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“Debonair and devil-may-care”: Walking scarecrows, headless horsemen, and the tightest breeches in Sleepy Hollow with Dr. Elizabeth Bradley
98 Plays9 months ago
“Who’s that walking down the street? Are they shovels or are they feet?” Get ready to dissect the lankiest lothario in Sleepy Hollow when I am joined by Dr. Elizabeth Bradley for a Halloween episode of Disney Undressed! In this episode we chat about Disney’s 1949 version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the eclectically-attired townsfolk who Ichabod Crane encounters during his brief tenure as the town’s schoolmaster. We talk about Sleepy Hollow’s major players like the delicious “coquette” Katrina Van Tassel and the “boisterous” Brom Bones as well as a few daring characters in the periphery.
Dr. Bradley is the Vice President of Programs and Engagement at Historic Hudson Valley in New York and the author of Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York and the editor of two Penguin Classic editions of Washington Irving's work.
Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York Written by Elizabeth L. Bradley
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories Written by Washington Irving, Introduction and Notes by Elizabeth L. Bradley
A History of New York Written by Washington Irving, Introduction and Notes by Elizabeth L. Bradley
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Transcript
Introduction to Disney Undressed
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello there, welcome to Disney Undressed, a show where we explore the magic of costuming in Disney films, parks, and everything in between.
Seasonal Changes and Disney Nostalgia
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm your host, Marley, a fashion scholar, curator, and examiner of almost all things Disney, specifically when it comes to fashion.
00:00:28
Speaker
So it's sort of that time of year where I'm in full on autumn mode and I'm kind of desperately trying to overcompensate for the fact that it still feels like summer here in Southern California.
Faithfulness of Sleepy Hollow Adaptation
00:00:39
Speaker
um in light of how quickly Halloween is approaching, I really wanted to stir up some spooky vibes and watch one of my favorite fall time movies, which is Disney's adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
00:00:55
Speaker
I love this movie for many reasons. not the least of which is its very fun sense of fashion. But just how faithful of an adaptation is it?
00:01:07
Speaker
Does it capture the spirit of the original story? What was really going on in this small hamlet on the Hudson at the end of the 18th century? And most importantly, just how do the frightful fashions of the hollow compare to historic dress around that time?
Interview with Dr. Elizabeth Bradley
00:01:22
Speaker
To help me answer those questions, I'm joined today by Dr. Elizabeth Bradley, Vice President of Programs and Engagement at Historic Hudson Valley. She is the author of Knickerbocker, The Myth Behind New York, and the editor of two Penguin Classic editions of Washington Irving's work.
00:01:40
Speaker
Dr. Bradley, who serves as a fellow of the New York Academy of History, has also been published in the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York, the Encyclopedia of New York, New York Times, and Smithsonian. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining me.
00:01:55
Speaker
I can only imagine what this time of year is like for you guys up there um in that neighborhood. So I'm really glad I was able to snag you for a bit to chat about all of this.
00:02:06
Speaker
Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm thrilled to be here. I think you may be one of the best people to give us some context for the original tale of the Headless Horseman, the history of Sleepy Hollow, and even Washington Irving himself.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I think maybe it would be fun if you could tell me maybe a little bit about Historic Hudson Valley and the different sites that you manage. I'd be delighted. Historic Hudson Valley is a network of historic houses in Westchester County, New York. So we're just outside New York City.
00:02:37
Speaker
And our properties include first and foremost, Washington Irving's home, Sunnyside, which is on the banks of the Hudson River and is in a landscape that he himself designed. So it is absolutely as spooky and charming as one could wish for.
00:02:51
Speaker
We also own- It's amazing. We also own Phillips Manor, excuse me, Phillipsburg Manor, which is colonial farmhouse and estate that is often said to be the model for the Van Tassel family home.
00:03:07
Speaker
We have another property called Van Cortland Manor, which is a new nation estate. And we, uh, and we own Union Church, which is the Rockefeller church with Matisse and Chagall stained glass windows.
00:03:20
Speaker
We also manage tours at Kiket, the Rockefeller estate. And all in all, we're, we're talking, most of everything isn't within a couple of towns range of each other. You can't walk from one property to the other, but many of them are situated within kind of that sleepy hollow catchment of the landmarks that feature in the legend.
Halloween Tourism in Sleepy Hollow
00:03:39
Speaker
That's so cool. How important is that neighborhood of, you know, kind of Sleepy Hollow proper um and Irving's story as far as your programming and what you guys do?
00:03:51
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Well, I'd say Sleepy Hollow is probably second only to Salem when it comes to Halloween events and tourism. And so it's it's huge for us. And we are thrilled to be able to capitalize on the mystery and wonder that just the name Sleepy Hollow, I think invokes for so many people we we program this season like crazy. It is our busiest season, as you suggested in your introduction.
00:04:17
Speaker
And there's something happening everywhere, most of it having to do with the Headless Horseman. But we're not alone. i mean, the the town of Sleepy Hollow was is originally called North Tarrytown, and they renamed themselves in the 90s to kind of capitalize on the associations with Irving's story and and the landmarks from Irving's story that still exist in the region, such as the Old Dutch Church, I'm sure we'll talk more about that.
00:04:42
Speaker
And so as a result, you see the headless horseman there all year long. He's painted on the sides of the police cars and the sanitation trucks. There is an actual headless horseman on horseback who is the mascot of the high school football team and on and on.
00:04:58
Speaker
That's fantastic. That's so much fun. You always love to see you know when a town or you know or an organization really kind of embraces you know a lore or you know local legend and things like that. That's that's so fun.
Fashion and Women's History at Historic Hudson Valley
00:05:10
Speaker
it's It's really delightful. Do you guys have, you know in any of your collections, historic dress? You know, we do. i wish we had more. and I think for us at Historic Hudson Valley, our collections were chiefly yeah either from the families who had ah whose stories we interpret, the families who owned the homes, Van Cortlandt family, the Phillips family, the Irving family,
00:05:37
Speaker
But also many of them were collected for us by people who were were helping historic Hudson Valley to really create those immersive environments that we now interpret.
00:05:48
Speaker
But unfortunately, fashion history was not chief among the things that were collected. And this is something we actually think a lot about, or we have been thinking a lot about in recent years at historic Hudson Valley, because we've begun a women's history institute, which is devoted to telling the stories of the women who lived at our sites and to focusing on their lived experience, whether they were free or enslaved, wealthy or working class.
00:06:13
Speaker
And so we have a few dresses. We have we have a number of pairs of very tiny shoes. And I look forward to talking about footwear with you when we talk about Katrina.
00:06:24
Speaker
um And we have reticules, a number of samples of women's embroidery and quilting and other things. But we would all love to have more pieces than we do in our collection. Of course, of course.
00:06:39
Speaker
um and Circling back to your work, I know you've worked on a couple edited collections of Irving stories and a book about him.
Washington Irving's Influence on Folklore
00:06:47
Speaker
What kind of draws you to his writing? You know, what was sort of the thing for you that was like, Oh, I really need to dig into this.
00:06:56
Speaker
I think for me, what made Irving so appealing was in part the fact that really everyone's expertise of Irving or with Irving begins and ends with Rip Van Winkle and the legend of Sleepy Hollow. And so I was fascinated to know what more there was.
00:07:11
Speaker
But also what really I think intrigued me was that he is responsible for this whole genre of American folklore. right He really was the first to give us a ghost story, the first person to posit an idea of authenticity around writing America or writing New York. Really for me, my book Knickerbocker focused on this idea of the Knickerbocker, what it meant to be a real New Yorker and the way in which that escaped its creator and took on a life of its own own across two centuries.
00:07:44
Speaker
Irving knew about this. This happened in his lifetime, that everything was being called Knickerbocker. I think he would not be surprised to find that everything is Headless Horseman now because that that's just how it seemed to work with his writing.
00:07:57
Speaker
Now, I'm curious, had you ever seen this movie before watching it for this conversation?
Cult Status of Disney's Sleepy Hollow
00:08:05
Speaker
Had I ever seen the Disney legend? The Disney one.
00:08:09
Speaker
Oh, yes. Gosh, I grew up on it. Didn't we all? yeah So I get the sense that this is sort of this kind of Disney cult classic situation. That might not be true, but this has been my encountering, is that where the people who have seen it really get a kick out of it and like knew it when they were growing up.
00:08:28
Speaker
On the other side, nobody has ever heard or seen, like nobody knew what I was talking about. So either they like, oh my God, yes, I remember that. or what are you talking about? That's so interesting. I really thought it was formative for everybody that I guess, you know, growing up in the Northeast, maybe it was special for us.
00:08:43
Speaker
I don't, I think maybe the reason that I knew about it now that I'm thinking about it a little bit more is because the way that it's presented is part of, it's like a combo with the Wind in the Willows adaptation. That's right. It's foretoed.
