The Early Years of Walt DisneyWEEK 5

Recently I had a conversation with a young thing in her thirties. I was surprised to hear the enthusiasm in her voice as she discussed the characters of the animated dwarfs in Snow White. After all they came to life in 1940. “What was it”, she was asking, “that made them so enduring?”

Other people remember the villains and witches. I well know one person who had to jump from his bed to the carpet for years to be safe from the evil queen lurking underneath him.

Disney had a profound influence on the world of film during his lifetime. His original organisation has evolved into the largest media company in the entertainment industry today.

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He was a creative man, constantly driven to discover the limits of possibility in filmmaking and to improve the quality of his products. He was not afraid to thrust his own ideas upon the world.

Born in 1901, Disney lived through many hard times surviving farm work in the blizzards of Kansas as a boy. Then he experienced unemployment and homelessness before gaining a toehold in his chosen field. These experiences were never forgotten and influenced his work.

Through tireless self-promotion he overtook competition in the film world and lived to see the success of Disneyland.

It is ironic that in the service of realism, Disney drove his artists and technicians to such high levels of craft that audiences forgot that they were watching animation.

Before we dive into a picture show, think of the link between these words:

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“image, imagery, imagination”.

In prehistoric times people draw animals in the depth of caves. They are beautifully drawn. They are not only accurate but have the suggestion of movement and inner life.

Resting after the hunt, Narcissus sees his own reflection for the first time and falls in love with himself.

Some time later mirrors are invented. The images that they allow us to see are central to a wide range of human topics, for example, art, psychology and optics. At first the process of making them is belaboured and imprecise, resulting in mirrors of dim reflection. As Paul the Apostle said: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

Eventually, the Great Hall Of Mirrors in Versailles became known as a dazzling achievement of French art.

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Mirrors allow a sense of personal reflection and comparative identity. They enable us to see and depict the world and are critical to the discovery of linear perspective.

But images are more than visual. They capture time and emotion and convey ideas and interpretations. Our imaginations are great storehouses of images and are capable of making monsters from shadows.

People have always had a compelling urge to make representations of the things around them, a need to create something that appears to be living and vital and has a separate identity that gives the illusion of life.

A small boy realises that the marks he has made on paper represent a real thing. He is delighted and perseveres with his efforts. He will always remember that a neighbour paid him a few cents for his picture of a horse.

The boy, Walt Disney, is to become a folk hero… the Pied Piper of Hollywood but let us think back to the turn of the century, 1895 to be precise. Thirty-three

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spectators gathered in a Paris basement while an image was projected onto a small screen. Imagine the astonishment as the figures began to move. The beginning of the age of cinema had arrived.

Late in the 1800s Melbourne was a sophisticated world-class city. Barely a year after the invention of the cinema camera by the Lumiere Brothers, in France, Melbourne had its own cinema, where the Tivoli Arcade now stands. It had seating for two thousand people.

On the 7th of November 1896, an enterprising American magician, Carl Herz, brought a Theatrograph to Melbourne. This was a less sophisticated copy of the Lumiere Brother’s Cinematograph, which had been patented, so was unavailable to him. Hertz, always with an eye for the new and novel, supplemented his own magic act with several short films and this was Melbourne’s first Movie Screening. It was so successful that a local newspaper would note:

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“The country visitor who returns home from Melbourne still in ignorance of the marvels of the cinematograph must have gone nowhere and seen nothing.”

The Australasian, 7th Nov. 1896

This clip will help to put the development of cinema in context, demonstrating the achievements of those who searched for ways of portraying different genres of film:

“The birth of cinema” 9 mins

Animation was once thought to have been based on “persistence of vision” a theory, explaining how we retain an image for a short time after removal of the stimulus.

However, Max Wertheimer in 1912 described Beta movement, where a series of images on a screen create the illusion of smooth flowing action. This occurs when the frame rate is more than 10-12 separate images per second. Of

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course, our understanding of vision and perception is steadily developing and always important to makers of cinema.

From an early age Walt Disney loves drawing. At high school he takes drawing and photography classes and contributes cartoons for the school newspaper. He goes to courses at the Chicago Art Institute.

By this time Charlie Chaplin has appeared in his first film and the first kiss has already been shown on screen, but a full-length drama with sound, is to come later and animation is still at its beginnings.

It is possible that Disney was aware of, or even saw “The Story of the Kelly Gang” which was the first dramatic feature film. It was released in 1906 and shot around the city of Melbourne, but only fragments of it remain. The rest is possibly as badly decomposed as Ned Kelly himself.

