Winnie the Pooh

Subject: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:31 PM

Mumble....

Having just listend to Disney vs ??? on the wireless....

Mumble...

I'kll stick with the AA Milne/Shephard version - with Chistoper Robin - saying his praetrs...

Dunno why I'm strating this thread. Pooh and the rest of the Wildwood team were majic.....

Mumble... Anyone else want to talk about "a bear of small rain"?

Cheers - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Blackcatter
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:14 PM

I prefer the original stories and drawings - not the Disney version but I like most of the Disney songs (and the Sherman brothers wre wonderful composers):

Winnie The Pooh
From Winnie The Pooh and the Honey Tree
Written by: Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

Deep in the hundred acre wood
where Christopher Robin plays
You'll find the enchanted neighborhood
of Christopher's childhood days
A donkey named Eeyore is his friend
and Kanga and little Roo
There's Rabbit and Piglet and there's Owl,
but most of all Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh
Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff
He's Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh
Willy nilly silly old bear

Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh
Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff
He's Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh
Willy nilly silly old bear

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:20 PM

I'm with you, Sam. What the Disney people did to Milne/Shepherd's amazing work is a travesty. Shame on them!

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum.
Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,
Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,
Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um.


The more it
Snows-tiddley-pom
The more it
Goes-tiddley-pom
The more it
Goes-tiddley-pom
on
Snowing.

And Nobody
Knows-tiddley-pom,
How cold my
Toes-tiddley-pom
Are Growing.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Mooh
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:25 PM

My kid sister has so many Pooh ornaments and other household articles that I have nightmares when sleeping over. Between that and my name being related, I could keep a therapist in good nick. I'm more like Eeyore anyway.

(The Shephard illustrations are better.)

Peace, Pooh Mooh Tooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Mooh
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:28 PM

Sorry, no h in Shepard, right?

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: PoppaGator
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:40 PM

I'm (easily) old enough to have grown up with the pre-Disney Pooh Bear. I've remained largely blissfully unaware of the Disneyfication that has occurred in recent years.

My own kids (now 21, 24 and 26), for whatever reason, never developed an interest in either the old nor the new Pooh, so I never had to suffer through the desecration of a classic from my own childhood.

Wasn't there a huge controversy not too long ago over ownership of the rights to Winnie the Pooh? I read about it somewhere on the internet -- could it have been here? Are there old threads on this topic that might address this?

As I recall, descendants of A.A. Milne were in a dispute with descendants of one of his literary agents or editors. The author had apparently ceded some rights to the agent or whatever, before the value of said rights skyrocketed, and the author's own family then fought to regain some if not all of the booty. I forget which of the parties had sold out to Disney. All pretty sordid, I believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Blackcatter
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:16 PM

By the way, Disney's first production of a Winnie the Pooh cartoon dates to 1963. Of course in the 80s and 90s there was new productions of TV shows, etc.

Don't know too much about the despute, but I know I have several rubber stamps with "classic" Pooh (i.e. pre-Disney images) scenes and characters, all of which are clearly marked: Copyright Disney. There date from the late 1800s to the late 1990s.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Deda
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:33 PM

My 28 year old daughter memorized "When I was one I had just begun, when I was two, I was nearly new...", and various other AA Milne poems. Our favorites for reading out loud were "King John was not a good man," and the one about the butter for the royal slice of bread. My now 6-year-old grandson has all the little disney figurines and books, but his mother and uncle and I will see to it that he gets a full dose of the originals. And as a part-time Latin tutor/teacher, I have a coulple of copies of "Winnie Ille Pu" and "Winnie Ille Pu Semper Ludet" (Latin version of "House at Pooh Corner") -- as well as "Ferdinandus Taurus", "Regulus" (the little Prince), and Cattus Petastatus (The cat in the hat), inter alia.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:34 PM

Well folks they're about to make another film of it, with Stephen Fry and others I can't remember.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: GUEST,John Hindsill
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:41 PM

Blackcatter, are you sure of the dates of your Pooh images? WtheP was not created until 1925 or 1926, so the images cannot be earlier than that. I first read Pooh in 1946, and thought it really old then. Hard to believe that Pooh is really so young!
BTW, I think I read where Disney prevailed in defending against the other copywrite holders. At stake were multi-millions of royalties.---John

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: The Walrus
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:57 PM

Guest John Hindsill,

Strictly speaking, Winnie the Pooh was first created around 1916/17 but wasn't [I]first published[\I] intil the mid 1920s - The stories were made up by A.A.Milne for his son Christopher Robin, while the former was on service with the Army in France and Flanders.