00:08:58
Speaker
yeah And at Disneyland here in California, we have a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. so it was one of those things that I knew what that was. So I had seen the movie that has the two ah ah two films together. So maybe that's what it is. But yeah, most most people I know are like, yeah, I've i've never seen that.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah. You know, that really, i just find that fascinating because at Sunnyside, we're we are all there, especially during the fall season. My colleagues and I are always at Sunnyside. and And so we often get to interact with the visitors who come through to see Washington Irving's home and really kind of soak up the landscape. They're usually doing other activities, going to cemeteries, etc.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I'll ask what their first encounter with the legend was, and inevitably it's Disney or Burton, but many of them do know the Disney. And I wonder if that's, if there is an, I don't know, some kind of Venn diagram about where you grew up or how old you are based on, you know, which version of the legend you you encountered first.
00:10:00
Speaker
And then, of course, there are the lesser ones, or maybe not lesser, but more hilarious ones, such as the Scooby-Doo version, the Wishbone version, the Jeff Goldblum version, and so on and so forth. It really is this pervasive story. And I feel like everybody's got, you know, some version of the headless story.
00:10:21
Speaker
Horseman. But yeah, this, this Disney one, I distinctively remember things about it. um And I was curious to to see how the film measured up against Washington Irving's story.
00:10:33
Speaker
So I did go back and I reread that. And you know what? I don't think it's a bad adaptation? It's really not.
Disney Fashion Moments
00:10:41
Speaker
It's really actually in in many respects, in the respects that matter, it's very faithful, especially the chase scene, I think is handled.
00:10:49
Speaker
it's It's cartoonish because it is a cartoon, but it is actually accurate to the description of the horseman's chase in in the story. Yeah. and The description of the characters, um it really seemed to influence the design of the animated characters pretty directly, especially Ichabod Crane.
00:11:10
Speaker
But before we dive then what is, if you have one, your favorite Disney fashion moment? So I think for me, my favorite Disney fashion moment, and I i confess to having watched Disney films as ah as a kid, but not really been a Disney animation fan as much as a fan of some of the Disney movies like Escape from Witch Mountain, things like that. That was sort of more my seventies, early eighties childhood.
00:11:37
Speaker
But I'd say it's probably ah a tie between Bianca in The Rescuers. I just thought she the little mouse. She was so chic. um and And then of course, Ursula in Little Mermaid. I mean, I just, you just gotta love her. She's just, she's more fabulous than anyone had a right to be.
00:11:57
Speaker
ah Yes, 100% agree. and i What you're talking about, Bianca, in in both films, in Rescuers and even Rescuers Down Under, she's always so put together, you know, fashion-wise and just emotionally. like She's very, very reasonable. She's very realistic.
00:12:17
Speaker
And she is always just so composed. And she's so adventurous. But she looks great. Right. I distinctively remember she has this beautiful little, like, purple kind of Cossack hat in her.
00:12:30
Speaker
the rescuers and that's there's always some good headwear i think with bianca always um okay so let's get into the disneyfied ghost story of the headless horseman with a very quick plot synopsis in 1949 disney produced an anthology film titled the adventures of ichabod and mr toad which featured two animated segments one adapted from Washington Irving's short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the other from ah Kenneth Graham's novel, The Wind in the Willows, directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimo, and James Algar.
00:13:08
Speaker
The Sleepy Hollow segment tells the story of Ichabod Crane, an outsider who comes to a small sequestered town in the Hudson River Valley to teach the children of the families who live there. We follow him as he attempts to woo the daughter of a wealthy local farmer,
00:13:24
Speaker
And is confronted by a jealous rival and a headless specter for his efforts. It's worth mentioning that this segment is narrated by none other than Bing Crosby, who sings several songs throughout.
00:13:37
Speaker
ah The basic plot is that Ichabod Crane comes to town as the new schoolmaster and everyone has an opinion about it in this town. He seems to really ingratiate himself into the community with everyone except Brombones, a very popular and well-liked local idol, sort of, who is threatened by Ichabod as a potential rival for the affections of a young lady named Katrina Van Tassel.
00:14:02
Speaker
While the two men vie for Katrina's attention, Ichabod shows himself to be extremely superstitious and prone to belief in ghosts and goblins, which Brom decides to use to his advantage in diverting Ichabod's pursuit of Katrina. At a party given by Katrina's father, Brom regales the guests with the tale of Sleepy Hollow's infamous local demon, the Headless Horseman, who is supposed to ride around looking for a head to collect for his own.
00:14:30
Speaker
After the party, Ichabod, who is sufficiently spooked, begins the long ride home through the dark woods when he is eventually confronted by an enormous headless figure,
00:14:40
Speaker
in black, astride a horse who chases him down and throws a flaming pumpkin at him. The next morning, only Ichabod's hat is found next to the remains of the shattered pumpkin, and the villagers speculate wildly about what could have happened to the schoolmaster, ultimately concluding that he must have been spirited away by the Headless Horseman.
Historical Inspiration for Sleepy Hollow
00:15:00
Speaker
The movie ends with Katrina marrying Brom Bones, and then life continues on as usual in Sleepy Hollow. that's the That's the basic gist of what's going on.
00:15:10
Speaker
And this is movie wraps up pretty quick. It's less than half an hour. So they kind of move move through it. um So a little bit of context and backstory. Washington Irving's story was published in 1820.
00:15:26
Speaker
And it's set in 1790 in a small Dutch enclave in the Hudson River Valley, which was called Tarrytown. But Irving's story refers to a particular village setting as Sleepy Hollow.
00:15:40
Speaker
Well, now, apparently Walt Disney actually went to Tarrytown, you know, in the 40s to get a feel for the area. And supposedly the scenic design of the town in the film is fairly bizarre.
00:15:52
Speaker
faithfully inspired by the actual sleepy hollow neighborhood and, um, you know buildings like the old Dutch church. You had mentioned that before. um Mary Blair, one of my favorite artists in the Disney, you know, pantheon of animators and artists who work there.
00:16:11
Speaker
She provided some of the most wonderful concept art for this film. I'm trying to try to remember to post some pictures of this later. um In your opinion, you know having spent considerable time in this area and you know with your work, what do you think about the way that Sleepy Hollow looks in the film?
00:16:30
Speaker
I think that they've captured, especially when it comes to the landscape, Disney and Mary Blair, i didn't know who that's who did it, so thank you for the name, and I'm thrilled that it's a woman we can add to our our list. and they They really understood what irving um Irving's descriptions were for.
00:16:49
Speaker
So some people find that the original legend of Sleepy Hall, of the story itself is challenging to read because it is so dense with description. It's really purple and it's prose, there's a lot there.
00:16:59
Speaker
But the point of that is really, really it's an exercise in place making. Irving is attempting to kind of conjure up a mood with his description of the landscape of Sleepy Hollow. You, the reader, are meant to understand Ichabod's fear or the fears that he's building up in himself as he walks home from telling ghost stories with the old Dutch wives or when he's when he's leaving Katrina's party.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I think that Disney really did a good job of capturing that sense of kind of awe-inspiring, terrifying, and yet exhilarating wilderness.
00:17:37
Speaker
So the town, it's about 30 miles from New York City. It's not the boonies. They're not completely isolated from Manhattan. And New York State at large has this great history of industrialization and shipping. And it's very centrally located you know along the East Coast.
00:17:57
Speaker
So for me, you know it's really easy to imagine that even though a Sleepy Hollow isn't New York City, there would have been tremendous access to contemporary fashion styles and news and things like that. So like they're not, they're sequestered a little bit, you know, and in the Valley, but they're not cut off.
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm curious generally what living in this area in 1790 would have been like. You're absolutely right about news because the the main roads would have been, would have brought Not only goods and and travelers, but with them, their news, letters, newspapers. And so before we had the you know the information superhighway, we had the literal highway that would bring information to people who were in small towns such as Sleepy Hollow.
00:18:50
Speaker
I think for Irving, though, he makes the point that Sleepy Hollow is kind caught in amber and that the people who live there are having the fashions and the news of the time pass them by. And they're kind of happy with that. They prefer to live in this.
00:19:06
Speaker
landscape of dreams and myths and and to tell you know stories from the past and rather than to to think very much about the present. And I think that's part of why Ichabod Crane is such a threat when he arrives.
Character Analysis of Ichabod Crane
00:19:20
Speaker
He comes, you know, he's a Connecticut Yankee and he he comes to town determined to improve the minds of the young people who live there ah to essentially liquidate Katrina Van Tassel's fortune and marry her and go out west and be part of kind of the Western Reserve, which out west at that time would have meant, you know Ohio.
00:19:42
Speaker
but that's really what he saw himself doing is just kind of cashing in on everything that she and her family's wealth represented and going out west where that cash would translate into even more land. So He's really a threatening figure on one level. i don't think that anybody in the village really recognizes Brom does, but for the wrong reasons.
00:20:06
Speaker
But it's fascinating because he does come from elsewhere and he destabilizes the village and then the village throws him out. Let's talk quickly about the silhouettes that were fashionable around this time for men and women, starting with the men. yeah a typical men's outfit in 1790 would have been knee-length breeches, long-sleeved shirt, waistcoat and jacket.
