Page X, Acknowledgements
"Music and cartoons
have gone hand-in-hand since Walt Disney made
Steamboat Willie in
1928. Music wasn't just an accompaniment for that car-
toon, it was what
helped sell the movie to the public and to the motion picture
industry. There was
virtually no dialogue in that cartoon. What attracted
people in those
primitive days of -talkies" was the idea that cartoon characters
(and even inanimate objects) moved in
synchronization to a musical beat.
That was the charm
of Steamboat Willie and virtually all the cartoons that followed
for several years
from Disney and from his followers and rivals.
It's rewarding to
see music coming back to the forefront of cartoons after
all these years." - Leonard Maltin
Page 21, Make Walt's Music by Ross Care
"THE STORY OF music in the animated films of Walt Disney, from 1928 until
Disney's death in 1967, is an involved scenario with a cast including many
leading and supporting players. The saga also coincides with the early history
Of American sound cinema, from the first talkies of the late to the
wide-screen/stereophonic sound epics of the I '50s and 1960s. Yet in spite of
the continuous exploitation that classic Disney music has received over the
decades, from the early cartoon and feature songs released on 78 rpm to CDs
of music found at the now-global Disney theme parks (which also recycle
music from the studio's very earliest eras), precious little is still generally
known about the gallery of composers who launched and sustained this
durable legacy. Thcsc musicians, among many Other artists, labored in relative
anonymity under the Disney aegis to create an often remarkable body of imaginative
Americana that continues to fascinate in this new millennium. "
Page 21, Dawn of the Golden Age by Ross Care
Disney's very first films were a hodgepodge Of silent commercials and ani-
mated shorts produced during the I '20s, among them the Alice in Cartoon-
land series, which placed a live actress in an animated setting, and a brief stint
with the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character. Disney, however, did not own
the Oswald copyright and soon lost the series, a setback that, happily, led to
the creation of Walt's most famous character, Mickey Mouse.
The Oswald/early Mickey era Of Disney also Saw a key creation in motion
picture history: over a period of several years in the late 1920s the sound film
was born. Disney's first Mickey Mouse shorts Were originally planned as silent
films. When Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer proved a hit in 1927, the intuitive
(Page 22)
Disney quickly jumped on the aural bandwagon and arranged for what was
actually the third Mouse short, Steamboat Willie ( 1928), to feature synchro-
nized music. Disney and a small staff (which included future director Wilfred
Jackson) essentially developed the soundtrack themselves, using public domain
tunes and sound effects recorded with a crude system of synchronization that
Jackson devised through the use of a rnetronome and markings on film. The
score was recorded in New York with a modest orchestra and a theater con-
ductor who was dubious of the whole affair.
Crude as the results seem today, the first sound cartoon created a sensa-
tion. Like the Warners, whose prime interest in sound film was not that char-
acters could finally speak onscreen, but that "now we can bring a symphony
orchestra to every small town in America," Disney's prime concern was also
musical. Only a few v.'ords Of dialogue are included in Steamboat Willie, most
of the audio track being a fusion of music and cleverly synched sound effects
that must have amazed and delighted the first sound audiences. A highlight
of the short is the Mouse's rather sadistic utilization of various farm animals
to musical ends (including, in a bit of bawdy barnyard humor exorcised from
most later prints, a nursing sow).
Key musical themes in Steam"zr Willie were the title tune "Steamboat
Bill" (an old Irish folk tune) and "Turkey in the Straw." This same pastiche
style was applied even more heavily to the Plane Crazy score ( 1928), which
features a catalog of familiar public domain Ruben," "Yan-
kee Doodle," "Dixie," "Hail to the Chief—fragments Of which are dizzy-
ingly stitched together by Carl Stalling in almost Ivesian fashion, and
sometimes heard in two- and three-part contrapuntal development. Stalling
would apply a similar musical approach to another manic early short, When
the Car; Away, in 1929. Both shorts also illustrate how the originally ram-
bunctious Mouse—Mickey is even guilty of blatant sexual harassment of
Minnie in Plane Crazy—quickly softened into the less irascible but still
spunky rodent of Steamboat Willie.
With the success of the first Mickey films, the Disney studio was defi-
nitely on its way to a decade that would witness rernarkable strides in both ani-
mation and the integration of music with animated narrative and mood.
musical aspects of this amazing decade are framed on one end by the crude
vitality of The Skeleton Dance (1929) and other early Silly Symphonies of the
late 1920s, and on the Other by the polished refinement Of the early 1940s,
in Fantasia and Bambi. This trajectory also illustrates Disney's growing inter-
(Page 23)
est in classical music and serious original underscoring, both Of which peaked
in these two pivotal features.
The Disney organization's first musical director/composer was Carl
Stalling. who is best known today as the musical genius behind the Warner
Bros. shorts. Disney had known Stalling in their Kansas City days, during
which the musician was musical director for the Isis Theater, where he both
played organ and conducted the orchestra. It was in Kansas City that Disney
had produced his early films, one of which included a live-musical accompa-
niment by Stalling. While en route to New York to record Steamboat Willie,
Disney again met with Stalling and presented him with the first tv,'0 Mouse
cartoons. Stalling scored both plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho (1928) in
Kansas City, then joined Disney in New York to record them. After making
the move to Hollywood, Stalling composed the scores for about fifteen
Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies shorts for Disney.
