Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (44 page)

in the film!

26. Quoted in Maltin, 37.

27. Karl F. Cohen,
Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted
Animators in America
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1997), 24, discusses how the popular press used this anecdote repeatedly during this period.

28. “Regulated Rodent,”
Time
(Feb. 16, 1931): 21.

29. Quoted in Maltin, 37.

30. Johnston and Thomas, 35.

31. For some reason, Minnie at the piano became a leitmotif during this 236

N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 1

period, as if this were all she could do. She appears this way in
The Birthday
Party, Mickey Cuts Up, Mickey’s Orphans
(1931),
Mickey’s Revue
(1932), and
The
Whoopee Party
(1932).

32. Robert Sklar, “The Making of Cultural Myths: Walt Disney and Frank Capra,”
Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies
(New York: Random House, 1975), 201.

33. Harry M. Benshoff, “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, Is Disney High or Low?

From Silly Cartoons to Postmodern Politics,”
Animation Journal
1:1 (Fall 1992): 67.

34. Sklar, 61.

35. Ibid., 65.

36. Benshoff, “Heigh-Ho,” marks this development as well.

37. Norman M. Klein,
Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon
(New York: Verso, 1993), also discusses this previous conception of animation: “To paraphrase Resnais, if we ask how far back the castle is in
Felix in Fairyland,
the answer might be: about five feet from the bottom, along the surface of the screen” (5).

38. John Canemaker,
Treasures of Disney Animation Art
(New York: Abbeville Press, 1982), 15.

39. Although I am describing silent animation conventions, it would be easy to apply this analysis of the body in animation to certain sound cartoons as well. Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote, and the title character in
Who Framed Roger
Rabbit?
(1988), serve as examples.

40. Walt, and subsequent historians working for Disney, would describe the years from 1927–1931 as an era of primitivism. Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of the top animators at Disney throughout its history, state in
Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life
that while “the early Mickeys displayed great vitality . . . they had never achieved the quality of life in individual drawings”

(8). Regarding the character of Mickey during this period, they comment that

“Mickey Mouse lacked . . . consistency in his first pictures. He was often just any character. . . . His reactions to the problems facing him were whatever made the funniest gag for that situation in the story” (35). Johnston and Thomas argue that the animation during this period was primitive and inferior because figures were too “stiff,” that there was no sense of volume or weight, much less what would eventually become known as “total animation,” a process in which the whole body is in motion rather than, for example, the one hand that is waving. In describing early animation this way, Johnston and Thomas privilege the style that Disney’s animators would later develop and do not acknowledge that most animation during the silent and early sound era was not only
drawn
differently but
conceived of
differently. Consequently, to judge a previous style through the eyes of a later conception is to see only its deficiencies and none of its merits.

N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 1

237

41. This was also the first year the Academy included a category for Best Animated Short Subject—probably in response to the sustained success of Disney’s studio. (Walt had been given a special Oscar the year before for creating Mickey Mouse.) Disney would win the category every year throughout the rest of the 1930s.

42. The Multiplane process placed animation cels and various levels of background scenery on superimposed glass panes, so that a three-dimensional composition appeared in front of the vertically positioned camera. In simulat-ing a live-action camera pan, figures in the background would be shifted less than figures in the foreground, heightening the illusion of depth. The process worked well, but was very time consuming and hence, pushed the budgets of projects up enormously. The studio stopped using the Multiplane process after the production of
Bambi
(1942).

43. This is not to say that the processes themselves inherently pushed towards this direction but that this was the main way in which the Disney studio conceived of using them—to create a more “real” world.

44. Richard Neupert, “Painting a Plausible World: Disney’s Color Prototypes,”
Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom,
Eric Smoodin, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 106–117, makes a similar argument about color being used in a greater attempt at realism.

45. Donald Mosley,
Disney’s World
(New York: Stein and Day, 1985), 144.

The italics are Mosley’s.

46. Giannalberto Bendazzi,
Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation,
trans. Anna Taraboletti-Segre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 65.

