This art of the comic-book blog celebrates a comic book title that dominated the 'funnies' section of America's newsstands of the 1940s and '50s: Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.
This example, Vol.4 No.9 (published 79 years ago, this month in June 1944!) showcases the work of comic-strip legend Walt Kelly (1913-1973), who would eventually move on from the Mouse Factory to create his own superb and long-running cartoon character, Pogo Possum, who – along with his engaging companions – resides in the Okefenokee Swamp that straddles the Georgia-Florida state-line.
A typical cover of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories featured Mickey Mouse & the Gang, although pretty quickly they were taken over by the Duck and his three troublesome nephews - Huey, Dewey and Louie – invariably giving grief to 'Unca' Donald'.
Here, however, Kelly shows Donald making music with two of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs, Dopey and Happy – the latter playing a double-bass with a Donald-shaped headstock that seems to have a beady eye on his doppelganger!
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!
Today would have been the 100th birthday of a very special lady who, for several years, I called a friend...
Her name was Adriana Caselotti (1916-1997) and although it never appeared on the film's credits, she was the speaking and singing voice for Snow White in Walt Disney's classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Rather
than retell Adriana's extraordinary story, I am going to let you hear it from the lady
herself in an archive recording of a long-distance, virtual-interview
which I conducted in June 1987 while researching for the book Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Making of the Classic Film which I wrote in collaboration with Richard Holliss to mark Miss White's 50th birthday.
I
mailed my questions to Adriana and she answered them onto tape. The
quality isn't great: it was recorded in a very echoey acoustic and there
are one or two amusing stops and starts (and a few inaccurate answers!)
but it gives a good idea of what a fascinating person she was.
As you
will quickly deduce, she was something of an eccentric, but she was –
once you became acclimatised to the near-exhausting enthusiasm – an
utterly charming and adorable person. I loved her dearly...
Anyway, here's Snow White's adventures as she herself recounted them, aged 71...
Alas, she never did visit England, but I
visited Los Angeles and got to meet her in person at her extraordinary
Polynesian style home (with an anachronistic wishing well and a
Japanese bridge in the garden!). I knew I was in for an experience when she
answered the door-phone as Snow White telling Grumpy: 'Brian's at the door!' and
singing 'I'm Wishing'!
On
the subject of singing, here's another unique
recording for you: the seventy-year-old Adriana singing six karaoke
numbers that she recorded
in November 1986: 'Bésame Mucho', 'Strangers in the Night', 'Harbor
Lights', 'Autumn Leaves', Beyond the Reef' (both vocals!) and 'I Left My
Heart in San Francisco'. This recording concludes with 'I'm Wishing',
from Snow White, recorded (as she explained in the interview
above) for the Fantasyland Wishing Well in Disneyland in 1983, when she
was age sixty-seven...
I
corresponded with Adriana up until the end of her life and made a
number of memorable visits to see her, by myself or with dear friends –
on various occasions, Richard and Chris, Muir, Michael and Malcolm – all
of whom shared my affection for this wonderful character...
Every visit was commemorated with some keepsake of our friendship...
Finally, here's The Fairest of Them All – a vintage BBC radio feature marking Snow White's 50th
anniversary that I wrote and presented on the BBC
World Service programme strand, Meridian on 8 December 1987...
And
if you're not snowed-up by now, you can read the story of the making of
this iconic film on today's post over on my sister blog, Decidedly Disney.
When you read this, I will be on my way to Derbyshire to speak at tomorrow's funeral of my friend Robin Allan, with whom – over some 40+ years – I have shared so many common enthusiasms and from whose knowledge of art, literature and cinema, I have learned so much.
What initially brought us into a friendship was a mutual obsession with the life and films of Walt Disney. Later we both went on to write about Disney and Robin earned his Phd for his superbly researched and argued 1993 thesis, The European Influences on the Animated Feature Films of Walt Disney.
Five years later, this ground-breaking study was published as Walt Disney and Europe: one of the most significant books on Disney art to be written and to which I was honoured to contribute a preface.
