The Fourth King (1977)

              I did not expect a production by Italian state television, which was broadcast exactly once by NBC on December 23, 1977, to be next on the list but here we are.  Despite the one showing it was eventually issued on VHS by Abbey Home Entertainment and possibly others, which is why it’s still relatively easy to find in its digitized form out in the wild.  The story behind its production has long since been lost to time but by the end of the 70’s everyone seemed to want in on the Christmas special action, so it’s probably just a boring tale of a production company wanting a piece of that syndication money.

              The company behind this was R.A.I. Corporation, the American subsidiary of Italian public television.  Renato M. Pachetti is listed as an executive producer, but as he was the president and chairman of the company at the time this was likely just a formality.  The actual driving force behind it was more likely Alvin Cooperman, a producer with NBC throughout the 60’s, whose connection is likely what got this aired on that network.  He wrote the story and Seymour Reit produced the screenplay, which according to his listed credits was his first produced anything in over twenty years.  His main claim to fame was co-creating Casper the Friendly Ghost with Joe Oriolo.  The director was Romana Scarpa, whose IMDB credits are sparse but who was incredibly well-known in Italy for writing and drawing Disney comics.  These comics, while a relatively niche market in the US these days, have been incredibly popular in Europe for decades and have their own long and storied history.  The opening minutes of this special bear out this pedigree as they’re relatively well-animated and strikingly directed, but then the lack of budget kicks in and the quality rather collapses.

              The cast is an odd mix of actual names and one relative nobody.  The main character, the sparrow Feathers, is voiced by Laurie Beechman, a mainstay of Broadway theater, nominated for a Tony for her narration in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and who played Grizabella in the first touring production of “Cats.”  Uno the lion was voiced by Ted Ross, who originated the role of the lion in “The Wiz” on Broadway and also portrayed him in the movie version.  Arnold Stang, whose voice you’ve definitely heard and who is probably most famous for Top Cat, plays the turtle.  The beaver was voiced by Bob McFadden, a veteran voice artist most well-known as Snarf in ‘The Thundercats,’ though I wouldn’t hold that against him.  Ed Clein rounds out the cast as the rabbit.  He’s the odd one out as he doesn’t seem to have any other credits to his name.

              This is another take on the nativity from an outsider point of view, this time some random animals in apparently Africa that witness the star signaling the birth of the Baby Jeebs and decide to send a representative to go take a look.  I say apparently because while it starts in a jungle and features a lion it also has a rabbit, a turtle, and a beaver.  There are African hares and turtles are all over the place in the region so fair play there, but it’s going to be really hard to justify having a beaver just wandering around anywhere close to Palestine in 1 B.C.E.  Also any trip from Africa to Bethlehem on foot is going to take a little bit longer than the amount of time that star was in the sky, but then that’s just being nitpicky.  Geographic concerns aside there are some specific problems I have with the special’s ideas on Roman society’s relation to these animals, but that’s for later.

              As I said we open on some decently animated shots of the animals spotting a shining star in the sky and reacting in wonder.  I had some hopes during this sequence because although the editing is jerky and frantic the actual shot composition and framing gives a decent feeling of anticipation and growing suspense.  The sequence draws particular attention to two of the animals: the sparrow, who is introduced with the star reflecting in her eye, and the lion, who reacts to the light of the star by covering his eyes with his paw and trying to go back to sleep.  These are both good introductions to these characters and their functions within the story: the sparrow is the one who brings a suspiciously detailed breakdown of what’s going on to the other animals and is all about going to check it out, and the lion is the one who’s at first uninterested but then decides that if someone’s going to go follow the star it’s damn well going to be him.

              The animals all gather together and sing a very-badly mixed song where they ponder the qualities of the representative they will send to go meet this baby called Emmanuelle who has been born in Bethlehem (all of this specificity implies a very significant information network managed by the sparrow but this is never really delved into).  A persistent problem with this special is that the vocals, especially during the songs, are very hard to make out and understand.  This far removed from the original broadcast, considering we’re dealing with a Youtube version of a digital rip of a VHS, it’s impossible to say if this was a production fault or just a deterioration from copies of copies, either way the lyrics are all but impossible to decipher. 

              Once the song is done the lion jumps into the center of the singing circle or animals and announces that he’ll be the one who’ll check things out.  Originally the other animals are skeptical, wondering why it should be him, but everyone except the sparrow instantly gives in to the lion’s cogent argument that he’s awesome.  The lion sings a song to this effect with the sparrow piping in from the sides that’s he’s just boastful and stupid, the eventual upshot of which is that they’ll both follow the star to Bethlehem.  This process takes up the entire first ten minutes of a twenty-four-minute special.

              The two set out, the lion out front with the bird following behind.  The sparrow quickly meets and befriends a rabbit and a beaver who are also interested in the star and who set out along with them.  They also meet a turtle who’s interested as well but he declines their invitation to go along, saying he’ll make his own way.  This doesn’t actually make any difference as he will continue to pop up over the course of the story with absolutely no explanation as to how he caught up with them.  The lion is busy ignoring all of them, just loping along.