47. Walt Disney, from a 1935 studio memo, quoted in John Canemaker, 18.

48. Johnston and Thomas,
Disney Animation,
9.

49. Schickel, 148.

50. Maltin, 42. The italics are his.

51. Schickel, 117.

52. Quoted in Schickel, 115.

53. For articles in popular news magazines, see “Portrait: Walt Disney,”

Newsweek
(Oct. 7, 1933): 48; “Profound Mouse,”
Time
(May 15, 1933): 37. Art and literary journals: “On the Screen: Three Little Pigs,”
Literary Digest
(Oct. 14, 1933): 45–46; C. A. Lejeune, “Disney-Time: Not-So-Silly Symphonies,”
Theatre
Arts
(Feb. 1934): 84. Film fan magazines: Sara Hamilton, “The True Story of Mickey Mouse,”
Movie Mirror
(Dec. 1931): 100–101; Walt Disney, “Mickey Mouse is Five Years Old,”
Film Pictorial
(Sept. 30, 1933): 5; “He’s Mickey Mouse’s Voice and Master,”
Movie Classic
(Nov. 1933): 30, 74–75; Richard H. Syring, “One of the Greats,” Silver Screen (Nov. 1932): 46–47. “High-class” periodicals: Gilbert Seldes, “Mickey-Mouse Maker,”
The New Yorker
(Dec. 19, 1931): 23–25; Walt Disney, “The Cartoon’s Contribution to Children,”
Overland
238

N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 1

Monthly
(0ct. 1933): 138; Arthur Mann, “Mickey Mouse’s Financial Career,”

Harpers’ Magazine
(May 1934): 714–721. Business and political journals: “Disney and Others,”
The New Republic
71:914 (June 8, 1932): 101–103; Claude Bragdon,

“Mickey Mouse and What He Means,”
Scribners’ Magazine
96:1 (July 1934): 40–43; “The Big Bad Wolf and Why It May Never Huff Nor Puff at Walt Disney’s Door,”
Fortune
10:5 (Nov. 1934): 146–157. Women’s and family magazines: Harry Carr, “The Only Unpaid Movie Star,”
The American Magazine
11:3 (Mar.

1931): 55–57; Henry Pringle, “Mickey Mouse’s Father,”
McCall’s Magazine
(Aug.

1932): 7; “
Parents’ Magazine
Medal to Walt Disney,”
Parents’ Magazine
9:1 (Jan.

1934): 17; Alva Johnson, “Mickey Mouse,”
Woman’s Home Companion
(July 1934): 12–13.

54. J. B. Kaufman, “Good Mouse-keeping: Family-Oriented Publicity in Disney’s Golden Age,”
Animation Journal
3:2 (Spring 1995): 78–85, lists all of the

“Disney pages,” pointing out that often the released short would have no correspondence to the description in the magazine. As Disney began releasing features in the late 1930s, the “Disney page” promoted these as well.
Good Housekeeping
ran “Disney pages” until 1945.

55. Gregory A. Waller, “Mickey, Walt, and Film Criticism from
Steamboat
Willie
to
Bambi
,” in
The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology,
Gerald Peary and Danny Peary, eds. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), 53.

56. Disney, “The Cartoons Contribution to Children,” 138.

57. Ibid..

58. Ibid.

59. “
Parents’ Magazine
Medal to Walt Disney,” 17.

60. David Frederick McCord, “Is Walt Disney a Menace to Our Children?”

Photoplay
45:5 (Apr. 1934): 30–31, 92, 103.

61. Dr. Walter Bera Wolfe, as quoted in McCord, 130. Accompanying McCord’s piece in
Photoplay
is a small article entitled “Dr. Brill Analyzes Walt Disney’s Masterpieces,” (92) in which a similar conclusion is reached.

62. “Profound Mouse,” 37.

63. Seldes, 23.

64. L. H. Robbins, “Mickey Mouse the Economist,”
New York Times Magazine
(Mar. 10, 1935): 22.

65. “The Cartoons Contribution to Children,” 138. These words are not ascribed to Disney himself, but are part of an anonymously written preface to the article.

66. Seldes, 23–24.

67. “Man and Mouse,”
Time
(Dec. 27. 1937): 21.

68. The quote is from “Profound Mouse,” 28 and the full text reads: “His wife, Lillian Marie Bounds, a Hollywood girl who has never had anything to do with the cinema . . . “Compare this with the
New Yorker
’s version in Seldes’ 1931

article: “He is married to Lillian Marie Bounds, who he met in Hollywood, N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 1

239

where she was probably unique, as she had nothing to do with pictures” (23).

