Reel Heroes: Walt Disney

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Yes, I'm 47, but I'm also quite a fan of animation, whether it's something new, like How to Train Your Dragon or Tangled, or something older, such as Disney's old hand-drawn animation.  Because of this, I look up to a guy like Walt Disney, even as the rumors surface all these years later, as they always do (and you know they do; the internet is rampant with rumors about every celebrity who ever lived).  I can still admire the guy for his achievements, at the same time I might question his real convictions.  Even admired presidents like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan certainly still have their detractors to this day!  

     The fact is, I’ve been on a Disney kick lately, watching some of the old classic Disney films, the ones that started it all:  SnowWhite and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Bambi, along with the behind the scenes material and the commentary tracks.  Some of them were quite interesting and enlightening, and it makes me realize what a labor these were, even if, at the same time, they were a labor of love.  Walt really believed in the material and, unlike many, but not all, filmmakers these days, both in and out of animation, he really strived to make the material and the stories classic and timeless, and not just a way to make money.  With Pinocchio, for instance, when it wasn’t going the way he wanted, he actually scrapped a lot of completed, or nearly completed, footage.

Clips from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi

     His name is synonymous with classic animation, and then one realizes how the history of animation grew from Walt Disney himself.  From the Silly Symphony’s and “SteamboatWilly”, his art continued to grow from rubbery looking bodies to animation that cannot be seen as anything other than art.  In many respects, and in my opinion (not shared by art critics, no doubt), what Disney accomplished is not too far removed from other great artists like Michelangelo and Picasso (this is where I picture the stuffy art critics start to giggle).  I dare anyone to watch these old animated movies - the scene in Snow White where she is running through the woods scared to death and all the trees turn into creatures with long, knarly hands, or the Monstro chase in Pinocchio, or the “Rite of Spring” segment with the dinosaurs in Fantasia, or the scene where Bambi looses his mother and shouts for her in a snowstorm and comes face to face with his father - and not see the art in it.  Why, even seemingly simpler scenes such as animating Gepetto working Pinocchio’s strings before he comes to life, or Bambi and Thumper playing on the ice, are still breathtaking in their animation and their ability to capture the wonder and emotion of the audience, and that is still evident today.  One has to realize that by the time he started making the full length, full color animated features, among critics and colleagues deriding him for it, that it was no longer Disney doing the actual animation.  No, by this time he was the head of a studio and was responsible for directing the animation of his workers, and since animated works of this magnitude were never attempted before, his studio not only had to churn out the work, but he had to school his animators in form and movement.  Just look at the difference between the deer seen in Snow White to the deer as they are drawn and animated in Bambi just a few years later:

     Disney turned from a doodler of little cartoons into a mogul, and there is much to be admired in that, and what is even more amazing is how he wasn't just in it for the money, but that he cared about such things as story and artistic vision.  His product wasn’t just product; he managed to make it into what is so often eluding the world of the entertainment business, and that is melding profit with vision and art.  You would think that the first full length feature cartoon wouldn’t be very good or very artful, being the first, and that only over time would the process grow to become more mature and artful.  There is an obvious progression that can be traced through animation, but there was still an amazing level of high-quality art right from the beginning, from the moment Snow White, an evil Queen, and seven little men were projected up on the big screen two years before Rhett told Scarlett he didn't give a damn and Dorothy got lost in the land of Oz.  And then Disney followed that up with an even better film in my opinion (Pinocchio, quite possibly Disney’s real Masterpiece, despite the fact that the advertising for all Disney's films on video and DVD seem to use that same term) and the melding of animation and classical music in the same year with the release of Fantasia, and then you realize just what it took for Disney and his animators to set the stage.

     Then, during World War II, after releasing Dumbo (yet another classic, if a bit short), he turned his studio over to be used for war time propaganda for the military, but still managed to churn out animated shorts and vignette movies like Melody Time, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free, and when the war was over, in the fifties, he was still making classic animated movies like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Sleeping Beauty, but at the same time, expanded into the realm of documentaries and live action movies, all in full color, and into the television medium which was quickly changed to color almost as soon as it was possible, with shows such as  The Mickey Mouse Club and Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, and into other realms of business such as the construction of his theme park Disneyland in California.  I remember all of these fondly from my own childhood.

     Disney was a mogul and a businessman who left a lasting legacy, but even more than that, he was someone who never wanted to make something just to make money.  With Disney, the story was paramount, and that is the one thing, more than any other, that makes me admire him, moreso than his drive to succeed and expand in so many different areas, enough to leave such a lasting legacy.  Like Ronald Reagan, he never listened to the critics, but forged ahead anyway, because he believed in himself and in what he was doing, striving to make it the best, even among criticism, and when the war hit, he put his country first, for which his studio suffered for a time, and then came back strong with not only more animated features, but expanding into so many other realms.  Would that we could all have such a legacy, having a name synonymous for, among a few other aspects, bringing joy and happiness to so many people and children, and building a lasting entertainment empire at the same time!  Not too shabby!