Hyperion Film & Camera Exchange

Timeless Beauty

2010-10-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

It feels like it was just yesterday when I was overjoyed with Platinum Edition DVD release of Disney's contemporary animated classic Beauty and the Beast. It was actually 2002. Time marches on without hesitation, especially in regard to entertainment, technology and this ever-so-quickly aging Disney journalist. But there is one particular constant: Beauty and the Beast remains an entity of entertainment both timeless and extraordinary, and one that has now been enhanced by further advances in home theater technology.

The newly released Blu-Ray Diamond Edition of Beauty and the Beast is simply amazing; it is an exceptional masterpiece in the venue of home entertainment. Presented for the first time in high definition, it now resonates with a visual clarity that both demonstrates and celebrates the talents and artistry of the individuals who created and produced this animated feature some two decades ago. The fine lines of the animator's craft are now more distinctly pronounced and visible. The benefits of a high definition presentation make more evident the nuances and details of hand drawn animation that have sadly been over-polished in the last twenty years of computer-driven production and the transition to purely digital animation. Similarly, one can now see the film's backgrounds in all their lush, deeply textured artistry, almost as if you were standing before each painting's original canvas.

Like its Platinum predecessor, the Diamond Edition includes three versions of the film: the original theatrical release, the 2002 expanded version that included the new musical sequence Human Again, and the Work in Progress cut that was originally presented at the 1991 New York Film Festival prior to the film's completion. One disappointment in that regard--the new Diamond Edition only presents the Work in Progress version as a small picture-within-a-picture overlay with the original theatrical release. There appears to be no option to view it separately in a full-screen mode.

The Diamond Edition migrated over many of the Platinum's special features, but also added a considerable amount of new content, most notably a three-hour branching documentary, Beyond Beauty: The Untold Stories Behind the Making of Beauty and the Beast, that is exceptional in both presentation and information. One "branch" is especially interesting. Revealed for the first time is an original treatment reel that was supervised by Richard Purdam, the project's first director. It encompassed a very different approach to the material, being distinctly non-musical, and was ultimately rejected by Disney execs. A second new documentary is included entitled Composing a Classic. It focuses on the creation of the music, which proved integral to film's ultimate success. Also included are the obligatory "family friendly" features such as games, trivia and music videos, necessary to provide appeal to the ever important soccer-mom demographic. Thankfully, these items are not as overwhelming here as they have been on prior Disney classic releases.

No doubt in another decade or so, we will be singing the praises of Beauty and the Beast in whatever new and wonderful technology that will then be gracing our lives and our home entertainment systems. And the film will remain as wonderful, timeless and extraordinary as ever.

Drawing on Tradition: The Princess and the Frog

2010-03-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

Drawing on Tradition:
The Princess and the Frog
By Jeff Pepper

The Princess and the Frog represented a major paradigm shift for me in terms of how I approach and ultimately purchase access to the latest Disney entertainment.

Translation: I waited for the DVD. More specifically, I waited for the Blu-Ray disc. The cost for a family of four to go to the movies now well exceeds the price of even a deluxe edition Blu-Ray package. For the first time that I can recall, I balked at running to the multiplex on opening day to see the latest Disney animated feature, and instead patiently waited a very short three months to enjoy The Princess and the Frog in the privacy and comfort of my own relatively well-furnished home theater. As Bob Dylan would say, " . . . the times they are a changin'."

It's not that I wasn't anxious and excited to see the company's celebrated return to traditional hand-drawn animation since Home on the Range underwhelmed both critics and audiences in 2004. (Celebrated, if not just a tad disingenuous--after all it was Disney itself that killed 2D six years ago.) It's just that I had been feeling a wee bit cynical throughout much of 2009 about the Walt Disney Company's overwhelming uber-synergetic marketing machine and its relatively transparent desire to drain my checking account.

Let me just quickly and unequivocally state that The Princess and Frog was totally undeserving of my somewhat immature and misdirected contempt. It is a wonderful, energetic and very satisfying film that, while not groundbreaking or wholly original, still manages to set itself apart from the vast majority of over-produced animated fare that has crowded theaters for the past few years. Despite the film's reliance on tried and true Disney formula, there is still oh so much to compliment and endorse. The songs and score by Randy Newman infuse the story with a style wholly new to a Disney feature. Animation is top drawer, backgrounds are lush and beautiful, characters are distinct and well-realized and the story moves along at an energetic and entertaining pace. And similar to title character Tiana's passion for making the perfect gumbo, the film adds just the right dash of sentiment that will fill and break your heart at the same moment.

What truly impressed me most was the obvious desire on the part of the film's makers to not just return to the mechanics of hand-drawn animation, but to literally draw on techniques and visual styles that could never be realized or matched in computer-generated productions. The musical sequences "Almost There" and "Friends on the Other Side" especially feature creative designs reminiscent of classic vignettes from films such as The Three Caballeros, Melody Time and Dumbo. To think that some bone-headed executive decided five years ago that this type of visual expression was obsolete and irrelevant is both chilling and disturbing. Thankfully, saner minds have been restored to Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Though the disc's supplemental features are a generally slight collection of very brief sound bite vignettes by the film's directors, cast and animators, they serve to very much illustrate the passion that these individuals had for bringing about a return of traditional animation to the Disney company. The Princess and the Frog was truly a labor of love, especially for 1980s and 1990s animation veterans such as Mark Henn, Andreas Dejas, Eric Goldberg and directors John Musker and Ron Clements. Experiencing their joy and enthusiasm by way of what are usually standard talking-head segments was an unexpected delight.

Though not a success on the level of a Pixar film, The Princess and the Frog demonstrates that a traditional animated feature can still be welcomed and enjoyed by critics and audiences alike. Bravo to its creators, animators, cast and crew. You have accomplished something truly meaningful at the precise moment in time when it so desperately needed to be accomplished. Well done.

The Treasures of a Bold Renegade

2010-03-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Good news, bad news.

We'll get the bad news out of the way first. There are only two titles being released this year in the Disney Treasures DVD line. And unfortunately, neither features animation, anxiously awaited Disney anthology series content, nor material relating to Disney theme parks.

The good news however, is that the titles that have arrived, Zorro - The Complete First Season and Zorro - The Complete Second Season, are top-of-the-line productions and welcome additions to the Disney Treasures family.

The Zorro sets are unconventional Treasures. It is the first time Disney has ventured beyond the 2-disc, $32.99 SRP. These collections weigh in at a hefty six discs each and carry $59.99 price points (although smart shoppers can find them as low as $38.99). It also marks the first time Disney has marketed any of their vintage television properties in complete season sets. Disneyland program episodes have appeared in numerous themed Treasures collections, and an earlier Treasures set featured the very first week of the Mickey Mouse Club. Interestingly, Zorro collections have been offered in the past through the Disney DVD subscription club (albeit in the much maligned colorized versions originally aired on the Disney Channel), but not at retail. These new complete sets of the Bold Renegade seem to mark an equally bold marketing strategy for the normally more reserved execs at Disney Home Entertainment.

In my much younger days, I watched syndicated Zorro episodes on one of my local stations. (Yes, back in the days of antenna reception and a channel selection that included three networks, PBS and a couple of independents.) I was never a huge fan of the program, but it was a means of killing a half hour on a rainy summer afternoon. Revisiting Zorro some four decades later as a Disney enthusiast and historian has been a both enlightening and very entertaining experience.

Much like the Davy Crockett Disneyland episodes, Zorro exploded far beyond its television incarnation into a pop culture phenomenon. Its brief two-season run from 1957 to 1959 beget a national passion that encompassed publicity tours, Disneyland tie-ins and tons of merchandise. At its peak, it claimed more than 30 million weekly viewers, American Idol numbers by today's standards; a dominating 40% share of the audience in the less populated late 1950s. Legal squabbling between Disney and ABC brought about the program's premature demise and, although it has never made a very large impact on recent generations of Disney enthusiasts, it remains a very significant part of Disney Studio history.

Zorro is a wonderful mix of humor, adventure and engaging performances. Guy Williams, a relative unknown at the time, became an overnight star as he portrayed both the swashbuckling hero and his meek and submissive alter-ego Don Diego de la Vega. Henry Calvin, as the bumbling but well meaning Sergeant Garcia became an audience favorite. The production values of the series were also especially notable. As Leonard Maltin notes in his introduction to Season One, "Walt never did anything halfway," and Zorro certainly reflects this. Extensive location shooting mixed with Peter Ellenshaw's beautiful matte work demonstrated results more akin to feature films than to a weekly television program.

The Zorro DVDs certainly live up to the standards we've come to expect from the Disney Treasures line; high quality transfers and generous supplemental features. Each season features 39 episodes. Season One also includes "Zorro: El Bandido" and "Zorro: Adios El Cuchillo," a two-part adventure aired during the 1960 season of Walt Disney Presents, a combination of episodes originally intended to be part of a never realized third season; an excerpt from the 1957 "Fourth Anniversary Show" featuring an appearance by Guy Williams; and a history of the Zorro character entitled "The Life and Legend of Zorro."

The Season Two set provides two additional episodes from the 1961 season of Walt Disney Presents, "Zorro: The Postponed Wedding" and "Zorro: Auld Acquaintance." An additonal feature, "Behind the Mask," profiles star Guy Williams.

Whether you are a passionate Zorro fan, a Disney historian and enthusiast, or a person just simply wanting to enjoy some old fashioned swashbuckling entertainment, the Disney Treasures Zorro sets will be well worth your time and resources.

Up With Monsters

2010-03-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

Disney Mathematics 101--

Today's Lesson:

Pixar + Blu-Ray = Entertainment Heaven.

My recent home theater upgrade began late last spring. It started very indirectly with the purchase of a Blu-Ray-compatible Playstation 3. It culminated mid-summer with the acquisition of 40" flat panel HD television and a Yamaha surround sound receiver. Even then, I was still generally reluctant to begin the $-intensive task of upgrading my rather extensive film library.

But then I watched the Blu-Ray edition of Cars and whatever reservations I possessed were quickly dispelled. Animation is indeed a marvel to behold in Blu-Ray format; Pixar animation on Blu-Ray is simply a jaw-dropping, visual overload of the highest order. I immediately purchased Ratatouille, Wall-E and A Bug's Life, the only other Pixar titles then available in Blu-Ray format.

Happily, this week marks the arrival of two more Pixar features in Blu-Ray editions. It is a Pete Doctor old-and-new combination as the general home entertainment release of Up is accompanied to market by the director's first feature, Monsters, Inc. in brand new Blu-Ray trappings.

"Blue" serves quite well as the buzzword for this new high-def version of Monsters, Inc. Sulley's blue fur is simply breathtaking to behold in all its 1080 dpi glory. In a roundtable feature exclusive to the Blu-Ray, the filmmakers spoke of the challenge of rendering Sulley in the Himilaya scene with winds blowing and snow mixing into the character's fur. Viewing that particular scene in high definition certainly demonstrates that challenge and showcases the skills and talent that successfully executed it.

While many of the set's bonus features have been recycled from the original DVD release, a number of new Blu-Ray exclusive features have been added. Notable among them is a 12-minute look at the new Monsters, Inc. Ride and Go Seek attraction at Tokyo Disneyland and aforementioned Filmmakers Roundtable, a 22-minute discussion featuring director Pete Doctor, producer Darla Anderson and co-directors David Silverman and Lee Unkrich. For the younger set, Roz's 100-Door Challenge Game has been added. And as Pete Doctor notes in a new Blu-Ray intro, much of the original DVD bonus material, especially production art, has been upgraded to higher resolutions to match the high-def format.

Doctor's second feature and Pixar's 10th consecutive box office blockbuster, Up is equally served well by the Blu-Ray format. In contrast to Monsters' bright and colorful fantasy-based designs, Up showcases towering cityscapes and sweeping landscapes rich in earth tones. Textures in particular seem to jump off the screen, whether it be the rocky ground of South America or just simply the clothing worn by Karl and Russell.

Bonus features also abound on the Up set. The theatrical short Partly Cloudy is included, as well as the brand new Dug's Special Mission, a hilarious, if somewhat slight new vignette starring one of the film's more popular characters. Numerous featurettes and documentaries fill out the set's two Blu-Ray discs, as does the interactive Global Guardian Badge Game for younger viewers.

The Blu-Ray editions of both Monsters, Inc. and Up include the standard DVD versions of the films as well as digital copies that can be transferred to PCs and digital devices.

But most important, beyond all the home theater-high definition bells and whistles, exist two wonderful and very emotionally satisfying films. Even on small conventional television screens in mono sound, neither would fail to entertain.

Another Drive Down The Road Ahead

2010-03-21T10:52:00.001-07:00

One of the most popular posts here at 2719 Hyperion has proven to be about something that is not altogether immediately recognizable as a Disney entity. My article on The Road Ahead, a fifteen minute segment from the 1958 Disneyland episode "Magic Highway U.S.A." was widely linked outside of the Disney online community and recognized by a number of retro-futurism bloggers.

I thought it would be fun to take another ride down The Road Ahead and visit again the transportation dynamics of late 2oth century America, as they were imagined by 1950's visionaries. So let's all jump into our highly specialized pleasure vehicles and take a trip along the magic highways of a future that never quite came to be.

"Speed, safety and comfort will be the keynotes of tomorrow's highways. A multi-colored highway system may enable the motorist to reach his destination by following the correct color strip. The increased speed of tomorrow's automobile will demand that highway signs be larger and more simple to read."

"Dashboard panels featuring built-in safety controls and electronic operating devices are predictions for tomorrow. A teletype panel shows up-to-the-minute traffic bulletins. The recommended safe driving speed is automatically indicated. Our rear view mirror is actually a television picture."

"Airborne emergency units would combine police, fire and ambulance services. Quick removal of disabled vehicles will reduce traffic tie-ups."

"Combining new formulas of concrete with quick-setting ceramic materials, a mobile kiln is supported by the bridge it builds."

"For tunneling through mountains, this atomic reactor applying incredible heat literally melts the hard rock as it makes molehills out of mountains."

On entering the city, the family separates, father to his office, mother and son to the shopping center. These new forms of vehicles will bring about special purpose roadways."

"Office buildings will combine unique parking and elevator services. From his private parking space, father will probably have to walk to his desk."

"These non-stop farm-to-market transports will bring remote agricultural areas to within minutes of metropolitan markets."

"Advances in technology will give us more time for leisure in tomorrow's living. The family vacation will always be decided by a family vote, but getting there will be simplified by a punched card system and the car is automatically operated and guided to preset destinations. Highly specialized pleasure vehicles will have every convenience of home."

Images © Walt Disney Company

The Road Ahead

2010-03-21T10:51:00.001-07:00

The last fifteen minutes of the 1958 Disneyland episode “Magic Highway U.S.A.” is like an odd holy grail for many fans of both Disney and 1950s futurism. Informally titled “The Road Ahead,” and using limited animation, it demonstrated futuristic transportation concepts to a generation of Americans just being introduced to the Interstate road system.

Rarely seen since its debut, “Magic Highway U.S.A.” was written and produced by Ward Kimball, who was by and large responsible for all of the anthology program’s early Tomorrowland-themed episodes. Its last prime time airing was in 1962. It finally resurfaced in the late 1990s, when it was broadcast a few times on the Disney Channel’s Vault Disney overnight schedule.

The show’s first forty-five minutes are a somewhat dry affair. We are lectured on highway development. Archival footage provided by the University of Michigan shows cars traveling on the unpaved Lincoln Highway circa 1913. And footage provided by the Horseless Carriage Club recreating the efforts of early motorists, while intending to be humorous, just ends up falling flat. It’s all fodder for the fast forward button; it’s that last segment that’s the payoff for the whole show.

If anything is a shining example of 1950s futurism, it is certainly these fifteen minutes. Sleek and stylized, its concepts and images portray a fun and exciting vision of future America. And sadly, so much that it predicted still has yet to be realized nearly fifty years later. We have yet to see the likes of multicolored travel lanes, radiant heat to clear rain and snow, radar screen windshields, giant road builders, atomic reactors that tunnel through mountains, and highway escalators, just to name a few of its high concept innovations.

“The Road Ahead” gained some degree of notoriety in later years while at the same time remaining still largely unknown in its origin. Visitors to the Horizons attraction at EPCOT Center, up until its closing in 1999, were typically intrigued by a few minutes of footage from the segment that looped on a display in the “Looking Back at Tomorrow” portion of the ride. Guests usually saw a vehicle being prepped inthe family motorport, and later heard “. . .on entering the city the family separates; father to his office, mother and son to the shopping center,” as the automated vehicle split in two on the screen. Intrigued riders were often curious about where the footage originated. It was a good match; the film displayed that same forward-thinking idealism that Horizons represented, and that EPCOT Center embodied during its first decade of operation.

The film was also a precursor of sorts for many of the ideas illustrated in the presentation Walt Disney made in October of 1966, outlining the company’s plans for Disney World, and specifically his vision of EPCOT. Not unlike "Magic Highway U.S.A.," most of those ideas and concepts also went unrealized.

White Wilderness - August 12, 1958

2010-03-21T10:48:00.001-07:00

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of one of Walt Disney's most celebrated films in the True-Life Adventure series, White Wilderness. Released on August 12, 1958, it was a distinct commercial success and would go on to win that year's Academy Award for feature length documentary.

It would gain a degree of notoriety a quarter century later, when in 1982, a Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary on animal cruelty would accuse the filmmakers of staging scenes and perpetuating the myths of lemming suicides. Though commendable for its overall expose of animal cruelty in motion picture making, the report tended to exaggerate Disney's propagation of the lemming suicide myth.

The makers of the True-Life series did in fact play hard and loose with filming and footage. But those individuals have long made no secret of such efforts and documentaries and interviews on the recent True-Life Adventure DVDs attest to their forthrightness. While the lemming scene in White Wilderness was admittedly staged, it has since been misrepresented rather frequently, accusing the Disney filmmakers of forcing the creatures over the cliff to their deaths. As noted by both the film's narrator Winston Hibler and other academic sources, the lemmings (based primarily on those indigenous to Norway) in fact die from exhaustion from extended swimming rather than from the plunge into the water. In his narration, Hibler notes the suicide myth in its proper context. In an interview on the CBC program, Roy E. Disney mistakenly cited a "seven-year suicide cycle." The program then proceeded to debunk this statement of lemming misinformation. A simple viewing of the film demonstrates that Disney's statement did not reflect the actual content presented in White Wilderness.

On the program, CBC reporter Bob McKeown cited no specific evidence that the lemmings in White Wilderness were killed as a result of the filmmakers' staging of the sequence, but did make that suggestion via the film's own footage. That coupled with a statement by Roy E. Disney, who by his own admission had no direct knowledge of the lemming sequence, that "we may have lost a few lemmings," more or less became the indictment that McKeown was looking for. While the Disney Studios' technical and philosophical approaches to making True-Life Adventure films were certainly questionable, especially when you consider the "True-Life"moniker, the lemming controversy associated with White Wilderness seems potentially overblown. It is interesting to note that fifty years later, staging techniques continue to be used in the filming of nature documentaries.