              The next scene is where conflict is introduced into the narrative by  way of random Roman soldiers.  According to the backgrounds the animals are still deep in the jungle, and despite my instincts I’m not going to spend time determining the actual flora of northeast Africa and the plausibility of Roman legions in the area at the time.  I’m going to assume that the portrayals are not entirely accurate and move on.  The sparrow spots the soldiers in the distance and warns the lion, who insists he’s not scared of any soldiers and so refuses to deviate the one hundred feet the sparrow advises him to simply go around them.  Keep in mind during the following scenes that everything is due to the lion literally rejecting advice to go slightly to the left.

              The lion jumps out and is confronted by an entire garrison of badly animated Roman soldiers who decide to capture him, presumably for shipment to the coliseum.  The lions runs away and is eventually chased into a trap.  He’s then locked in a cage and the animals, turtle again helpfully warping space and time to pop up to give exposition about the soldiers, decide they should help him by offering up themselves as potential prey to the Romans, providing a distraction so the sparrow can remove the pin holding the lion’s cage shut.  They get very specific about it as well: the turtle says he hears his kind are great as soup so he’s sure the Romans will want to catch him, the beaver says he understands hats made out of his hide are popular, and the rabbit bets they’ll want his foot as a lucky charm.

              All of these ideas are fairly jarring for a children’s cartoon so I have to give them some credit for doing something I wasn’t expecting.  I can confirm that turtle soup is indeed delicious so that part of the plan checks out.  The existence of beavers in Africa is already reality-breaking so the idea that Romans might be fans of Davey Crocket as well doesn’t really increase the implausibility that much, so fine.  The origin of the myth of a lucky rabbit’s foot is very murky, best guess is some combination of the European tradition of the Hand of Glory mixed with garbled African American slave culture, point being that while this isn’t likely something that would tempt Roman soldiers I’m willing to give it a pass.  Said soldiers immediately chase the turtle and the rabbit while ignoring the beaver, who laments that it must be too hot for them to wants any more hats, which is a pretty decent joke, so that’s one point to the special.

              While the distraction is going on the sparrow indeed frees the lion, who bolts from the cage.  Unfortunately the descending cage door shuts on the sparrow’s tail feathers, trapping her.  The lion pauses, unsure whether or not to save her, and the Romans descend upon him again, at which point he roars.  This has no effect on the soldiers so he roars again, at which point they just drop their spears and run away because the special only has seven minutes left and they still have to get to Baby Jeebs.  The lion frees the sparrow and suddenly the lion has a completely different personality and they’re all friends.  The fact that this entire situation was caused by the lion not wanting to listen to the sparrow’s advice is never brought up again.

              They make their way to the manger and gaze in awe upon the ball of bright light that’s in the crib instead of the Baby Jeebs.  There has to be some amount of study about the various ways Jesus is depicted in different versions of the Nativity over time, there must be some tradition of not actually the depicting the baby itself.  All of the other human characters are shown, including a very saucy Mary who gives what I can only describe as a very sultry come-hither look directly to the camera.  There’s no hint in this universe that the animals can talk to humans, so I don’t have to do my usual rant on that.

Well hello, Mary, how you doing?

              The lion sees all the wise men and their gifts and laments that he didn’t bring anything for the Baby Jeebs, at which point the sparrow gives a very strained argument about how he did bring her as a friend and she has a song she can sing, which fine, whatever works for you, bird.  Laurie Beechman then belts a song that’s well below her talents.  The special closes with the animals up on a hill thinking back on their journey.  The lion decides out of nowhere that if there were a fourth king at the nativity, an idea which nobody had been talking about, it would be the sparrow, who gave such a wonderful gift.  The sparrow insists that she’s no leader, that birds are meant to fly, and that since the lion is the king of the jungle he should be the fourth king.  The lion smiles smugly at this and then the credits play over a scene of the animals reporting back to their jungle friends.

              That’s a pretty unsatisfying end to a rather underwhelming special.  The idea of wacky shenanigans happening while we follow a group of people going to see the nativity who we wouldn’t expect to be there is an entire subgenre of Christmas specials at this point and this one doesn’t bring much new to the conversation.  I get that the point is that the lion starts out an asshole but through the power of friendship becomes a better person, but the transition is so sudden and the personality shift so severe that it comes across as utterly arbitrary and just underlines the cynical nature of the entire enterprise.  This is really just a variation on The Little Drummer boy, a character offering an intangible gift to the Baby Jeebs that’s just as good as the expensive stuff because it comes from the heart, but none of the leadup to that moment really justified the ending.  Someone just decided to tell yet another ‘X witnesses the Nativity’ story, figured that jungle animals hadn’t been done yet, and threw a script together.  The entire thing is a footnote to the story of Romana Scarpa, though I guess I’m glad that some Broadway vets got some paychecks as well.