According to Gene Deitch, a director of animation and friend of E. B. White, the author's wife wrote the following words in a 1977 letter: "We have never ceased to regret that your version of "Charlotte's Web" never got made. The Hanna-Barberra version has never pleased either of us... a travesty..." E.B. White himself wrote of the film: "The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I do not care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney World, with 76 trombones. But that's what you get for getting embroiled in Hollywood."