Eleven years ago, I spent a couple of incredible days in the
company of the amazing Marge Champion who is, today, celebrating her 101st
Birthday!
Marge, with her second husband Gower Champion, became
Hollywood's headlining dance duo. They danced their way through a slew of
memorable MGM movie musicals, among them Till
the Clouds Roll By (1946), Show Boat
(1951) and Everything I Have is Yours
(1952). Other films in which they starred included: Mr. Music (1950) with Bing Crosby, Give a Girl a Break (1953) with Debbie Reynolds, Jupiter’s
Darling (1955) with Esther Williams and Three for the Show (1955) with Betty Grable and Jack Lemmon.
What is less well known is that, in 1937 – as the then Marge
Belcher – she was the live-action model for footage created to guide the
animators grappling with the task of convincingly
giving animated life to the heroine of Walt Disney's first animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Marge's hidden life as Snow
White was very quickly revealed to the
public in Life magazine (April 4,
1938) with a picture shoot also featuring dancer
Louis Hightower, the model for Snow White's Prince...
While working at
the Disney Studio, (where she later modeled for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and
some of the balletic creatures in Fantasia) Marge met and married her first
husband, legendary animator Art Babbitt who was responsible for animating Snow
White’s nemesis, the Wicked Queen, and – in a somewhat different style – Mickey
Mouse’s pal the hapless Goofy and who is also featured in the Life feature
above.
The marriage ended after four years and, in 1947, she married Gower
Champion and the couple were soon a hugely success dance partnership, becoming,
de facto, the Fred and Ginger of the '50s.
In 2009, I was drafted in (as 'Disney Historian') to
accompany Marge and Disney representative Mindy Johnson, through a couple of
days of British press promotions for the newly issued 'Diamond Edition' DVD of
the film – the classic movie for which she had received no credit and yet to
which she had had a major creative input.
Although at the time of our working together, Marge was
already 90 year of age, she was indefatigable!
At the end of a second gruelling day of interviews, when I expected her to want
to do nothing but crash out in her London hotel (and by which time, frankly, I was ready and eager to drop) she
blithely asked my partner David Weeks and myself what we were doing that
evening and insisted that we join her on a visit to see her friend Donna
McKechnie (the first Cassie in A Chorus
Line) who was in performance at the then music venue, 'Pizza on the Park'.
Donna joined us after the show and Marge kept us all engaged
in tirelessly animated conversation until the staff were stacking the chairs on
the tables and beginning to switch off the lights! When we finally had to leave (closer to midnight than
not), David and I offered to drop Marge at her hotel: "Goodness no!"
she replied, "the walk will do me good!"
Now,
at 101, she is still the trouper! Great going, Marge! Happy birthday and keep
dancing!
With the first of The Hobbit movies due to premiere next month and thirteen dwarfs (or as Tolkien insisted on spelling them, 'dwarves') set to become movie stars, this is the perfect opportunity to recall a cinematic event that took place 75 years ago...
Despite only featuring seven dwarves (or, as Walt preferred, 'dwarfs'), Disney's first-ever feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was ground-breaking and epoch-making.
It may be that youngsters watching the latest Pixar film for the umpteenth time would think it quaint, old-fashioned, even seriously out-dated, but, the fact is, the picture which premiered in Hollywood on 21 December 1937, is the true ancestor of every animated feature made since.
Accompanying that exhibition is not one but two books devoted to the movie by film and animation historian, J B Kaufman. The first of these volumes, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Art and Creation of Walt Disney's Classic Animated Film(below) is essentially a catalogue to the exhibition, but if you haven't seen the companion volume (of which more anon), you would easily categorise it as it a major Disney art book in its own right!
Essentially, it is – or, at least, I imagine – pretty much like taking the exhibits home with you: beautifully reproduced and lavishly displayed examples of Snow White's rich treasury of art..
Turning the pages, one is struck by the astonishing extent of the preparation and detailing undertaken by the personnel at the Disney Studio in embarking on a project that, at the time, was considered so revolutionary that Hollywood dismissively dubbed it 'Disney's Folly'.
It is difficult, today, to understand not just how innovative it was, but also what daring Walt Disney displayed in taking the decision to move from making short animated films lasting 7-minutes to one that would run for twelve times that length. There were nay-sayers who argued that it would be impossible for audiences to sit through an 83-minute cartoon film because the colour and movement would simply be too much for their eyes!
Undaunted, Disney personally bankrolled the venture (selling his car, mortgaging his home) and so infected his artists with his passionately held fervour that they committed themselves to his seemingly crackpot vision. He was ably supported by a talented and dedicated staff including the gifted Joe Grant who defined Snow White's cruel nemesis, the Wicked Queen and her homicidal alter ego the Hag...
As a result, within just nine years from Mickey Mouse's rickety-rackety black-and-white debut in Steamboat Willie, the stars of Hollywood turned out in force for the the premiere of the first feature-length animated film with colour and synchronised sound.