Despite said controversies, White Wilderness contains much spectacular and remarkable footage. It remains a distinct spiritual and technical forerunner to current nature documentaries, most especially the much lauded Planet Earth series. In fact, the first episode of Planet Earth features scenes of a mother polar bear and her cubs that is remarkably similar to footage in White Wilderness.

Images © Walt Disney Company

Clock Cleaners - October 15, 1937

2010-03-21T10:46:00.001-07:00

On this day in 1937, the Mickey Mouse cartoon Clock Cleaners was released to theaters across the U.S.A. It is one of the many ‘trio” shorts featuring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, that were popular during the late 1930s.

The film places the three protagonists high above the city skyline as they wash and clean both the interior and exterior of an elaborate and precariously high clock tower. It opens with an amazing scene of Mickey riding the clock’s second hand around its face, as a means of cleaning its huge numbers. It then follows each character’s individual adventures: Mickey attempting to evict a stubborn stork; Donald fighting with a sassy mainspring; and Goofy inadvertently being “gonged” by the tower’s mechanical bell-ringers. It climaxes with an intricately choreographed ballet of aerial acrobatics and pratfalls, as Mickey tries to prevent a dumbstruck Goofy from falling to his doom.

Wonderful details abound:The carefully crafted clock face . . .

The mechanical bell-ringers that take the forms of Father Time and Miss Liberty . . .

The clock’s intricate gear system that is mechanically accurate and constantly in motion . . .

And the little angels that circle Goofy’s head after he is brained by Miss Liberty.

Cured Duck - October 26, 1945

2010-03-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

When it comes to our favorite mallard, the title Cured Duck is clearly an oxymoron.

Released on this day in 1945, Cured Duck features Donald Duck attempting to reign in his out-of-control temper so to get back in girlfriend Daisy’s good graces. He responds to a newspaper ad from the Tootsbury Institute of Temperism, and soon finds himself at the mercy of the company’s patented insult machine. The machine guarantees a “cured duck” if Donald can withstand ten minutes of the physical abuse and verbal provocations it dispenses. The duck survives and ultimately displays to Daisy his new powers of self control, only to ironically fall victim to Daisy’s own explosive nature.

The opening scene is notable in that Donald is puffing away on a large cigar. It was a sequence that was edited out when the short appeared on the Disney Channel’s Vault Disney block of programs in the 1990s. This was at the same time Pecos Bill was having his cigarette digitally erased in the DVD release of Melody Time, and the Martins and the Coys were being extricated from Make Mine Music.

The highlight of Cured Duck is a Donald Duck temper tantrum of epic proportions. After being frustrated by an obviously latched window, he goes on a destructive rampage, of which Daisy’s house is the primary victim. It’s an incredibly rapid sequence of events. Witness when Don rips a telephone from a wall, and then subsequently drags a lamp and washing machine through the plaster as well, followed finally by the phone pole itself:

An interesting bit of 1940s pop culture: when Donald symbolically transforms into a heel after his initial tirade, it bears the Wingfoot brand name.

Out of Scale - November 2, 1951

2010-03-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

The inspiration for the Donald Duck cartoon Out of Scale, released on this day in 1951, interestingly enough came from Walt Disney himself. Walt had a fascination with trains since he was a young child, so it was not surprising when he took up the hobby of model railroading in the late 1940s. With the help of animators Ward Kimball and Frank Thomas, and the resources of the Disney Studio, Walt built his own backyard railroad, called the Carolwood-Pacific, in the early 1950s. Walt would often don engineer coveralls and cap and take guests on rides on the half mile run around his residential property.

Walt’s exploits quickly became the creative fodder of director Jack Hannah and crew. In the short, Donald is a model train hobbyist, with an extensive garden railway. Insisting that everything in his layout be to the exact scale of his miniature railroad, he unknowingly removes a large tree that is the home of Chip ‘n Dale. The two chipmunks are not very happy about it, and the usual mayhem ensues.

Chip ‘n Dale attempt to rescue their tree, but have to beat a hasty retreat into Don’s miniature town of Canyonville. They quickly become comfortable in a scale model house, that, in a nod to Walt’s concept of the “plausible impossible,” is completely furnished, right down to furniture, food, books, and even reading glasses. It’s possible that the scene might have alluded to Walt’s own penchant for detail--in furnishing the caboose on his 1/8 scale train, he had authentic period newspapers reduced in size and placed in a paper rack.

Realizing that the chipmunks are in fact “in scale,” Don calls off the chase and plays along. But the duck can’t resist resorting to some malicious mischief, and the chase resumes anew. In the end, the two convince Donald that their oak tree can convincingly play the part of a giant redwood, and effectively be “in scale.”

How to Be a Detective - December 12, 1952

2010-03-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

It begins with a man being violently thrown from a bridge into the icy cold waters of the river below. It ends with a climactic car chase through both urban and rural landscapes. In between, blackjacks are wielded, bullets fly, mickeys are slipped and violence reigns supreme.

It’s a fast paced, hard boiled eight minutes. And oh, did I mention--it’s a Goofy cartoon.

Released on December 12, 1952, How to Be a Detective is without a doubt, one of the best Goofy cartoons ever produced. An over-the-top send up of Hollywood’s dark crime noir genre, it is as irreverent as it is hilarious.

The Goof is cast as Private Eye Johnny Eyeball, who is paid a fast $100 by a “classy dame” to simply “find Al.” He is quickly confronted by Pete in the role of a homicide detective who tries to warn him off the case. He then finds himself consistently at odds with a “suspicious character” who closely resembles one of the weasels from the Wind in the Willows sequence of Icabod and Mr. Toad. Eyeball finds himself subsequently being drugged, machine gunned, fitted with cement shoes and thrown in the river, dropped down an elevator shaft, and kicked out of the morgue (“Beat it! And don’t come back ‘til you’re ready!”)

Comically violent images abound. Take for instance the window actions near the beginning of the short:It’s enough to send a soccer mom on boycotting and letter-writing rampages. Fears of just such actions pretty much kept How to Be a Detective locked up in the vault until its release on the Disney Treasures Complete Goofy DVD a few years ago.

Crazy criminal activity aside, the short sports some outstanding art direction. There are some top notch backgrounds that really evoke the crime film genre that is the target of the cartoon’s humor--

The opening bridge toss:

The eerie, rundown house on the hill:

And the seedy Al’s Joint saloon:

. . . are just a few great examples.

In the end, the case is of course solved, and more by happenstance than by the efforts of Johnny Eyeball. An all around great cartoon and one of the studio's better efforts from the 1950s.

Symposium on Popular Songs - December 19, 1962

2010-03-21T10:35:00.001-07:00

Symposium on Popular Songs sits in a relatively unvisited corner of Disney animation history. Rarely seen since its release on this date in 1962, it was finally made available last year on the Walt Disney Treasures Disney Rarities DVD set. It’s interesting for a number of reasons and, and it has some especially notable names in its credits.

Disney’s marketing department released this short article as a part of promotional material sent out to theaters:

With $3.88 worth of groceries, a pipe cleaner, a spool of yarn, a box of toothpicks, 500 sheets of colored paper and their whimsical imaginations, Walt Disney artists Bill Justice and X. Atencio created a symposium of comical characters that make "A Symposium on Popular Songs" one of Disney's funniest featurettes.

The star of the Technicolor production, however, is that expert on everything, the man who invented jazz, Professor Ludwig von Drake. Making his motion picture debut, the Professor introduces a brand new cast of "animoted" stars—made of movable paper cutouts—to trace the history of popular music from ragtime to the twist. Whenever possible, "Pops" von Drake steals the spotlight by sing ing one of the tuneful melodies composed by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman.

Ludwig's modest home is vaguely reminiscent of the Taj Mahal. He greets his guests at his massive double doors and leads them into the parlor. He explains how, when he was a starving musician at the turn of the century, he was in rags. So he invented ragtime. As the Professor sings and plays "The Rutabaga Rag," a group of "animated" oranges, apples, rutabagas, string beans, and other vegetables and fruits dance the ragtime.

Since ragtime was soon worn to shreds, the Professor decided to write a new song about the roaring twenties. He introduces Betty Boopie Doop to sing "Charleston Charlie," and a group of flapper era characters to do the Charleston.

Ludwig's next great song hit came after he had lost all his money in the depression. To cheer everyone he wrote, "Although I Dropped a Hundred Thousand in the Market, Baby, I Found a Million Dollars in Your Smile." To sing it, the Professor introduces Rah, Rah Rudy and his Megaphone Boys.

During the late 1930's and early 1940's, a new type of singer called "crooners" captured the imaginations of the American public. Ludwig brings on Fosby Crooner to sing his love ballad, "I'm Blue For You, Boo-Bo-Bo-Bo-Boo." Fosby makes it easy for the audience to join in by bouncing from word to word as he sings.

While everyone was cutting "Boo-Boo" records, Ludwig was cutting out paper dolls. By "shear" accident, he cut out three talented look-alikes called the Sister Sisters. The girls introduce the Professor's new boogie woogie rhythm with "The Boogie Woogie Bakery Man." During the 1950's, the beat that put American youth back on its feet was Bop. To sing his new bop hit, "Puppy Love is Here to Stay," Ludwig introduces Freddie Babalon and his Babalpnians.

In his Hi-Fi studio—"Dot means Hi-Finance," says the Professor— von Drake brings his "Symposium on Popular Songs" to a swinging climax by singing and twisting to his latest hit, "Rock, Rumble and Roar."

In color by Technicolor, Walt Disney's cartoon featurette, "A Symposium on Popular Songs," was written and styled by Xavier Atencio, directed by Bill Justice, with words and music by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, and arranged and conducted by Tutti Camarata. Animation was by Eric Larson, Cliff Nordberg, Art Stevens, Ward Kimball, Les Clark and Julius Svendsen. Buena Vista releases.

Justice and Atencio previously employed the studio-dubbed “Animotion” stop motion animation process on the 1959 release Noah’s Ark, and in a number of opening title sequences of live action features, most notably The Parent Trap in 1961. Both Noah’s Ark and Symposium earned Oscar nominations. The results of the process in Symposium are both clever and creative, but can be a shock to those expecting traditional hand-drawn, cel-produced Disney animation.

The music and lyrics by the Sherman Brothers are a lot of fun, but sadly have been largely forgotten, even by the Disney company itself. I’ve only come across one song, “Although I Dropped a Hundred Thousand in the Market, Baby, I Found a Million Dollars in Your Smile,” on a CD compilation. Surprisingly, The Sherman Brothers CD that the company released back in 1992, did not include any of the seven numbers from Symposium.

The highlight of Symposium on Popular Songs for me personally is Ludwig Von Drake, as performed by Paul Frees. Von Drake is one of the most underrated of all Disney characters. He is nothing short of hilarious in all of his appearances, of which Symposium is no exception. An especially great example of Frees’ voice and comedic talent with Von Drake is the vintage 1961 vinyl LP Professor Ludwig Von Drake, which has been recently made available for download on iTunes.

Likely one of the reasons Symposium remained locked away, especially in recent years, was a fairly extreme caricature of a Chinese character in the Boogie Woogie Bakery Man sequence. Thankfully, Disney has moved away from the soccer-mom focus group method of marketing its classic animation, and now allows viewers to evaluate these films, and their occasional controversial elements, for themselves.

The Worm Turns - January 2, 1937

2010-03-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Released on this day in 1937, the Mickey Mouse short The Worm Turns is an exercise in clever cartoon action and gags, gorgeous watercolor backgrounds and brilliant Technicolor. Made in the late 1930s days of the Hyperion Avenue studio, it is a shining example of the outstanding art direction that was a hallmark of much of Disney’s output at that time.

Had Universal’s classic Frankenstein movies been made in Technicolor, the opening sequence from The Worm Turns might give you an idea of how they would have looked. Director Ben Sharpsteen and his crew are clearly paying homage to the good doctor when Mickey, in his white lab coat and red shiny rubber gloves, mixes a vibrant and excitable batch of chemicals.

The object of Mickey’s experimenting is to concoct a bravery potion. The ingredients he mixes together are beautifully staged via two wonderful background paintings:

The details are terrific. For example, the recipe for the Courage Builder is quite detailed, and comes from and old bound tome entitled Ancient formulae.

As the cartoon progresses, Mickey takes on more of a supporting role as he tests his courage-inducing potion on a fly, mouse, cat, and ultimately Pluto. Showdowns build one upon another, leading up to Pluto’s confrontation with a shotgun wielding dogcatcher, played to villainous extreme by Pete.

There are so many standout moments in The Worm Turns; it is truly difficult to name them all. I particularly like the bird’s eye camera shot of Mickey about to dose the mouse:

The clever gag of the cat’s nine lives exit, and then subsequent return, to their host. It is especially funny when Life #1 emerges, and then whistles for #2-9 to follow.

There is also Pluto’s squash and stretch encounter with a brick wall. (Check the wonderful details--the NO PARKING crosswalk and the patched flat tire on Pete’s wagon.)

And the neighborhood backdrop to the Pete-Pluto chase is beautiful:

The film has one interesting continuity error. Near the beginning when Mickey removes a cork from a potion bottle with his mouth, it mysteriously disappears a few frames later.

The Worm Turns is among many other notable Disney shorts from the same time period, on the DVD set Mickey Mouse In Living Color Volume One.

A quick postscript: In my research, I was unable to track down any credits beyond director Ben Sharpsteen and animator Al Eugster. If anyone knows who was responsible for this short's amazing backgrounds, please put a post in the comments section. Thanks!

Animated Animators - The Nifty Nineties

2010-03-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

The 1941 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Nifty Nineties makes subtle, and not so subtle references to numerous Disney Studio staffers of the time period. Now famous animator/writer/producer/director and Nine Old Men alumnus Ward Kimball literally takes center stage with fellow animator Fred Moore in the short’s vaudeville show sequence.

As “Fred and Ward-Two Clever Boys from Illinois,” the two tell jokes and perform pratfalls for an audience that includes Mickey and Minnie. According to an animators draft provided by Jenny Lerew to Mark Mayerson for his Mayerson on Animation blog, Kimball in fact animated himself and Moore in the sequence.

The Nifty Nineties references other studio personnel in the same scene via a number of advertisements on the theater’s curtain.

Walter D.’s Hats That Please -- Okay, that one’s pretty obvious.

Wilfred Jaxon Feed and Fuel -- Veteran animation director Wilfred Jackson.

Riley’s Livery Stable -- Nifty Nineties director Riley Thompson.

Prof. Churchill Pianos Tuned -- Composer Frank Churchill.

Clark’s Confectionary -- Animator Les Clark.

Gen. J. Sharpsteen Dentist -- Studio veteran Ben Sharpsteen.

R. B. Martch Guns -- Animator Bob Martch

T. Hee Shoes -- Storyman T. Hee.

Happy Herb Undertaker, Palms Read - C. Payzant, M. Flanigan Coffee, M. Nelson Fancy Goods, and Breezy Allen’s Haberdashery are the other ads on the curtain. So far in my research, I haven’t found anyone who has been able to identify any individuals associated with those particular names.

[EDIT: Jeff Kurtti provided some additional identifications via the comments section that I wanted to include here as well:

Charles Payzant was a watercolor artist who served as art director on the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia and on Dumbo. Happy Herb may refer to Herb Ryman, who was an art director on the Pastoral Symphony segment of Fantasia and on Dumbo. Mary Flanigan ran a coffee and snack shop at Hyperion and then at the Burbank Studio.

Thanks Jeff!]

[EDIT #2: Are Myklebust provided some corrections to to my transcribing (from a blurry screen capture) which I have made, and also provided the following identifications:

M. Nelson Fancy Goods -- background artist Myron F. Nelson.

"Breezy" Allen's Haberdashery -- animator Paul Allen.

And one ad I did not previously list:

C.E. Philippi Fishing Eqpt. -- layout artist Charles Phillipi.

Thanks Are!]

In a comment on Mark Mayerson’s aforementioned post about The Nifty Nineties, Michael Barrier identified the drunk man in the “Father Dear Father” part of the vaudeville show as a caricature of company vet Dick Huemer.

It's Tough to Be a Buzzard from Hinckley Ridge

2010-03-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

With the month of March now upon us, we are reminded that the buzzards will soon be returning to roost in the small town of Hinckley, Ohio. The tradition of welcoming these turkey vultures back to their summer habitats was established in 1957, and to most of the area’s residents, it signifies the true arrival of spring.

But to Disney enthusiasts of the baby boomer generation, it serves to remind us of a once famous, but now mostly obscure Disney production. For the story of Hinckley and its prodigal buzzards became perhaps the most well remembered element of the 1969 animated short subject It’s Tough to Be a Bird, and the subsequent episode it evolved into on the Wonderful World of Disney in 1970.

Now I can only speak from my own memories, but this wacky film was a huge deal to myself and fellow members of my then preteen generation. While my contemporaries viewed most Disney television offerings of the time as little more than a way to kill an hour on a Sunday evening, It’s Tough to Be a Bird managed to elevate itself to a viewing status typically reserved for the likes of The Wizard of Oz and holiday perennials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was the subject of at least a couple Monday morning playground discussions that I fondly remember participating in.

Released on December 10, 1969, It’s Tough to Be a Bird proved immensely popular due largely in part to its zany, fast paced montages and over-the-top humor. It was all a very distinct reflection of its creator Ward Kimball. The film is hosted by the character M.C. Bird, voiced by Richard Bakalyan, who relates (often to his own detriment) the history of mankind’s relationship with its avian counterparts. While rooted in some of Kimball’s sci-fi themed parodies from earlier Disney anthology episodes, it is clearly a departure from the studio’s typical short subject fare, animated or otherwise. Its offbeat nature is more akin to Monty Python than Mickey Mouse, and its cutout style animation brings to mind the later efforts of Terry Gilliam on the Pythons’ Flying Circus shows. In one particular scene that epitomizes the film’s somewhat more irreverent humor, M.C. alludes to Edgar Allen Poe’s reputed alcoholism and how a certain raven salvaged his literary career.

The short culminates with the aforementioned visit to Hinckley, Ohio, and the very quirky reality of the town’s “Buzzard Day” celebrations. The sequence finishes with comedienne Ruth Buzzi’s hilarious and very off-key rendition of “When the Buzzards Return to Hinckley Ridge.” Kimball’s efforts were rewarded when the film received the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject of 1969.

Originally 22 minutes in length, the short was expanded to fill out a full episode of the Wonderful World of Disney that first aired in December of 1970. Recycled True-Life Adventure footage and a homage to birds in Disney films and cartoons rounded out the television version.

The film’s success would lead Kimball to direct Dad, Can I Borrow the Car, another short similar in style and humor, but this time examining the relationship between man and the automobile. Narrated by Kurt Russell, it arrived in theaters in September of 1970.

Unfortunately, watching either version of It’s Tough to Be a Bird, is quite difficult at best. The theatrical version appeared a few times on Disney Channel Vault Disney programming in the late 1990s. I was lucky to obtain a copy of the television version when it was included on a Wonderful World of Disney VHS collection, and that tape is now well over twenty years old. Hope currently rests on its possible inclusion in a future Treasures or Legacy DVD set of remaining Disney rarities.

Those Complicated Funny Little Bunnies

2010-03-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

With Easter fast approaching, Disney’s Funny Little Bunnies was clearly an obvious choice for the subject of a post here at 2719 Hyperion.