00:20:27
Speaker
It's pretty simple, straightforward. um For women, of course, that you would have had the layered skirts and the jacket-type bodices. There were variations to the styling of gowns with things like stomachers or closed fronts to bodices, but overall the silhouette was very uniform with a long full skirt and a defined waist.
00:20:46
Speaker
ah Certainly there would be some consideration of daily activities and work that would influence what pieces and what materials people were wearing on a daily basis. So I wouldn't necessarily expect a woman, you know, working in a farmhouse to be completely bedecked in lacy petticoats or wearing excessive trims or accessories on a daily basis.
00:21:06
Speaker
But, you know, I would expect an amount of homespun and natural fiber fabrics in a farming community that's somewhat rural. But since Levy Hollow is so connected to this kind of thriving industrial center via the Hudson, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see an inclusion of more luxurious imported fabrics or lacework or things like that in people's wardrobes as part of maybe their special finery. Uh-huh.
00:21:35
Speaker
And I'm curious, you know, kind of was fashion something that was really important to him in his writing? That is such an interesting question. i'd have to say, i think that Irving leans into fashion description when he is depicting women, it seems to him to be a way of signaling femininity.
00:21:55
Speaker
okay um and And so i now I think reading it as a 21st century person, it can feel a little sentimental, but for him, I think that was the way into ah kind of the portrait of ah of a woman, essentially.
00:22:09
Speaker
i would say that irving's in Irving's time, you know, certainly the fashions that had had considerably altered. And so he's hearkening back, or he thinks he's hearkening back ah to the post-revolutionary time, the beginning of the new nation period, which is really when he was born. He was born in the year the Revolutionary War ended.
00:22:27
Speaker
So it it's nostalgia for him. But what he ends up doing, I think, is... is really kind of creating some misunderstandings around what Dutch New Yorkers wore or what Dutch descended New Yorkers wore, partly because we see more, more wholesome descriptions of dress in his first book, The History of New York, which is ah really lampooning the Dutch settlement. And there's ah ah you really the giant hats and giant pipes and and and everyone's in a million petticoats. And it, It's all very extreme, it's very over the top and hyperbolic and and that's the point of it.
00:23:05
Speaker
Unfortunately, a lot of of um his his admirers and adapters took it literally and so you often see this in the depiction is that there's just a million petticoats, a million this and that because that's what Irving wrote.
00:23:18
Speaker
he He would love that, that his sort of ironic and winking touches were were entire were entirely entirely interpreted with a straight face. But I think sometimes we maybe give him too much credit for being a connoisseur of ah fashion, particularly women's fashion.
00:23:34
Speaker
All right, let's meet the cast of characters in this spooky little hamlet. We're to start out with Ichabod Crane. So Ichabod Crane, he's a town schoolmaster, recently arrived in Sleepy Hollow, and he has caused quite a commotion. Apparently the opening sequence of this film is hilarious because it's just him wandering through the town.
00:23:56
Speaker
Um, everyone's sort of discussing him or dissing him through song, uh, except the women of the town who absolutely adore him. Um, it has major bell vibes from beauty and the beast where people are literally just shouting personal comments about his parents while he walks down the street.
00:24:14
Speaker
Um, Ichabod is described in Irving's original story as being he's pretty tall and gangly. And the animators really went to town with this character design.
00:24:24
Speaker
So you've got some of the famous nine old men team like Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson in the animation studio at the time and Ward Kimball, who worked on this movie. And they really drew out some of the descriptions of Ichabod.
00:24:36
Speaker
So here's um a quote from Irving regarding Ichabod. He was tall, but exceedingly lank with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs. hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.
00:24:53
Speaker
His head was small and flat on top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long slight snipe nose so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, unquote.
00:25:06
Speaker
Now this next part, that's all, it feels... Very specific and not terribly flattering. But the next part made me laugh out loud when I read it. It was, quote, to see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him. One might have mistaken him for the genius.
00:25:26
Speaker
um The genius of famine. genius of famine descending upon the earth or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield, unquote. I mean, that's that pretty funny. And these details, they seem to really amuse the animators, um as well as the songwriters, Gene DePaul and Don Ray. There's a song called Ichabod Crane that introduces him in the film.
00:25:51
Speaker
And they say some very unflattering things about him, kind of mirroring Irving's description like, quote, lean and lanky, skin and bone, with clothes of scarecrow, would hate to own, unquote.
00:26:02
Speaker
But, you know, for all of this sniping at him, they also describe him from the women's point of view as, quote, debonair and devil may care, unquote, and say that he's the town's ladies' man, gets around like nobody can.
00:26:17
Speaker
And then this is sort of affirmed several times throughout the movie how much women love him because he has such lovely manners and he's so erudite and apparently is an exceptional dancer.
00:26:29
Speaker
And one of the big running jokes and the gag throughout the whole movie is how much Ichabod loves to eat and he's always hungry. There's a bit in this intro sequence that really comically meshes this kind of all together where he crosses paths with a woman carrying a tray of pies and he pauses to open a gate for her or something.
00:26:49
Speaker
And then he swipes a pie off of ah the tray. He steals it from her. And I think this kind of goes back to the point that you were making that Ichabod is not a good guy necessarily.
00:27:02
Speaker
And it's just, it's so funny to see this running gag and just how exaggerated his features are. And I mean, if you had to guess, what size shoes do you think this version of Ichabod Crane is wearing?
00:27:15
Speaker
Like 14 or something. I don't know. There's some enormous in clown shoes. They are... Insane. And I was curious, I mean, in your opinion, you know, how ridiculous is Disney's Ichabod to, or within the context of Irving's description?
00:27:32
Speaker
I think it's actually spot on. I mean, I really have no notes when it comes to Disney's Ichabod. They did an extraordinary job of capturing both that the baggy clothing that's kind of indeterminate, um you know, his his frame, his physiognomy, his profile. I mean, all of it is is extremely well done. I think what I do have a hard time seeing is the suave side that the the townspeople or the townswomen are supposed to see.
00:28:02
Speaker
Because Disney's version, yeah unlike Burton's, for example, there's no there's no seeming charm or vulnerability that's perceptible. I think it's got to be kind of the book learning, which is meant to set him apart. And then apparently his singing as well, which we later learn is is really not so great. Right.
00:28:21
Speaker
When he goes to the Van Tassel party in the book, Irving talks about Ichabod spending extra time getting ready beforehand. And yeah really trying to kind of spiff out his, quote, only suit of rusty black.
00:28:35
Speaker
And he has a small wool hat rested on the top of his nose for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, unquote. ah This suit, it seems to have you know different fabric for the coat and the breeches. and you do see this you know in 18th century portraiture pretty frequently, the two-tone styling for men.
00:28:55
Speaker
It's a shame we don't really get to see a waistcoat. um You just see this big cravat that's sort of blusonic out of his jacket. um Ichabod seems to be the only main character who doesn't get a wardrobe change throughout this film. He's only wearing the one outfit.
00:29:10
Speaker
And for me, when I was thinking about this, I guess it makes sense because he's this itinerant schoolmaster and he probably really doesn't have much to his name. ah Traveling schoolmasters were really common in colonial America.
00:29:25
Speaker
And they lived with the families that they served, so they didn't really need much else other than what they could reasonably travel with. Going back real quick to that mentioning the animator's interpretation of Ichabod, as I was kind of researching and reading up a bit about the film, I went to one of my favorite books about Disney animation. It's called The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.
00:29:47
Speaker
and i I always talk about this book. I can't recommend it enough. If you're interested in the history of animation... or just the history of the Disney company kind of at large. They talk about working on this film in a section of the book where they discuss acting and emotions in animation.
00:30:03
Speaker
And one of the animators who worked on the film, Blaine Gibson, he did the sequence where Ichabod is riding his old plow horse in the woods and is getting more unnerved by the sounds and the shadows in the dark.
00:30:15
Speaker
And there's a passage where they're talking about how they want the audience to, quote, share the sensations of the character but without any sense or um identification with him.
00:30:25
Speaker
This is the case with the rather unsavory Ichabod Crane, unquote. And that's, I think, what really got me to think about my own interpretation of Crane and where my focus had been for so many years on that story.
00:30:39
Speaker
you know, the description of him being unsavory, maybe that's a bit harsh, but I have to say Ichabod really isn't a particularly good person. He's very calculating and self-seeking, and he seems to be really dedicated to social climbing and this kind of wealth procurement.
00:30:56
Speaker
And this felt really hammered in watching the sequence about Katrina when he's daydreaming about having ah the most beautiful wife in the county and becoming the master of the Van Tassel farm and the fortune.
00:31:09
Speaker
Going back and rewatching these films, it always makes me appreciate the storytelling prowess of the animators. And I don't know that I could say in certainty that it's always fully intentional, but it's very clever to kind of pick up the nuance of a character like that.