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Blackcatter
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 07:15 PM

Sorry that was 1980s & 1990s These are rubber stamps for making greeting cards, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 06:08 AM

We share the same middle name, so of course I will talk of the bear of very little rain. Or even brain. I was called Piglet when I was young... VERY young!!

I've never really liked the saccharin Disney version, the red jacket never did anything for me. I did like Tigger though, he really did come over well. The Shepard Tigger was always a little too 'ginger kitten' for my liking.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Red and White Rabbit
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 08:16 AM

My dad still writes to me " Dear Piglet..." and signs love Pooh
I remember growing up with him singing "the more it snows ....." at every occasion!

My daughter loves the disney version of the stories ( she is only 6) and is a real fan of the anything Pooh or rather eyore who is her favourite. I grew up having the stories read to me and then they appeared as a cartoon version on the TV took me a while to get used to that - who did the voices I can see the guys face but cant remember is name

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:52 AM

I collect bears & have a number of Disney & Shepard characters. Shepard's pictures are perfect, tho the Disney images are cute & everywhere os I have quite a few, both new & second-hand from my favourite charity shop. I only have 2 Shepard toys, they are both plush versions of Pooh.

They are all c. Disney, even the Classic Pooh (with swingtag showing an illustration by Shepard) so it looks like Disney "owns" the original illustrations. The blurb says "c. Disney. Based on the "Winnie the Pooh" works copyright A.A.Miln & E.H. Shepard".

sandra (definitely bear of small brain, cos I've always had problems with memory & concentration & I hope it won't get worse as I get older)

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 11:06 AM

AA Milne wrote, well, filthy stuff. If you doubt it, consider these lines:

God bless Mommy, I know that's right.
Wasn't it fun in the bath tonight?

And don't get me started on Pooh and his "Hunny Pot"!

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Blackcatter
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 11:13 AM

Rabbit's hole . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 12:17 PM

And Roo bouncing Tigger....

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 01:33 PM

Liz THE Squeak...

You're middle name is THE. Winnie the Pooh's middle name is THER.

Not the same middle name at all...

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 02:47 PM

"Evil Disney Pooh!" as my daughter calls it. There are only two Poohs-the original books and Alan Bennett's BBC readings thereof and ... there are only three Poohs, those above, and a book of essays called "The Pooh Perplex" (see Rapaire et al) and ... has anyone seen a book of poems called "Now we are Sixty"?

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: GUEST,Blackcatter
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 03:36 PM

The two books that use Pooh and friends to explain Taoism are pretty good too.

Tao of Pooh
Te of Piglet

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 04:20 PM

Actually and truthfully, "The Pooh Perplex" clarified for me the various schools of criticism rampant in the early '60s.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 06:22 PM

Exactly! I knew someone who couldn't read it because they were taking it at face value.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 07:30 PM

Pooh Bear was named after the mascot of the Canadian regiment from Winnipeg, a black bear called, well, Winnie. So many of the lads in that regiment got blown away in the Great War (wow, that was a great war!) there was no one left to look after the poor bloody bear and it was given to London Zoo. AA Milne used to take Christopher Robin to the zoo and thence came the stories about the bear they'd seen. I can only imagine it was called pooh beause it naffed a bit. Kids can be crue, hey? ;o)

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 07:36 PM

Cruel, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 07:59 PM

All this Pooh-ing without a mention of Kenny Loggins's "House at Pooh Corner?" Amazing.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Aug 04 - 11:47 AM

I only discovered these atories in my early forties when Alan Bennett read them on the radio. Their profundity and underlying sadness swept me away and I read everything about the subject - including Christopher Robin's two volumes of autobiography.

Milne said that he identified with Eeyore and that his writing room was 'the gloomy place'.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 03 Aug 04 - 12:06 PM

Thanks for you stories mates - I'm watchin - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: KateG
Date: 03 Aug 04 - 01:31 PM

My grandparents lived in Lodsworth, near Haslemere, Surrey in the 1950s. Ernest Shepard and his wife were neighbors and friends. At one of my grandfather's cocktail parties someone asked Shepard if had used Christopher Robin Milne as the model for the drawings in the Pooh books. "Heavens,no", was the response, "Christopher Robin had knobbly knees, used me own son."