When I watched the 1934 cartoon short recently, I saw a quaint, entertaining, but largely unspectacular endeavor from Disney’s prolific and groundbreaking Hyperion era. The film was the only Easter-themed short produced by Disney and stands as a shining example of the studio’s early marriage with three-color Technicolor. Like numerous other Silly Symphonies, it is a generally plot-less affair, a series of gags and vignettes that served to explain the more secular traditions associated with the Easter holiday. Similar in theme, style and structure to the earlier Santa’s Workshop, the short features a happy contingent of well-dressed rabbits and their assembly line antics, producing holiday treats such as decorated eggs and chocolate bunnies.

So, how could I take a fresh look at this 70+ year old cartoon?

There was the possibility of merchandise tie-ins. But alas, I’m not much of a vintage Disneyana collector and references to products relating to the more obscure Silly Symphonies are a bit difficult to track down. But there was one interesting item that bore mentioning--a 1951 Little Golden Book entitled Grandpa Bunny, that nearly two decades after the cartoon’s release, explained the origins of Bunnyville and its founder Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny.

Then there was the angle of Wolfgang Reitherman, one of Disney’s famous “Nine Old Men.” It had been noted that Funny Little Bunnies was likely Reitherman’s first assignment at the Disney Studio. I immediately went scrambling for Didier Ghez’s Walt’s People books and dug back into the series’ one Reitherman interview. But there was only a brief mention of the short where the studio veteran noted some difficulty in animating the decorated eggs in a couple of scenes.

My Disney history muse was clearly letting me down.

But sometimes an academic approach is not always the correct one. And it was my own mother who indirectly reminded me of this fact.

She was with me when I popped the DVD in the player a second time and navigated through the menu screens to Funny Little Bunnies, desperately seeking some measure of inspiration.

Within a few moments after the short started, my mom observed, “This is old, like one of the cartoons I would have watched when I was a little girl.” I confirmed that she would have been a child of five years when Funny Little Bunnies was released. She continued to watch for a few moments, then added, “Cartoons were good back then. Not like now. I don’t understand the cartoons that come out now.” As a grandmother of toddlers and tweens, she was likely referring to antics of Sponge Bob, Kim Possible and the countless other animated denizens that travel the current cable and satellite signals.

Talk about a humbling moment. Mom’s very basic observation was the perspective I needed. I was over complicating a bunch of cute rabbits.

Because Funny Little Bunnies, like so many of its Silly Symphony contemporaries, is engaging in its very simplicity. In a funny, colorful and happy manner, it explained to a generation of Depression-era children, just where Easter baskets came from.

Disney enthusiasts such as myself frequently expound on the child-like wonder that Disney entertainment often restores to our jaded and cynical adult frames of reference. Yet very often we can’t see the enchanted forest for the trees. Sometimes a work of animation needs to be perceived as it had been by its original audience, without any baggage of historical perspective. To its audience of some seven decades ago, Funny Little Bunnies was a simple and entertaining eight minutes of cartoon fun.

The Simple Things - April 18, 1953

2010-03-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

The 1953 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Simple Things is an average and in almost all ways unremarkable production. But what it has come to represent, at least to me personally, resonates on an emotional and sentimental level that goes beyond anything the actual short itself conveys.

The Simple Things certainly lives up to its title. Mickey and Pluto take a fishing trip to the beach where their primary antagonists are a persistent clam and overly annoying seagull. It follows the typical pattern of multi-character shorts, where each character has a separate vignette (Pluto with the clam; Mickey with the gull) and then reunite for an overall climax.

But what distinguishes The Simple Things, was that for all intents and purposes, it was essentially the last Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Granted, Mickey’s Christmas Carol would be produced in 1983, and would be followed seven years later by the Prince and the Pauper. But they were both special productions-- adaptations of literary works with more extended running times, and were not really akin to the typical 7-8 minute shorts produced during the studio’s first three decades. And while Runaway Brain certainly matched the just described criteria for classification as a cartoon short, the 1995 film stands more as a happy and refreshing anomaly rather that a return to a schedule of studio produced fare.

No, despite these films and even the television-produced Mickey’s MouseWorks and House of Mouse, The Simple Things represented Mickey’s retirement from the very art form that he as a character ultimately defined and revolutionized. It would also foreshadow Walt Disney’s own shuttering of the studio’s shorts department two years later in 1955.

Mickey’s retirement from film did not relegate him to the life of leisure embodied in the carefree fishing trip of The Simple Things. He quickly transitioned into a television personality via the Mickey Mouse Club and appearances on the Disney anthology program, and later into the roles of theme park ambassador and corporate icon. But he would with his costars--Donald, Pluto, and Goofy among others--leave behind the very form of entertainment that in fact had given birth to the Walt Disney Company.

I can’t imagine that director Charles Nichols and his crew ever intended for the title of The Simple Things to imply anything beyond the cartoon’s theme and content. But in my studies and research of the short, it has always been identified as Mickey’s last cartoon and in that context the title has always taken on an additional meaning for me. The song "The Simple Things" that opens and closes the film, provides more than a moment of bittersweet sentimentality when considered in the context of the then declining animated short subject, not just at Disney but across the rest of Hollywood as well.

The theatrical cartoons of 1930s, 1940s and 1950s are in many ways the simple things referenced by that song’s lyrics. As Mickey and Pluto no doubt journeyed to a rocky beach to escape their worries and troubles in The Simple Things, I and countless others still escape in a similar fashion to that simpler, yet always endearing animated entertainment of those bygone days.

2010-03-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

For seven brief minutes in 1929, Mickey Mouse was, at least in physical size, a mouse.

It has always been a point of amusement that Mickey is, well . . . pretty big for a mouse. When viewed in scale to his surroundings, Mickey likely stands three to four feet tall; a little guy in the conventional sense, but one pretty hefty rodent otherwise. Many toddlers are often sent into screaming hysterics when they encounter for the first time Mickey’s even larger theme park incarnation.

That is why the 1929 cartoon When the Cat’s Away, Mickey’s sixth film, stands as a curious anomaly in the iconic character’s long filmography. For in both physical size and social dynamic, Mickey is truly a mouse in this Walt Disney directed short.

Like many of its early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony counterparts, When the Cat’s Away is a music-based collection of pratfalls and gags centered on a simple premise and void of any kind of plot. Its raw barnyard pedigree is evident right from the start, when the title-referenced character of Tom Cat emerges from a run down shack and quickly imbibes in a triple-X branded jug of moonshine before making his required exit. To the uninitiated, when Mickey pops out of the small hole in Tom’s porch moments later and subsequently leads a small army of mice into the shack, the short takes on an unintended surreal quality.

It is no small coincidence that the Mickey’s fellow mice bear striking resemblances to similar rodents from Disney’s earlier silent endeavors. The film is a remake of sorts of Alice Rattled by Rats, produced in 1925, and the character designs do not stray far from that short’s original cast. And these “supporting mice” contribute much of the cartoon’s content. Mickey’s antics are for the most part focused on a player piano and the typical cartoon gags that that instrument usually inspires. While somewhat mundane overall, the film’s shortcomings are easily forgiven in relation to its more relevant historical context.

But more than anything, When the Cat’s Away is fascinating simply on the level of watching Mickey engage in an environment that matches the creature that he is. In that regard, the cartoon is a curious left turn away from the five Mickey Mouse shorts that preceded it. Mickey had been clearly established as an out-of-scale mouse from his inception in Plane Crazy. For whatever reason, in this case premise trumped consistency and Mickey enjoyed a brief connection with his more primal (albeit still in a cartoon sense) nature.

I can think of only one other screen appearance where Mickey was distinctly “mouse scale”--the 1934 film Hollywood Party. This early live action-animation mix has comedian Jimmy Durante at one point picking Mickey up by the tail while party-goers scream and stand on tables and chairs. Check this earlier post for more information on that particular Disney-MGM collaboration.

And on one final note regarding When the Cat’s Away—the frequent off-color humor prevalent in many of these early shorts is markedly apparent at the cartoon’s end. Minnie’s own “end” becomes prominent in one of the film’s parting shorts.

Mickey's Mechanical Man - June 17, 1933

2010-03-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here’s an interesting quote from Walt Disney:

“The robot angle is popular now. There have been several robots made that really do perform things, and the public is aware of the possibility of the thing.”

Is he referencing the now-famous Buddy Ebsen “little man” experiment? Or discussing the advent of audio animatronics as ultimately realized by such milestones as Great Moments with Mister Lincoln or Pirates of the Caribbean?

No, these words predate even those events by quite a number of years. They were written in January of 1933 as Walt put to paper his ideas for a cartoon short that would ultimately take the form of Mickey’s Mechanical Man, released on June 17 of that same year.

The cartoon was an odd and decidedly offbeat entry in the still clearly evolving Mickey Mouse series. As Walt noted, a fascination with robots and mechanical men was gradually emerging in Depression-era popular culture and it would reach a crescendo of sorts with Westinghouse’s introduction of Elektro the Robot at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. But while Mickey’s automaton marvel is certainly inspired by representations of robots in the science fiction pulp magazines of the era, the cartoon’s story and setting are much more pedestrian and decidedly non-“fantastic” in nature. For Sam, as Mickey named his mechanical wonder, is not destined for the amazing adventures experienced by his magazine and Hollywood counterparts, but was created in fact for a slightly less inspired function: boxing.

Sam’s adversary in the ring took its cue from another popular archetype of the period, a savage and menacing gorilla. Likely the short’s creative talent were aware of the impending April 1933 release of Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong, as the story’s boxing simian just happened to be named The Kongo Killer.

The story’s action and humor center on the literally one-note gag of Minnie’s car horn that sends Sam into a frenzied, out-of-control rage. It is ultimately that gimmick that empowers Sam to defeat his rival. In a fast paced sequence, boxing glove-donned arms and apertures rapidly and successively emerge from all over Sam’s body and pummel Kongo into submission.

While Walt’s original notes detailed scenes of Mickey actually building Sam and subsequently operating him by remote control, the finished short provides no apparent explanation of the robot’s origin, and he acts relatively autonomous from his mentor. Without this background, the cartoon takes on an almost matter-of-fact attitude towards its somewhat wacky premise, as if robot-gorilla matchups were common events during those early years of the Great Depression. But as in many of Mickey’s early black and white efforts, it’s the occasionally off the wall and weird ideas such as those realized in Mickey’s Mechanical Man that became many of the mouse’s more memorable moments.

In the end what I enjoy the most about this particular short is the simple tin can-style design of Sam and how it epitomized those early steam-powered, gear-filled representations of mechanical men. Cartoons are very often snapshots of popular culture, and Mickey’s Mechanical Man presented us with an early rendition of what would become a major icon of science fiction-themed entertainment.

Special thanks to Hans Perk who made available Walt’s original notes for Mickey’s Mechanical Man on his website A. Film L.A.

Teachers Are People - June 27, 1952

2010-03-21T10:21:00.001-07:00

Despite its now uncomfortable parade of guns, grenades and schoolhouse explosions, the Goofy cartoon Teachers Are People remains one of the studio’s funnier endeavors and yet another hilarious take on post-war America sensibilities.

Released on June 27, 1952, this animated homage to the teaching profession took the interesting twist of placing Goofy’s Mr. Geef persona into a role that was at the time nearly completely dominated by the fairer sex. And much like his other Geef vehicles, the Goof plays the role with the usual disconnected innocence that is in stark contrast to the antics of the young pupils in his charge.

Allen Reed, who would go on to voice Fred Flintstone for Hanna Barbera, provided the irony-laced narration that was a standard feature of many of the Goofy shorts. All of the usual schoolhouse conventions are present: pigtails dipped in inkwells, apples for teacher, paper airplanes and overbearing parents. But the short’s humor is better found in its irreverent depictions of some of the less than innocent realities of childhood. The mayhem of the classroom and the apparent joys of truancy are not ignored, while homage is also played to cheating on exams and the limited attention spans of even our best and brightest. The cartoon’s most funny and likely perceptive observation is that sex education is more often learned in the schoolyard than in the classroom. Not necessarily the kind of gag one would expect to find in a 1950s era Disney production, but it’s an excellent example of how the Goofy shorts often pushed the envelope in ways more typically associated with the efforts of Warner Brothers and MGM.

This is no more apparent than in the scene where George, the resident class clown empties his pockets of everything from a slingshot and firecrackers to the slightly more lethal hand grenade and revolver. Potentially offensive in our current era of increased school violence, the scene manages to maintain its overall tone of absurdity enough to diffuse any real strong cries of protest. But even then it’s hard to completely exorcise from mind recent headlines and news reports when the schoolhouse literally explodes into ruin, and the cartoon concludes with George at the blackboard repeatedly scribing I will not bomb the school again. It’s a funny moment, but sadly, due to our all-too-recent history, a somewhat disquieting one as well.

Teachers Are People can be found on the Disney Treasures Complete Goofy DVD set.

Images © Walt Disney Company

In the Bag - July 27, 1956

2010-03-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

Rarely will you see the 1956 Humphrey Bear cartoon In the Bag discussed or even acknowledged in scholarly animation circles. It exists without the presence of a major Disney cartoon star such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, and was produced during the late 1950s, when animated short subjects were beginning their slow but steady march to the precipice of near-extinction. Yet this little underrated gem of a film stands as one of the studio's funnier efforts. And its little piece of George Brun's produced music has kept it alive in the memories of countless viewers since it was released on this day some fifty-one years ago.

First you stick a rag, put in the bag, bump bump
Then you bend your back, put it in the sack, bump bump
That's the way it's done, it's a lot of fun, bump bump
Cuttin' capers puttin' papers in the bag

That little ditty has survived in the subconscious minds of so many. Few remember the lyrics beyond the exaggerated "bump bumps" but they can clearly hum the tune and mimic the hip action of Humphrey and his pals. The song became so popular, it inspired a Mickey Mouse Club recording entitled the "Humphrey Hop."In the Bag was the second of only two cartoons to headline the character of Humphrey Bear and costar Ranger J. Audobon Woodlore, both of whom had attained some measures of success in a number of Donald Duck shorts. The short centers on the Ranger's efforts to clean up a litter-strewn Brownstone Park by cleverly tricking the resident bears into "playing a game" that will effectively take care of the mess. Failing that, he bribes them all with a meal of chicken cacciatore. Humphrey is ultimately left "holding the bag" and his efforts to clean up his assigned section are portrayed in a series of gags and pratfalls, and feature a hilarious cameo from another famous bear of 1950s popular culture.

What is especially notable about In the Bag is that it was one of only a few CinemaScope cartoon shorts produced by Disney. It has been only with its inclusion in the Disney Treasures Rarities DVD set that viewers have finally been able to see it in its original widescreen theatrical format.

Director Jack Hannah and his crew very specifically composed In the Bag for CinemaScope, and it's striking to see their results in a presentation that hasn't fallen victim to cropping and pan-and-scan revisions. As the following screen shots illustrate, it is easy to see how Hannah's original designs for the film were severely compromised in subsequent television and home video appearances. In any of these examples, imagine one third of the screen effectively cut away:

Clever, funny and well realized in its cartoon modern style and widescreen presentation, In the Bag stands as one of those off-the-radar productions that still compares favorably to many of the studio's better known and more historically recognized animated shorts.

Images © Walt Disney Company

Mickey's Fire Brigade - August 3, 1935

2010-03-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

There is so much pre-Snow White Disney animation that goes largely unrecognized and unnoticed, even though all of those early Hyperion Avenue efforts essentially laid the groundwork for the studio’s big leap into feature films. A shining example of this highly concentrated period of brilliance and creativity could easily be the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Fire Brigade, released on this day in 1935.

Mickey’s Fire Brigade was the second of what would become the well known “trio” shorts of the late 1930s that showcased Mickey, Donald Duck and Goofy . It followed Mickey’s Service Station by a little more than three months, and clearly benefited from the advancement into Technicolor that had just become the standard of all the studio’s productions. It would be hard to imagine this very color-intensive film executed in the stark grayscale designs that Mickey’s Service Station had then still been burdened with.

The film’s mid-1930s pedigree is readily apparent as represented by Donald and Goofy, who retain much of their early years characteristics. The Goof is still very much channeling his Dippy Dawg persona, and Donald’s long bill and lanky body remain very much in place.

Throughout the history of animation, fire has often been morphed into a personality-based entity, but never more successfully than in this particular cartoon. From the moment the title card erupts into flames, fire becomes a character every bit as distinct and adversarial as a villain such as Pete, or as pronounced as even the malicious and mischievous specters from The Lonesome Ghosts. When Donald and Goofy first approach the burning house, they are immediately met by very clever and highly motivated fire-based manifestations. Donald is literally lifted up by a flame from the basement and batted through an upstairs window, while Goofy’s approach through the front door is met by a smoke cloud that transforms into a boxer and punches him back out into the front yard. Similarly, when Mickey mans a fire hose at the top of a ladder, flames quickly reach out and close the window he has positioned himself in front of.

The cartoon is an incredibly kinetic tour de force of pratfalls and gags with nary a slow or subdued moment. Among its many, many high points:

Donald wages war with a small army of flame gremlins. His tactics include scooping them up and depositing them in a goldfish bowl, and doing the probable impossible of neutralizing them with fly paper.

They in turn taunt Donald by dancing on piano keys to the tune of Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, and in a clever bit, literally take the floor out from underneath him.

Mickey dramatically wrestles with an out of control fire hose, that hilariously breaks the fourth wall when the film’s non-existent movie camera is doused in the process.

And Goofy’s misguided attempts to rescue furniture and valuables are lampooned when the items are ultimately and ironically incinerated in the fire engine’s boiler.

The action climaxes in the uproarious bathtub rescue that culminates in a crazy wack-a-mole exchange between Clarabelle Cow and our trio of heroes.

Every frame of Mickey’s Fire Brigade brims over with activity and attention to details. Director Ben Sharpsteen and his crew took no shortcuts; there are no static representations of fire anywhere in the film. Most notable in this regard--while Clarabelle performs her bathtub serenade, a small window nearby reveals the smoke and flames she is so blissfully ignorant of. It demonstrates the extra mile Disney animators were willing to go to have their product stand apart from all others.

It would be remiss to not mention the short’s wonderful watercolor backgrounds that were done such great justice by the aforementioned advance into Technicolor. Beautifully realized, these efforts would be a hallmark of much of the studio’s production during the late 1930s and foreshadow the later similar achievements in background painting that distinguished the likes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio.

Even in the fast paced arena of golden age cartoons, Mickey’s Fire Brigade is layered with a creative brilliance and possesses a frantic energy that is nearly unsurpassed. It is a rollercoaster ride of classic animation that clearly represents the collective genius that was residing at the time at 2719 Hyperion Avenue.

Images © Walt Disney Company

Runaway Brain - August 11, 1995

2010-03-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

It’s been a dozen years since the happy anomaly that is Runaway Brain debuted in theaters alongside the now forgotten feature film A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. This cartoon emerged over forty years after the studio produced its last traditional format Mickey Mouse cartoon short, The Simple Things, in 1953. It is a dynamic, hip and fun seven minutes of animation, very much awash in 1990s popular culture, yet still thankfully grounded in the creative sensibilities of the Hyperion Avenue era of Disney production.

