney's Coyote Tales
Home Video[]
VHS
DVD
- Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities
- Walt Disney's It's a Small World of Fun!: Volume 1
- Walt Disney Animation Collection: Classic Short Films: The Reluctant Dragon
Trivia[]
- The crocodile in this short has the same design as Tick-Tock the Crocodile.
- Friend Owl from Bambi, the Owl from Sleeping Beauty, and the owl from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad made small cameo appearances in the short.
- This short was first shown in theaters with Toby Tyler.
- A lot of the elephants' designs and animations were eventually reused in The Jungle Book, particularly the scene where the elephants pile up on top of one another.
- Many sequences in this short feature reused animation from previous Disney movies, such as Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland.
- The character of Raja the tiger has some design elements used for the unnamed tiger that terrorized Goofy in Tiger Trouble.
- Goliath was the name of an infamous giant from scripture, convenient that it should be given to the biggest elephant in the herd.
- This is the first Disney cartoon animated using the faster and less expensive xerography process, a process of using Xerox technology to transfer animation drawings to cels as part of the traditional animation process instead of utilizing hand-inking.
- Goliath II received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but lost to Gene Deitch's Munro.
- The short film itself is played after Gala Day at Disneyland and before Toby Tyler.
- In the unrestored 1990s TV/VHS prints (and presumably even the older unrestored 1980s TV/VHS prints), Tick-Tock the crocodile has dark brown skin. [1][2][3] The restored version on Walt Disney Animation Collection: Classic Short Films: The Reluctant Dragon DVD release shows that Tick-Tock the crocodile originally had olive-green skin. [4]