00:31:24
Speaker
and then build the design and the gags around them. Absolutely. That was very fun to see this time around. Yeah. And, you know, it's it's more of a challenge, I think, than maybe we, if we're not animators or not visual storytellers, understand. i mean, to really capture all those elements that are are written at great length in Irving's story. We got a little taste of this ourselves at Historic Hudson Valley because we made a shadow puppet version of the film that we created.
00:31:53
Speaker
it was It was an analog shadow puppet show, but we filmed it, so it's available online. But it essentially forced us to, in the medium of shadow puppets, try to create that same Ichabod. Here's Ichabod imagining food. Here's Ichabod stealing food. Here's Ichabod looking at Katrina. you know And really trying to capture, you realize how challenging that is when you don't have access to all the words that Irving himself could use to describe the scene.
00:32:17
Speaker
And the shadow puppet thing you're describing, I have seen it online. It is very charming. Oh, thank you. I love the aesthetic of that. It's a little like a phantasmagoria a little bit. Yes.
00:32:30
Speaker
That is an aesthetic I very much enjoy. So yes, please check that out. ah If you have a moment, it's super, super cool. um All right. So moving on from Ichabod, he will come back up.
00:32:40
Speaker
I promise he always does. Balthus Van Tassel, who has absolutely no lines in this film, ah which is fine. We don't we don't need him to talk, is a prominent citizen in the town and a gentleman farmer who appears to be sort of I don't know, maybe like this unofficial social chairman of Sleepy Hollow.
00:32:58
Speaker
ah When we first see him, he's driving what I think is a sort of like curricular carriage maybe or like a little pony trap. But he's wearing he's got an outfit. He's wearing a waistcoat, a jacket and breeches and then is absolutely decked out with lace, ruffles and jewelry.
00:33:15
Speaker
He's also got on this kind of jaunty little hat as well. um I think it's just it's a tricorn hat. But it's like on the small... side. um it's The proportions of this man are interesting.
00:33:28
Speaker
and i I'm curious if this is a realistic portrayal of a country farmer. you know like in my sort of experience looking at, you know art history and the ah descriptions, like what portraiture in this, it's very romanticized. um And I love the idea of, you know, the animator storyboarding for this and thinking about what a gentleman farmer in the late 18th century would look like.
00:33:51
Speaker
And this kind of, it goes back to that point that I always make about how fashion is used evocatively rather than historically for costuming purposes. But it seems a little wild to imagine Baltus is coming into town on his little pony trap wearing all of those jewels.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's a little silly. um i mean, do you have anything like that in ah any of your collections from history of the region? um We have lots of waistcoats, but I'd say that I feel like what's happening with Disney animators and Baltus Van Tassel is that he is depicted wearing all of the gold that she, is just that she Katrina, is described as wearing.
00:34:27
Speaker
because yeah Katrina in Disney is sort of singularly unadorned. um And so it's really her dad who gets to wear all the gold that Irving describes her wearing. And she's kind of wearing her dowry the literal and And I think for Valtus, there are all these signifiers of his wealth that are we're meant to see the contrast between the relatively simple outfit in in the Disney version that Ichabod's wearing, or even that Brom Bones is wearing with his rustic hat.
00:34:56
Speaker
This is meant to be all of the kind of trappings of a Dutch burger, even a Dutch patroon, was somebody who owned large swaths of land. And it's possible, you know, one thing that that I've written about and we're we're not really sure about with with the story of the legend, if we're if we're talking about the year 1790, it's also possible that some of um Van Tassel's wealth is generated by enslaved labor.
00:35:20
Speaker
ah Certainly, he modeled on a Phillips family member who was an enslaver. And there were some of the larger landowners in Westchester County at this time did did enslave people to ah to process the various foodstuffs such as wheat that was being brought to them by their tenant farmers. So we don't know. you know there's There's a lot that is that is in the story or on the margins of the actual story that is kind of left out, including some of these marginal Black characters.
00:35:52
Speaker
So it may be that we're seeing with Baltus more of that wealth that ostentation may be meant to signify for us something distasteful in him as well. Yeah, that's it's very conspicuously left out. There are absolutely no, you know, people of color. There's no mentions of any of that in in the film at all.
00:36:11
Speaker
So, yeah, I'd be very curious to know exactly what the extent of the wealth is as well as, ah the methods of gain for that yes to investigate uh that katrina van tassel i want to start talking about her i am a little obsessed with this queen this level she is running sleepy hollow on a whim and i just i love this she has got all the dudes in this county literally bending over backwards to get in her good graces and she's playing them all like a fiddle
00:36:44
Speaker
um katrina she's the only child of baltus van tassel the apparent heir to the van tassel farm and the fortune and i guess this is a really important detail in this story that i had never considered or took notice of when i was a kid i want to lay out this description of her from the original irving story that i think bears consideration as we look at her she's described in the book as quote a blooming lass of fresh 18 plump as a partridge ripe and melting and rosy cheeked as one of her father's peaches And universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations, unquote.
00:37:18
Speaker
Love this. Katrina's got it all, ah including very high standards and the confidence to know what she wants. But she also really likes to stir up drama. And a lot of actually a lot of this, this quote is referenced in the Bing Crosby Katrina song.
00:37:33
Speaker
ah that happens when she's introduced. um The sequence where she's introduced with her lovely song, it shows how all of the men in Sleepy Hollow dote on her by helping her carry her shopping parcels and by indulging her in all of her sort of transient impulses. Like one of the things that she's doing, she's having this picnic and this herd of men are carrying all of her picnic stuff setting up the blanket in the food in one spot only to have her shake her head and send them off in the complete opposite direction to go do it over again in another absolutely identical spot.
00:38:07
Speaker
And the song basically lets the audience know that she's this beautiful charmer who doesn't really have any intention of seeing through any of her various romances. um And it marks her as a coquette. And they say this coquette multiple times in the song.
00:38:22
Speaker
all of her movements are very sort of balletic with all of the little leaps and the dancing. And this is the sequence where Ichabod meets her presumably for the first time. And he's so captivated by her beauty and charms that he completely forgets this girl that he's on a picnic with already. And he's so besotted with Katrina that he exchanges a roast chicken for his own hat and sets a chicken on his head by mistake.
00:38:49
Speaker
That's not the book. It just gets me. I mean, hes he's so absolutely swept away in a fantasy. And Katrina really interesting character. Apparently, there was a number of model sheets that the animators used for her that were reused from previous Disney films, borrowing heavily from characters slew foot Sue in melody time from 1948 and grace Martin from make my music in 1946. I'll post um a picture of this later. So you can kind of see the comparisons between these women back to the source material for Katrina Irving says quote, she was with all a little of a coquette as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions as most suited to set off her charms.
00:39:36
Speaker
She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Sardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and with all a provokingly short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country around, unquote.
00:39:51
Speaker
I mean, looking at her, it seems like the animator stayed pretty true to that description of Katrina. And I think this goes back to what you were saying about, you know, Baltus wearing all of the gold that she's supposed to be displaying. Yeah, exactly.
00:40:06
Speaker
yeah And when we first see her, she has this bright pink jacket, a white stomacher with lacing, a light pink skirt with a white petticoat and these fla flat um black slip slip-on shoes and a very distinct white cap.
00:40:21
Speaker
What do you think about this outfit? So I'm glad you brought this up. So I think it's really interesting. And there's some clues in Irving's writings.
00:40:34
Speaker
that kind of suggests the ways in which Disney is working with and um against the text. So Irving says she was a coquette. She combined fashion, old and new, as as worked best, like for her features, for her body type.
00:40:49
Speaker
and And so we see that, right? Because the the stomacher... is starting to go out of fashion at this time, right? She should be moving toward an empire waistline, and you know, something that's more kind of, we're getting, we're getting into the Regency. We're post, we're post-revolutionary. We're starting to move in that direction in a town like Sleepy Hollow. That would come later, but a fashionable, wealthy girl like Katrina would have the resources to to know what the fashions were. Sure.
00:41:17
Speaker
Katrina may have decided that this was not the right style for her, right? An empire kind of Pride and Prejudice look is not for everybody. And especially if you're trying to show off your quote unquote vast expectations, it may be that a stomacher and something a little more form fitting that shows more decolletage is a better choice for you. So I think there's that going on.
00:41:36
Speaker
I think it's interesting that Disney chose to depict her without any stockings, which is shocking. Totally shocking. And I know it's partly to to get that short petticoat and the provokingly, you know provoking ankle, but utterly shocking, especially in the context of other Disney princesses. Like, I don't know. It's as if they forgot. And it's it's kind of it really startles me.
00:41:58
Speaker
It's super bizarre. I have a note about the stockings because literally everyone else in this film is shown wearing good stockings. All the men are wearing theirs and and she is very conspicuously missing them. And it's it's ah it's a very interesting choice um as well. I mean, God, if you start at the top and you work your way down.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yes, we haven't gotten to the hat. yeah That, look I mean, um this is not something I'm expert in, but it looks like this sort of Dutch, like Volendam hat, maybe like a pointed kind of bonnet. And, you know, I'm i'm not an expert in Dutch head coverings, but I know they kind of have like various meanings associated with status and wealth and the age of the wearer, um just like any other, you know, traditional cultural garment might have. But do you know if like this particular style would have been popular in this area around the time?