While Disney did not completely abandon Mickey Mouse cartoons during the decades following The Simple Things, the two efforts that preceded Runaway Brain, Mickey’s Christmas Carol and The Prince and the Pauper, were longer form literary adaptations and somewhat removed from the more traditional cartoon short format. Runaway Brain returned Mickey to the classic time and pace of a one reel short subject, the very type of animated entertainment he pioneered some sixty years earlier.

From its opening frames however, there is no mistaking Runaway Brain’s modern age pedigree. After its King Kong-esque opening title is quickly clawed into tatters, the audience is met with a joystick-wielding Mickey totally immersed in a Mortal Kombat style video game based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Minnie arrives for an anniversary date and is quickly put off by Mickey’s inattention. Mickey tries to make a amends but digs himself even deeper when Minnie mixes up newspaper ads and misinterprets 18 holes of mini golf for an 18-day Hawaiian cruise.
Desperately in need of a $1000 windfall, Mickey follows a want ad to the laboratory of simian mad scientist Dr. Frankenollie, whose devious plan is to do a brain swap between the mouse and his monstrous lab assistant Julius. Frankenollie features, albeit briefly, the voice talents of Kelsey Grammer, while Julius is in fact portrayed by Disney career villian Pete, whose peg leg was returned after a fairly extended PC-related sabbatical. Brains are switched, the good doctor is incinerated, and the short plunges into a frantic paced tour de force of action and heroics with a rough and tumble cityscape atmosphere more akin to recent Spiderman flicks than to traditional Mickey Mouse adventures.

But Runaway Brain is not as disconnected from Mickey’s cartoon heritage as one might think. Scratch below it’s video game, surf shop and other contemporary trappings and you have a short produced from very much the same disciplines behind Disney’s earlier short subject cartoons. The brain exchange that takes place between Mickey and Julius is an especially notable achievement in character animation and a credit to Andreas Dejas and his team; it effectively transplants Mickey’s personality into the monstrous Julius, and likewise turns a long standing corporate icon into a raving psychopath. In addition, director Chris Bailey was not afraid to move his non-existent camera around and approach shots from wholly unorthodox angles, as demonstrated by the sequence where a Julius-possessed Mickey scampers up through the laboratory’s pipes and conduits to dramatically emerge before the city skyline. Early Disney animators used similar “camera moving” techniques as far back as the early 1930s.

More than anything, Runaway Brain is a successful creative marriage of the Mouse’s very early and certainly less inhibited black and white efforts with the later Technicolor productions that featured a much more benign Mickey but were rich in style and layered upon lush, detailed backgrounds.

While the occasional pundit has made note of this uncharacteristic approach to Mickey and has even speculated that that is why it has been largely unseen in the years since its release, its darker and wilder dynamic is not unprecedented. Mickey explored similar avenues in early cartoons such as The Haunted House, The Gorilla Mystery and The Mad Doctor, just to name a few. Dr. Frankenollie’s lab is an obvious throwback to Universal’s classic monster films, but no doubt also received some inspiration from Mickey’s similarly styled 1937 cartoon The Worm Turns.

Runaway Brain’s unconventional nature was also likely influenced by the trio of Roger Rabbit cartoons that preceded it during the early 1990s. That is especially evidenced by the number of inside jokes its creators slipped into the film. While references to The Exorcist, veteran Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, and even a regurgitated Zazu are relatively obvious, it takes a keener eye to spot the newspaper homage to Clarisse, the torch-singing counterpart to Chip and Dale in the 1951 short Two Chips and a Miss. The monster’s name Julius is a possible reference to one of Pete’s earliest of co-stars, a cat character from the pre-Mickey series of Alice comedies. And it appears that Mickey must be a Trekkie of sorts, as a model of the Starship Enterprise can be seen in a corner of his living room.

Preschooler moms beware--this is not your standard toddler-friendly Mickey Mouse cartoon. Hence its inclusion on a Disney Treasures DVD rather than in the more inclusive Cartoon Classics line. Modern audiences may be jarred somewhat by its darker, irreverent tone, but most animation buffs would likely view Runaway Brain as a return to Mickey’s earlier, often times impudent, sometimes scary, and definitely more uninhibited, black and white years.

Images © Walt Disney Company

They're Off

2010-03-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Director Jack Hannah and his crew really appear to have enjoyed themselves when making the 1948 Goofy cartoon short They're Off. Similar to elements in prior cartoons such as The Nifty Nineties and Hockey Homicide, a racing form makes reference to the short's own makers as well as other Disney Studio personnel.

Horse owners include Hannah, Campbell Grant, Riley Thomson, Al Bertino, Yale Gracey, John Hench, John Sibley, Art Babbit, Ken Anderson, Charles Phillippi and Andy Engman. Among the jockeys are Bill Berg, Volus Jones and Hugh Hennesy.

Hannah, Gracey and background artist Howard Dunn are also alluded to on a page of scrawled notes and formulas.

Still mysteries to me are the following names: M. Satterwhite, B. Selk, Toby, M. Greenberg, B. Newman, Bobby N., F. Bresson, R. Carlson, D. Link, T. Witmer and A. Scott. I am hoping that some of the ever so resourceful readers here can help identify any or all of these equestrian notables. I will update the post accordingly.

Edit-From Hans Perk:

Around this time (more precise in July 1946), Jack Hannah shared his room 2C-6 with his assistant director Bee Selck. Mary Satterwhite was in 2C-7, and in 2C-5 we find M. Greenberg, Yale Gracey and Thelma Witmer (bg painter) - next door to Howard Dunn, Don Griffith and Eustace Lycett in 2C-4. Frank Bresson in 3D-14, Robert Carlson (animator) in 1F-3 (with Russ Dyson), Dorothy Link in 2F-7 (with Jack Bruner and Chuck Wheeler), Art Scott in 2A-3, Toby Toblemann (ass. dir.) in 2A-7. No Newman at that time...

Also of note is a wonderful background pan near the beginning of the short that features numerous books on horses and racing. Funny bits include authors Pickham and Weep and titles Mother Hubbard's Selections and Know Your Nags.

Images © Walt Disney Company

Hawaiian Holiday - September 24, 1937

2010-03-21T10:14:00.001-07:00

Even though it didn’t achieve statehood until 1959, the romance and exotic nature of Hawaii permeated stateside popular culture for much of the first half of the 20th century. It reached a crescendo of sorts just prior to World War II, and it was in this paradise-worshipping atmosphere that the 1937 Mickey Mouse cartoon Hawaiian Holiday was born.

Hawaiian Holiday likely owed some of its inspiration to another island-themed Hollywood production that preceded it into theaters by six months. The Bing Crosby musical Waikiki Wedding was a huge hit for Paramount Pictures, and featured the now classic tunes "Blue Hawaii" and the Oscar-winning "Sweet Leilani."

Hawaiian Holiday opens with the song "On the Beach at Waikiki," immediately establishing its exotic island setting. That famous tune by G. H. Stover and Henry Kalmai was one of the most popular songs of the 1930s and was introduced here by Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy. Pluto was also on hand, rounding out one of the rare occasions when all of Disney’s “fab five” shared the screen in the same cartoon short.

We are quickly presented with many of the era’s romantic conventions of Hawaiian popular culture. The characters are enjoying a beachside luau. Mickey plays the traditional slack key guitar while Minnie and Donald alternate between ukulele strumming and hula dancing. In a distinct foreshadowing of his later Sport Goofy persona, the Goof engages in a pratfall-filled surfing vignette. At the time, surfing was still generally considered uniquely Hawaiian, and was just beginning to make its migration to places like Australia and California.

But alas, this many stars is two or three stars too many. Shortly after Mickey, Minnie and Donald are featured in a comical musical interlude, the rest of short settles into focusing mainly on Goofy with his surfboard and Pluto’s antics involving a crab and a starfish. This somewhat disjointed approach is fortunately offset by the short’s wonderful details (including outrigger canoe and little grass shack) and amazing watercolor backgrounds, both hallmarks of the Hyperion Avenue studio era.

One particular subtle and ongoing gag that I really enjoyed involved Goofy’s trademark hat. It is a well-crafted bit of plausible impossible. Despite pratfalls, high waves and underwater submersion, it, for the most part, remains firmly attached to its owner’s head. On the occasion when Goof and hat are separated, carefully orchestrated choreography reunites the two in short order.

Another subtle yet interesting detail is Minnie’s portrayal as a topless hula dancer. While replete with standard white gloves and oversize shoes, only a lei adorns her upper body. Sixty years later she would again travel to Hawaii at the conclusion of Runaway Brain, but would opt for a more conservative two piece suit for that trip.
Author DeSota Brown notes in the book Hawaii Recalls, “Films used Hawaii for all sorts of celluloid action, from tap dancing hula girls and angry volcanoes to murder mysteries and communist plots. These weren’t strictly intended to promote the islands as such, but they helped to do the job nonetheless. The fact that these movies were usually utterly unrealistic bolstered, instead of diminished, their selling abilities.”

To a similar extent, Hawaiian Holiday equally served to portray and promote that romantic notion of an unspoiled island paradise of a now bygone era, albeit in animated form.

Images © Walt Disney Company

A Visit to Dr. XXX

2010-03-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is a near overwhelming task to quantify the sheer brilliance of the 1933 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Mad Doctor.

Director Dave Hand clearly intended to borrow style and design from that era's stark yet very stylized black and white horror films. This seven-minute tour de force is heavy on atmosphere and surprisingly, a little bit more chilling and unsettling than one might expect. So much so that it was considered unsuitable for some audiences by a British film censor, and later, 16mm prints carried a similar warning.

The Mad Doctor employs many standard horror story conventions, beginning with its dark and stormy night opening. It then goes on to blend three somewhat disparate themes--a haunted house filled with booby traps and secret passages, threatening creatures in the form of animated skeletons, and the title character mad doctor and his ambitious plans of body part amalgamation. Let's face it gang, those early Mickey cartoons were not the benign "strolling in the park one day" and "I'll clean up your yard" efforts that characterized his later Technicolor years.

The tone is established quickly when Pluto is violently kidnapped and taken to a skull rock-perched castle, the ominous and threatening features of which are only clearly revealed in split second lightening flashes. Mickey bravely follows in pursuit and quickly encounters the first in a series of comical yet still decidedly scary booby traps, when the castle bridge disassembles as he moves across it. Still teetering high above the crashing waves of the sea, Mickey is literally pulled into the castle's interior. At the same time, a nameplate near the door reveals the villain to be Dr. XXX. This is a distinct aside to Warner Brothers 1932 film Doctor X. That particular film's art direction and set design no doubt inspired Dave Hand and his crew as Mickey and Pluto's subsequent adventures would reveal.

Mickey finds himself in a set piece with all the standard haunted house embellishments. Cauldrons, chains and manacles, skulls and bones all litter the entrance foyer, while a swarm of bats emerge from the darkened recesses. Most striking is Mickey's journey down a secret passage that is, in my opinion, one of the single most amazing pieces of animation from those still rough-around-the-edges early days of cartoon production. In this sequence, as Mickey travels down a claustrophobic passage, the view follows him in a continuous shot as he pivots around a corner and tumbles down a long shaft. My young son, upon viewing this segment of the short, immediately exclaimed, "Wow, that was 3-D!" No, actually that was hand-drawn, traditional animation at its finest, where the background elements were ingeniously animated along with central character.

Following earlier efforts such as The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House, the comical potential of skeletons is revisited again as Mickey encounters the prank-delivering undead denizens of the doctor's castle. It is here that the very clever designs of the creative team are entertainingly demonstrated, beginning with a coffin-styled cuckoo clock complete with skeletal cuckoo. Equally clever and well-realized is the skeleton-filled stairs that Mickey literally finds himself falling victim too. An ensuing chase scene in which the skeletons lob their own skulls at Mickey builds up the short's kinetic energy, but it's tempered somewhat by the still determined and resilient mouse's encounter with a giant spider skeleton.

At the same time, helpless victim Pluto is mired in troubles of his own. The mad doctor has revealed both himself and his diabolical plans. These plans involve Pluto and an equally terrified chicken and a lot of cutting and dissecting. The doctor's chalkboard diagrams are very funny as is his poetic soliloquy, but Pluto's fear in the scene is so palpable that the short does tangibly shift into a slightly more chilling and for some, no doubt frightening experience. When the mad doctor cuts apart Pluto's shadow, it is almost more disturbing than comical.

Despite his own valiant rescue efforts, Mickey soon finds himself in similar circumstances, and with no hope of escape. The story's happy resolution is only accomplished through the "it's all just a dream" plot device. But subtly, this underlying nightmare context is still a bit unsettling--the villain was never vanquished and the heroes were left to some decidedly grisly fates. I can see why some of those early card-carrying members of the theater-sponsored Micky Mouse Clubs may not have left the theater happily whistling "Turkey in the Straw."

But that was, and is still the joy of those early Mickey Mouse cartoons. Most of these endeavors displayed a plucky irreverence that was ultimately lost or diminished in later years. The Mad Doctor both immersed itself in, and at the same time, satirized Hollywood's then fledgling horror genre to great effect. It is certainly a classic piece of animation, and one of the most notable achievements of the Disney Studio's pre-Technicolor years.

This degree of notoriety served it well in recent years when it was used as the basis for content in the video game Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse. Many of the short's inspired gags and pratfalls translated deftly into challenging game devices.

The Mad Doctor can be found on the Walt Disney Treasures DVD collection Mickey Mouse in Black and White Volume One.

Images from The Mad Doctor © Walt Disney Company

You Can't Reason With a Headless Man

2010-03-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

While Donald Duck's 1952 cartoon Trick or Treat bears the Disney Studio's most direct homage to the Halloween holiday, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment from the feature film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad serves up equal amounts of ghostly chills and jack-o'-lantern imagery. For All Hallows Eve is in fact the setting for Ichabod Crane's penultimate encounter with perhaps one of Disney's most underrated villains, the Headless Horseman.

One of the true highlights of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and perhaps one of the most overlooked musical vignettes in Disney films, is the song "The Headless Horseman" from composers Don Raye and Gene de Paul, noted Hollywood talents, both with extensive popular music resumes.

Don Raye transitioned in the mid-1930s from vaudeville entertainment to songwriting, working with other bright young composers, most notably Sammy Cohn. A fortuitous match was made in 1939 when the Andrew Sisters began performing his material. This led to work in Hollywood, first on the 1939 movie Argentine Nights and later the 1941 Abbott and Costello debut film Buck Privates, both of which prominently featured Andrews Sisters' performances. He became a resident song smith for Universal Studios, teaming with Gene de Paul beginning in late 1941 and the two subsequently collaborated on such films as In the Navy, San Antonio Rose, Keep 'Em Flying and Ride 'Em Cowboy. de Paul was also on the Hollywood fast track; that same year he was Oscar nominated for work on the film Hellzapoppin. The two found their way to Disney in the late 1940s, contributing to So Dear to My Heart, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Raye later on Alice in Wonderland. Shortly thereafter, dePaul would become especially famous for the musical numbers in MGM's classic Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, released in 1954.

Distinctly reflecting their own musical backgrounds, Raye and de Paul infused the colonial American setting of Sleepy Hollow with the popular music styles of the mid 20th century. Frequent Andrew Sisters co-performer Bing Crosby tells the story via narration and song, and at one point provided vocal instructor Ichabod with his trademark "bo bo bo baba bo" crooning. But the segment's true musical highlight is in fact Crosby's vocalization of villain Brom Bones performance of the Headless Horseman ghost story.

Famous for such wartime hits as "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar," Raye's skills for clever, densely-worded lyrics are clearly evident in the tale of Sleepy Hollow's resident pumpkin thrower:

Now gather round while I elucidate,
On what happens outside when it gets late.
Along about midnight the ghosts and banshees,
Get together for their nightly jamboree.
There's ghosts with horns and saucer eyes,
And some with fangs about this size.
Some short and fat, some tall and thin,
And some don't even bother to where their skin.
I'm telling you brother it's a frightful sight,
To see what goes on Halloween night.

Oh, when the spooks have a midnight jamboree,
They break it up with fiendish glee.
Ghosts are bad but the one that's cursed,
Is the Headless Horseman, he's the worst.
When he goes a jockeying across the land,
Holding his noggin in his hand.
Demons take one look and groan,
And hit the road for parts unknown.
There's no spook like a spook that spurned,
They don't like him and he's really burned.
Swears to the longest day he's dead,
He'll show them that he can get a head.

They say he's tired of his flaming top,
He's got a yen to make a swap.
So he rides one night a year,
To find a head in the hollow here.
And he likes 'em little, he likes 'em big,
Part in the middle, or a wig.
Black or white or even red,
The Headless Horseman needs a head.
With a hip, hip and a clippity clop,
He's out looking for a top to chop.
So don't stop to figure out a plan,
You can't reason with a headless man.

Now if you doubt this tale is so,
I met that spook just a year ago.
Now I didn't stop for a second look,
But made for the bridge that spans the brook.
For once you cross that bridge my friend,
The ghost is through, his power ends.
So when you're riding home tonight,
Make for the bridge with all your might.
He'll be down in the hollow there,
He needs your head. Lookout! Beware!
With a hip, hip and a clippity clop,
He's out looking for a head to chop.
So don't stop to figure out a plan,
You can't reason with a headless man.

"Grim Grinning Ghosts" vocalist Thurl Ravenscroft did an equally fun yet slightly more sinister studio version of the song that was recently included on the iTunes exclusive Walt Disney Records Archive Collection Volume One.

The Old Mill - November 5, 1937

2010-03-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

It is well near impossible to underestimate the importance and impact of The Old Mill, Disney's classic Silly Symphony that was released seventy years ago on this date. Cited most often as the first film to employ the multiplane camera, its merits extend well beyond that particular technical innovation. In their now classic book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston succinctly describe why The Old Mill is so notable and important, even beyond the achievement of the camera itself:

By 1936, a new type of picture was becoming possible. Technical skills were advancing and a new camera was being built that promised wonderful illusions; animation of rain and clouds and lightning had improved to the point where they were quite convincing; cartoon colors were beginning to glow; and new styling coordinated all of a film's parts into one unified concept. When these achievements were combined with the ability to portray mood on the screen, a true milestone in the development of the animated cartoon resulted: The Old Mill, Academy Award winner for 1937. With no story other than the reaction of various animals to one stormy night in a broken down mill, the film showed that an audience could be swept up by sheer artistry and become deeply involved in an animated film.

Echoing similar themes, authors Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman remarked in their recent excellent and extensive tome Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies:

This is the first Disney film meant to be taken seriously, the first with quasi-religious overtones in which art, nature, and machinery are given a sacred aura.

Much could certainly be written about The Old Mill, from the specific technical intricacies of the multiplane camera to the film's numerous awards and accolades. But its very simple, yet stunning interpretation of life, death and renewal is what truly resonates and continues to distinguish the film some seven decades later.

The Old Mill, under the inspired direction of Wilfred Jackson and Graham Heid, is brilliant in both composition and visual direction. The viewer is literally drawn into this microcosm of nature, almost as if taking the form of an incorporeal spirit and witnessing the events that subsequently transpire. This is in fact a deliberate dynamic created by the film's makers, in that frequently, the various creatures seem to acknowledge the viewer, most notably an especially observant owl.