"Evil Disney Pooh"...Wyrd Sister, your daughter has excellent taste!

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Tig
Date: 03 Aug 04 - 06:07 PM

OK who's got the jar of Tigger food - or even it in liquid form???

Having been brought up on a diet of Winnie the Pooh, House at Pooh Corner and jars of malt extract is it any wonder my family nickname is Tigger and my Mudname Tig!

I too tend to prefer the origingal illustrations.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 01:52 PM

We do so have the same middle name, in mine the Rs is silent, unlike those on Mudcat.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: catspaw49
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 02:17 PM

I'm kinda' with Dorothy Parker on this one. She wrote a New Yorker review column under the name "Constant Reader" and made this comment on Milne's work, "Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: brid widder
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 03:05 PM

I met Winnie the Pooh as a Brownie in the late 50's... we had the stories read to us at Pack Holiday... a few years later when I was a girl guide I helped as a Pack Leader at another such holiday... Winnie the Pooh was the theme for the week all the leaders took character names... I was Eeyore... and quite right too.

In the seventies the stories were read on Jackanory... by Willy Rushden... who did a brilliant job with the voices... I remember Kanga had an Australian accent (of course) and Roo a squeaky Australian accent!!

I HATE what WD had done to all the residents of the hundred acre wood... it's not just the illustrations that have changed... the characters have too...they all seem so silly!!! Rabbit was quite canny, and good at organising things...now he's just daft!! and Winnie was a bear of little brain... but NOT stupid...after all he could read... once Christopher Robin told him what it said and answering Wol with alternate yes and no took wisdom!

walt disney Winnie the Pooh is a Travesty of English Literature!


There are lots and lots of people who are always asking things
Like Dates and Pounds-and-ounces and the names of funny Kings
And the answer's either Sixpence or A Hundred Inches Long
And I know they'll think me silly if I get the answer wrong

So Pooh and I go whispering, and Pooh looks very bright
And says "Well I say sixpence, but I don't suppose I'm right"
And then it doesn't matter what the answer ought to be
'Cos if he's right, I'm Right, and if he's wrong it isn't Me.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Blackcatter
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 03:16 PM

Anyone for playing a game of Pooh Sticks?

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: brid widder
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 03:23 PM

mine's the sort of greyish one!

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 07:56 PM

well we all know pooh sticks. sling enough of it.

I think Dorothy Parker, smart lady that she was, missed a trick there.

Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin are as good a creation as Falstaff and Hal - just as affecting a tale of innocence and experience.

When Christopher Robin sets off for his English public school, presumably to be beaten and buggered and generally turned into an English gentleman - I think the sense of loss and the grief at the loss of innocence are almost unbearable and beautifully expressed.

Remember this was also a national theme for England after the first world war. A certain kind of writer - Tolkien and Robert Graves spring to mind - they'd seen a bit more of life than the Algonquin and they were in full retreat from it, as the only hope of preserving their humanity. I think Milne fits into this last pattern.

However DP was a great lady - wouldn't want to offend anybody on that point and I am fully aware and appreciative of her urbane wit.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 09:06 PM

I'm with Spaw and Dorothy on this one. There's something cloyingly and offensively bland about the whole damn Pooh phenomenon, whether its motivation was the preservation of innocence or not. Yeah, I'm heartless, but he was Winnie the Shit when I knew him.
Sorry, the insomnia is bad again tonight.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 09:34 PM

So Spaw, what do you read to your kids?

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 05 Aug 04 - 02:53 AM

Mumble... Having started this thread about a thread-bare bear (in a moment of fernented HUNNY nostalgia)... May I please claim the right to use an original Pinecone for Pooh-Sticks...

Thanks for your comments... they recall many memorable memories of my first and only Teddy - Called "Fred Bear" - because he was - inheritred from an Uncle who took the plush off - and was alsothe original owner of my POOH books...

Mumble... reaches for the fermented HUNNY jar....

Wasn;t it great when we could say "Now We are Six"...

Mumble... No=one's mentioned the "Heffalump Pit" yet?

Cheers - Sam - with help from Mr Sanders and Wol

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Aug 04 - 02:00 PM

I suppose the whole point of innocence is that it can't be preserved.

If that's how it seems to you, I don't doubt the genuineness of your feelings.