In retelling the Grimm Brothers fairy-tale, Disney continued the oral tradition by which this and other stories had been handed down across the generations, adding his own embellishments such as Snow White's Cinderella-like slavery in the Wicked Queen's castle and, for the first time, giving the dwarfs individual personalities and names that defined their character...
At the same time, however, he indelibly stamped his imprint on the story for all eternity, so that anyone now making an image of Snow White finds it almost impossible not to clothe her in a yellow dress with a black bodice, a white collar and blue-and-red puff-sleeves.
What Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved beyond doubt was that animated characters – creations of nothing more than pencil, ink and paint – were capable of embodying human emotions: not simply of making people laugh (as the cartoon capers of all the early animation studios could do) but also of moving audiences to care for – even shed tears over – the celluloid actors.
It also proved that Walt Disney and his artists had full command of the craft of storytelling. Snow White is one of the most economic films ever made, using its songs to help define character and advance the story.
From the moment that the Queen's Huntsman takes the Princess into the forest and, refusing to kill her, sends her running for her life to the moment when the Dwarfs find her dead from the Queen's poison apple is, incredibly, a period of just 24-hoursd; and yet, the character relationships are so strongly drawn that it feels as if Snow White has been living with the Dwarfs for many weeks.
This weighty, large-format, 320-page tome aims to be the last word on Miss White and her diminutive friends: tracing the origins of the story back to its Germanic origins and examining the stage and film precursors to the Disney version, one of which, made in 1916 and starring Marguerite Clark, had made a powerful impact on the young Walt Disney. "It was," he later recalled, "one of the first big feature pictures I'd ever seen. I thought it was the perfect story. It had the sympathetic dwarfs... It had the heavy, it had the prince and the girl. The romance. I just thought it was a perfect story."
Kaufman charts Walt's all-consuming ambition for the project and examines the studio's early experiments at producing convincing animation of the human figure that were part of the protracted preparations for the project and which involved the studio's greatest talents including two brilliant illustrators, Ferdinand Hovarth...
...and Gustav Tenggren who, between them, helped craft the film's 'European', Art Deco style..
Having established the history, Kaufman embarks on a detailed, scene-by-scene deconstruction of the action – including sequences that were planned, but later abandoned.
As such it is a tour de force of research and analysis, sensationally illustrated with hundreds of photographs, sketches, layouts, backgrounds and animation paintings – among them many full-page and double-page spreads. The illustrations are a combination of previously unseen art jostling with oft-reproduced images: an inevitable side-effect of dealing with such a famous and repeatedly celebrated film.
Disney art has always been well served by the coffee-table format and
this volume is no exception: animation fans will spend as long poring
over the superbly reproduced art as in reading the text.
Kaufman is, I think, needlessly harsh in his judgement of my old friend Adriana Caselotti, whose operatic trills he condemns but which were as vital a part of Snow White's screen persona as the live action footage filmed by Marge Belcher (later Marge Champion) who acted out all the heroine's movements for the animators.
The author gives full credit to the various artists and animators whose genius was subsumed into the 'Walt Disney' signature, while acknowledging the fact that it was Walt's driving vision and shot-by-shot involvement in the scripting and animation that guarantreed the film's success.
The book concludes with the story what happened following the film's tumultuously-acclaimed opening: the Oscars (one full-size and seven miniatures); the film's re-releases, world-wide distribution and marketing and its eventual restoration.
The books are fondly introduced by Diane Disney Miller, Walt's daughter,
through whose devoted energies, the Disney Family Museum came into
being.
Here she is with J B Kaufman discussing the publication...
I have a couple of quibbles: firstly, as might be expected, there's a measure of pictorial
duplication between the two volumes which means that the true devotee will find it difficult not to feel an overwhelming urge to purchase both, only to then experience some frustration at finding so many repeated images – all the more so if they are also aware of what has not been included.
Secondly, for a volume that clearly sets out to be a definitive work, the 'Bibliography' in the book's final 34-page 'Resources' section ought, more accurately, to have be called a 'Select Bibliography', since it fails to list a number of major works.
Obviously, the first omission I spotted was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Making of the Classic Film, (right),written by Richard Holliss and myself twenty-five years ago to celebrate the movie's 50th anniversary, which featured the first publication of a number of the pieces of art now reprised by Mr Kaufman.
Initially, I was apt to put the absence of our volume down to a paranoid
belief that Holliss and Sibley just didn't meet the necessary academic criteria, but then I began to notice that other significant volumes were also conspicuously not there...
Where were (left)Christian Renault's Les Heroines Disney? Or Pierre Lambert's superb Walt Disney L'Age D'Or and the same author's lavish Blanche-Neige that featured much of the same imagery as is now to be found in these new books...
