#1936Club – The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson

This is a children’s book with a story about a little Spanish bull who preferred to sit under a tree and smell flowers rather than fight. It sounded very familiar: was it made into one of those short Disney cartoons? Indeed it was; made in 1938, it won an Oscar and was still being shown on television into the 1970s. In fact, in some countries it is shown every year on Christmas Eve. When they tried to replace it with something else in the 1980s in Sweden, it came back the following year after a public outcry. What a delightful and illogical tradition!

What’s even more surprising than the fact I remember it is that Walt Disney himself voiced Ferdinand’s mother. According to one of the reviews on IMDB, the animated bandilleros and picadors were based on the cartoon’s animators and the matador on Walt Disney himself; he was reportedly Not Amused by that, though surely he must have vetted it, especially if he voiced part of it; that story sounds apocryphal to me.

A surprisingly political book

As it was published at the time of the Spanish civil war, General Franco – the man who led the violent uprising – was definitely not amused at the pacifist bull and banned the book. The ban was not lifted until his death in 1975. Hitler had all copies burned (“degenerate democratic propaganda”, he said, only he said it in German). After the war, 30,000 copies were printed and distributed free to German children to promote peace (source: Illustration Chronicles).  It was the only non-communist book allowed in Poland by Stalin. Even Ernest Hemingway, who fought in Spain, had something to write about it. Perhaps even more surprisingly, in the first year after publication, it sold more copies than Gone With the Wind, also a 1936 book, in America (source: Sothebys). 

It was fascinating reading about all the criticism, serious and tongue in cheek that has surrounded the book over the time since its publication. It’s been criticised and hailed (depending on your viewpoint) as pacifist, fascist, socialist, showing your feminine side, and championing individualism, being true to yourself and encouraging children to be lazy or refuse to stand up to their responsibilities (source: The New Yorker).

The Song of Ferdinand the Bull

Disney also promoted the cartoon well before it appeared by releasing The Song of Ferdinand the Bull that was later covered by various artists. This is discussed in this wonderful blogpost. Do take the time to listen to the embedded videos. The Slim Gaillard jazz version reminds me of the jazz in the backing of Tom and Jerry cartoons and has a wonderful section where the double bass imitates a cow. On the downside, it also has homophobic connotations, with Ferdinand with his hands (hooves?) on his hips and the singer commenting at the end (in a very camp voice, no less) that “Ferdinand’s a sissie!” I’m assuming this wasn’t part of the original. I recommend the Dixieland Swingsters version, which shows various versions of the book’s cover and the ‘bonus video’ showing the pantomime cow version of Ferdinand.

Back to the book

 The best way to read this book if you don’t have a copy is to have it read aloud to you with all the illustrations clearly visible. Try this video. It’s interesting to see that the Disney animators hardly changed a thing except the style. Even the men’s funny hats are virtually the same and you can see that the joke of the wine corks hanging off the cork tree comes from Robert Lawson’s illustrations. Not until the scene in the bull ring is the story changed. In the book, Ferdinand enjoys the flowers in the ladies’ hair. In the cartoon, the matador has been thrown a bunch of flowers and tears his hair out when Ferdinand won’t fight. Thank goodness all those bandilleros and picadors and the matador were so afraid of Ferdinand’s reputation, or the pain would have driven him to his death, given his exaggerated reaction to the bee sting. As it is, its a delightful pacifist tale that infuriated two dictators and that’s a win in my book. Perhaps a more realistic version of events is given in the 2017 full length computer animation film Ferdinand which was nominated for all sorts of Academy Awards, but had the misfortune to come out in the same year as Disney Pixar’s Coco, with Coco having a full month longer at the box office to create a buzz. I haven’t seen either of them.

It’s quite amazing that a little picture book can have such a legacy. After all, Munro Leaf claimed that he only wrote it so his friend Robert Lawson had something to draw.

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