Lambert the Sheepish Lion

Raised by sheep, LAMBERT THE SHEEPISH LION wants to live a life of gentle peace & quiet. Then one night, a wicked wolf carries off his foster mother...

Winner of the 1952 Oscar for Best Animation, this is a very enjoyable little film. Bill Peet, eventually a popular children's author in his own right, was one of the writers here. The title tune is infectious, and Sterling Holloway is perfect as the Narrator.

I remember watching 'Lambert the Sheepish Lion' on the Disney channel years and years ago. It was my favourite Disney short. In summary, Lambert is a lion cub who is mistakenly given to a sheep. Lambert is ridiculed by the other sheep until there is trouble and he must save the sheep from danger. By doing this, he gains his courage. The theme tune to this little short is very catchy, and it's just a feel-good story with the ironic little twist and the feeling of success that Lambert has become a hero now instead of being bullied. Out of all these years, I have never forgotten this little short, and I can vaguely remember the tune.

This short is one of the more successful Disney produced in the 1950s. Nominated for an Oscar in 1951, it has one of the more memorable one-shot characters Disney created in Lambert. Some of the visual gags, particularly toward the end of the cartoon are hilarious! Toward the end of the 1940s, Disney slipped behind UPA and MGM and even Warner Brothers in terms of shorts. The quality was still there, but the energy seemed to fade a bit. Cartoons like Lambert show that Disney could still more than hold its own. Highly recommended

When the stork delivers a crop of lambs, one of the ewes is left out. But there is a lion cub who is named Lambert. He was apparently mismarked. So he is inadvertently given to the mother. She decide to keep him and chases the stork away. Of course, the lion cub is rejected by the others, not recognizing his being for what it is. The conclusion is predictable. Still, it is well worth seeing and the song is very memorable.

In Australia (probably elsewhere, too) this short cartoon was screened just before "The Lion King". For a brief moment I sensed a new golden age, with hand-animated features basking in critical praise and paying their way at the box office, and classic short cartoons once again seeing the light of day (that is to say, the darkness of cinemas). The dream didn't last long, did it? "Lambert" turned out to be the last hand-animated short I ever saw in a cinema; today, Disney doesn't even bother to re-release its old FEATURES any more, and its animation department, which has maintained continuous production for something like seventy-five years and still has the best animators in the world, is fighting for its life in the face of general indifference. We are living in evil times.

I was particularly glad to see this cartoon in the dark, just before "The Lion King": it always brought tears to my eyes, which I managed to keep secret. I gather it was based on a children's book, or was at one point going to be a children's book, or some such, but unless the prose was as perfectly crafted as Hans Christian Andersen's, this is surely the better form. It's a departure for Jack Hannah, who doesn't try to be funny; he just tells a sweet, warm-hearted story as clearly as possible. How can you not love it?