Walt Disney was dominating the animation field in the late 1930s. In the 1938 Academy Awards Best Animated Shorts category, four out of the five cartoons nominated for best cartoon were produced by Disney. Competition within Walt's studio was fierce to win the Oscar, yet a peace-loving bull whose interest is more in smelling flowers than attacking a matador's red cape in November 1938's "Ferdinand the Bull" beat out Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and a 'Silly Symphony' entry. The bull's win broke a six-year streak by the 'Silly Symphony's' animators, who had won that category since cinema's first three-strip Technicolor cartoon, 1932's "Flowers and Trees." "Ferdinand the Bull" beat out Disney's 'Silly Symphony's' 'Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood'-the third-to-last cartoon in that highly-successful series-Mickey Mouse's 'Brave Little Tailor,' Donald Duck's 'Good Little Scout,' and Max Fleischer's 'Hunky and Spunky.'
"Ferdinand the Bull," based on American author 1936 Munro Leaf's book, 'The Story of Ferdinand,' features a bull who loves nature rather than fighting other bulls. When a group of bullfighting scouts are canvasing the area for bulls, Ferdinand's colleagues, who are raised to fight one another, show off their beastly skills. Our hero Ferdinand, whose passion is smelling flowers, accidentally sits on a bee's stinger, sending him into a frenzy and knocking all the other bulls on their keisters. The scouts are so impressed with Ferdinand's hutzpah they haul him to their bull ring.
At the day of his fateful battle with the matador, whose face looks like Walt Disney, Ferdinand is escorted by his handlers. These assistants' appearances were an inside joke by the cartoonists who drew their faces to resemble those who created "Ferdinand the Bull.' Ferdinand demonstrates to the angry bulls destined to meet their eventual deaths in the ring that the best way to escape such a fate is to take the time to smell the flowers tossed into the ring by admiring women spectators to the matadors they love. The leftists fighting in the Spanish Civil War at the time saw the cartoon as a parable for pacifism. They remembered the lessons of Ferdinand when they assumed power in Spain, and insisted on remaining neutral during World War Two.
"Ferdinand the Bull" is included in the Disney Christmas special 'From All of Us to All of You,' first shown on television in 1958. The extravaganza has since been dropped from its United States' TV line-up during the holiday season, but in the Scandinavian countries the program is a Christmas Eve ritual on their broadcasting stations. In 1982, Swedish TV programmers decided to tinker with the cartoons in the 90-minute show, and replaced "Ferdinand the Bull" with the Academy Award-winner 1939's "The Ugly Duckling," a Silly Symphony cartoon. The telephones of the country's TV stations lit up with viewers protesting the switch. With its tail between the legs, Sweden reinserted Ferdinand into the special the following year. The Disney Christmas show in these Scandinavian countries consistently ranks as one of the most popular television programs for the entire year.