Perhaps Disney read “Motion Picture Magazine”, first published in 1911. It was the first fan magazine. Its most successful column, written by a woman, was

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called “The Answer Man”. It was an innovation, beginning this style of journalism.

At any rate, in 1919, Disney, aged eighteen, returned home to his family. He had been away in France, first working as an ambulance driver during the First World War and then spending time in France to escape the great flu epidemic that carried off twenty million people around the world. He returned home where he was faced with the prospect of working in his father’s business.

Elias Disney, his father, was by many accounts, a tough man who struggled to provide for his family of five children. He was a strict member of the Congregational Church and Walt was named after the minister. Elias didn’t think that being an artist was a secure enough job for his son but like many a son before him, Walt refused to listen. Instead, as always, he went to his older brother for advice. Roy and Walt supported each other throughout their lives as Walt created and Roy balanced the books.

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Through Roy, Walt was able to find work at a commercial art studio, drawing farm equipment, horses and bags of feed for catalogues. He worked very hard, rarely leaving the drawing board but gaining his first training in commercial art.

Even more importantly, he met Ub Iwerks, who became his closest friend and later, his chief animator. When this job finished the two formed a company of their own which only lasted a month. However after that, they joined the Kansas City Film Ad Company in 1920 and were introduced to primitive animation.

Disney and Ub had already been experimenting with cartoons and the movie camera. Disney’s niece can remember that when she was five years old he would amuse her by reversing the film in his camera to play tricks with reality.

By this time, Max Fleischer, one of Disney’s competitors, had brought out his first series of cartoons and invented the Rotoscope.

The following clip explains the importance of his invention:

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Out of the Inkwell & Rotoscope (4)

Meanwhile, across the sea in Germany, between 1923 and 1926, Lotte Reiniger, working by hand, cut around 100,000 individual silhouettes to create “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”, the first feature length animated film of all time. She won international recognition for the enchanting filigree figures and imaginative décor in this fairy tale film.

Reiniger used a distinct art style for her animation. Instead of relying on facial expressions to express emotions or action, her characters relied on gesture. She also utilised the technique of metamorphosis, accomplishing the results by using cut out animation.

We are fortunate to be able to view her work today using a negative saved in England where Reininger and her husband were given asylum after WW2. The original film was destroyed in the Battle of Berlin.

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As I watch it I think of her as an aging lady, saying:

“My hands have been using scissors for so long now, that they know what they have to do”.

Prince Achmed (2)

Disney used Reininger’s style in “Fantasia”, in the scene where Mickey Mouse is in the same shot as the live action musicians.

Speaking of Micky Mouse, here is a clip showing Disney’s business history and early direction as well as acknowledging Ub Iwerks as Mickey Mouse’s original animator.

The “History of Mickey Mouse ”. (5)

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The highly acclaimed animated short, called “Band Concert” with its wonderful sound effects, so appealed to the great conductor, Toscanini, that he saw it six times and invited Disney to his home in Italy.

This “Silly Symphony” film is in Technicolor and shows Donald Duck, whose voice is that of Clarence Nash. Let’s watch a little of it and recognise the well known characteristics of Mickey and Donald:

“The Band Concert” (8)

In 1925 Disney creates the Walt Disney Company and for the next 14 years it grows and is modified to cope with the needs of the ever-growing staff. It is where Mickey Mouse was created in 1928.

In 1925 Lillian Bounds is hired as an inker and painter, and she marries Walt later that year.

In 1929 the stock market has crashed and the Great Depression has started.

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In 1932, a short film, “Flowers and Trees” was produced in the new three-strip colour and it was such a critical and commercial success that all future Silly Symphonies were produced in this way. Disney’s exclusive contract with Technicolor was in effect until the end of 1935, forcing other animation producers to use inferior systems.

“Flowers and Trees” won the first Academy Award for Animated Short Subjects.

Flowers & Trees (7.30)

By this time, Disney and his brother are both married. While his brother has a son, Walt and his wife are having difficulties and Disney has health problems.

Fortunately, in 1933, they have a daughter and later they are able to adopt another. Walt becomes a doting family man.

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However, funds are short and Walt falls out with his best friend. Walt is said to be too commanding and unwilling to give credit to anybody else. Ub Iwerks, on the other hand, is a workhorse. When animating the first Micky Mouse cartoon, he finished an average of 600-700 drawings a night.

His loss to Disney is both commercial and personal.