The film opens some distance from the mill, as seen from the perspective of an orb weaver spider meticulously crafting its web. A slow and methodical zoom brings us in closer to the mill as we witness ducks and cows in their deliberate motions and travails. The focus settles on a small songbird whom we follow into the mill's interior to its mate and a nest of eggs. In a truly amazing vertical tracking shot attributed to animators Bob Wickersham and Stan Quackenbush, we travel from the building base to its peak, along the way encountering mice, doves, the aforementioned owl and finally a colony of bats who, with the approaching dusk, take leave and return us to mill's surrounding community of residents.

A cacophony of frog croaks and cricket sounds becomes an entertaining musical interlude. In perhaps one of the film's most stunning scenes, fireflies dance before the backdrop of the mill. This all leads to the climatic and visually mesmerizing thunderstorm. Drama unfolds as the mill residents attempt to survive an assault that culminates in a dramatic lightning strike.

Dawn arrives, peaceful and serene. The bats return from their nightly sojourn and we journey through and away from the mill much in the reverse manner of how we initially approached it. Starting at peak, we descend through the mill's now slightly more disheveled interior and revisit again the owl, doves, mice and a nest of newly hatched songbird young along with their attentive and proud parents. Retreating back from the mill, we see ducks and cows reversing their prior travels and we ultimately return to the spiderweb of the film's beginning, destroyed, yet still beautiful in its rain soaked glistening. While the mill's residents have ultimately weathered the storm, in a subtle testament to the nature of life and death, it is the fate of the distant spider that is questionable.

As noted, The Old Mill was a dramatic departure for Walt Disney, and especially remarkable in that it was less than a decade removed from the more primitive presentations of Steamboat Willie and The Skeleton Dance. In theme and execution, it paved the way for much of what would emerge a few years later in Fantasia. It's opening scene would be reinterpreted close to fifty years later for the equally stunning opening sequence of The Rescuers Down Under.

The Old Mill is an amazing and notable achievement, a film whose depth extends well beyond the visual dynamic afforded to it by one of the Disney Studio's most famous innovations.

Baloney and Macaroni and a Huckleberry Pie

2010-03-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

In their 1987 book, Too Funny for Words: Disney Greatest Sight Gags, Disney Legends Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston noted, "The first Mickey films had been developed so carefully in story that there was really no need for dialogue, other than an occasional 'Yoo-hoo" from Minnie (Building a Building, 1933)." The citing of Building a Building was by no means a random choice on the part of these two Studio veterans; this early Mickey Mouse black and white classic is an amazing and wonderful combination of story, music, character and pratfall comedy, orchestrated by Dave Hand in what was his first directing assignment for Walt Disney. It was released seventy-five years ago today on January 7, 1933 and richly deserved the Academy Award nomination it subsequently received.

Building a Building was built upon a then common foundation, the standard Mickey-Minnie-Pegleg Pete triangle formula used in many of the Mouse's early era cartoons. But the short spins out from that premise in so many other entertaining ways. While Mickey's personality driven steam shovel initially takes center stage, it is in fact lunch cart vendor Minnie who quickly takes the reins of the cartoon via the snappy "Box Lunch" musical number. A cacophony of pounding hammers and rivet gun percussions accompany Minnie in a sky-high choreography that grows to include painters, bricklayers and carpenters. The vignette ultimately concludes with a clever sashay performed by Mickey's aforementioned steam shovel.

The short then segues into a series of Harold Llyod-inspired stunts and construction site daredevilry, as Foreman Pete plays rival to Mickey for Minnie's affections. In an interesting twist, the over-the-top pratfalls are mixed deftly with Douglas Fairbanks maneuverings. One moment Mickey is partaking in a plausible impossible of high altitude gravity defiance, the next he and Minnie are furiously attempting to outrun Pete's uber-destructive rivet gun rampage. Their rope swinging, beam-balancing, cement trough bobsledding escapades can almost rival the action found within any Indiana Jones adventure.

The short is full of funny moments both loud (Pete calling Mickey a "blankety-blank baboon") and quietly amusing (workers parachute down from the building when the lunch whistle blows). One especially notable sequence features Mickey transporting a load of bricks via platform elevator. The animation became a textbook example of the squash-and-stretch gag technique, to the point where Walt subsequently showcased the scene on the Disneyland television show.

Especially interesting about Building a Building was a curious dynamic that it created between director Hand and Walt himself. As critically well-received as the fim was at the time, it elicited a entirely different reaction from Walt, as Hand explained in an interview with Michael Barrier in 1973:

"He told me that I shouldn't be in the business, on my first directorial job on shorts. That was Building a Building. Walt had the extra animators, and I suppose he saw a directorial ability in me—I say that humbly—so he gave me this story that was turned down by other directors and said that I was to direct it. This was my introduction to Disney direction, although I had directed before Disney. He didn't care about what I'd done before. But he wouldn't give me any of the key animators, the guys who could animate. He gave me these little, junior fellows. He said, 'Hell, Dave, you've worked with juniors as supervising animator, you can work with these fellows.' Well, there was a lot of personality stuff, and how do you get it out of juniors? Anyway, when the picture was previewed, I felt happy, because I happened to have counted the number of laughs in the picture, because it was my picture. Never mind the number, it was up there—actually, twenty-one. I was very happy—happy for the studio, not for myself. The next day, Walt came into my room, and he stayed through noon hour—about an hour and a half—and told me where I should have been, instead of in an animation studio, and how did I ever think I could direct. This is true: Walt isn't here to defend himself, but I assure you it was true. He knocked me down until I was lower than a snake's belly. I don't know why he did it, because I know the picture was all right: I heard the audience at the sneak preview."

Hand's efforts on Building a Building and other shorts were ultimately vindicated. As Hand himself noted, "A very peculiar man, Walt was. But I took it. I took it, and before long I was directing Snow White [laughing]. Don't ask me how I got it."

Mickey's Polo Team

2010-03-21T10:05:00.001-07:00

While the 1936 short Mickey's Polo Team is best remembered for its many movie star caricatures, it also features a number of scenes that serve up a veritable who's who of Disney Studio cartoon characters from the mid 1930s. Most prominent are Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the Big Bad Wolf as the players for the Mickey Mousers team, who square off against the Movie Stars team comprised of screen comedians Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx and Laurel and Hardy.

But even more interesting are the numerous personalities that fill the grandstand:

1. Legs Sparrow, one of the three prime suspects from the Silly Symphony Who Killed Cock Robin.

2. Peter and Polly Penguin from the Silly Symphony Peculiar Penguins.

3. Three of the many miniature Mickey orphans that appeared in the shorts Orphans Benefit and Orphans Picnic. Because there are three, I identified them as such rather than as Morty and Ferdy who made their lone screen appearance in Mickey's Steamroller.

4. Cock Robin and a distinctly off-model incarnation of Jenny Wren from Who Killed Cock Robin. The Jenny Wren character was in fact a caricature of Mae West, though the resemblance is not apparent in this particular version.

5. The Wise Little Hen from the Silly Symphony of the same name. That short is best known for the debut of Donald Duck.

6. King Midas and Goldie from the Silly Symphony The Golden Touch.

7. The title character from the Silly Symphony The Flying Mouse, who is accompanied by his mother.

8. Ambrose and Dirty Bill from the Silly Symphony The Robber Kitten.

9. Pluto and his occasional girlfriend Fifi.

10. The Three Little Pigs surround famous child star Shirley Temple.

11. Two unnamed rabbits possibly derived from the Easter-themed Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.

In separate scenes, Max Hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and Toby Tortoise Returns shares the screen with film star Edna May Oliver . . .

. . . while Clarabelle Cow swoons over ladies man Clark Gable.

Cheering the Movie Stars team in another area of the grandstand are a number of other notable Hollywood personalities of the era:

Clockwise from top left are Charles Laughton (from his title role in Henry VIII), Eddie Cantor, Greta Garbo, W. C. Fields and Harold Lloyd.

Melody Time

2010-03-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

Vastly underrated, largely unrecognized, and sadly little discussed by even the most serious and well respected of Disney historians is the 1948 animated feature Melody Time. It is in many ways an unheralded classic and a very notable showcase for many of the studio's most talented writers, artists and animators. It was released six decades ago on May 27, 1948.

The initial lack of financial success for Fantasia forced Walt Disney to abandon plans for successive reissues of that film with new material, but he did in fact revisit the style and structure of Fantasia, though not its classical music format, in both Make Mine Music which followed in 1946, and then Melody Time. Along with the other late-1940s "package" films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the films quickly lost their identities when Disney chose to subsequently break them apart into individual sequences for later theatrical releases and television airings. It was not until the mid-1990s that Melody Time emerged again in its original form, though albeit in very low profile Disney Channel airings and then a few years later in home video releases that, at least in America, included the unnecessary editing of cigarette smoking references. These factors, combined with the film's very distinct post-World War II popular music have sadly served to diminish its otherwise significant artistic and creative achievements. Even contemporary critics tend to still compartmentalize the film, analyzing and discussing its component parts rather than addressing its overall theme and presentation.

Melody Time is comprised of seven musical vignettes--Once Upon a Wintertime, Bumble Boogie, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot, Trees, Blame It on the Samba and Pecos Bill--presented in the form of an overall musical program, somewhat akin to a concert hall program. Though it jettisoned the classical music trappings of Fantasia, it still retained that film's prominent theme of artistic interpretation. Each sequence begins with a paintbrush and canvas introduction. Though generally well received, most criticisms of the film focused on these connecting narratives, considering them generally weak, and undermining the film's overall presentation. While generally praising Melody Time's individual segments, Leonard Maltin remarked in his book The Disney Films:

"What Melody Time lacks is unity. The paintbrush format and Buddy Clark's introductions are a poor substitute for cohesion, and, though one can enjoy the various segments, there is a feeling, when Pecos Bill brings the film to an abrupt conclusion, that something is missing. Fantasia was episodic, too, but one felt that it was cut from a whole cloth, as it were. There was never a feeling of fragmentation."

It is an opinion with which I must respectfully disagree. The cohesion that Maltin found lacking is in fact present on a much more subtle yet still overriding level. The overall art direction of Melody Time represented a dramatic shift away from the more literal artistic interpretations that had characterized most Disney animation up until that point. Mary Blair, Claude Coats and Dick Kelsey, despite the episodic format, provided the film a unified visual style heavy with impressionistic influence and very atypical uses of color. It is a film that is consistently painted in very bold strokes and in many places truly bears the mark of Mary Blair's artistic genius. This is especially apparent in Once Upon a Wintertime, Trees and Johnny Appleseed. It is indeed ironic that Blair's legacy has been recently so wrapped up in It's a Small World, by individuals who tend to disregard efforts such as Melody Time where her talent and creativity are so very better represented.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed in particular is easily one of the most underrated and unappreciated works of Disney animation. Studio veteran Winston Hibler created a rhythmic narrative and successfully combined it with wonderful songs and Blair's often stunning tableaus. Hibler's eloquent and frequently beautiful poetic narration is complemented so often by Blair's amazing designs. The sequence's final moments that highlight " . . . John's heavenly orchard of apple trees," where apple blossom trees merge into a cloud-filled sky, is simply breathtaking.

And this is not to in anyway discount any of the other six segments. Once Upon a Wintertime is a holiday greeting card come to life and is especially notable for the aforementioned atypical uses of color. Though brief, Bumble Boogie is a high energy tour de force through a surreal piano inspired naturescape. Well realized are both Little Toot and Pecos Bill, which stylistically come closer in storytelling and design to Disney's then more traditional efforts. Blame It on the Samba returns to the visually dynamic settings, music and characters of The Three Caballeros, while Trees presents a dramatic and again clearly Blair-inspired interpretation of the Joyce Kilmer poem. Ward Kimball's broad interpretation of Pecos Bill is especially well realized.

Similar to Make Mine Music, Melody Time is also an entertaining representation of pre-rock and roll American popular music figures. While little remembered today, Dennis Day, Frances Langford, Freddy Martin, Ethel Smith, and most especially the Andrew Sisters and Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers were well known personalities via both film and radio. For many, it serves as a nostalgic musical time capsule; for others it unfortunately severely dates the movie and diminishes its overall appeal. Regardless, in the history of Disney music, songs such as Johnny Appleseed's "The Lord is Good to Me," "Blame It on the Samba," and Pecos Bill's introductory "Blue Shadows on the Trail" deserve far more recognition than they have heretofore received.

The film's most lasting legacy would certainly be the Pecos Bill segment. Those particular characters successfully transitioned into theme park incarnations over the years, with Walt Disney World's Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe being the most prominent example.

It is unfortunate that Melody Time has suffered somewhat unfair comparisons to Fantasia, and also the often very unfair perceptions of stagnant creativity associated with the post-war package films. It certainly deserves better.

Museum of Modern Marvels

2010-03-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

The future frequently envisioned in the 1930s was a bright and shining place, filled with tall skyscrapers and mechanical automatons that took even the most common laborious tasks and functions out of the hands of the common citizens. It was a great big beautiful tomorrow as presented in films such as Metropolis and Things to Come and a popular culture phenomenon that ultimately culminated at decade's end in the World of Tomorrow presented at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.

Donald Duck experienced that particular vision of the future for a brief time in 1937 when he visited the Museum of Modern Marvels in the cartoon Modern Inventions. It was released on May 29th of that year.

The Museum, like much of era's pop culture futurism, what no so much a showcase of emerging technologies but a series of robotic appendage-based contraptions designed to perform the mundane rather than the magnificent. Hydraulic potato peelers, pneumatic pencil sharpeners and robot nurse maids were among the exhibits within the halls of the museum's sleek, streamline moderne architecture. No doubt many members of the cartoon's audience, as they were then emerging out of the throes of the Great Depression, could dream of owning a robot butler, despite Donald's own exasperation with the one that haunted his steps as he toured the museum.

A standard archetype of these earlier era future visions and also present in Modern Inventions is the robotic barber chair. Donald comically gets his tail trimmed and head polished by the friendly automation. Disney would in fact revisit that concept and the whole of 1930s futurism some forty years later in a set piece of the Horizons attraction at EPCOT Center.

Fleischer Studios, home of Popeye and Betty Boop, would also explore similar themes in 1938 with the short All's Fair at the Fair, a cartoon that anticipated the upcoming New York World's Fair. It as well featured an automated robot-based shave and a haircut sequence.

Stargazing at Mickey's Gala Premier

2010-03-21T10:00:00.001-07:00

Who was who in Hollywood in 1933? You need only look as far as the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier for the answers. Released on July, 1, 1933, it featured over forty caricatures of motion picture celebrities. In the short, all of Tinseltown turns out for the premiere of "Galloping Romance," a short-within-the short remake of Gallopin' Gaucho.
The momentous event was held at the famous and now iconic Grauman's Chinese Theater, located at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard. Famous for its forecourt celebrity footprints in cement, the theater was built by showman Sid Grauman, whose partners in the endeavor included Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Howard Schenck. It opened on May 18, 1927 with the premiere of the Cecil B.DeMille film The King of Kings. In 1989, the theater's front facade and forecourt were recreated as the entrance to the Great Movie Ride at the Disney-MGM Studios in Walt Disney World.

Mickey's Gala Premier was just five years removed from Hollywood's silent era, and so it's not surprising that numerous silent film stars are featured in the short. Director Burt Gillette and his crew reached back nearly two decades when they included five of the Keystone Cops. Numerous individuals throughout the silent era were members of Mack Sennett's group of slapstick players. Mickey's Gala Premier showcased four of the more famous officers: Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Max Swain and Chester Conklin. The Cop between Swain and and Conklin has been identified by some sources as Harry Langdon. Langdon was a silent film comedian who worked for Mack Sennett but was never cast as a Keystone Cop.

Another famous silent film comedian, Harold Llyod, is joined at the radio microphone by actors Edward G. Robinson, Adolf Menjou and Clark Gable. Robinson appears as the character Rico from his 1931 movie Little Caesar.

Three of the era's best known starlets took their turn at the microphone: Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Crawford appeared in the costume of her character Sadie Thompson from the 1932 film Rain.

The biggest draw at the box office in 1933 was Marie Dressler who appears in the cartoon with her frequent co-star Wallace Berry. The two had then recently worked together in the films Dinner at Eight and Tugboat Annie. Their most famous pairing was the 1930 movie Min and Bill, for which Dressler won an Academy Award for Best Actress. That movie was also the inspiration for Min and Bill's Dockside Diner, a counter-service restaurant at Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Famous then and famous now are the Marx Brothers--Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Chico--and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

In his guise as the Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin attempts to sneak past theater owner Sid Grauman.

Eddie Cantor appears in his role from The Kid from Spain, released in 1932. Maurice Chevalier and Jimmy Durante also take turns at the radio microphone. In the 1960s, Chevalier would appear in the Disney live-action films In Search of the Castaways and Monkeys Go Home. He also recorded the title song for The Aristocats shortly before his death in early 1972.

The Barrymore siblings, Lionel,Ethel and John, appear in their roles from the 1932 movie Rasputin and the Empress.

The perpetually morose Buster Keaton does not share a laugh with famous big mouth Joe E. Brown.
Helen Hayes had just won an Academy Award in 1931 for her performance in The Sin of Madelon Claudet. She is seated nearby to Chester Morris, Gloria Swanson, George Arliss and William Powell. The following year, Powell would assume his most famous role of Nick Charles in The Thin Man. Morris would become famous a decade later for his series of Boston Blackie movies.

Classic monsters Dracula, Mister Hyde and the Frankenstein monster, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi, Fredric March and Boris Karloff respectively, display their more jovial sides.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey are largely unremembered today, despite being one of the most popular comedy acts of the 1930s. Ed Wynn is well known to Disney fans for his roles in films such as Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat, The Gnome-Mobile and Alice in Wonderland.
Mae West recreates her persona from the movie She Done Him Wrong. She invites Sid Grauman to "Come up and see me sometime." Greta Garbo was one of the decade's most famous leading ladies.

Will Rogers lasso's Mickey while Douglas Fairbanks is overcome with laughter and begins rolling in the aisle. Rogers appears in the The American Adventure at EPCOT.

Disney animators were none too kind when they created this caricature of Will H. Hays. Famous for the Hays Code, he was the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the forerunner of the current MPAA. He was known in Hollywood as the "Censorship Czar," thus explaining his costumed appearance in the cartoon.

And who are these three gentlemen standing next to Groucho Marx in one of the shorts final scenes? The one on the right bears a very strong resemblance to certain famous cartoon-maker of the era. Hmm . . .

Images © Walt Disney Company

Mickey's Kangaroo

2010-03-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

In the 1935 cartoon Mickey's Kangaroo, Mickey receives a special delivery from a Leo Buring in Australia. The short was supposedly inspired by real life events. On a post from the Disney History blog, J.B. Kaufmann noted:

"According to a syndicated story that appeared in newspapers in 1934, an Australian admirer sent Walt a gift of two wallabies, a male and a female. By the time they reached the States, they had produced a third. According to this story, the Disney staff promptly named the male wallaby Leapo, the female Hoppo, and the baby Poucho. This of course became an obvious inspiration for the cartoon Mickey's Kangaroo, released the following April. Joe Grant told me in 1988 that the newspaper story was true; he remembered the wallabies being kept in a pen outside the story department. I asked him if the name that appears on the mailing label in the cartoon, Leo Buring, was the name of the real-life person who sent the animals to Walt, and he thought it probably was."