00:42:54
Speaker
No, it's really, i think it's um it's funny because when I was talking with my colleague, Catalina Hannon, our research librarian at Historic Hudson Valley, she was saying that Irving and Disney have a lot to answer for, for this sort chocolate box idea of the Dutch, you know, all little white caps and wooden shoes. And she's not wearing wooden shoes, but with the absence of um the appropriate stockings, there's a feral quality, I think, to Katrina.
00:43:17
Speaker
And the hat is part of it. and The hat and then in some scenes, the pigtails, the which also would be um really inappropriate to the time period. Yes. Especially for a young woman of 18. If she's 12, maybe that would be a better time for pigtails. But um it is fascinating, the hat. I think the hat was really supposed to signify to the contemporary viewers of this film that that she was a Dutch lass. And we're talking about a time, you know, post-World War two where there is, as as always happens, kind of a ah ah renaissance of interest in in Dutch culture of New York.
00:43:58
Speaker
have for For my purposes, you know this is a time when the idea of Father Knickerbocker resurges at various world's fairs, you know, Father Knickerbocker with his buckle hat and his knee breeches, his buckle shoes.
00:44:10
Speaker
and And this sort of Dutch last look is going along with that. And we start to see this in a lot of different ways. iconography too, including like the Dutch boy or the you know the Van Houten Coco, like it's it's everywhere. And so I think she's meant to signify that kind of familiarity for the viewer, but really her hair would probably have been in some sort of loose arrangement of curls. And if she was stylish, I mean, she would have just gotten over the high hair period know that it that had sort of um only recently passed. It wouldn't be powdered.
00:44:41
Speaker
Her hair wouldn't be powdered anymore, but it absolutely would not be in two little pippy long stocking braids. Well, and the fact they add, you know, they have pigtails with the bows at the ends and it it feels so juvenile to me.
00:44:54
Speaker
And I just, I wonder if, you know, it's to highlight how young she is. And I don't think in the film they expressly give an age. Irving does. He says 18. So she's wearing Um, a caraco, which is a jacket that's fitted around the torso and then it flares out over the hips.
00:45:12
Speaker
This is obviously just a very exaggerated representation though. I mean, you can see the skirts and the flounce of the jacket moving around like crazy when she's moving. Um,
00:45:23
Speaker
Not to say that 18th century clothing was like flat or inflexible, but the dress style of the time, it wasn't designed with this sort of movement in mind. And those heavy fabrics, they just don't really have that same kind of fluid, rippling range of motion.
00:45:38
Speaker
And I think it looks like when we meet her, it looks like she's wearing a stomacher, which is meant to kind of close the bodice of the jacket garment. And that's what would have that crisscross lacing up the front. But a lot of the caracos, they would have been worn with a a fichu, like um yeah a large neckerchief to cover the very low cut neckline of the jacket across the bosom.
00:45:59
Speaker
Now her skirt, I mean, this this thing is like defying... physics it's very short even by Irving's suggestion you know I would think like the hem of her petticoat it's hitting just under her knees so her feet and ankles and shins which are all exposed uh I'm just baffled by because she's the daughter of the wealthiest farmer in the county who comes riding in wearing more jewelry than anyone else in this town combined apparently and they could certainly afford some silk stockings Or even if she's doing any labor around the farm herself, she would definitely have some you know cotton or wool stockings, right? i mean, she'd be wearing something. Yeah.
00:46:40
Speaker
Yes, she would absolutely be wearing it. Her mother, who is alive, um although I know she doesn't really feature, but she's she's features in the story in a tiny way. ah She would not have let her out of the house. my It's just, it's very, very, very, very interesting. um Speaking her shoes, those are another interesting choice. Yes. I mean, the ballet slipper style isn't completely... out of time here.
00:47:04
Speaker
Correct. i wonder if, you know, it's just really realistic given the setting. I mean, most shoes had some sort of heel to them and hers don't have anything. These are just flat.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah. but Yeah. I mean, they the story does say she has the prettiest foot and ankle in the county round. So I think For Katrina, she would have wanted the kind of silker satin slipper that would really have molded to her foot to to show it off. And and it's really the that those feet are in contrast to Ichabod's feet.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yes, of course. quite Interesting. Interesting. The next thing we see her wearing is the party outfit, which is a very similar silhouette to her day dress in color and silhouette, but mine is the stomacher and the sleeves are different.
00:47:47
Speaker
She's got like a light pink skirt and the same sleeves, but she's wearing a darker pink piece over the top. This to me sort of looks like it might be stays without lacing.
00:47:59
Speaker
Like they took the kind of general shape of that and they attached a little peplum over the hips and And I wonder if the styling of the jacket is meant to sort of reference like a robe a la Polonaise, and which the robe a la Polonaise has a bodice with three distinctive gathers in the back and it's worn over a longer skirt.
00:48:20
Speaker
I mean, that's a little bit of a stretch, but I could see maybe the historical reference point coming from that if I was trying to rationalize it, perhaps. ah She also has a little black ribbon around her neck and the pigtails again with the ribbons.
00:48:36
Speaker
um Same shoes, though, black ballet flats. And then her last outfit is a wedding ensemble at the very end of the movie. The color of this dress is really bizarre. And I'm not sure if it's meant to be shades of blue or a white color that's heavily shadowed because they're inside a church.
00:48:52
Speaker
There doesn't. appear to be much natural light so I'm not sure what color this is supposed to be but it looks like another caraco in a lighter shade than the skirt but we don't ever see the front of it and you only see her from the back and the side she's got a long veil covering her pigtails again the pigtails the veil trails down her back to her skirt and it looks like maybe it even has this kind of small but bonnet that the veil is attached to I'm not sure it's kind of hard to tell and i I mean I kind of recall you know
00:49:24
Speaker
it's an The veil is like an ancient tradition and it has a surge of popularity in the 19th century. This reminds me, Katrina's veil here, it reminds me of those ah small cap veils that someone women wore in like the 40s and the 50s.
00:49:40
Speaker
So I kind of chalk this up to maybe another example of drawing inspiration from contemporary fashion. Right, right, right. Yeah. And I think the these animators were really adept at mixing styles from across the spectrum of historical dress to maximize the viewer's ability to easily understand that these characters are in a sort of specific um social situation that would be familiar to them, even if the cultural dress of the time wasn't quite the same as what they were used to.
00:50:12
Speaker
I wanted to say, I do think though that the wedding dress not being white is very much appropriate. White wedding dresses were really not customary or commonplace at this time. So i appreciate that. we don't see those until much later on.
00:50:26
Speaker
Exactly. So I appreciate that the Disney animators didn't do that. Although I think Calla Lily's, what she's carrying would have been really hard to come by. That's another story. And then the other thing I just wanted to point out, because it fascinates me, is that in the party scene, she's wearing a little black ribbon around her neck. Yes.
00:50:42
Speaker
And for me, that signals another Irving story, which is later, but of course not later, to the Disney animators. It's called The Adventures of the German Student. And it's it's a version of um a tale that's been told by many authors in which a young man is besotted with a young woman who has a black velvet ribbon around her neck that she refuses to take off. And she keeps saying, you know, it's a secret at some point, I'll tell you.
00:51:09
Speaker
And when what turns out is that when the when the ribbon comes off, so too does the head ah the young woman. It's ghost story. But it's sort of fascinating that that's a detail possibly not intentional. But if there's sort of an and is an Irving super fan among the Disney animators, maybe that was a little nod to that other story.
00:51:27
Speaker
And that's the sort of detail that I, whether it's intentional or not, it's fun to kind of think about because, you know, it's the story of the headless horsemen. And then there's a cute little nod to a story, you know, this headless girl. I'm like, headless girl.
00:51:43
Speaker
Right. Brom Bones. Let's talk about him next. Cause he does have a very distinctive look in here. Um, So Brahm, he's Ichabod's rival for the attention of Katrina. And Brahm sort of feels like maybe he's like the ringleader of the town's bachelor brigade.
00:52:01
Speaker
ah yeah He's depicted as a little bit of a bully and sort of brutish. And he kind of gives like Gaston light to me. um But Brahm makes his entrance in the film astride a horse wearing a fur cap and the tightest breeches you've ever seen.
00:52:19
Speaker
But 18th century breeches were quite snug and well-fitted generally. But I mean, these are these are pretty tight. ah And every time I see a fur cap, I have to laugh.
00:52:30
Speaker
I mean, these things are one of the quintessential costuming gimmicks because they are all about vibes. And I have to wonder if the animators were just thinking of some vague colonial frontiersman stuff.
