THE SILLY SYMPHONIES

How this landmark series shaped the course of Walt Disney’s career

and forever revolutionized the art of animation.

Research Paper by Josh Weiner

“The Global 1930s,” HIST 193, Prof. Ekbladh

April 30th, 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) Introduction, pg. 3

2) Before the Silly Symphonies: Walt Disney’s Early Career

Overview

Summary

3) The Essential Silly Symphonies

Skeleton Dance

The Frolicking Fish

Flowers and Trees

The Three Little Pigs

The Old Mill

4) The Legacy of the Silly Symphonies

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Fantasia

Beyond the Disney Studio

5) Conclusion

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1) INTRODUCTION

The art of animation has multiple pioneers, including James Stuart Blackton and Windsor

McCay, both of whom broke significant new ground with their landmark pieces, Humorous

Phases of Funny Faces (1906) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).

Yet the art has no greater icon than Walter Elias Disney. In the three decades following

his full­length breakthrough, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), he produced a body of

work whose legacy and universality remains unrivaled in the history of the medium. The

company he founded has fully carried on his efforts in the generations since his passing, making

it likely that he will remain animation’s most dominant figure for all time.

However, none of the success was by any means a guarantee. Walt Disney grew up

unwealthy on a farm in Missouri, where his parents frowned upon his interests in the arts. Even

when he saved enough money to move to Hollywood and concentrate on his animation projects,

Disney was far from a standout figure in the entertainment industry.

His early works from the 1920’s— including the Laugh­o­Gram shorts, the Alice

cartoons, and the first short films to feature his soon­to­be trademark character, Mickey Mouse—

established Disney as a promising creative talent. However, these works were still a long way

from the complexity and artistic professionalism of his later full­length projects, and faced stiff

competition from the works of other animators who were active during the same period, most

notably the Fleischer Brothers.

With the Silly Symphonies series, Disney made his first significant gesture to separate

himself from the crowd. The series began with 1929’s Skeleton Dance and continued on through

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1939’s The Ugly Duckling, a Technicolor update of the original black­and­white film which

came out in 1931. During the interim, the Walt Disney studio produced seventy­five short films

which proved revolutionary in numerous regards and were collectively invaluable towards

Disney’s maturity as a master artist and visual storyteller.

This research paper will illustrate the ways in which Disney achieved such astounding

artistic growth through crafting the Silly Symphonies series. An overview of Disney’s early

career will demonstrate that the man always had a gift for producing works of charm and

imagination. The Silly Symphonies, however, were what really established Disney as a singular

talent in his field. Over the ten years that this series ran its course, his studio achieved many

groundbreaking feats of animation— including the use of Technicolor, the multiplane camera,

and non­post­sync sound, all of which were inaugurated in different episodes of this series. At

the same time, Disney produced his most clearly­defined characters and complete storylines to

date in Symphonies such as The Three Little Pigs and The Tortoise and the Hare (both 1934), all

while developing a team of animators and effects masters who were able to bring his animated

vision to life more fully than ever before.

The final portion of this essay will reveal just how profound a role the Silly Symphonies

played on the evolution of animation. Through working on this series, Disney was able to

position himself for the even more ambitious feat of producing full­length animated features

such as Snow White and Fantasia, which borrowed and elaborated upon many critical elements

of the Silly Symphonies. The influence of this series extended well beyond the Disney studio,

too; upon its profound success, animators across the world were inspired to push the imaginative

and technological boundaries of their work. Many of the most popular and important animated

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works of all time— most notably the Warner Bros. cherished Looney Tunes series— would have

likely not become what they were had it not been for the advent of the Silly Symphonies.

The conclusion of this paper will back its overall thesis statement: the Silly Symphonies

are unquestionably one of the most influential works of 1930’s cinema, as they allowed the

Disney studio to establish the platform of narrative and technological tools which were then put

to masterful use during the production of the full­length features. “It is impossible to overstate

the impact that Walt Disney had on the development of animated cartoons,” film critic Leonard

Maltin writes. The Silly Symphonies serve as critical evidence as to why such overstatement is 1

indeed impossible.

1 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 29.

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2) BEFORE THE SILLY SYMPHONIES: WALT DISNEY’S EARLY CAREER

OVERVIEW

Prior to the advent of the Silly Symphonies, Disney had been active as a professional

animator for eight years, six of which he had spent in Hollywood. This section of the essay will

assess the work which Disney produced in those years, determine how it set the stage for Disney

to take on the Silly Symphonies series at the end of the decade, and also demonstrate that these

early projects left considerable room for improvement as narrative and artistic pieces.

Born in Chicago in 1901, Walt Disney spent much of his childhood in agrarian Missouri

and in Kansas City. His parents did not take too kindly to his interest in art and drawing,

especially not his conservative father, Elias Disney, who feared that this interest might distract

him from developing more practical means of supporting the family. However, Walt continued

to pursue his passion for art and, after getting rejected from the U.S. Army for faking his age, he

pursued work as a commercial artist both in Chicago and in Kansas City.

