Robin Hood

When sitting here writing and thinking about characters that have been able to transcend through the decades, I've been remiss in mentioning Robin Hood. Yet another character whose story gets told and re-told and re-imagined for new audiences constantly.


My first introduction to Robin Hood, and for many years my only knowledge of the character, was from the 1973 Disney movie that used anthropomorphic animals as the characters. Robin Hood, most fittingly, was a fox.


We recently bought the movie as a Christmas gift for Brynn, my friend Steve's daughter. She also happens to be my six-year-old son Alex's girlfriend, but that's a blog for another day. The acquisition, wrapping, and giving of the gift had the movie high in my thoughts. And I recently watched it again with my own kids.


I must have seen the movie as a child sometime in 1974, as it released in late November 1973. But this was at a time when the only option for seeing movies was in the theater. There were no digital releases or DVD's or VHS tapes for me to play the movie over and over again to become so familiar with it. Instead, I learned the movie so well from yet another Christmas gift early in life.


I had a copy of this record featuring 'songs and stories' from the movie. I must have played it a dozen times and memorized the artwork from the storybook. I had many records that constituted songs and stories from another source. Most notably Power Records that would re-hash super hero adventures. This form of childhood entertainment is one of the mediums that has been made completely obsolete by advancements in technology. Why listen to a record while reading along with the story when you can get the actual movie on your Apple TV months after the release?

To me, if you were going to go Disney, Robin Hood was the most manly way to do it. He was an adventurer, a fighter for justice. It was something I could wrap my head around. Peter Pan seemed to be a shiftless layabout that was only spurned into action for selfish reasons. Robin Hood did the right thing no matter the personal consequences and for no gain of his own.


In re-watching the movie I got a few surprises in the cast. As I was watching the opening credits, Andy Devine was listed as the voice of Friar Tuck. This was a surprise because I was familiar with Devine's jarringly scratchy voice from early episodes of the Jack Benny show. In the late 1930's, early 1940's, Andy Devine was a semi-regular on the show. So seeing him here was a pleasant surprise.

But then, while doing some looking into the history of the movie, I found something I hadn't noticed in the initial credits. Phil Harris played Robin's right hand bear Little John! Phil Harris was Jack Benny's band leader for many many years. Even going on to marry Alice Fey, earn a radio show of his own, and become a comedian in his own right. Having become familiar with Phil Harris in my adulthood, I was floored to learn that he was the distinctive voice of a childhood favorite.


Robin Hood joins the ranks of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Superman as a character that gets reinterpreted many different ways for many different audiences. He's become an eternal, iconic piece of our shared culture and even stretches this sharing past American shores. But despite the movies, books, comics, and TV shows, when someone mentions the character this is the version that comes to my mind.

It really is the things that hit us in our childhood that form us as adults.

Thanks,
DCD