00:52:45
Speaker
of lore in conjuring this like brawny, rustic, good old country boy sort of dude. and this It's funny, this actually came up in another episode of this show, shout out to Vicky Lance, that these caps are always associated with these American heroes of the West, but they have such a fraught history of, you know, colonialism and appropriation.
00:53:09
Speaker
And this, when I went back and reread Irving's story, he actually mentions the hat, which surprised me. and So this isn't, you know, an invention by the artist, which I had thought because that tends to be typical.
00:53:25
Speaker
So when Brahm is introduced in the book, Irving says, quote, in cold weather, he was distinguished by a fur cap. surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail, unquote. Now, how reasonable would it be for a hat like this to make an appearance in the Hudson River Valley 1790?
00:53:41
Speaker
in seventeen ninety The idea of the coonskin cap, sort of the Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett legends of, you know, with those hats and everything that entails.
00:53:51
Speaker
That comes later. And I actually did a little research before we jumped on just to make sure that Daniel Boone and the idea, the legend of Daniel Boone and his hat, because apparently he hated those kinds of hats. Yeah.
00:54:02
Speaker
was post-David the story and it does by about eight years. there There is a song called The Hunters, which sort of characterizes Daniel Boone in this way with this hat.
00:54:13
Speaker
um I'd say they're probably, know, they they probably were in less, how to put this, less interesting to the to their community or to the people who wore them or the people who saw them being worn um in 1790 than they were when Irving is writing and people are kind of signaling what it meant to be American or or or thinking about the frontier.
00:54:38
Speaker
And certainly, you know, it's only eight years later when this cap and and daniel boone are referred to in the same breath so i think that for disney um that this was a great opportunity to signal kind of his ruggedness you know his manliness and still be true to the to the text and it's it's very much this like romantic idea of quaintness and ruralness like in your descriptions of you know what sleepy hollow you know is like that they you know, they have access to news. They have access to current events and fashion and whatever, but they kind of prefer a little bit of that sequestered lifestyle where they can reference antiquity and, you know, maybe wear the Dutch caps and and things like that. But it is a very romantic, um problematic garment.
00:55:31
Speaker
Anyways, let's talk about the residents of Sleepy Hollow because there are a lot of background characters. Mm-hmm. The first group that we meet, the Sleepy Hollow Boys, who are Brahms friends, who just kind of seem to be a bunch of single dudes who gather at what Bing Crosby calls Ye Olde Schnooker and Schnapps Chape to drink ale and bro down or whatever it is they're doing. it looks like they're all taking naps, drinking beers. But these guys are all wearing pretty much the same thing. Breaches, long sleeve shirts and vests.
00:56:07
Speaker
and or waistcoats, but there's not a tremendous amount of detail. I think the general shape here, it's not too egregious from a historical standpoint, but when you look at the details or the lack thereof, the styling is sort of imprecise, like ah the collars of their shirts or the way that their waistcoats are hanging open.
00:56:26
Speaker
There's one guy though, i was curious if you'd noticed him, what you thought about this guy, who's wearing ah very bright pink shirt with a little stocking cap um with a pom-pom. And I'm curious where an outfit like this comes from when it's created by an animator.
00:56:41
Speaker
yeah On the one hand, yeah they're making a film that needs to have visual appeal and everything can't look exactly the same. And historical accuracy is not the name of the game, so it's sort of irrelevant.
00:56:54
Speaker
But on the other hand, what was the reference point for something like this against the rest of the guys in the Sleepy Hollow Boys? like Is there any sort of labor or a position that a hot pink or any other like really brightly dyed shirt would be common?
00:57:11
Speaker
ah My thought was maybe that this guy with a stocking cap could be one of their friends coming in from Tarrytown where he could be like a sailor or ah Dock worker? I don't know.
00:57:22
Speaker
What do you think? Yeah, I think the pink is really hard to rationalize. The stocking cap is more, um you know, harkens back to kind of liberty caps, right? Sort of Revolutionary War era stocking hats. and And it could just be something he still has because the war has only just concluded seven years before, although probably this guy was a kid when that happened, much like Washington Irving.
00:57:47
Speaker
and But I think the pink is really, i can't, you know that, that was, that would have been an expensive color, you expensive There's no, I don't think that pink was gendered.
00:58:01
Speaker
And again, I am not so much a costume historian, so I can't say, but pink wasn't gendered the way that it has been gendered, you know, in the 1940s perhaps, but I just, I just can't rationalize that hot pink. to be beyond It's an interesting choice. And no, I agree. It's not, it's not terribly gendered. I mean, you saw, you know, pink suits, you know, in the 18th century, you know, things that were very richly dyed, but it's just, it seems like an interesting choice for this region. And I just, I wonder, you know, is this guy supposed to be, does he actually live in the town was the question I was kind of asking myself, but, um,
00:58:38
Speaker
yeah All the men we see in this film, they're all wearing hoes and they all wear the same buckled shoes. Pretty accurate. There's no real variations there. Everybody kind of wears the same thing. It's funny to me that the men of this film, they're so narrowly represented in their garments, while the women are a lot more diverse in theirs.
00:58:58
Speaker
ah I'll start with the women in this choir group that Ichabod runs. There's these three young women who have very different styles from their dress to their hair. God, I feel like I'm describing Charlie's Angels.
00:59:11
Speaker
There's one girl who has pigtails, another they girl with pigtails, but has also these very like coiffed kind of bangs. And in the front, as she's wearing this long sleeved pink dress that has a white Peter Pan collar with maybe what looks like a pullover sweater vest.
00:59:31
Speaker
Um, The next girl has a long sleeved blue dress with a white collar and cuffs and a sort of yellow green bonnet perched on top of her little bob haircut.
00:59:43
Speaker
And the last girl who stands out to me in particular is a reoccurring character. And this girl is such a vibe. i I hope you noticed her. Her name is Tilda. And I only know this because I had to look her up.
00:59:55
Speaker
She's never named in the film. My girl is like a full two feet shorter than everyone else. entire town and she's apparently a little like man crazy um she's actually the same woman that Ichabod is picnicking with earlier in the film when Katrina rolls through and ah steals his attention but this girl told that she wears the same outfit every time we see her which is a green dress with white bloomers underneath and green stockings or green hose and she has what looks to me like this very ultra modern
01:00:30
Speaker
bowl cut bob hairdo and one of the very edgy yeah but yeah else so soon classic yes it's um it's a very strong look and i'm absolutely by bewildered by this woman's style and i'm curious uh what your opinion was on her in the context of some of the other women that we see because she's got these bloomers on which are very conspicuous because her her skirt keeps floating floating up um And the bloomer type underwear are just not period appropriate. yeah
01:01:07
Speaker
It's just, it's such a choice. And it's so, all of these women, every woman is wearing a different amalgamation of historic dress. I think that, I mean, I don't know whether this shows...
01:01:22
Speaker
um That there there was just a feeling like it it didn't really matter what these lesser female characters wore because all eyes would be on Katrina. ah Or if they were meant to be a little bit like Cinderella's sisters, you know, we were supposed to think that their dress was incongruous and their hairstyles were wrong and they didn't, you know, again, did not match up to to their prettier sister.
01:01:46
Speaker
To be fair, Irving really doesn't cover this topic, you of the other young women in the town are really not of interest to him. He talks a lot about the old Dutch wives and um and the ways in which Irving would, Irving, excuse me, Ichabod would regale them with the stories out of Cotton Mather, of New England Witchcraft, and they would, you know, in return, give him the stories of of and indigenous myths and of the Headless Horseman and Major Andre.
01:02:12
Speaker
But I feel like the Disney animators were kind of on their own here and they just sort of went with that tried and true archetype. Yes. my One of my favorite things in the whole world watching Disney movies is looking at background characters.
01:02:25
Speaker
um Just like I said, I have young kids, so we end up watching a lot of movies multiple times. So your eyes starts to wander and you start noticing what people in the background are doing and what they're wearing and just the gamut of historical reference you see in a specific time period is like mind blowing.
01:02:45
Speaker
um But all of these, all of these folks, they all turn out for the Van Tassel party. um You see the whole town where what it looks like comes out ah for a Halloween party, which is not referenced in the book.
01:02:57
Speaker
They specifically. No, the book takes place during, or this, I should say the key scenes take place in the fall. it's It's kind of a harvest event, like a harvest frolic. But Halloween as a holiday really did not exist. So that's. Yeah, that wasn't really a thing. Okay. No, but but certainly everybody who comes to Sleepy Hollow these days is coming because they've they've put Sleepy Hollow and Halloween together in their minds. And so it's no surprise that Disney does as well.
01:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, you know, the Headless Horseman. it's It's spooky. Yes, we can shove that into, you know, the Halloween
Irving vs. Poe: Ghost Stories and Murders
01:03:30
Speaker
category. But I was noticing in the book, it's, you know, you get kind of that harvest time vibe, but nobody explicitly says Halloween because nobody was celebrating. Exactly.