Leo Buring was at that time becoming a well known figure in the Australian wine industry. According to the web site Wine Society, "In 1931 Buring formed a business partnership with Reginald Mowat of Great Western called Leo Buring & Co. His first wine was made from grapes grown at his Emu Plains property in the early 1930s."

Another interesting piece of kangaroo trivia--likely inspired by Mickey's Kangaroo, Disney artists would in 1943 redesign Pocket Books trademark kangaroo Gertrude. The paperback publisher's mascot and joey were no doubt drawn in part from the character designs created for the 1935 cartoon.

Daisy's Favorite Spot

2010-03-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

Daisy Duck has always been portrayed as a bit of a free spirit when it comes to romance. And according to the 1954 Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Diary, she dated quite a few Disney Studio employees. In one of the short's funnier moments, Donald carves his and Daisy's names in a tree at a location the narrator identifies as "Daisy's Favorite Spot." The back of the tree reveals why.

Though only first names are carved onto the tree, they likely refer to the following studio employees:

Al - storyman Al Bertino
Dan - effects animator Dan MacManus
Sib - animator John Sibley
Nick - storyman Nick George
Hugh - layout artist Hugh Hennesy
Ed - animator Ed Ardal or composer Edward Plumb
Harry - animator Harry Holt
Jack - director Jack Kinney
Bruce - layout artist Bruce Bushman
X - then artist and animator X. Atencio
Fred - Possibly animator Fred Moore, though Donald's Diary was made two years after his death in 1952

The cartoon features one other notable Freeze Frame! moment. When Donald and Daisy go to see a drive-in movie, they can be seen viewing the Pecos Bill segment from Melody Time.

Images © Walt Disney Company

"Grab Your Shootin' Iron Son, We're Goin' Huntin'!"

2010-03-21T09:52:00.001-07:00

One of the great joys of the recent Disney Treasures DVD The Chronological Donald Volume Four was to see the 1955 cartoon No Hunting restored to its original unedited, widescreen Cinemascope presentation.

No Hunting clearly stands out as one of director Jack Hannah’s best efforts over the course of his tenure with Donald Duck. It is more akin to Tex Avery’s numerous MGM parodies or Goofy’s own “How To” series, than it is to traditional Donald Duck cartoons. Donald and his typical antics are kept to a minimum, in favor of a broader, satirical take on the outdoor sporting life that was especially romanticized during the post-war years.

Hannah's approach to lampooning that era's sportsmen was certainly an interesting creative choice. The director and his crew set their very over-the-top satire in a tableau of World War I and II-inspired battlefields and elements. Hunters hunker in trenches and hunter-paratroopers descend down from the sky. Beachhead landings and devastated landscapes feature prominently. The comedy is broad and often hilarious, despite the use of very harsh wartime imagery as its primary satirical device.

The broad, but still somewhat sharp social satire is combined with well-crafted slapstick in the form of the spirit of Donald's Grandpappy. He is certainly at the heart of the short's humor and foreshadowed future eccentric Donald Duck relatives such as Ludwig Von Drake and Moby Duck.

Hannah discussed No Hunting with Jim Korkis, in an interview reprinted in Volume One of Didier Ghez’s series of books Walt’s People. Here’s an excerpt where Jack relates the inspiration for the short:

I used to go hunting with my dad when I was a kid and this short was a great takeoff on these hunters and fishermen. They really are this way. They are as dangerous to themselves as to the game they’re hunting. I’ve heard there are more hunters shot on opening day than deer. It shows how timeless these shorts are because it still spoofs hunters and fishermen. They’re still that way.

My students especially enjoyed the joke where all the trash cans are coming down the river and I stuck in Bambi’s mother who says, “Man is in the forest. Let’s dig out.” There was sort of a subtle feeling in the short that Donald wasn’t himself which is why he doesn’t talk. Hunting didn’t mean a thing to him but it was the spirit of his grandfather that came out of the painting off the wall that got into him and now made a monster of him. He was possessed. That’s why he didn’t speak. Donald just wasn’t himself. I never thought of that later as being one of my better shorts but after seeing it recently, I’ve changed my opinion.

Beyond his directing chores, Jack made another interesting contribution to No Hunting:

Talking about this particular short, I stuck my voice in several times. Remember where the spirit of the Duck had antlers on and a moose was down in a hole with him and the moose says, “Hmmm, you’re a cute one”? That’s my voice! The animator I was working with on that sequence, John Sibley, got a big kick out of the way I said it so I finally said, “Hell, I’ll record it.” And I did.

Special thanks to Jim Korkis and Didier Ghez for making the interview material available. Be sure to check on Didier’s terrific Disney History blog, and his Disney Books Network, for more information on the Walt’s People series.

Who's Who in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood

2010-03-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

As a companion post to Going Hollywood With Mother Goose, we hereby present a guide to the celebrities and popular culture represented in the Silly Symphony cartoon, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

The short opens with a direct parody of the MGM roaring lion logo. While it comically features a roaring Mother Goose, what it notable is the take-off on MGM's slogan,"Ars Gratia Artis," or translated, "Art for Arts Sake." The Mother Goose logo features the pig latin phrase "ERTZNAY TO OUYAY," roughly translated, "Nertz to You!" or "Nuts to You!" This is quite likely a not-so-subtle dig at the Hays Office, the industry-created watchdog organization headed by Will H. Hays that constantly dogged Hollywood studios to adhere its code of morals and standards when producing their films. The Hays Office considered the phrase "Nuts to You!" to be offensive and frequently demanded (although often unsuccessfully) for it to be removed from scripts and films.

Katherine Hepburn is the first star to been seen in the cartoon. She is cast in the role of Little Bo Peep and spends the entire cartoon in search of her sheep.

The Old King Cole sequence features Hugh Herbert as the king and Ned Sparks as his jester. Comic actor Joe Penner arrives and presents Herbert with a not quite cooked duck--Donald Duck that is. Penner's signature line throughout much of his career was "Wanna buy a duck?"

Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx are the Fiddlers Three.

Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew are represented in Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Three Men in a Tub. Laughton is seen in his role of Captain Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty while Spencer Tracy portrays his character of Manuel from Captains Courageous. Although Bartholomew appeared with Tracy in Captains Courageous, he is seen here as his character from the movie Little Lord Fauntleroy.

W.C. Fields portrays Humpty Dumpty and is antagonized by famous dummy Charlie McCarthy. Fields and McCarthy shared the screen in the movie You Can't Cheat an Honest Man and their longstanding feud was a popular feature on Edgar Bergan's radio program. Fields had previously played the role of Humpty Dumpty in the 1933 motion picture version of Alice in Wonderland.

Simple Simon and the Pieman are represented by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

See Saw Margery Daw is performed by Edward G. Robinson and Greta Garbo. Garbo utters her famous line, "I want so much to be alone."

Eddie Cantor is Little Jack Horner; Wallace Beery is Little Boy Blue.

From the cartoon's musical finale, Edna May Oliver, Mae West and ZaSu Pitts form a singing trio. Some sources claim that the center character is Joan Blondell, but based on her exaggerated figure, hairstyle and facial features, she appears much closer to Mae West.

Clark Gable and George Arliss.

Cab Calloway and Fats Waller.

Fred Astaire and the long controversial Stepin Fetchit.

And finally, big mouths Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye complete the musical number.

But one possible mystery remains. Who is portrayed on the figurehead of the rattle held by Ned Sparks in his jester incarnation? The design seems too distinct to be generic. Would anyone care to hazard a guess?

Going Hollywood with Mother Goose

2010-03-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Similar to efforts made for the 1933 cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier and the 1939 Donald Duck short The Autograph Hound, the Disney Studios transformed Hollywood celebrities onto celluloid in what became the most expensive of all Silly Symphonies, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood. Immensely popular and critically lauded when released in late 1938, it would, in unedited form, go on to languish for decades in the Disney vaults due to perceived offensive content related to its caricatures of African American personalities Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Stepin Fetchit, and a brief blackface gag involving the animated incarnation of actress Katherine Hepburn. The Walt Disney Company finally made it available in uncut form in 2006 on the Walt Disney Treasures More Silly SymphoniesDVD.

The celebrity caricatures in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood are credited to Disney Legend Tee Hee, and they proved to be his baptism of fire into the Walt Disney Studios. Hee began working in Hollywood in the mid-1930s, drawing caricatures of contract stars for MGM's publicity department. He moved to Warner Brothers in 1936 where he would provide similar designs for the cartoon The Coo Coo Nut Grove. Despite a earlier failed interview with Disney Studio boss George Drake and art instructor Don Graham, Hee later allowed a neighbor's brother, who was an animator at the studio, to hand deliver to Walt a collection of his caricature drawings.

In an interview with Richard Hubler, Hee described how he manged to get in the door of the studio: "This was through these caricatures again. Thank goodness they were the entree because my drawings were not good enough and Walt liked the caricatures. He thought they were great and he said, 'I think we can use him on Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood,' the film that they had not been progressing very far with."

He was paired with Ed Penner to create a storyboard for the short. He described to Hubler the story meeting where he and Penner presented their ideas to Walt Disney:

"When we started going through it, I had enough ham in me that when it came to the parts of the characters, I would enact them, standing up in front of the people--there were about twelve or thirteen people there, including Walt. I did Katherine Hepburn saying, 'I've lost my sheep, really I have," . . . I was flitting around you know, like they would do. And I think Walt was entranced. He laughed, and all the other guys laughed too . . . Ed Penner and I, we had the conviction that Walt would like it, and while I'd never met him, I just felt this was what he would like. So when it was all over with he said,'Well, I think it's great. What do you guys think?' And they all said it was great. So I knew I had a friend."

The other creative powerhouse behind Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was Ward Kimball. Kimball animated more characters than anyone else on the crew, most notably the characters representing Hugh Herbert, the Marx Brothers and Cab Calloway.

As Hee observed, the project had been long in development when he was brought on board. According to authors Russell Merit and J.B.Kaufman, Hee combined the ideas from two previously unrealized Silly Symphonies--The Hollywoods and Mother Goose Land. Bill Cottrell, along with Joe Grant, (Grant had previously designed the star caricatures for Mickey's Gala Premier), conceived for The Hollywoods a forest setting filled with birds and animals based on Hollywood personalities. It was shelved primarily due to Warner Brother's release of The Coo Coo Nut Grove, which Hee, as mentioned, was instrumental in helping to create. Hee ultimately married this idea to the concept of Mother Goose Land, a short that was developed in the mid-1930s, but also later abandoned. A Walt Disney memo from 1935 summarized the idea for the short: "Jazz has taken the place of the old jingles, so Mother Goose takes them and puts them to a modern tempo with modern thoughts." This concept clearly evolved into the lively jazz-based finale led by the Cab Calloway and Fats Waller characters in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

Merit and Kaufman also noted " . . . so much story material was suggested for Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood that at one point, in the spring of 1937, Disney considered releasing it in two reels. Ultimately it was released as a standard one-reeler, but remained the most expensive of all the Silly Symphonies."

Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was certainly appreciated by the very show business community it both satirized and celebrated; it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. It competed that year with three other Disney shorts, The Brave Little Tailor, The Good Scouts and Ferdinand the Bull. The popular and similarly acclaimed Ferdinand ultimately took the top prize.

Don't miss the companion piece to this post:

Who's Who in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood

Animated Animators: Ferdinand the Bull

2010-03-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

Though it won an Academy Award for best animated short subject, Walt Disney's 1938 cartoon Ferdinand the Bull seems better known among Disney enthusiasts and historians for its use of caricatures of Disney animators, then working at the studio.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston identified the individuals caricatured in their book Too Funny for Words: Disney's Greatest Sight Gags. In order of appearance:

First came the banderilleros, as represented by Ham Luske, Jack Campbell, Fred Moore and Art Babbitt.

They were followed by three picadores, the last of which is a caricature of Bill Tytla.

Finally, the matador arrives, followed by his moza de espada, in the guise of Ward Kimball.

Of the sequence,Thomas and Johnston noted:

"The parade of participants for the great bullfight in Ferdinand the Bull (1938) was a series of caricatures of animators and directors, with the animator who conceived the whole idea bringing up the rear and leering knowingly at the camera. It was rumored that Walt thought the matador was a caricature of himself, but the animator quickly denied giving the character any resemblance to his boss."

That animator of course was Ward Kimball. And even in a later interview, Kimball made no acknowledgment of basing the matador on Walt: "I caricatured myself, Fred Moore, Ham Luske, Jack Campbell, Art Babbitt and Bill Tytla." Of his own animated incarnation, Kimball noted, "I came in with a pillow with a sword on it, and I think I liked the part."

Socializing with the Social Lion

2010-03-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

When the title character from the Walt Disney 1954 cartoon The Social Lion helplessly floundered through the big city, he passed by hidden references to three studio veterans. Two of these individuals can be found in the opening credits of the short itself.

Fergy's Fresh Fillets refers to animator Norm Ferguson. Fergy joined the Disney Studio in 1929 and quickly became one of its most notable and productive animators. He was recruited by Walt to serve as supervising animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and was a major creative force in nearly all of the studio's animated features up until his untimely death in 1957.

The Bushman Reality Co. refers to layout artist Bruce Bushman. Bushman began his career at the studio doing layouts for cartoon shorts. He later served as an art director on the original Mickey Mouse Club series and was a key designer for many of Disneyland's earliest attractions.

Less obvious is the proprietor of M. Tebb Custom Millinery. Mary Tebb was a well known member of the studio's ink and paint department.

Mickey Plays Paderewski

2010-03-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

The popular culture that found its way into the earliest of Mickey Mouse cartoons has often become lost and obscure to contemporary audiences. Such is certainly the case with the 1929 short The Opry House. When Mickey proceeds to entertain the crowd with a piano solo, he is sporting an extreme hair style that he proceeds to brush back in an exaggerated sweep of the hand. This was in fact, not a generic gag. In their book, The Hand Behind the Mouse, authors Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy confirm that Ub Iwerks was using Mickey to caricature the then quite famous pianist, composer and Polish politician Ignacy Paderewski.

Paderewski was world renown throughout much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He toured America extensively during the 1920s, and the reference was undoubtedly not lost on those viewing The Opry House during its 1929 release.

Though Minnie Mouse did not appear per se in The Opry House, she is represented on a poster for the Yankee Doodle Girls. This was a popular vaudeville act throughout the first few decades of the century. A young Charlie Chaplin enjoyed a brief romance with one Hetty Kelly, a member of a Yankee Doodle Girls song and dance troupe back during the summer of 1908.

The Violent Mayhem of Hockey Homicide

2010-03-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

In our current era of too-frequent overbearing political correctness, the 1945 Goofy cartoon Hockey Homicide stands as a shining example of a creative process not held hostage by studio executives overly concerned with pleasing soccer-mom demographics. The genius of this short is rooted in its parody of the sport’s reputation for excessive violence and the subsequent frenzy that that violence inspires in the game’s spectators. Rather than ignore or disavow this darker side of competition, it embraces it and celebrates it with an irreverent and sardonic glee. In the fifty-plus years since its release, Hockey Homicide has lost neither its humor nor its relevance. It is a hyper-paced, hilarious eight minutes of unbridled mayhem that also casts a satirical eye to sports fandom’s often unquenchable thirst for blood and brawling.

The cartoon is very much in the spirit of the classic quip of “attending a boxing match only to have a hockey game break out.” Beating and pummeling are the strategies of play with occasional hockey maneuvers peppered throughout. The short’s most memorable and now classic gag is the ongoing rivalry between star players Ice Box Bertino and Fearless Ferguson. When the two begin brawling even prior to the opening faceoff, it sets off a cycle of fighting and penalty suffering that extends almost the length of the cartoon. It is highlighted by the announcer’s oft repeated “Here come Bertino and Ferguson out of the penalty box . . . and there go Bertino and Ferguson back into the penalty box.”

The frenzy of the game builds and builds until it spills into the stands and ignites the spectators. The crowd storms the ice and chaos ensues, leading to an eye-popping montage of violence that incorporates scenes not only from other Goofy sports cartoons but from the studio’s features Victory Through Air Power and Pinocchio as well.

A couple of particularly funny gags: the two rival fans featured throughout the short are seated appropriately in Section 8; and when the ice is cleaned between periods, among the debris shoveled up are cowboy boots and spurs, cups and saucers, a bottle of Heinz 57, boxing gloves, an umbrella, a hair brush, a croquet mallet and even an extended hand clutching a cigar.

Especially notable in Hockey Homicide are the references by name to Disney employees. The aforementioned Bertino and Ferguson refer to animators Al Bertino and Norm Ferguson, while referee “Clean Game” Kinney pays homage to the short’s director Jack Kinney (and possibly also to storyman Dick Kinney). When a scorecard is examined early in the short, the teams’ rosters are a veritable who’s who of the Disney Studio in 1945. It’s a great screenshot, worthy of Freeze Frame status, and it is very likely the most extensive “in-joke” ever incorporated into a piece of Disney animation.

Hockey Homicide stands as one of the best Goofy cartoons produced and also easily qualifies as one of the studio’s funniest. Goofy in name, but certainly more sophisticated in content and humor, the short takes a not-so-subtle shot-on-goal at a professional sport and the antics of its passionate fans.

Walt In Hollywoodland

2010-03-21T09:38:00.001-07:00

Fifty-five years before the Disney-MGM Studios welcomed its first visitors in 1989, Walt Disney and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had previously come together in an interesting, but now extremely obscure moment during Hollywood’s golden age.

You see, Mickey Mouse had star billing in an MGM movie. And he shared the credits with the likes of Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges.

MGM commissioned Disney to create an animated sequence for its 1934 film Hollywood Party. Disney had animated short sequences for two Fox films in the same time period--a dream sequence in the 1934 film Servant’s Entrance, and a futuristic vignette in 1933’s My Lips Betray. What made Hollywood Party different was the use of then uber-star Mickey, and a cartoon story that was essentially a transplanted Silly Symphony. It was Disney entertainment, just not in a Disney Studio-produced movie.

As to the context of Disney producing material for other studios, author Michael Barrier noted in his book Hollywood Cartoons:

"In the early thirties, Disney ventured briefly into making animated inserts for two live-action features, Servants' Entrance and Hollywood Party, both released in 1934. He evidently saw such work as a way to ease into the making of his own features, but the inserts turned out to be more a source of irritation than of profit of any kind. Such sponsored films were inherently problematic, in Disney's scheme of things, because they were not under his control in the way that his shorts and features were. Once the feature inserts were behind him, Disney shunned most sponsored films."

Hollywood Party is a “revue” movie, a type that was popular during the 1930s. It was essentially a series of song and dance and comedy vignettes, strung together by a very, very loose, and at times non-existent plot. At the center is comedian Jimmy Durante who is hosting a lavish party with a star-studded guest list. While names like Jack Pearl, Polly Moran or June Clyde don’t ring many bells these days, the faces of Durante, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Larry, Moe and Curly are still instantly recognizable.