Like I say I came to 100 acre wood late in life and through the genius of Alan Bennet's readings. I was talking to an old friend about my discovery, when i was in the first flush of excitement about it. He said, You parents generation thought it was all middle class garbage - probably that's why you never encountered it much as a kid....

I don't read the books myself nowadays, but I recall it as a terrific read..... subtle without being knowing and adult. All I can say is, give it a try.....you may find yourself surprised.

Subject: RE: BS: Winnie the Pooh
From: GUEST,R&WR
Date: 06 Aug 04 - 03:58 AM

Thanks Brid Widder - couldnt think who read the voices for WInnie the Pooe h your brain is better preserved than mine - obviously you get more alcohol!

I also grew up with the poems Two Little Bears and Alexander Beetle and Whatever happened to Mary Jane which my mother would qoute all the time whenever my father started Tiddlypomming!

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: GUEST,jb
Date: 26 May 11 - 01:20 AM

Does anyone remember a "78 record" of someone singing some of A. A. Milne's poems? I used to play if for our children in the late 60s and early 70s. "Half way down the stairs" was one of the songs on the recording.

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 May 11 - 05:58 AM

I think that record might have been one by Ann Stephens, a young actress [played the scheming minx in The Franchise Affair back in the 50s]. Before that she was a child actress {Noel Coward's daughter in "In Which We Serve"}, & IIRC made some Christopher Robin records when she was about 11 which were popular, esp "Changing the Guard". Is it one of these you are looking for?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: alanabit
Date: 26 May 11 - 09:53 AM

"When Christopher Robin sets off for his English public school, presumably to be beaten and buggered and generally turned into an English gentleman - I think the sense of loss and the grief at the loss of innocence are almost unbearable and beautifully expressed."

Big Al Whittle earlier (04/08/04).

Those pithy words sum up what is so moving about the final chapter of "The House At Pooh Corner". I recall reading it to my daughter a few years back and finding it hard not to burst into tears. That time when your kids will enter any fantasy with you and make up whole worlds for themselves is so short. We both knew it was coming to an end, even as we were making up our own stories about The Teddy Bears of Gremberg Woods. In fact Gremberg Woods is one of the least romantic places on earth. It is only in the imagination of small children that you can unashamedly romanticise such places. For all her brilliance, it should recognised that Dorothy Parker was never likely to "get" Winnie The Pooh. It was not written for a childless New York intellectual.

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 May 11 - 11:34 AM

The end of the book is actually incredibly sad - also moved me to tears the first time I read it.

I live about an hour from the Forest and have stood at the "Magic Place" and looked out over the countryside from there. Also played pooh-sticks with my son many, many years ago on that bridge...

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 May 11 - 04:44 PM

THe recordings i grew up with were 7-inch 78s mastrfully sung by Frank Luther.

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 26 May 11 - 05:01 PM

Doesn't Winne the Pooh mirror The Jungle Book? Kipling has a child raised by animals in the forest in India; Milne has a child in charge of animals in a forest in Sussex. Adult humans do not appear as proper characters in either.

There is a lot of fine detail in the way the characters are drawn in WtP, and it isn't all nice. For example, the resident creatures set out to bully Kanga (an immigrant single mother) and steal her baby in the hope of forcing her to leave; fortunately she stands up to them because she trusts Christopher Robin not to let anything bad happen, and they become fond of Roo and accept both newcomers. They also try to bully Tigger, who is new and disruptive, by taking him into a remote part of the Forest and leaving him to get lost; fortunately this again misfires and the residents (nearly wrote rate-payers there) come to realise that he's kind-hearted and useful. Even Pooh gets drawn into both nasty schemes, not because he's malicious but because he simply doesn't believe he can think.

Owl is actually rather dim but everyone thinks he's wise because he looks it, so he has to pretend; Eeyore is very dim but is convinced that he's brilliant, resents people who are cleverer than himself, and is constantly trying to make people feel guilty about ignoring him; Pooh thinks he's dim but is in fact the only one who comes up with workable ideas from time to time. The interplay between the characters is subtle, and observing it should help to prepare anyone for the social dynamics of schools, offices and societies.

Disney got it wrong for both books by leaving out the subtleties and substituting jolly music - fun in its way, but very different from the originals.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Winnie the Pooh
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 27 May 11 - 09:29 AM

Worthy of wider distribution is Minstrel's "Suddenly Eeyore", a filk on "Suddenly Seymour" from "Little Shop of Horrors"

Cheers
Nigel