Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone arrived in 1963 as the studio’s final animated feature released in Walt Disney’s lifetime. It runs 79 minutes. It premiered in London on December 12, 1963, and opened in the United States on December 25. It grossed $22.2 million in the United States and Canada, a box-office success that outweighed the mixed reviews it drew at the time.
Trailer, via Animation Compendia.
A Scrawny Boy and a Forgetful Wizard
The film follows Wart, a 12-year-old orphan, who wants only to be a knight’s squire. On a hunting trip he runs into Merlin, an elderly wizard with a talking owl named Archimedes and a shaky grip on his own memory. Merlin decides he will tutor the boy, on the theory that once one has an education, one can go anywhere.
That idea drives the film’s best sequences. Merlin turns Wart into a fish so they can study physics in the castle moat, until an angry pike attacks them. Later he turns them into tree squirrels to teach gravity. The lessons are loose, funny and strange, and they are the reason to watch.
Kay, Ector and the New Year’s Day Tournament
Sir Ector, Wart’s foster father, runs the castle. When Sir Pellinore announces that the winner of the New Year’s Day tournament in London will be crowned king, Ector enters his son Kay and makes Wart Kay’s squire. Merlin’s enchantments — self-washing dishes, among them — get Wart punished instead of praised.
The plot is thin, and it knows it. The sword in the anvil sits forgotten for most of the runtime, a promise the film barely bothers to keep until the end.
Three Actors, One Boy
Here is the detail that matters most, and it is not the magic. Rickie Sorensen, cast as Arthur, hit puberty during production. Director Wolfgang Reitherman replaced him with two of his own sons, Richard and Robert. The result is a voice that changes between scenes and sometimes inside a single scene, all three takes landing in an American accent that clashes with the Arthurian setting and the accents around them.
Mari Ness of Tor.com argued the three voices could have read as Arthur’s mental and physical growth, given the film is about growing up. She also noted Reitherman “inexplicably chose to leave all three voices in for some scenes, drawing attention to the problem that they were not the same actor.” She is right on both counts. The fix was available and nobody took it.
Merlin, Mim and the Cast Around Them
Karl Swenson voices Merlin, and the part fits him. Reitherman estimated 70 actors read for Merlin and none had the eccentricity he wanted; Swenson had first read for Archimedes. Junius Matthews plays the owl, Sebastian Cabot narrates and voices Sir Ector, Martha Wentworth plays Madam Mim, and Norman Alden plays Kay.
Bill Peet wrote the story and screenplay, from T. H. White’s 1938 novel. The Sherman Brothers wrote the songs and George Bruns composed the score. Disney bought the film rights in 1939, and the film took two decades of false starts to reach the screen.
What Holds Up
The Sword in the Stone is a minor Disney feature with a major flaw and one real pleasure. The pleasure is Merlin: a wizard who knows the future, forgets the present and teaches a boy to think. The flaw is that voice, and it is not a small one — it pulls you out of scenes that were otherwise working.
The film earns its place as a curious artifact: the last animated feature of Walt Disney’s life, and a movie about education that never quite educates anyone. It is charming, uneven and worth 79 minutes.
By the Numbers
- Runtime: 79 minutes
- Premiere: London, December 12, 1963
- US release: December 25, 1963
- US/Canada gross: $22.2 million
- Score: 7.2/10
The Merlin Lessons, Ranked
- Merlin turns Wart into a fish for a physics lesson in the moat
- Merlin turns them into tree squirrels to learn gravity
- Merlin enchants the dishes to wash themselves
- Merlin turns Wart into a sparrow for Archimedes to teach
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