Disregarding the factual omission that Walt met Lillian when she was working at his studio as an “ink-and-paint girl,” the almost verbatim repetition belies the press release handed out by the studio.

69. Seldes, 24.

70. “Man and Mouse,” 21.

71. “The Big Bad Wolf and Why It May Never Huff Nor Puff at Walt Disney’s Door,” 146.

72. “Family Movie Guide,”
Parents’ Magazine
9:1 (Jan. 1934): 30. This warning accompanied each “movie guide” in every issue.

73. Dr. Edgar Dale, “Helping Youth Choose Better Movies,”
Parents’ Magazine
9:4 (Apr. 1934): 26–27, 71–73; Fred Eastman, “How to Choose Movies for Your Children,”
Parents’ Magazine
9:3 (Mar. 1934): 18–19, 67–68; and Marguerite Benson, “Will the Code Bring Better Movies?”
Parents’ Magazine
9:6 (June 1934): 26, 66–67. Dr. Edgar Dale was part of the research team whose work for the Payne Fund project served as the basis of
Our Movie-Made Children.

74. Janet Flanner, “Boom Shot of Hollywood,”
Harpers’ Bazaar
(Nov. 1, 1936): 183.

75. Maureen Furniss, “Animation and Color Key: The Career of Phyllis Craig,”
Animation Journal
5:1 (Fall 1996): 58–70.

76. Mosley, 165.

77. Bob Thomas,
Walt Disney: An American Original
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976). Thomas’ work is the only authorized biography of Disney, and certain facts—such as the adoption of Walt’s second daughter—were obscured at the request of the family. So, for Thomas to include such an anecdote in such a laundered work gives it a certain credence.

78. Mosley, 165–166.

79. Ibid., 166.

80. Ibid., 167. Although the animator who tells this anecdote is never named, the detail about “whether your shorts fit or not” leads to the specula-tion that the source is animator Ward Kimball, who in a different section of Mosley’s book, describes how he was informed to buy a better-fitting pair of volleyball shorts because the female employees were enjoying a little too much how his pants kept falling down when he played volleyball during lunch. See Mosley, 165.

81. Eric Smoodin analyzes how a number of popular journals reported (or, in some cases, did not report) the 1941 strike in his chapter, “The Popular Press Views Cartoons: Shaping Public Opinion While Creating Walt Disney,” in
Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993).

82. The picture reference is to a photo accompanying a
Business Week
article from Feb. 10, 1945, and represented in Smoodin, 126.

240

N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 1

83.
The Reluctant Dragon
(1941) was also made at the studio during this period, but is not conventionally listed as part of the “Golden Age.” Presaging the

“package” films that would emerge from the studio from 1942–49, the film is a tour of the studio led by Robert Benchley, stopping to present a few pieces of animation in the process such as “Baby Weems” and “The Reluctant Dragon.” Although “Baby Weems” is shown mostly as a storyboard, it does create a type of experimental animation which is quite unique for Disney at the time. The set piece that gives the film its title though is done quite in the richly detailed style of Disney during this period.
The Reluctant Dragon
was released during the strike, and its blatant promotionalism of the studio was in stark contrast to the picketers standing outside the studio and in front of some theatres.
The Reluctant Dragon
will be discussed further in chapter 2.

84. It was outdone in 1939 by
Gone With the Wind.

85. R. D. Feild,
The Art of Walt Disney
(New York: Macmillan, 1942), 197.

86. Douglas Gomery, “Disney’s Business History: A Reinterpretation,”

Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom,
Eric Smoodin, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), says explicitly that “World War II saved Disney” (74).

Smoodin in
Animating Culture
also analyzes the relationship between the federal government and Disney in “Disney Diplomacy: The Links between Culture, Commerce, and Government Policy,” as does biographer Mosley, 195–196, and Disney animator Jack Kinney in his reminiscences
Walt Disney and Assorted
Other Characters: An Unauthorized Account of the Early Years at Disney’s
(New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 138.

87. Gomery, 74.

88. Richard Shale,
Donald Duck Joins Up: The Walt Disney Studio During
World War II
(Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 16.

89. Shale, 22–23, discusses correspondence between the Disney studio and the U.S. Navy about making a series of aircraft and warship identification films.