When Disney met another struggling young artist named Ub Iwerks in 1919, an important

creative partnership was established. The two finally found work at the Kansas City Film Ad

Company, where they produced a series of commercial advertisements and comic vignettes

known as “Newman’s Laugh­o­Grams” (named for the Newman’s Theater where these pieces

were initially screened). Some time later, the pair of animators decided to take the project a step

further by extending the Laugh­o­Gram Ads into a series of full­blown theatrical cartoons.

These seven Laugh­o­Gram films— which Disney and Iwerks produced over a two­year

period at their Laugh­o­Gram Kansay studio— were quite basic pieces which did not exhibit the

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aesthetic refining and narrative heft of Disney’s later projects, including the Silly Symphonies.

Nonetheless, this was a significant project simply in the sense that it allowed Disney to take his

necessary first steps as a professional animator. Already in this early stage of his career, he was

able to bring “genuine charm and invention” to his projects, while also demonstrating careful

attention to background detail and wash tones in films like Puss in Boots. All of these were 2

qualities for which the Silly Symphonies would later be renowned.

Perhaps the most evident connection between the Laugh­o­Gram films and Disney’s later

works is that they drew upon a similar collection of classic fairy tales. The ten Laugh­o­Gram

films included titles such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Jack and the Beanstalk and Alice in

Wonderland. Many early animators were inspired by comparable material— during the same

period, German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger achieved such groundbreaking silhouette animation

projects as Cinderella (1922) and The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Disney would go on

to champion the process of blending fairy tales with animation in the context of the Silly

Symphonies and his feature­length productions.

In 1923, the Laugh­o­Gram Studio went bankrupt, forcing Disney and his team to move

westward for work. After securing working space in Hollywood, the team continued to produce

innovative short films, some of which starred a plump, mischievous little animal named Oswald

the Lucky Rabbit. This little critter was one of the first Disney characters to exhibit clear

personality and physical humor, products of the animator’s determination “to forge Oswald into

a distinctive personality, to make Oswald peculiarly and typically OSWALD.” Disney strived to 3

2 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 30. 3 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf,

2006. 7

produce such personality qualities in his later projects, fully succeeding for the first time (from

his perspective) with the best­known of the Silly Symphonies, The Three Little Pigs.

However, unable to get Universal Studios to distribute the Oswald cartoons for as much

as he had hoped for, Disney decided to start anew with another cartoon character, one who

resembled the rabbit in terms of personality and physical appearance, but was a different animal

with a different name. This character was originally called Mortimer Mouse before Lillian

Disney, Walt’s wife, suggested a further name change: Mickey Mouse.

Disney achieved his most significant breakthrough yet upon the creation of Mickey

Mouse, who made his official debut in 1928’s Steamboat Willie. This short film, one of the first

sound cartoons ever, portrays Mickey’s misadventures while captaining a steamboat with the

troublemaking Pete— who would later become a prominent supporting character in the Goofy

cartoons— on board with him. Minnie Mouse, Mickey’s female companion, also has a cameo

appearance in this piece. The tremendous charm of the piece, the memorable cast of characters,

and the groundbreaking use of sound made Steamboat Willie a true landmark in the history of

animation.

SUMMARY

By the late 1920’s, Disney had produced his best­known character— the most iconic

animated figure in history, at that— and already had a collection of impressive cartoon shorts to

his name. It was time to build upon his early career achievements in the form of his most

pg. 103.

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thorough creative undertaking yet, which the Silly Symphonies turned out to be. Having now

provided a general overview of Disney’s initial projects, it is now time to determine the ways in

which the Silly Symphonies drew upon those projects but also improved upon them in a number

of critical regards.

Disney’s most significant achievement in these early years of his career was assembling

a creative team that would go on to contribute a great deal to his later projects. This included

animator Ub Iwerks and composer Carl Stalling, both of whom worked on Skeleton Dance and

many other entries in the Silly Symphonies series. Disney’s early years as a cartoonist taught him

that “animation was not a one­man business,” and he put that lesson into practice many times

over throughout his career. 4

His early works prove that Disney always had a basic command on the art of animation,

and that he was willing to experiment with original narrative concepts, such as those of the

Mickey Mouse shorts, as well as to draw upon classic folklore, as he did with the Laugh­O­Gram

series. The Silly Symphonies continued this dual trend, as the series included both original pieces

like The Frolicking Fish (1930) and adaptations of fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs. Disney’s

catalogue of full­length features would be just as varied in that regard, with a combination of old

and new stories including Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).

It is fair to say that Mickey Mouse and his Steamboat Willie peers were a critical

inspiration for the cast of characters in the Silly Symphonies, a further series of charming,

mischievous, anthropomorphic animals. Moreover, Mickey Mouse is arguably the first example

of a “recurring character” in animation, as he would go on to star in many other shorts after

4 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 30.

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Steamboat Willie (1928), including The Gallopin’ Gaucho (1929), Plane Crazy (1929), and

eventually a wide range of color cartoons. Having a recurrent set of characters is an important

aspect in allowing for an “animation series,” as would later be demonstrated by the Silly

Symphonies— which featured several famous recurring characters, including the title characters

in The Three Little Pigs— and countless other cartoon series that followed.