I could go on and point out that also not listed are R D Feild's seminal 1942 work The Art of Walt Disney,Bob Thomas' The Art of Animation or Leonard Maltin's The Disney Films as well as any number of significant periodical articles, suffice it to say that any future students of Disney's first great classic, will need considerably more than the frustratingly meagre reading-list provided by Mr Kaufman.
Nevertheless, the books will, for many, be a revelation and a way into appreciating the fact that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
was an achievement of such courage and audaciousness as places it not
just among the greatest films of all time but also among the greatest
art masterpieces of the twentieth century.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic remains on show until 14 April 2013 at The Disney Family Museum, 104 Montgomery Street, The Presidio, San Francisco, CA 94129
Opening hours:
Wednesday-Monday: 10:00-18:00
Last ticket sale and entry is 16:45 Closed every Tuesday
You will find a fascinating treasure-trove of information about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – the film and its many subsequent manifestations – on the blogsite Flimic Light: Snow White Archive.
And, finally, here's one of the pieces of Snow White art from my own collection...
I mentioned that I was talking with Marge Champion last week about her work on Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for which she had provided live-action film footage to enable the animators to create a convincing human character in such scenes as the one in which she and the dwarfs are singing and dancing together...
Marge recalled also having provided the Disney artists with reference footage for their animation of the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and the dance steps - though not the physical bulk - for the balletic hippo in Fantasia...
This reminded me that I have long been intending to blog about a terrific book that will be of interest to musical film fans, animation buffs and lovers of dance.
Written by Mindy Aloff (a distinguished dance critic and a teacher of dance history)Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation is, as the title proclaims, a study of dance in Disney films and it is as wide-ranging as the animated pictures that emerged from the studio over the years.
In 1929, just one year after the debut of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, Disney released his first 'Silly Symphony' cartoon, a series set to popular and classical tunes, that allowed the animators to explore a diverse range of characters and stories.
The first of those 'Silly Symphony' experiments was entitled Skeleton Dance...
Seven years later, here's Mickey Mouse in colour dancing up a storm in the 1936 cartoon, Thru the Mirror...
Donald Duck was also quite a hoofer as can be seen from his jitterbugging performance in the 1940 short, Mr Duck Steps Out...
"Dancing wasn't crucial to the Disney enterprise," writes author, Mindy Aloff, "but it was intrinsic to it. Bodies moving in periodic rhythms to music - either while executing choreographed dances, or while engaging in physical activities that verge on dance, or, occasionally while creating abstract designs (such as the surreal marching-and-floating-in-space patterns of the 'Pink Elephant' ballet in Dumbo) - were hallmarks of Disney's animated films..."
Well, you can judge for yourself because here is that elephant ballet that is a-sort-of-a-dance-even-though-it-is-not-quite-dancing...
In a foreword to the book, choreographer and director, Mark Morris explains why he includes Walt Disney on his list of influential choreographers alongside George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham and Busby Berkeley. "I marvel," he writes, "at the variety of choreographic invention and aptness. What a remarkable resource of whimsy, fantasy, art!"
Indeed, the sheer diversity of Disney dance is extraordinary: in one picture, Make Mine Music (1946), there is, among other things, a pas de deux from ballet stars, Riabouchinska and Lichine...
And this, accompanying a jazz number from Benny Goodman and his Orchestra...
Dance is often used in Disney films to convey moments of key emotion: Cinderella dancing with her Prince as the clock moves inexorably towards the midnight hour, Briar Rose dancing with woodland animals as she fantasies about meeting the man of her dreams, Belle dancing withe the Beast and so softening his bestial heart, but it just as often used as an integral part of the storytelling process as can be seen in this classic sequence from the last film to be personally supervised by Walt Disney - but released in 1967, a year after his death - The Jungle Book.
Just as the Disney animators had modeled Snow White on the movements of Marge Champion, so the artists working on The Jungle Book based the antics of of King Louie and Baloo on those of veteran jazzmen Louie Prima and Phil Harris...
No Disney film features quite as much dance as the 1940 feature, Fantasia. It is a masterpiece of animation and dance is part of the total expression of the film's visualisation of music and musicalisation of art and I have been thinking quite a lot about this movie lately as I am prepare to provide a new commentary on the film for it's Blu-ray DVD release next year.
In addition to the ballet of hippos, alligators and elephants executed to the music of 'The Dance of the Hours' and the gambolings on Mount Olympus and Bald Mountain in the sequences choreographed to Beethoven and Moussorgsky there is the exquisite sequence based on Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite' which is presented as a succession of dances executed by fairies, fishes, flowers, snowflakes and - in a segment animated by Marge Champion's first husband, Art Babbitt - mushrooms...
"Dance and animation," writes John Canemaker in another of the book's forewords, "a pas de deaux choreographed in heaven." And that divine choreography is what Mindy Aloff has chronicled in this richly-textured book.
