- “The best Mickey ever was never finished. It was called The Plight of the Bumble Bee, and it was all finished in animation. It had an awkward length, but Fred and Sib agreed that it could not be cut, so it was shelved.”
- ―Director Jack Kinney
Plight of the Bumblebee is an unfinished, and lost Disney animated Mickey Mouse short produced by the Walt Disney Studios in 1951. It was directed by Jack Kinney.
Synopsis[]
Mickey grooms a talented bee, Hector to be an opera star, but the bee gets drunk on nectar from the flowers on stage and ruins the show at the Opera House.
Plot[]
Mickey stumbles in the big city, where he finds a bee named Hector singing "bebop" (a bee who is jazz bopping), but notices that the bee occasionally hits a beautiful operatic note. Mickey decides the bee is destined for bigger things, and becomes his manager by signing him to a contract. However, he soon discovers that the reason Hector is singing in a malt shop is that he has a weakness for the flower's nectar.
In fact, whenever he has been drinking nectar, he becomes a sloppy "drunk". So, Mickey tries to keep Hector away from temptation. Unfortunately, for his operatic debut at the Opera House, the stage set is decorated with flowers and he overindulges, causing a female opera diva to faint in a fit causing chaos and ruining the show. After the performance, a defeated and heartbroken Mickey runs across a musical grasshopper outside and decides to try again.
History[]
In 1981, cartoonist Daan Jippes casually browsed through some index cards at the Disney Archives, and found some information about Production 2428 ("Plight of the Bumblebee"), including the location of three dusty boxes filled with stacks of animation by animators, Fred Moore, Hal King, John Sibley, and Cliff Nordberg, layouts, photographed storyboards, and exposure sheets. Also found, was the recorded soundtrack (with the final voices) on a transcription disc.
- “This big model sheet up here was all made from drawings that [Fred Moore] made for… a featurette, called "The Plight of the Bumblebee." Mickey had a bee that could buzz operatic numbers, he was a great virtuoso that way. But the bee had a weakness, he was a "nectarholic": he'd get "drunk" on nectar, so Mickey had trouble controlling him this way. Fred got that picture about 90% animated, I understand, and Walt dumped it because he got scared of the alcoholic connotations.”
- ―Disney Legend and comic strip artist Floyd Gottfredson stated during an interview.
Legacy[]
In 2009, the unfinished short was shown at the Disney Rarities panel at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California.
Gallery[]