Mickey quickly takes center stage when party guests start screaming “A mouse! A mouse!” Durante quickly comes to the rescue and suddenly finds himself at odds with the famous character, who is actually in “mouse scale” with the surrounding humans. Mickey is distinctly in his feisty, early 1930s personality, taking a swing at Durante and then mocking the star’s trademark oversized nose. He wins over the surrounding party guests who demand more entertainment from the little guy. Mickey then introduces a sequence very much akin to a Silly Symphony. The movie shifts from black and white to brilliant Technicolor to present The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers.

The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers is a bit bizarre in its story of candy-themed characters marching off and ultimately fighting a war. The action involves a Trojan War-themed combat with the Gingerbread Men of Pastryland. It is especially wacky when the injured soldiers return home, with battlefield injuries dressed in candy stylings (a missing leg is replaced with a candy cane stump for instance).

It is not far removed from the studio’s own Silly Symphony Cookie Carnival produced in 1935. But while Cookie Carnival had the typical Disney happy ending, Soldiers ends on a note of humorous morbidity when the sun comes out and melts the celebrating victors.

Walt would quickly cease in producing material for other studios, and focus instead on his own plans for feature length films. And likely because the endeavors were owned by Fox and MGM, who had little interest in preserving Disney content, they have all but faded into obscurity. Hollywood Party had a brief VHS release in 1992.

The sequence from Servant's Entrance miraculously surfaced last year courtesy of Didier Ghez, who writes the always informative and wonderful Disney History blog. Didier secured a copy and has generously made it available via YouTube and his site. The animation features kitchen utensils, led by a Humpty Dumpty-style egg character in a musical vignette that quite deftly for its time mixed live action and animation.

According to the IMDB, only an incomplete print of My Lips Betray survives in the UCLA Film and Television Archives.

Behind the Walls of Hollywood Studios

2010-03-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

But just not the same Hollywood Studios you may have been thinking of.

Nearly seven decades ago, Walt Disney and his talented staff of animators created a place called Hollywood Studios that served as the setting for the 1939 Donald Duck cartoon, The Autograph Hound. I have frequently noted that many of Disney’s animated shorts are windows to the popular culture of bygone days, and The Autograph Hound is very distinctly a snapshot in time of Hollywood during its golden era.

The hallmarks of this Donald Duck vignette are the numerous celebrity-inspired characters that were created to populate the fictional movie studio that Donald gate-crashes in search of autographs.

The first “celebrity” that Donald encounters within the walls of Hollywood Studios is the then well known character actor Henry Armetta. Famous for his ethnic-Italian personas, he was an almost constant presence in films during the era, appearing in thirteen films over the course of 1938-1939 alone. Next Donald encounters a mischievous Mickey Rooney who, unlike Armetta, achieved enormous fame and still enjoys a film career, now some seventy years later.
The cartoon’s only other surviving caricature is Shirley Temple. A precocious child actress, Temple was one of the brightest stars in Hollywood when The Autograph Hound was produced and released. In the 1935 movie The Little Colonel, her dancing skills were showcased when she and costar Bill “Bojangles” Robinson famously tap dance up and down a staircase. Temple is similarly dancing on stairs when Donald collides with her in The Autograph Hound.

While Shirley Temple’s fame extended far, far beyond the end of her film career, the Ritz Brothers and Sonja Henie have somewhat faded into Hollywood obscurity and are little remembered now in the 21st century. Like Temple, they were featured prominently in the short, sharing extended interactions with Donald Duck.

Al, Jimmy and Harry Ritz were a trio of brothers famous for their synchronized dancing, slapstick comedy and celebrity impersonations. They made the leap from stage and vaudeville productions to movies in the mid-1930s. They were reaching the peak of their fame at the time Autograph Hound was in production. 20th Century Fox headlined them in a number of films, starting with Life Begins in College in 1937.

Henie catapulted to fame in the late 1920s when she took the figure skating sport by storm. From her Wikipedia entry:

Henie won the first of an unprecedented ten World Figure Skating Championships in 1927 at the age of fifteen, and her first Olympic gold medal the following year. She also won six consecutive European championships. She is credited with being the first figure skater to adopt the short skirt costume in figure skating, and make use of dance choreography. Her innovative skating techniques and glamorous demeanor transformed the sport permanently and confirmed its acceptance as a legitimate sport in the Winter Olympics.

Henie signed with Fox in 1936 and starred in a string of successful films through the mid-1940s. The Autograph Hound was actually the second time that Henie was paid homage to in a Disney Cartoon. Released earlier in 1939, The Hockey Champ features an ice skating Donald Duck doing a brief impersonation of the star, complete with her trademark curly hair and long, dark eyelashes.

While these stars were featured in extended sequences with Donald, the bulk of the cartoon’s celebrity cameos are found in a fast paced montage near the end of the film. In a little more than thirty seconds, there is a total of twenty star caricatures that flash across the screen:Screen legends Greta Garbo and Clark Gable share a passionate embrace, despite their well known and often public statements that expressed a very clear and mutual animosity.

Mischa Auer, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx and brother Harpo, and ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy, although his right hand man Edger Bergen is noticeably absent. The pair would eventually appear in Disney's feature film Fun and Fancy Free.

Eddie Cantor, Katherine Hepburn, Slim Summerville, Irvin S. Cobb and Edward Arnold.

Hugh Herbert, Roland Young, the long-censored Stepin Fetchit, and big mouths Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye.

Three appearances are notable in the fact that the personalities are featured in roles they were famous for when the cartoon was released in 1939. Bette Davis is garbed as her character from the 1938 film Jezebel, for which she was awarded a Best Actress Oscar. Lionel Barrymore appears as his character of Dr. Gillespie from the series of Dr. Kildare movies that were then just getting underway. Lastly, Charles Boyer is in his role of Napoleon Bonaparte from the 1937 film Conquest.

One final odd and interesting detail from the cartoon--when Donald collides with a painted backdrop that ultimately bounces him toward his collision with Shirley Temple, the set is identified with a sign that reads The Road to Mandalay. This was at one time the working title of what would become the first of the famous "Road" pictures that starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Originally offered to George Burns and Gracie Allen, and then to Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie, it eventually evolved into The Road to Singapore and arrived in theaters in March of 1940, some six months after The Autograph Hound premiered.

On Wheels of Progress

2010-03-21T09:33:00.001-07:00

On September 29, 2006, a mere nine days into my blogging adventures, I wrote a very brief post about one of my most favorite pieces of Disney entertainment--the generally innocuous and now considerably obscure Donald Duck film Donald and the Wheel. I came to feel that my passion for this particular amalgamation of early xerography, rotoscoping and brief snippets of live action was a very rare emotion indeed. But I have come to discover fellow brothers in the Wheel cause who literally span the globe. So I have decided it is time again to celebrate this largely forgotten production that continues to gather dust in an unvisited corner of the Disney celluloid archives.
Donald and the Wheel was in fact part of one the most dramatic transitions in the history of Disney animation--the move away from hand-inked cels to the faster and more productive xerography process. Xerography was largely the innovation of resident studio technical genius Ub Iwerks. While 101 Dalmatians is most frequently heralded as the first major demonstration of the process, it was actually used experimentally in Sleeping Beauty, and tested more completely in the 1960 short subject Goliath II. But largely absent from the animation history books is the further exploration of xerography in Donald and the Wheel, which made its way into theaters a mere six months following the release of Dalmatians. Its eighteen month production schedule certainly crossed over with those of both Goliath II and Dalmatians.

An exhibitor's kit for Donald and the Wheel, though steeped heavily in PR prose, provided this generally informative background on the film's technical accomplishments:

Walt Disney scores another entertainment first with his Technicolor cartoon featurette, "Donald and the Wheel." Using the revolutionary Xerox and Sodium Screen Processes together for the first time, Disney and his director, Ham Luske, combine real people and objects in the same perspective as animated characters and objects.

Telling the story of man's greatest invention, the wheel, required illustrations of many types of wheels and cogs, sometimes highly technical in nature. Instead of having an animator draw them, Disney had color film taken of wheels and transferred them to the screen with the Xerox Process.

For example, when a scene called for an illustration of the wheels used in a cotton gin, Eli Whitney's original invention was photographed and transferred to the screen.

With the Sodium Screen Process, Disney technicians were able to reduce a beautiful, auburn-haired ballerina to the size of Donald Duck and place her on a phonograph record with him.

The Sodium Process uses two films exposed simultaneously through the same lens, one sensitive to the Sodium screen, the other not. When the two are combined, a perfect silhouette is achieved, which is then superimposed on a master print.

The same kit provided this very detailed synopsis of the film:

In Walt Disney's newest Technicolor cartoon featurette, "Donald and the Wheel," Disney brings to the screen a story he has been working on for the past twenty years, man's greatest invention, the wheel.

The tale is told in rhyme with a pair of ghostly narrators, the Spirits of Progress, Sr., and Progress, Jr. The straight man is none other than Walt's old pal, Donald Duck, aptly arrayed in the garb of a cave man.

The faint figures of Progress, Sr. and Jr. watch a common, ordinary wheel rolling. Barrel-voiced Senior explains to bopster Junior that the wheel is man's greatest invention.

"Without the wheel, mankind would be at a standstill," he observes.

Junior disagrees. "What about the airplane, automobile, typewriter, steam engine, cotton gin, sewing machine and washing machine," says the boy.

Progress Senior strips each invention of all but its basic parts — wheels — and graphically proves his point, that the wheel, son, is man's greatest invention.

Caveman Donald, however, is harder to convince. The spirits take the little character on a meteoric ride from a circular drawing on a rock down through the ages to our present day hot rods. When Donald piles up his heap on the crowded freeways, he gives up.

"Who needs wheels," he says. "I'd rather walk."

The spirits try again by showing the duck that even the world spins like a wheel, that the solar system is really wheels within wheels, that a clock depends upon wheels, gears are adaptations of wheels, and finally, a music box works on wheels.

Music is to Donald's taste, it develops, especially when a beautiful redheaded dancer does a jazz number, a square dance and a ballet with him atop of an oversized, spinning phonograph.

The spirits have chosen the wrong cave man to invent the wheel, however. Donald scurries back to his cave, erases the circle drawn in the rock and pulls his wheel-less sled over the horizon.

"No thanks," says Donald, "I'm not going to be responsible for that thing."

Senior and Junior shrug off their disappointment, but are happy that some cave man, if not Donald, eventually did have the foresight to invent the wheel.

There are likely many who view negatively the film's on the surface mishmash of rough edged styles and and distinctly non-Disney techniques and would no doubt quantify it all as short-cut animation. But in the end, director Hamilton Luske and his crew crafted a charming, entertaining endeavor that successfully mixes humor, music and education. Unlike its much more popular but decidedly stuffier cousin Donald in Mathmagic Land, Donald and the Wheel appropriately moves along at a much more energetic pace, largely due to the the clever rhyming dialog and equally creative song lyrics provided by Mel Leven. The song "The Principle of the Thing," whose lyrics I excerpted in my earlier post, stands as a truly unrecognized gem from the studio's vast library of music. Thurl Ravencroft and his fellow MelloMen did justice to Leven's efforts, with Ravencroft himself performing the voice of the senior Spirit of Progress.

What is especially ironic about Donald and the Wheel is that our favorite duck essentially plays second fiddle to the rotoscoped silhouettes of Progress Jr. and Progress Sr. A generation gap-dynamic is played out by these two characters, highlighted by Junior's beatnik-speak, again cleverly realized in Leven's rhyming dialog.

"Gazooks, Pop! This cat is really nowhere! In some circles we'd call him square"

Through narration and song, these two Spirits of Progress elevate the film beyond the potentially dry history lesson it might have been otherwise. When they are taken out of the forefront in the story's slightly weaker jukebox-phonograph sequence, the pace noticeably slows, but recovers quickly when the duo return for the final fanfare.

The short recycled animation, most notably from the Pecos Bill sequence from Melody Time, then itself later had its own material recycled for the Ward Kimball-directed 1970s' television program Mouse Factory. The gear and cog contraption created during the "Principle of the Thing" song found its way into that show's opening montage. And in an example of typical Disney synergy, the film's subject matter, humorous tone and musical nature would resurface twenty years later in the form of EPCOT Center's World of Motion pavilion.

A comic book tie-in for Donald and the Wheel was released in 1961. It was featured in this prior post here at 2719.

Pleased to Meet the Robinsons

2010-03-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

I just met the Robinsons. And it was a happy encounter indeed.

While the reviews for Disney’s newest animated feature film have been generally positive, there have been a few (most notably the New York Times), that have taken a decidedly harsher view of Meet the Robinsons.

It really represents a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.

Meet the Robinsons is quirky, frantic at times, and clearly unconventional. It is also fresh and original. It has so many of the qualities that countless critics found missing in the numerous animated features that seemed to be constantly falling out of the sky over the last year. So when the film is described as “. . . surely one of the worst theatrically released animated features issued under the Disney label in quite some time,” such comments bear a note of exaggeration with fair degree of malicious intent.

The film chronicles Lewis, an orphan and scientific genius, and his time traveling adventures with Wilbur Robinson and Wilbur’s eccentric family of the future. The story does not by any means take the form of a smooth and linear narrative. Much of the movie is a disjointed bumpy ride, where the storytelling can sometimes be as off kilter as its cast of characters.

But ultimately that it what Meet the Robinsons is all about--happy, energetic spontaneity, with a very direct emphasis on fun. Director Stephen Anderson took to heart the story’s oft-repeated mantra of “Keep Moving Forward.” At the same time, the film refreshingly does not pander to the current entertainment climate that requires flatulence-based humor and PG-13 innuendos to effectively reach all the target demographics. It is unapologetic in its old fashioned, yet never over the top sentimentality.

And it is a healthy dose of that sentimentality that sneaks up and emotionally wallops you by the film’s conclusion. Personally, I didn’t see it coming. And that is why I ended up truly loving the movie. It surprised me on a level that was wholly and totally unexpected, with a heartfelt finish that reminded me of what Pixar accomplishes so well in just about all of their films. Yet it is not difficult to understand, in our popular culture which has become increasingly cynical and fueled constantly by internet negativity, why many critics and like-minded viewers would reject the Robinsons’ positive and idealistic message.

Enhancing the experience of Meet the Robinsons tremendously was its Disney Digital 3D format. The process was nothing short of amazing. It was my first exposure to the new digital-based process that utilizes circular rather than linear polarization, and in turn results in stronger more vibrant colors and an almost total elimination of “ghost images.”

An added bonus for most, but a near-religious experience for myself, was the presentation of the 1953 Donald Duck short Working for Peanuts. Made originally in 3D at the height of the format’s post-war wave of popularity, it was a joy to see it restored to a big-screen theatrical presentation. While the cartoon had enjoyed a brief run in the late 1980s as the pre-show for the Magic Journeys movie at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, that small scale presentation did not do it justice. Here's hoping that Adventures In Music: Melody, the company's only other theatrical 3D film, will accompany a future Disney Digital 3D release.

Another Pixar Triumph

2010-03-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

There is little that I can say about Ratatouille that hasn’t been said already. From the most popular of media outlets to the multitude of Disney related blogs and online communities, praise for this latest endeavor from Pixar is very close to unanimous. And deservedly so.

It is a triumph of technique, design, story and character and a film that transcends the very genre that its makers have essentially been defining and redefining for the past fifteen years. While few in Hollywood would likely ever rank Ratatouille writer-director Brad Bird among such luminaries as Scorsese, Spielberg or Eastwood, he manages a filmmaking process that is ever much more complex and produces results that are equally as entertaining and captivating.

Let’s face it—Pixar does not settle for the conventional. And nothing can be more unconventional than the story of Remy, a country rat with a passion for food and cooking, who inadvertently finds himself at the center of Paris culinary culture. While there are countless reasons to cheer this film, Remy stands out distinctly. He is an amazing triumph of character animation. When sharing the screen with his fellow rats, his personality his brought to life through the excellent voice acting of Patton Oswalt. But it is the nuances of his silent interactions with his human counterpart Linguini that provide a performance that is a triumph of humor and heart. For Remy, a simple shrug of the shoulders or the slow blink of an eye conveys an essence of character that you will never find in a Shrek film or among a group of dancing penguins.

While Monday morning will bring a new round of box office tallies, of which Ratatouille will undoubtedly be a focal point, this film will never need validation rooted in financial accounting. Pundits and Wall Street analysts will potentially drone on and on again on the merits of the Disney-Pixar merger, rehashing suppositions that have long grown stale and hold little relevance. For Ratatouille revisits the same passion for filmmaking and levels of artistic achievement that Walt Disney himself brought to productions such as Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia over a half a century ago. To discuss such an achievement strictly in the context of short-term number crunching and marketing campaign challenges, demonstrates a short-sightedness barely worthy of debate. Sometimes it is the intangible investments that in the long run pay the highest dividends.

Revisiting the Robinsons

2010-03-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

Six months later, and without the benefit of its truly spectacular 3D presentation, I still unequivocally love Meet the Robinsons.

I was curious if I had actually been overly influenced by those impressive three-dimensional bells and whistles. After two viewings of the film in its just-released DVD format, I can honestly say that I wasn't. As I noted in my earlier review here at 2719, Meet the Robinsons is a wholly unconventional film, especially by Disney standards. It is easily off-putting to those quickly offended by its disjointed and sometimes non-linear storytelling and its on-the-surface exaggerated archetype characters. And while it is doubtful it will ever achieve a cult-like status akin to something like The Nightmare Before Christmas, I don't believe it will be as readily dismissed as its other recent Disney animated contemporaries Treasure Planet, Home on the Range or Chicken Little.

Meet the Robinsons was painted in broad, albeit digital strokes. Characters are extreme in their qualities and eccentricities, but not necessarily defined by their archetypes. If you are quick to dismiss what seems to be Lewis' simple search for family and acceptance, or Bowler Hat Guy's overplayed villainous buffoonery, then you do a disservice to the efforts of director Stephen Anderson and his fellow talents at Walt Disney Animation Studios. For it is the very different, yet intertwined journeys of Lewis and the diminutive Mike Yagoobian that ultimately transcend and compliment what would otherwise seem a wacky time travel adventure into family dysfunction.

Dwelling on past regrets or happily embracing the future. Celebrating failure as a catalyst to success or disavowing personal responsibility to validate a miserable and failed life. These are the challenges faced by Lewis and Goob. When we are first introduced to the two friends and roommates, the contrast in their personalities is distinct. Goob speaks a disjointed stream of consciousness that reflects his dreams of a future of baseball stardom, and demonstrates a lack of focus that will prove crippling and exploitable. At the same time, Lewis displays a quiet determination in constructing his latest invention, yet is crippled himself in his perceptions of failure and lack of forward thinking.

