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Why Watch? Well, don’t you want to know the truth about Mother Goose? This quirky 1957 Disney short film takes you behind the rhyme, explaining the origins of “Little Jack Horner,” “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” and “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” Sort of. The cartoon is somewhat more devoted to charm than accuracy, getting a few details entirely wrong. Yet if anything it makes The Truth About Mother Goose even more clever, retelling tall tales with the very loose sense of history that made them fun in the first place. Your second to reason to watch is Wolfgang Reitherman, who co-directed the short with Bill Justice. Today is Reitherman’s birthday, what would be his 104th. He was one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” the group of core animators that created most of the studios greatest early works. The Truth About Mother Goose was Reitherman’s first outing as a director. He...

Veteran animator who contributed to every aspect of Disney's output for 42 years

When the veteran animator Bill Justice, who has died aged 97, applied for a job at the Disney studio in 1937, it was on the basis of a 30-day "try-out"; he remained there for the next 42 years, contributing to every facet of Disney's output, from feature films and short cartoons to TV shows and theme park attractions.

Justice was born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended the John Herron Art Institute (now a school of Indiana University) to study portrait painting. In 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, he responded to a Disney recruiting advertisement in Esquire magazine and gave up the weekly income of $65 he was then earning in order to work at Hollywood's most famous cartoon studio, for $12 a week. He began as an "in-betweener" on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...