Disney is artistically restless, driven to experiment and to try new things. At this point, he could see the “writing on the wall” with rising production costs and the limitations of short films, which were sometimes denigrated, becoming fillers in theatre programs.

He wanted to create a full-length animated film, with all its challenges but the idea was revolutionary. It must have cost Roy many sleepless nights, thinking of the risk and expense.

When approached by Kay Cayman, a Kansas City advertising man, Disney is able to find a new source of funding for his artistic restlessness.

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Disney merchandise makes perfect presents, and Mickey Mouse watches are still collected, still valuable even to this day. Later it will be necessary to create a merchandising department.

Merchandising

Despite the worries, with Disney’s drive and talented staff, the film, “Snow White”, the first animated full-length feature with sound and colour, commences production in 1937.

Critics were virtually unanimous in their admiration for the film. “There has never been anything in the theatre quite like Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, say the critics, describing seven reels of animated cartoon in Technicolor, which unfold absorbingly interesting, even, thrilling entertainment.

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“So perfect is the illusion, so tender the romance and fantasy, so emotional are certain portions when the acting of the characters strikes a depth comparable to the sincerity of human player, that the film approaches real greatness.”

Today one must remember that nothing like this film had been seen before.

Charlie Chaplin told the Los Angeles times that the film “surpassed high expectations.” In dwarf Dopey, Disney has created one of the greatest comedians of all times”, he stated.

The movie’s innovative use of colour, animation, sound, direction and background among other elements, later inspired directors like Fellini and Orson Wells. In fact Citizen Kane features an opening shot of a castle at night with one lighted window that is strikingly similar to the first shot of the wicked Queen’s castle in Snow White.

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Disney was a great storyteller and he loved fairy tales. They offer the perfect opportunity to provide gateways to fantasy, tell hard truths and ways of dealing with them and to offer hope.

They are perfect dramatically with formulaic structure, good and bad characters, magical elements and particular memorable devices such as magic mirrors.

But Disney did far more than that. His inspiration was not in creating Snow White. She might be considered too meek and gentle nowadays.

His success was in creating her world. At a time when animation was a painstaking frame by frame activity and every additional moving detail took an artist days or weeks to draw, Disney imagined a film in which every corner and dimension would contain something that was alive and moving.

He used the multiplane camera, which gave the illusion of three dimensions and could release the film from its trap of space and time. The audience could

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be shown unlimited points of view in a scene, limited only by the imagination of the producer.

In this, his first animated feature, Disney lifted the fairy tale from a short tale portraying archetypes and with a simple moral, to a lifelike, rich story, with memorable characters.

As we look at the trailer of Snow White, (1937) it is necessary to remember that this film shows a princess who was designed eighty years ago and that values and expectations for her may have changed.

Snow White

After “Snow White” Disney wanted to travel in new directions in film making, so with money earned from his success he began production on three films at once.

They were “Pinocchio”, “Fantasia” and “Bambi”.

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“Pinocchio”, the second of Disney’s feature films was released in February 1940. It is based on, “A Tale of a Puppet” by the Italian writer, Carlo Lorenzi, who wrote under the penname Carlo Collodi. The book was first published in English in 1892. Collodi had been a priest and later worked in politics, although he had a strong interest in education.

Disney kept just enough of the horror element present in the original story to keep it effective. Originally in the book, Pinocchio is portrayed as “thoughtless, deceitful and cruel”, while in this film he is naïve and trusting.

In order to maintain the interest as Pinocchio wavers on his quest to learn “real” human behaviour, Disney provides a new character, Jiminy Cricket who sings a catchy tune.

In fact, Disney used music in all his work to indicate and emphasise character, flag subplots and support mood. “There’s a terrific power to music” says Disney himself.

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Many consider “Pinocchio” the ultimate in the art of animation. The quaint storybook setting inspired intricate detail in the production line. The ornate clocks in Gepetto’s workshop and the cobblestones on the street of the village are examples of the attention to detail.

In order to satisfy the artistic demand a new model department was created and Disney made great efforts to engage knowledgeable people to inspire and teach art to his staff.

As well:

“Walt brought in top story people. He brought in H.G.Wells to lecture on story development.”

Don Graham, an art instructor inspired students by bringing in real animals for the staff to draw, until “… it became a zoo”.

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Many people consider the animation is close to perfect although it was not until after the War that the film began to make money.

