26 min. / English / Season 3, Episode 7 / dir. Marek Buchwald / Lightyear Entertainment
“Pegasus” appeared as an episode of the TV program Long Ago and Far Away, which was an anthology show that aired on PBS between 1989 and 1993. It featured fairy tales and short stories narrated by James Earl Jones in the first two seasons, and celebrity guests in later seasons. This episode was also packaged with five others from the series to create a VHS compilation called Stories to Remember, and was also paired later in the 2000s with an episode featuring a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” (also narrated by Mia Farrow) on a DVD.
In this short film, the life story of the winged horse Pegasus is told by famed actress Mia Farrow, who narrates the tale from the perspective of Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy and astrology, and the youngest of the Muses, who struggles to be as musical as her sisters.
The story begins with a recounting of Medusa and her death at Perseus’ hands. From her blood is born the winged horse, who is then captured by Athena and delivered to the Muses on Mount Helicon to be a playmate and companion. Athena stresses that Pegasus is a mortal, not a god, but one destined for greatness that she will return for in time.
Pegasus frolics with the Muses, who tell him that he will someday be a warrior’s steed and may even visit Olympus. Urania prophesizes by looking at her globe that he will actually ascend beyond Olympus someday — a nod to his future role as a constellation. That night, Pegasus takes Urania on a ride through the air on his back and stamps his foot on a rocky point on the mountain, creating a spring (likely the Hippocrene). Urania drinks the spring water and breaks into a song of gratitude.
The next morning, Pegasus is gone. Urania gazes on her globe and sees that Athena has taken Pegasus to Lycia, where the Chimera is terrorizing the people and their land. Athena appears to the hero Bellerophon in a dream (in black and white) and explains his destiny to him. She leaves him tokens – a bridle and a spear – and then Pegasus approaches him. Together they take on the Chimera, attacking its three heads, and finally defeat it by sending the lead spear down its throat. Bellerophon then marries the Lycian princesss and in time becomes king.
As he grows old, Bellerophon hungers for glory and restored youth. In a fit of hubris, he decides to ride Pegasus to Olympus and demand that the gods rejuvenate him. Zeus grows angry at this act and fashions a gadfly out of clay, which stings Pegasus and causes Bellerophon to fall to his death. Pegasus falls and is injured too, but Urania intervenes and, after she begs Zeus to drink from the spring, he is moved to heal the winged horse and to make him his thunder bearer. Pegasus lives a long life in service to Zeus, and when he grows old, the god transforms him into a constellation that can still be seen today.
Mia Farrow’s involvement in this project may very well have been inspired by her role as the voice of the unicorn turned into a human (Amalthea) in the 1982 animated film, The Last Unicorn, which is one of my all-time favorites! The animation in “Pegasus,” by the now defunct Studio Korumi in Tokyo, is not much to marvel at, but the music and writing is rather charming.
Animated Antiquity 
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