01:03:41
Speaker
and ghosts were scary all year long and Sleepy Hollow. So these folks, I mean, they're obviously dressed in, you know, their Sunday best, but they are a motley crew. It's...
01:03:53
Speaker
it's the the ensembles are they're varied um the men look pretty pretty uniform to each other there's like some slight variations in the coloring of the coats because the animators they want to make it you know visually interesting you don't want to see like 10 men in the same gray jackets and brown pants or whatever but um in Irving's book he describes the party guests as quote old farmers In homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles.
01:04:26
Speaker
And their brisk, withered little dames in close crimped caps, long-waisted short gowns, homespun petticoats. As well as buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation.
01:04:48
Speaker
And the sons in short square skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass buttons and their hair generally cued in the fashion of the times, unquote. So that's that is what the description of the townspeople.
01:05:04
Speaker
is that there is this kind of sense of antiquity yeah and you know and an old guard versus the new you've got some you know the younger people kind of incorporating a little bit more modernity into their looks the last person that we are going to talk about who hasn't really come up very much is the headless horseman
01:05:30
Speaker
According to Irving's story, the locals of Sleepy Hollow told tales about, quote, the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during the American Revolutionary War, unquote. i I know this isn't really the point of the story, but I'm i'm so wanting to see more of the horsemen. Mm-hmm.
01:05:56
Speaker
And you just, you don't see him in the movie. Like he he shows up at the end and like he he's a striking visual and like that's great. But I really want to see more And I think this is where like in my head, you know, I grew up watching the, um,
01:06:11
Speaker
the Tim Burton one where like the headless horseman is like, you see him all the time. And there's images of him. And he has a head. I know. I want to see more of you know, this guy's story, but that's not what this is about. And like, it's fine.
01:06:24
Speaker
ah The Hessians, I mean, these guys, the they wore a bit of a variety of uniform trappings. um There isn't, you know, like one... specific uniform that they all wore. But one of the things that distinguished them, you know, from the American and the British soldiers during the war, it was a very distinctive helmet.
01:06:43
Speaker
Yeah. But they had kind of similar enough jackets and trousers, you know, brass buttons. you When you see a ah soldier from, you know, that period, nothing, you know, tremendously shocking or or different.
01:06:59
Speaker
But what's disappointing here is that our specter, he doesn't really bear any marks that remind me of a soldier. All you really see is just a solid black figure with a huge flowing red cape astride a giant black horse.
01:07:14
Speaker
And this horseman, he is wearing the tightest pants you've ever seen, which immediately makes me think, oh yeah, that's totally, ah that's totally brown. Right. That's absolutely brown bones. Yeah, he could have been really fabulous. And it's been fascinating to see how he's depicted in art throughout the past 200 years since the story was written or 200 plus years. And that's something that we do at Sleepy Hollow, excuse me, at Sunnyside in the fall is that we put out different examples of depictions of scenes from the legend. It's really, really fun. And we have some terrific paintings of the chase scene, as well as of the scene where Ichabod is admiring the table with all of its pies and cakes at the Van Tassel feast or dancing with Katrina or wooing Katrina. And because people are just so enamored with the story that you really find artists of every stripe trying their hand at depicting some aspect of it.
01:08:08
Speaker
But inevitably, for the most part, the horseman is, you know, it's really the horse. The horse is always this powerful, extraordinary black steed that that the horseman's riding on. And then often there's a cloak and there's a a little bit of crimson in the cloak. And maybe we're supposed to think that I know Hessians didn't often they were green, but that you're supposed to think of a British soldier or of the war in some way because of the the red cloak.
01:08:34
Speaker
But they're really in shadow. And that's, I think, part of the point is that this is, in a way, a figment of Iqbal's imagination. Yes, there's a horse. Yes, there's a rider.
01:08:46
Speaker
not actually headless. and And so much of what terrifies Ichabod is because of the way in which he has worked himself into this frenzy with all of his storytelling and and story absorbing.
01:08:59
Speaker
But there's one depiction of the horseman that I really like, and it's Arthur Rackham. I believe it's Arthur Rackham, who was ah an illustrator in the early 20th century, the turn of the century,
01:09:11
Speaker
I can send you the link, but it's it it makes the horseman look like like David Bowie. I don't want a how else to put it. He's got this fabulous you know brass button suit on and and this kind of crazy, like weird little cap. And I don't know why he has a cap, but he's because it's on the head that he's throwing. And it's it's just, it's really divine. And it's kind of everything that you want, especially knowing that the Hessians often were.
01:09:33
Speaker
kind of dandies, right? These helmets that they wore were crazy. They had spikes on them sometimes, or at least they were pointed almost like a bishop's miter. So to lose all of that detail is such a shame. And it's a i I really appreciate that at least one artist out there really really went for it.
01:09:49
Speaker
that's That is very fun. I would love to see that. um But I mean, that that's pretty much everyone who matters. And the movie kind of wraps up with the question of what really happened to the schoolmaster when he disappeared?
01:10:03
Speaker
Was he indeed spirited away by the horsemen? Did Brom murder and dispose of his rival? Or was Ichabod simply frightened away and left Sleepy Hollow to pursue another opportunity further upstate?
01:10:16
Speaker
I wonder if most people kind of come away from watching this movie with a similar assessment, yeah i don't know, to what I did when I saw it now as an adult, where I did kind of a 180 experience.
01:10:30
Speaker
on my feelings toward everyone, particularly Ichabod. And now I have a much different interpretation of how things end than when I did seeing this as a, as a kid. um What do you think happened to Ichabod Crane?
01:10:44
Speaker
don't know.
01:10:47
Speaker
Well, you know, there is a postscript, which if you reread the story, you saw that there's a postscript script that suggests that, yes, he might have been spirited away by goblins, or he might have gone off and found his fortune out west, or he might actually have been seen in the town as a justice of the 10 pound court. And he's doing just fine.
01:11:05
Speaker
um For me, i'm I'm really more interested in what happened to Katrina because i I think I like to think that Katrina is at the bottom of all of this. And that's something where the Disney version really kind of helps you get there because you see how she is the architect of so much of the chaos in the town.
01:11:21
Speaker
I really hope that Katrina, you know, liked the choice that she made. i kind of wish more for her than than old Brombones, but perhaps there can be tricksters together ah throughout the rest of their life. But that it's always Katrina that that I focus on, partly because this is a story without a lot of pathos. you As you said, you don't really feel for Ichabod, or as you get to know the story better, you you feel for him less and less because he's It's not really deserving of your pity.
01:11:48
Speaker
And so it's fun then to think about those two, those two kind of rapscallions who were kind of pulling the strings for for everyone in the town and whether they kept on doing it after they after they got together.
01:12:02
Speaker
and I remember being like, that's a great ghost story. That's like really scary and interesting, but that actually doesn't really fit the vibe like. of Irving's story at all. But you're kind of anticipating Burton. And i think um I think that's interesting is it makes me wonder if that was also Burton's childhood reaction, because there's so much of the Disney story that maps onto Burton's version. He captures all of the same aspects that, you know, where Disney was really kind of learning from Irving, whether it's, you know, the spooky sounds and the way Ichabod reacts or the chase scene, you or all of these details that kind of gave it its comic energy and and helped to create that landscape of the supernatural.
01:12:43
Speaker
A lot of that just goes to whole cloth from Disney into Burton. And then of course, but with the, with the murderous impulse laid over top. So maybe he like you as a child was like, this is enough.
01:12:54
Speaker
There's gotta to be more. I wonder if that was just like, that's just a, ah my preference. like I just want it to be scarier. yeah And it's not it's not meant to be that kind of scary.
01:13:06
Speaker
um Yeah. And this for us and at a Historic Hudson Valley, this is kind of always the the challenge of Washington Irving because he wasn't Edgar Allan Poe. He right himself was a a really nice guy His whole family lived with him, when especially when they were in financial straits.
01:13:22
Speaker
and He wrote his whole life long. He was hustling to kind of keep making money for this family and to add on to his home. And the story is is meant to be a ghost story. It's meant to kind of really fire your imagination. But Irving really didn't write about murders. you know That wasn't his thing. He wrote about ghosts and pirates, pirates, treasure and all kinds of things and and other tales that were also narrated by this Knickerbocker figure. But But he wasn't he wasn't writing Murders in the Rue Morgue.
01:13:50
Speaker
And so oftentimes when visitors come to Sunnyside and the house has a stepped gables like are depicted in in Disney's version of the legend, you know those wonderful houses with the little little um kind of steps down on either side of the roof line.
01:14:04
Speaker
And you really kind of hope, I think, when you come there that there'll be this ah sense of terror that Ichabod experiences. But the terror is kind of really only for the the very... um You know, for those who are are are the the most gullible or who really prime themselves for it, really Irving is having fun at everyone's expense, much like Brombones does.
01:14:26
Speaker
And so sometimes we do have visitors who are looking for even more of the supernatural or or maybe a little more horror than we give. We're just giving them a nice ghost story. That's, it's such a fun story. And I was, I'm so happy that I revisited it now as an adult.
