Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
In a toy shop, a little girl wants to buy a beautiful rag doll, but it is stitched hand in hand to a boy doll and she can only afford one. She asks the shopkeeper to cut them apart, and he refuses, telling her why. One evening in Ragland, living needles, threads, scissors and paintbrushes made a girl rag doll and a boy rag doll. The paintbrush finished their faces and gave each a magic candy heart, which brought them to life, and told them to reach the Castle of Names before sunset. On the way the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees offers them a ride, collapses, and has to be refilled with sawdust. Then the boy doll is enchanted by a glamorous Spanish doll, and the girl doll's candy heart breaks. The Spanish doll rejects the boy because he has no name, "just a nobody". At the castle hospital the doctors can do nothing for the girl; the boy finds his way back to her, she is saved, and the two receive their names, Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, with their hands stitched together so they can never be parted. Back in the toy shop, the girl understands why the dolls must stay together.
Why It Matters
- Ragland, a world made of fabric, buttons and sewing tools, is a lovely piece of Fleischer design, and the film shows the studio, after Gulliver's Travels, reaching for the emotional storytelling of Disney's features.
- It was the first Paramount cartoon to feature Raggedy Ann and Andy, co-written by Worth Gruelle, the son of their creator. Unlike the books, it makes the pair sweethearts rather than brother and sister, and the story of the stitched hands gave the characters an origin they never had in print.
Notes and Trivia
- It came from the Fleischers' last years running their own studio, before Paramount took control in 1942.
- See also: Gulliver's Travels (1939), Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941).