As we witness the reverse-evolution of Bowler Hat Guy back into his original incarnation as the young Mike Yagoobian, we become aware of a complexity of character rather than an over-the-top cliched archetype. Bowler Hat Guy's villainous swaggering exterior is methodically peeled away to reveal a still ingrained childhood mindset that is easily manipulated by an outside influence. When a defeated Goob teeters unknowingly on the precipice of his emotional destiny, it is his own future self that ultimately influences the path he takes:

"No! Everyone will tell you to let it go and move on, but don’t! Instead, let it fester and boil inside of you. Take these feelings and lock them away. Let them fuel your actions. Let hate be your ally and you will be capable of wonderfully horrid things. Heed my words, Goob. Don’t let it go."

Little Mikey grows into a bitter and disappointed individual, easily manipulated by the inhuman and evil machinations of Doris, the true villain of the piece. But in that symbolic exchange, it was he himself who determined the path taken. It is a bold statement about the human condition and its propensity for self-corruption, surprisingly found in a film genre recently better known for flatulence-based humor and teen-pleasing innuendos.

Lewis' obsession with the past is however not so much rooted in regrets as it is in the desire for family and acceptance. But he finds those dynamics, not in a past memory of a long lost mother, but unexpectedly in the wacky spontaneous collective of the extended Robinson clan. In another similarly symbolic encounter, Cornelius Robinson reinforces his forward-moving mantra upon young Lewis, thereby ensuring the very future that he, Cornelius, has in fact created.

This subtle laying of emotional groundwork allows for a culmination of story and events into an ending both overwhelming in its heartfelt nature and unexpected in its sincerity. The film is in many ways presented as a scrambled puzzle where surprisingly, nearly every piece deftly falls into place before the end credits roll. The smallest of details are accounted for despite the usual paradoxical problems inherent to time travel storytelling. The film's final moments, devoid of dialog but set to Rob Thomas' performance of the song "Little Wonders," deliver a succession of character performances rich in emotional nuance and possessing a genuineness unexpected in their very scope and delivery.

Upon subsequent viewings, I noticed a number of subtle elements that were simply brilliant in their execution. The film's opening moments where an infant Lewis is placed on the steps of the Sixth Street Orphanage, is colored in deep sepia tones, much liked an aged photograph and in direct contrast to film's later presentation of a bright and multicolored future.

The roots of the hilarious dinner table martial arts movie confrontation between Frannie and brother Gaston can be found in the film's early science fair scene where Frannie tells future son Wilbur "Don't sass me boy, I know karate."

The differences between Lewis and Goob are demonstrated in a subtle but telling manner via Lewis' equation-filled composition book that plays in stark contrast to Goob's happy unicorn-themed binder and its simple one-page checklist. Despite the nefarious tasks scribbled on that first page of loose leaf paper, the simple joyful nature of the possession betrays an underlying goodness potentially buried beneath the Bowler Hat Guy's villainy. The hollow nature of the adult Goob's plans and motivations is succinctly summarized early in the film when the head of Inventco pointedly questions "You mean you haven't thought this through?" The film revisits this thesis both hilariously and directly via the manipulations of Frankie the frog and T-Rex who both submissively proclaim "I'm just not so sure how well this plan was thought through . . . . . . Master."

I especially loved the parallel visits to the Anderson Observatory by Lewis in both the future and the present. Much in the way Cornelius reveals to Lewis his future potential, Bud and Lucille similarly uncover his eyes to the empty area upon which that unbridled potential will be realized.

And I will without reservation make note of the film's overall testament to the creative philosophies of Walt Disney. Much like the film's conclusion, the end quote is an unexpected emotional surprise that reaches beyond just the specific life journey of Lewis/Cornelius Robinson. While Walt Disney may have not specifically proclaimed the Keep Moving Forward mantra, his suppositions on "pushing the envelope" and "everyone needs a good failure" are clearly the basis of the Robinson family creeds. The quote, for many of us, is a direct correlation as to why we are, and have been, passionate Disney fans and enthusiasts. And it in many ways speaks to the recent transformation of the Walt Disney Company under the collective leadership of Bob Iger, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. Iger's own recent recent references to "generating creative success" certainly reflect the Keep Moving Forward philosophy, and certainly run counter to the Bowler Hat Guy planning that often defined the company prior to Iger's appointment as CEO.

As I've often stated, opinions are subjective. Meet the Robinsons has its detractors, many of them among the self-proclaimed Disney faithful. They clearly did not have the patience nor tolerance for the unconventional approach to the material taken by director Anderson and his crew. But it was that very approach that set it apart so dramatically and refreshingly from the overabundance of animated product that currently fills the multiplexes and DVD store shelves. At least for me, it was a fun, emotionally-charged and highly satisfying ride into the future with a fitting and relevant tribute to the Walt Disney Company's creative past.

Your Friend the Rat

2010-03-21T09:20:00.001-07:00

Once again, Pixar steps out of the box, but even more notably, steps back in time.

Its funny that so much of the initial buzz about Your Friend the Rat, the new Pixar short subject that appears on the just released Ratatouille DVD, is focused on the fact that it is largely comprised of two dimensional animation. For in truth, the roots of this particular endeavor can be found not simply so much in its more traditional hand drawn format, but in the cartoon modern style trappings and fast paced irreverent humor found in early Disney television productions largely written and directed by Ward Kimball.

This entertaining and often hilarious film owes much in theme and structure to Kimball's 1969 Oscar-nominated It's Tough to Be a Bird, and in some places even echoes that film's dialog. But in style and design it is clearly rooted in Kimball's earlier efforts on the Disney television anthology programs. It also is related to films such as The Truth About Mother Goose and additionally to many of the television episodes that showcased the eccentric and always very funny Ludwig Von Drake.

Remy and brother Emille take us through a fast paced and surprisingly educational history of the rat. Beginning with a quite expressive summary of mankind's longstanding war with this rodent species, the film then segues into a chronicle of global rat infiltration. It makes a hilarious pit stop in the 14th century to expose the real truth behind the Black Death, and at the same time affords us a clever but slightly more obscure Pixar character cameo. The fun continues, especially in an inspired sequence borrowing visuals from early pixel-heavy video games that illustrates how brown rats were vanquished from Alberta, Canada.

But the film rarely strays far from its Ward Kimball-inspired zaniness. When it touches on how rats have managed to survive extended exposure to nuclear radiation, the resulting mutant rodent is distinctly reminiscent of Kimball 's creations in 1957's Mars and Beyond. And shortly thereafter, when Mars plays a prominent part in the film's closing musical number, the dots are quickly connected. These Pixar folks are clearly fans of that particular member of Disney's Nine Old Men.

One piece of advice - be sure to read the details of the ending disclaimer. It's a bit of a challenge due to the antics of Remy and Emille, but well worth the effort.

One Enchanted Evening

2010-03-21T09:18:00.001-07:00

When it comes to Enchanted, I'm just a little bit late to the ball. Holiday travels and a busy work schedule kept me away from the multiplex until this past weekend, but Disney's very loving and incredibly entertaining tribute to its own fairy tale heritage was well worth the wait.

I have to admit that, despite the generally favorable buzz that surrounded Enchanted this past year, it remained relatively low on my radar screen. Though certainly lucrative, Disney's Princess brand of late has not reflected creatively sensibilities so much as marketing opportunities. Despite the film's many glowing reviews, as I entered the theater a small chip of cynicism remained ever present on my shoulder.

It was quickly knocked off.

Enchanted is a whimsical, happy, yet still smart and often rather sophisticated musical comedy. It is a homage to the Walt Disney Studio's long standing dynamic of fairy tale animation, and it makes no apologies for embracing that premise. The very clever transition at the beginning from the Studio's relatively new digitally-enhanced Castle-centric opening fanfare into the movie itself via a very nostalgic storybook introduction (complete with Julie Andrews narration), leaves no doubt that you have entered a Disney-inspired, and equally notable, Disney-celebrated, cinematic environment.

The film's animated segments were produced by James Baxter Animation, whose namesake's resume includes tours-of-duty at both Disney and Dreamworks. The animation remains very true to its forebears such as Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but injects a healthy dose or two of cartoon-based exaggeration to reflect the story's broader and more comedic approach to the archetypes, settings and themes presented.

Giselle, the movie's fish-out-water heroine and her ever faithful and determined Prince Edward most definitely epitomize Disney-based fairy tale models. Thrust into the reality of present day Manhattan by the evil machinations of Edward's stepmother Narissa, Giselle upends the life of divorce lawyer Robert Phillip and his young daughter Morgan, while awaiting rescue by her fair prince and unknowingly dodging attempts on her life by Narissa's misguided henchman Nathanial.

What emerges is a battle of romantic notions as Giselle's purities of heart and intent collide directly with Robert's cynicism and also his uninspired relationship with his girlfriend Nancy.

Amy Adams is simply a revelation as Giselle, portraying the character's naivety and goofy innocence as much through nuance and body language as through dialog and song. While fellow cast members, especially Patrick Dempsey as Robert and James Marsden as Edward, are equally deserving of accolades, Enchanted is clearly Adams' showcase, and no doubt her name will likely be appearing on numerous ballots this upcoming awards season.

While some have expressed disappointment in the Alan Mencken/Stephen Schwartz musical numbers, I myself found them a refreshing departure from the more Broadway-based stylings of the 1990s Disney storybook productions. The gentler approach taken with the Enchanted numbers reflects the more understated musical qualities of Disney's earlier era fairy tales, most especially Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

In fact, Enchanted's princess pedigree is more firmly rooted in those golden era classics than their later 20th century counterparts such as Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Giselle's undying optimism and romantic idealism feel more akin to Snow White and Cinderella than to Ariel, Belle or Jasmine. Similar to this year's earlier Meet the Robinsons, the film also has a very heartfelt and emotional resolution set to song. The sequence notably revisits the pop-up storybook design that opened the film, and then allows Disney Legend Julie Andrews to intone the concluding ". . . and they all lived happily ever after."

And much in the way that Meet the Robinsons created a distinct and very emotional connection to the creative philosophies of Walt Disney, Enchanted conveys similarly the very noble themes of love, hope and optimism that Walt attempted to infuse into all his efforts. By respecting those qualities rather than mocking them (as many recent animated films have done), director Kevin Lima has fashioned an experience that will likely become as evergreen as the original entertainment that inspired it.

Disneyland U.S.A.

2010-03-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

The latest wave of Disney Treasures DVDs, Disneyland: Secrets, Stories & Magic, The Chronological Donald Volume Three and The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, were released yesterday. I will leave it to others in the Disney online community to do more extended reviews of each of the volumes, especially in regard to their technical specifications and presentations; I would much rather address some of the great items included in these releases more specifically than in just the context of a general review.

While I was certainly anxious to see those early restored Oswald cartoons and also revisit Donald Duck in one of his most celebrated periods, I instead first unwrapped the Disneyland set and immediately went searching for what I consider to be the real gem of the three volumes -- the 1956 People and Places short subject Disneyland U.S.A., restored to its original glorious wide screen Cinemascope presentation.

It is a revelation. I had previously seen a pan-and-scan version of the film about a decade ago on the Disney Channel's overnight Vault Disney programming, and to say that cropped edition did not do the film justice would be a severe understatement. For Disneyland U.S.A.'s wide angle panoramas of the park during its earliest of days are true marvels to behold.

Having never visited Anaheim until 1989, I have always longed to get some type of visual sense of 1950s era Disneyland. It is often very difficult to ascertain size, scale, scope and placement from even the best of photographs, but it is in those areas where Disneyland U.S.A. succeeds so dramatically. The film provides all of these perspectives almost immediately; an opening aerial flyover quickly establishes the geography of the park during those early years. In one continuous shot the camera travels counter-clockwise around the park and provides an amazing visual reference of what once was. It is breathtaking.

Before heading into the park proper, our guide and narrator, the oh-so-easy-to-listen-to Winston Hibler takes us for a quick tour of the nearby Disneyland Hotel. The brief few minutes spent there is still a revealing encapsulation of 1950s culture, from candy stores and beauty salons to shuffleboard courts and poolside fashions.

Upon arriving in Disneyland, we are taken on a leisurely land-by-land tour that alternates between the aforementioned spectacular aerial panoramas and more intimate guest's eye viewpoints. Nearly every corner of the park, no matter how remote, seems to be touched in some way by the camera's eye.

More than anything, viewing the film is most akin to watching a long challenging jigsaw puzzle being assembled before your eyes. Disparate images you may have previously seen in books, photos, other films and on television programs suddenly are brought together in context to form a greater picture of the park as it existed in 1956. One shining example of this is brought to bear through the film's overview of Frontierland. I had long wondered how all the various ride components of Nature's Wonderland coexisted; via bird's eye views and first person perspectives, we see how the mine trains, pack mules, Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches all departed the little town of Rainbow Ridge and navigated the faux-desert landscape. Vignettes in other areas of the park reveal other geographic mappings. In similar fashion, the various vehicle components associated with Storybookland in Fantasyland are also demonstrated.

What is also especially enjoyable is seeing things that were largely innocuous in 1956 that have since become iconic. Guests pay little attention as they walk past many of the now-famous attraction posters displayed near the park entrance. In another scene, a young child clutches her ticket book, which today is considered a collectors item emblematic of not only Disneyland, but to some extent, American popular culture as well.

Disneyland U.S.A. is a vibrant and extremely colorful trip back in time that simply mesmerizes. It is a 42 minute time capsule that you'll likely want to revisit again and again.

And a great compliment to Disneyland U.S.A. are three of my favorite Disney blogs-- Daveland, Gorillas Don't Blog and Stuff from the Park. Their collective collections of vintage Disneyland photographs are Disney Treasures in their own rights. Just remember to come up for air every few hours or so.

How to Hook Up Your Home Theater

2010-03-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

If we can go on the assumption that Goofy has some degree of canine genetics in his biology, then the new cartoon How to Hook Up Your Home Theater proves that you can in fact, teach an old dog new tricks.

Currently showing in theaters with National Treasure: Book of Secrets, this new animated vignette is the first in a series of new cartoon short subjects that were commissioned by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull shortly after taking the reins at Walt Disney Feature Animation. It is wonderful marriage of nostalgia to contemporary popular culture, applying the formula from the classic 1940s and 1950s era Goofy "How-To" cartoons to digital age home electronics. It's a fun and very often hilarious combination.

Like its predecessors such as How to Be a Detective, How to Swim or Home Made Home, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater comes out of the gate fast and never slows down until the end credits. It pays immediate homage to the original Sport Goofy films with a direct connection to How to Play Football, by utilizing the original stadium background from that 1944 production and expounding similar pratfall-filled gameplay. But the shorts contemporary sensibilities soon emerge. For, while the mid-20th century everyman clearly loved football, his early 21st century counterpart loves it equally as well but just translated to a mammoth television screen with all the accompanying home theater bells and whistles.

With his ever present off-screen narrator, the Goof explores the world of home entertainment via both sharp witticisms and broad physical comedy. The moment Goofy walks into the Shiny Stuff superstore and subsequently (and hilariously) professes his love for a wall-sized television, you realize that this animation golden age superstar has definitely embraced the modern age. The short pokes fun at numerous home theater conventions, including delivery windows, instruction manuals, tangled cables and universal remotes.

And for the quintessential Disney geek such as myself, there are plenty of hidden details and inside jokes. References can be found to Mickey Mouse, Dopey and even a supporting character from Pinocchio. In addition, quick but distinct homages are paid to both John Lasseter and Walt Disney himself. But especially notable was use of the original early era design styles of both the opening title cards and the end credits. It is both a testament to, and a celebration of, the Disney Studio's legacy of cartoon shorts, of which How to Hook Up Your Home Theater is a most welcome addition.

Wall-E

2010-03-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Wall-E is the right movie at the right time. It is at its core a sincere and simple love story devoid of sarcasm and cynicism, but framed within a cautionary fable that gently, though still pointedly, presents a post-apocalypse future brought about by environmental neglect and commercial over-consumption. It is a visually stunning combination of art and design that conveys an astounding emotional depth through not just its deftly animated central characters, but via landscapes and panoramas at times hauntingly surreal and and at other times dense in high tech polish.

The film's title character, a resilient and ever-curious robot appears to be the last of his kind left on a garbage-filled and long abandoned planet earth. With his only friend, an equally sturdy and resilient cockroach, he spends his days compacting and stacking trash cubes while also collecting objects and paraphernalia from what is our now bygone civilization. In doing so, he has developed an unexpected emotional dynamic that imbues in him a loneliness, inspired especially by the romantic musical vignettes he has discovered on a VHS copy of the film Hello Dolly.

Wall-E's world is rocked both literally and figuratively by the arrival of EVE, a sleek distinctly female robot sent by the space-exiled last vestiges of humanity living on a distant starship. EVE is seeking any sign of the reemergence of organic life; Wall-E in turn seeks companionship from EVE and an emotional-physical connection in the form of the hand-holding he has witnessed in the scenes from Hello Dolly. Their romance ultimately takes them into space where they confront the overweight and overstimulated remnants of the human race who live an idyllic, albeit mindless existence and have long ago lost the heartfelt connectivity that Wall-E so desperately yearns for.

The film's hallmark is most certainly its earthbound first act, almost entirely devoid of dialog yet dense in character-driven story and emotional resonance. Though his romance with EVE takes center stage, his friendship with the unnamed cockroach is equally rich in nuance and charm. Director/writer Andrew Stanton embraced a wholly unconventional approach with the material, but it paid huge dividends. So incredibly well-realized are Wall-E, EVE and the movie's other non-human denizens, you are never at a loss to understand what they are all about. It all represents a commitment to creative integrity that continues to set Pixar well above their closest competitors.

Equally entertaining, but in an altogether different way was Presto, the new Pixar animated short that preceded Wall-E. It is a beautiful and hilarious Tex Avery-inspired cartoon that is pure fun from beginning to end.

Discovering Disneynature's earth

2010-03-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

earth, the initial offering of the Disneynature imprint, is truly a True-Life Adventure for the 21st century. It successfully marries the charm and wonder of Walt Disney's mid-20th century groundbreaking nature documentaries with current filmmaking techniques and innovations.

I unfortunately missed earth when it premiered in movie theaters this past spring. But happily, the just released Blu-ray Disc provides a in-home experience to rival just about any theatrical venue.

A joint production of Disney, Discovery Channel and the BBC, earth successfully distills footage from the acclaimed television series Planet Earth into an entertaining ninety minutes that in many ways distinctly brings to mind the film's True-Life predecessors. James Earl Jones provides a narration that is immediately reminiscent of Winston Hibler, the very memorable voice behind the original True-Life Adventure series. Like Hibler before him, Jones effectively injects enough charm and humor into his efforts to insure the interest of even the youngest of the film's viewers. By loosely following the travels of three separate mother-offspring animal sets (polar bears, humpback whales and elephants), the film provides a degree of storytelling connectivity both entertaining and necessary.

Visually, earth is spectacular to say the least. It is the perfect showcase for Blu-ray technology and high definition televisions. Especially impressive are the filmmakers' uses of aerial photography and time-lapse effects that, in a high definition presentation, are simply breathtaking.

Disc special features include a making-of feature and an interesting, but still somewhat insubstantial interactive menu screen that can be enhanced and updated by means of internet connectivity.

Though the film is essentially an abridgment of the Planet Earth series, it can effectively stand on its own merits, or otherwise serve as an introduction to that clearly more extensive production. It is a laudable beginning to the Disneynature brand and a worthy successor to Disney's True-Life Adventure legacy.