In a published interview, Stalling noted that it was he who suggested the
concept for Disney's second series, the Silly Symphonies, which were con-
ceived to showcase more self-contained musical scores. (Due to their plot and
gag-oriented nature. the "Mickeys" generally subordinated the music to ani-
mated action). Further details of Stalling's brief career with Disney may be
found in his 1971 Funnyworld interview, reprinted in its entirety elsewhere
in this volume, but it might also be noted that the designation "Silly Sym-
phonies" accurately sums up DisneB overall attitude toward music. While
always appreciating the audience appeal Of popular music, during the 1930s
Disney was also increasingly drawn, if always somewhat ambivalently, to clas-
sical music. (His comments concerning the abstract Bach sequence in Fanta-
sia describe images that came to mind while falling asleep in a concert hall,
and in the 1935 Silly Symphonies Music Land, the queen Of the Symphony
Land is first seen dozing on her throne while a sedate minuet plays.)
Frank Churchchill and Snow White and the Seven Dwarths (Page 26) by Ross Care
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). While hailed as the cinematic
milestone it certainly is, musically Disneyi first feature is more backward-
looking than pioneering. Songs are fluidly linked to character and incident,
yet the mode is still more one of nostalgic operetta than of the American
musical comedy that was slowly evolving on Broadway during this same
decade. The arrangements, likewise, were scored for a modest theater orches-
tra sound, slipping in some mildly jazzy Paul Whiteman—esque touches only
for some of the up-tempo interludes. The operetta ambiance is reinforced by
the twittery coloratura soprano of Snow White herself, playing opposite the
stolid baritone of her prince Charming (with the dwarfs themselves filling in
as a self-contained operetta chorus). Indeed the first third of the film verges
on opera, With one musical number following another in rapid succession and
linked by continuous orchestral underscoring (most notably the Gothic cues
for the Magic Mirror/Wicked Queen scenes).
But Disney fusion of high-tech animation and traditional operetta struck
a chord With late I930's audiences, and the film was a global popular and crit-
iCal success. Many of tunes made the hit parade and won the com-
poser one of the top ASCAP ratings up to that time. Snow White also launched
the first commercially released original film soundtrack ever, a bestselling 78-
rpm album on RCA Victor, and its songs, particularly "Someday My Prince
Will Come," one of Churchillk most poignant melodies, continued to be
recorded by artists such as Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis in the 1950s and '60s.
Unfortunately, Frank Churchill's musical gifts and popular success were
not to lead to a Disneyesque happy ending. Troubled by nervous tension and
alcoholism, Churchill committed suicide on his ranch near Newhall, Cali-
fornia, on May 1 4, 1942. The music for Dumbo (co-scored With Oliver Wal-
lace) had just won an Oscar for best score, and Churchill's touching song,
"Baby Mine," had been nominated for best song. Churchill can be seen in the
studio tour sequence in The Reluctant Dragon (1941), which he also partially
scored. Two of his melodies turn up as late as 1949, in The Adventures of Ich-
abod and Mister Toad (the song "Merrily on Our Way"), and 1953, in Peter
Pan (the crocodile motif).
Page 75, Birth of an Art form by Charles. L Granata
What makes Fantasia so special? Why is it revered as a technical and aes-
thetic milestone?
Though largely ignored by audiences of its day (and scorned by classical
music "elitists"), Fantasia was the movie with which Walt Disney stepped
Eoldly into the unknown. Taking tremendous financial risks while pushing
every talent at his disposal to maximum capacity, he was hoping to create a
masterpiece.
"Fantasia was made at a time when we had the feeling that we had to
the doors here," Disney once explained. "This medium was something
felt a responsibility for, and we felt We could go beyond the comic strip
and do some very exciting, entertaining, and beautiful things with music, and
picture, and color. So, we just went ahead and tried it out."
DisneB notion to produce a film marrying animation and classical music
was born long before Fantasia's raw footage hit the editing desk. In 1929,
Disney and composer Carl Stalling conceived and produccd a non-Mickey
short in which music usurped the action. This film (The Skeleton Dance)
included a snippet of Edvard Grieg's "March of the Dwarfs," and became the
first in a series called Silly Symphonies. In 1932, a Silly Symphony called
Flowers and Trees—set to rhe music of Mendelssohn and Schubert—became
the very first 3-strip Technicolor film.
Disney purposefully kept Mickey Mouse out of the Silly Symphonies.
But toward the late 1930s, Mickey's character began to sag, sending Walt
scurrying to spice up his image. Thinking of the musical shorts, he devised
an ingenious plan: Mickey would star in an animated version of The Sorcerer's
Apprentice, a Goéthe fairy tale set to the music of French composer Paul
Dukas.
Soon after, Disney accidentally stumbled into a great fan of his car-
coons—famed conductor Leopold Stokowski. "l first met Walt Disney in a
restaurant," Stokowski recalled. "l was alone having dinner at a table near
him and he called across to me. 'Why don't we sit together?' Then he began
to tell me that he Was interested in Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice as a POS-
Sible short, and did I like the music. I said I liked it very much, and would be
happy to cooperate with him." Stokowski went to work immediately, focus-
ing on the orchestration and recording of Dukas's music. It was a task the
musical demigod relished.
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