01:14:44
Speaker
And I mentioned my kids love this movie for some reason. I don't know what about it is, but it is the wildest thing in the world to hear like a seven-year-old and a three-year-old singing Bing Crosby.
01:14:55
Speaker
um ah He's also a very interesting choice. yes Yes. But I think he was just saying yes to a lot of things in 1949. Yeah. eighteen forty nine but um I think he would have been kind of a nostalgic and patriotic choice too. You know, that was kind of of like Bing Crosby moment in American history. i Think about the cusp of the fifties. It's, it's the right time for Bing Crosby, even if it's kind of like asking, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a very mild mannered, like John Oliver or something to narrate it now. It's not. I mean, I, like you said, I think it's a product of its time. You know, Bing was brought in to sing for it. And because there was this kind of national obsession with American folk tales and Disney
01:15:34
Speaker
be hammering uh that nostalgia into their future tv programs and experiences in disneyland within the next decade because that's when you start seeing davy crockett and that coon skin cap i makes like the biggest splash in the disney um you know oeuvre at that point um but yeah overall what sort of a score would you give this movie as far as authenticity to the original story versus what would you give it on like vibes?
01:16:07
Speaker
I love that. So authenticity versus vibes. Got it. I'd say authenticity, I'd probably give it around a seven because I think it actually, which is pretty good for me because, and I'm sure some of my colleagues will have my head for this, especially our wonderful museum educators who know so much more about Irving than anybody else could.
01:16:32
Speaker
ah Because I do think that the essence of the story is really interesting. is really articulated here you know and in comic ways that only animators could could achieve so brilliantly. So I'd say a seven, which is pretty good for a cartoon adaptation.
01:16:48
Speaker
When I give Scooby-Doo like a two, so, you know, yes context. yeah yeah And then for vibes, I'd say... Gosh, for vibes, i I'd probably give it a little higher, probably give it it like an eight or a nine, because I, again, I think that the chase scene and the the way in which the, as you said, the scenic artists have sort of conjured up this landscape, both with the architecture, but not just the built environment, but also the natural environment, really giving you that feeling. That was the feeling Irving had when he first came to the region as a young man. He was
01:17:21
Speaker
was really smitten with this sense of of the possibilities of the kind of ghostly and historical possibilities. And I do think that that that Disney comes through with that.
01:17:32
Speaker
It's very charming. What I like about this movie, particularly in the context of other Disney animated movies around this time, that it's based on a fictional tale, but it's very much rooted in real in a real time in a real place,
01:17:51
Speaker
With actual like regular people. um Yeah. yeah Besides the headless horsemen, of course. ah So the costuming of the people who live in Sleepy Hollow is supposed to be representative of a typical early Republic American town.
01:18:07
Speaker
It's not. It's supposed to be. ah But like the people, they aren't royalty. They're not living in a fantasy world. yeah So it's it's not a fairy tale. So it's fun to see instances like this, you know, in Disney films around this time, the artists take on just regular old people through the lens of, you know a historical inspiration. wow i i think that's that's kind of fun.
01:18:32
Speaker
um And unlike a lot of Disney, or at least kind of the classic Disney movies, As you said, there there's no there's a royalty. And in this case, the supernatural actually works to defeat Ichabod, the villain, as opposed to the supernatural kind of being on the villain's side. So it's nice. It's essentially the town, the sleepy, sleepy hollow gets to keep its status quo and Ichabod, the disruptor, is is run out of town.
01:19:00
Speaker
Yeah. And things largely go back to the way they were before. The way they were. like not Not much changes. um So as we kind of wrap up here, I think for listeners, if you are curious about 18th century dress and you want to learn a little bit more about it, there are tons of books filled with gorgeous photographs of gowns and museum collections and portraits with lovely representations of gowns and jackets from the and the early But getting truer
01:19:32
Speaker
but getting a truer sense of the everyday fashions of people like those who would have lived in Sleepy Hollow needs a bit of a deeper dive. And I always recommend things or books like The Dress of the People, Everyday Fashion in 18th Century England by John Stiles, and The Politics of Fashion in 18th Century America by Kate Hallman.
01:19:54
Speaker
These kinds of books are great because you really get an examination of how regular people engaged with fashion and where it came from. you know how were European styles transmuted into uniquely American versions of those same styles and how regional differences developed.
01:20:11
Speaker
um So for example, What Clothes Reveal, the Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America by Linda Baumgarten is another really good one. It looks at pieces in the Colonial Williamsburgs collection to get a sense of the American perception of fashion at the time. So, and I think going to places like historic Hudson Valley and other historic sites and seeing what kind of historic dress or textile pieces really helps to kind of round out a more um representative image of what life was like then, as opposed to kind of you know, the art historical portrayals.
01:20:51
Speaker
um And I have to say, if you haven't read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, now is a great time of year to check it out. I mean, you're going to notice quite a few descriptions of clothing that help set a very period-influenced scene.
01:21:04
Speaker
And I think this is kind of true um of any American novelists in the 18th and 19th century, like Nathaniel Hawthorne Louisa May Alcott. Even when the descriptions of fashion are pretty straightforward or the garments themselves are quite simple,
01:21:20
Speaker
They're always very intentional. And I think when you have a novel or a short story or whatever as source material for a film, I think the costume designer, or in this case, the Disney's animators, they will draw directly from it when there are specific identifying garments or materials that help to kind of define a character's design. Now, Elizabeth, if if the listeners are interested in reading more about your research on Washington Irving, where could they find your published work?
01:21:49
Speaker
Absolutely. So I have a book called Knickerbocker, The Myth Behind New York, which should be available on Bookshop and Amazon. I've also written a short book on New York history, which is really takes it from beginning to the present day, and that's called New York City Scopes, which also should be available on Bookshop or Amazon.
01:22:07
Speaker
And then, of course, the Penguin Classic editions of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories, as well as the Penguin Classic edition of The History of New York, have my essays available. about Washington Irving and particularly about the legend of Sleepy Hollow. And there's a fabulous depiction of the legend on the cover of of that Penguin classic.
01:22:26
Speaker
That one, I will say, was originally done as art for the Fox TV version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which we didn't even talk about. so That's really interesting.
01:22:38
Speaker
There are so many covers for the various, um the editions of Sleepy Hollow or, so because it's not just Sleepy Hollow on its own. It's usually, you know, a collection, but it's almost always an image of, um,
01:22:53
Speaker
The Headless Horseman or something from The Life of Sleepy Hollow because that's, I think, the thing that people know.
Exploring More Washington Irving Stories
01:22:58
Speaker
So my next question for you is going to be is if um if you like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, what are a couple other of Irving's stories that are good kind of next steps to kind of get you into his catalog?
01:23:10
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. So if you if you enjoy The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I would say there are some other great stories told by the same narrator, Dietrich Knickerbocker, and set in the same universe. They mostly can be found in a collection called Bracebridge Hall, and they include Dolph Heiliger,
01:23:26
Speaker
um which is a Dutch name that i can i can ask I can send it to you so you can put it in your show notes. um And the Money Diggers and Wolfert Weber or Golden Dreams and their stories of buried treasure and pirates and Dutch ghosts and real estate.
01:23:43
Speaker
And so they're actually quite relatable and they're really, really charming. So highly recommend as a follow-up to The Legend.
Recommendations for Visiting Sleepy Hollow
01:23:51
Speaker
Are there any hot tips you have about visiting Sleepy Hollow or kind of the surrounding areas Yes, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is where Washington Irving is buried and and they do wonderful evening tours.
01:24:03
Speaker
At our own sites at Phillipsburg Manor, we have a number of events, including Twilight Village, which is a kind of haunted night market. And then during the daytime, we have a new program called the Headless Horseman Files, which is a lot of fun and where visitors are encouraged to help um local townspeople of Sleepy Hollow solve the mystery of the disappearance of Ichabod Crane.
01:24:24
Speaker
So we've got a lot going on. the the biggest event for my organization is the Great Jack-o'-Lantern Blaze, which happens every year in in Croton on Hudson at our Van Cortland Manor site. And that's just a festival of carved pumpkins.
01:24:37
Speaker
just extraordinary number of park pumpkins. Many of them, many of the depictions in the sculptures are legend themed and really, really beautiful. It's a lot of fun and it's kind of a ah spooky way to round out your season.
Closing Thoughts and Future Content
01:24:49
Speaker
Elizabeth, I am so, so pleased you werere able to join me today. yeah this was absolutely charming. I wouldn't have missed it. And I so appreciate the chance to really kind of talk about the different Irving takes with you and and deconstruct Katrina Van Tassel. So fun. Oh, yeah.
01:25:04
Speaker
she she probably should have been her own episode now that I now that I think about it a little bit more um all right everybody thank you for listening be sure to follow Disney Undressed on Instagram and threads I'll be posting some fun visual references ah that were in the episode as well as info for the next episode so do keep an eye out for that and I hope you will join me again as I undress your favorite Disney films