Pinocchio Lies

“Fantasia” was Disney’s opportunity to really let his hair down and experiment. It is a concert consisting of eight animated pieces of classical music, arranged and conducted by Leopold Stokowski and Disney artists. Disney wanted the audience to “see music and hear pictures”. He likened this to being in a concert hall half asleep. To be honest when watching this film recently, I wondered how I sat through the two hours duration as a child. Even so, at this stage in my life I am very moved by its beauty and power, in some parts, more than others.

The opening scene showing the orchestra is unusual for a Disney Feature. It makes us feel as if we are attending a concert, seated as part of the audience. As classical music is considered to be not cartoon like, serious, maybe even “highbrow” perhaps we don’t know what to expect. However the conductor is

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reassuring as he explains each piece. The general theme, we are told, is to explore the ideas of order and harmony, how the elements are controlled.

The first feature, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is portrayed in powerful abstract flashes of light and colour. After watching this scene it is possible to understand Disney’s words “Bach has spoken”. The designer, Oscar Fischinger, was a brilliant abstract artist but he objected to Disney directing additional ‘needless realism’ such a sky background to his scenes and left the Disney studio.

Striking images abound in almost every sequence of the film. The dancing flowers and fairies of the “Nutcracker Suite”, the mushrooms in the Chinese Dance and the whirling Cossack thistles and swirling orchids in the Russian dance all stand out as wonderful art.

Of course everybody remembers the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment with its narrative form and Mickey Mouse getting more than he bargained for.

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In “Night on Bald Mountain”, with its enormous bat-winged demon we are followed by almost literal haunting. Bela Lugosi was actually hired so the artists could study him presiding over a riot of cavorting ghouls.

In fact, over a thousand artists and technicians were employed to make “Fantasia”. During its making Disney said, “We have worlds to conquer here.”

Unfortunately with the imminent outbreak of the war he was unable to carry out all his plans including installing Fantasound, his version of a stereophonic system, into picture theatres.

Even so, “Fantasia” garnered significant acclaim at the time of its release and was seen by some critics as a masterpiece.

Film critic Edwin Schallert of the “Los Angeles Times” said that “Fantasia” is:

“Caviar to the general, ambrosia and nectar for the intelligentsia. It’s courageous beyond belief”.

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With its success Disney was able to show that animation is possible for doing anything; it isn’t only a medium for children.

Russian Dance

“Bambi” was adapted from Felix Salten’s novel, “Bambi: A Life in the Woods”. It tells the story of a young deer’s coming of age with his friends.

The original book is an adult book, now considered a classic and one of the first environmental novels ever published. The plot was considered to be “too grim and sombre” for a Disney film so was adapted and simplified to make it lighter.

In Germany, where the book was first published, it was banned as “political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe”. Many copies of the book were burned making original first copies rare.

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When development of the film in 1936 began, Disney started to prepare a hand picked team of artists who would ultimately spend six years working on the film. To create a realistic but stylised forest background, artist Tyrus Wong created hundreds of sketches. They were revolutionary since they had more detail around the centre and less around the edges, so leading the eye to the characters.

The multiplane camera was used throughout the film but one of the most effective shots was a lengthy pan, during the song “Let’s Sing a Gay Little Spring Song”. It follows the birds as they fly, landing on a blossoming branch.

Let’s Sing

Eric Larson, one of the artists, was concerned to improve the portrayal of the deer in “Bambi”. He said that in “Snow White” they had looked “like big flour sacks”. Artists had to create a balance between realism of body and movement, even through snow, while still conveying character.

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When released “Bambi” received mixed reviews because of the fantasy elements. Hunters felt that the film was “the worst insult ever offered in any form to American sportsmen”.

Today, however Bambi is viewed as a classic and has recouped a considerable amount of money with its re-issues.

In 1940 the Company moved to the bigger Burbank Studio. In the following year Disney perceived the Strike that took place as an unforgivable betrayal by his workers.

During the War years the new studio was converted for work on military contracts. Disney produced training films and propaganda.

By the time he died in 1966 he was considered a giant of twentieth century entertainment and his achievements were many.

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Throughout his life, he was both beloved and feared, wanting mass acceptance while pushing artistic boundaries, driving his staff while wanting a workplace family.

His choice of literature for adapting to films seems to me to have a common thread. Many were not well known until rewritten by his team. Many are complex, written for adults and dark, giving him the opportunity to carry out the Disney makeover, which is now so familiar. This means that on the one hand, the films may be seen to be cute, clean and American. On the other hand it can be said that they bring obscure, difficult books to life and encourage the audience to read the original.

The controversy still rages but I must stop.

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