Robin and I lectured together on one or two occasions and whenever I got the opportunity, I would involve him in my broadcasts. He appeared in programmes I wrote about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (which he he had seen as a young boy on its first release and which remained one of his favourite films), a documentary marking Mickey Mouse's 60th birthday and a feature on Disney's 1940 masterwork, Fantasia, and its sequel, Fantasia 2000.
Today, I am posting a broadcast I made for the BBC World Service in 1992 to mark the release of Walt Disney Productions' Beauty and the Beast and which explores the way in which fairy-tales have been retold in the cinema. Robin Allan is joined by fellow commentators Christopher Frayling and Marina Warner and I hope you will enjoy the programme and the observations of my oldest and dearest friend...
Here are some more Disney radio programmes featuring contributions from Robin Allan...
It's difficult to believe, but 75 years ago this week, Walt Disney's first feature-length animatedfilm, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began enchanting and (in the case of the Wicked Queen and her alter ego the witchy old Hag) terrifying British kids when the film went on General Release in the United Kingdom.
I will be celebrating Miss White's anniversary (shared, naturally, with Doc, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful and Dopey) by presenting an illustrated talk at London's Cinema Museum this coming Tuesday, 12 March.
As well as extracts from the film, I will be showing sequences that never made it into the beloved classic, as well as several related short films including, from WWII, the Seven Dwarfs helping to sell war bonds and instructing people how to prevent the spread of malaria!
And as a special, curtain-raiser for Tuesday's event, here are Snow White's Seven Little Men along with Pinocchio, Geppetto, Donald, Pluto, Mickey & Co doing their bit for the war effort...
A few weeks ago, I blogged a review of a couple of new books published to mark the 75th anniversary of the release of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...
Today, seventy-five years on from the film's premiere at Hollywood's Carthay Circle Cinema, I want to pay tribute to Adriana Caselotti (1916-1997), the woman who lent her speaking and singing voice to the film's heroine...
Rather than retell her story, I am going to let you hear it from the lady herself in an archive recording of a long-distance, virtual-interview which I conducted in June 1987 while researching for the book Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Making of the Classic Film which I wrote in collaboration with Richard Holliss to mark Miss White's 50th birthday.
I mailed my questions to Adriana and she answered them onto tape. The quality isn't great: it was recorded in a very echoey acoustic and there are one or two amusing stops and starts (and a few inaccurate answers!) but it gives a good idea of what a fascinating person she was.
As you will quickly deduce, she was something of an eccentric, but she was – once you became acclimatised to the near-exhausting enthusiasm – an utterly charming and adorable person. I loved her dearly...
Anyway, here's Snow White's adventures as she herself recounted them, aged 71...
Alas, she never did visit England, but I visited Los Angeles and got to meet her in person at her extraordinary Polynesian style home (with an anachronistic wishing well and a Japanese bridge in the garden!). I knew I was in for an experience he answered the door-phone as Snow White, telling Grumpy: 'Brian's at the door!' and singing 'I'm Wishing'!
On the subject of singing, here's another unique
recording for you: the seventy-year-old Adriana singing six karaoke numbers that she recorded
in November 1986: 'Bésame Mucho', 'Strangers in the Night', 'Harbor Lights', 'Autumn Leaves', Beyond the Reef' (both vocals!) and 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco'. This recording concludes with 'I'm Wishing', from Snow White, recorded (as she explained in the interview above) for the Fantasyland Wishing Well in Disneyland in 1983, when she was age sixty-seven...
I corresponded with Adriana up until the end of her life and made a number of memorable visits to see her, by myself or with dear friends – on various occasions, Richard and Chris, Muir, Michael and Malcolm – all of whom shared my affection for this wonderful character...
Every visit was commemorated with some keepsake of our friendship...
Finally, here's The Fairest of Them All – a vintage BBC radio feature marking Snow White's 50th
anniversary that I wrote and presented on the BBC
World Service programme strand, Meridian on 8 December 1987...
And if you're not snowed-up by now, you can read the story of the making of this iconic film on today's post over on my sister blog, Decidedly Disney.
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...
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