Although the Silly Symphonies borrowed heavily from Disney’s early pieces, the series

was also a marked improvement on those pieces. To begin with, the characterization and

storylines of the studio’s 1920’s efforts were generally quite basic. Disney’s early characters did

not have such well­defined personalities, with a few exceptions such as Mickey and Minnie

Mouse in Steamboat Willie. Even in that instance, “the plot of Steamboat Willie is negligible...

the story is just an excuse to utilize the effects of sound synchronization.” From The Three Little 5

Pigs onwards, many of the Silly Symphonies were considerably more profound in those regards.

Beyond their limited narrative content, the animation in these early works was also well

short of groundbreaking. These films were hand­drawn in traditional black­and­white, as were

most animated productions in the 1920’s. The animation in the Silly Symphonies was

considerably more sophisticated— not to mention in Technicolor, beginning with Flowers and

Trees— and included advanced sound effect techniques such as post­synchronization sound

editing, which were incorporated in the series’ debut feature, Skeleton Dance.

In most of Disney’s pre­Symphonies material, the accompanying music is pretty simple,

usually just a one­track piano playing. This was far short of the musical richness and complexity

which would be featured in the Silly Symphonies, a project which Disney purposefully designed

5 Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1994, pg. 63.

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so that “the music could be exploited more effectively than was possible under Mickey’s

supervision.” It was Walt Disney’s goal to enhance the atmosphere of his films as much as 6

possible by incorporating classical music into his films, but he did not see that goal properly

realized until the second decade of his professional career.

Overall, while Walt Disney established himself as a prominent creative force in the

1920’s, he was not yet the dominant figure in the already­competitive field of animation. Disney

was ultimately able to secure that status during the following decade by treating his initial artistic

vision, as displayed in his early catalogue, to a series of unprecedented technological and artistic

innovations in the context of the Silly Symphonies.

3) THE ESSENTIAL SILLY SYMPHONIES

This section, which will be the most substantial of the paper, will explore the ways in

which the Silly Symphonies “were more experimental in their techniques and structure than the

Mickeys and full of free­flowing fantasy.” There will be an overview of the ten­year period in 7

which the seventy­five Silly Symphonies were released, with a particular emphasis on the

best­known and most stylistically­innovative of these films. These include Skeleton Dance, the

first of the Silly Symphonies; The Three Little Pigs, the most famous of the Symphonies; and

Flowers and Trees, the first film to bring color animation to the world. The purpose of this

section is to reveal how the Silly Symphonies granted Disney the wealth of technology and

strengthened storytelling abilities which allowed him to claim the throne of animation for good

by the time the decade was through.

6 Field, pg. 44. 7 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. pg. 31.

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“SKELETON DANCE” (1929)

Casual encounters with famous composers certainly served Disney well over the years. In

the late 1930s, a chance meeting with maestro Leopold Stokowski of the Philadelphia Orchestra

at Chasen’s restaurant in Hollywood ultimately inspired the two artists to collaborate on their

1940 masterpiece, Fantasia. Some time earlier, in 1929, Disney hosted a “gag meeting” with

composer Carl Stalling, who had known Disney since childhood and had long served as his

important creative partner. As the two conversed, Stalling discussed ways in which they might

build upon Disney’s concept of pairing animation with classical music. Then came the pivotal

proposal: to animate a group of skeletons dancing around a graveyard to the sound of Edward

Grieg’s ‘March of the Dwarfs.’

“Ever since I was a kid I had wanted to see real skeletons dancing and had always

enjoyed seeing skeleton­dancing acts in vaudeville,” Stalling recollected. “As kids, we all like

spooky pictures and stories, I think. That's how the Silly Symphonies got started.” Disney 8

approved of the idea and began work on the project with Iwerks. The Silly Symphonies were born

on August 6th, 1929 when the two collaborators released the first entry in the series, a six­minute

short entitled Skeleton Dance.

Stalling described his score for Skeleton Dance as “a fox trot in a minor key.” The score 9

incorporates prominent elements from “March of the Dwarfs”— this can be heard most distinctly

in the sequence where one skeleton beats on the other’s spinal cord as if it were a xylophone—

8 Michael Barrier. "Carl Stalling: An Interview by Michael Barrier, Milton Gray, and Bill Spicer." FunnyWorld Revisited. Last modified October 29, 2007. Accessed March 25, 2014. http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Funnyworld/Stalling/Stalling.htm. 9 Ibid.

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while also recycling music from the end titles of the Mickey Mouse cartoons, among other

previous Disney works.

Such a combination of sources granted this film a considerably more complex score than

those of the earlier Laugh­o­Gram and Mickey Mouse shorts had been. Skeleton Dance

established the trend of borrowing from classical music which would soon become a trademark

feature of the Silly Symphonies, as well as leading to the musical grandiose for which Disney

productions became so acclaimed.

Unlike Steamboat Willie, Skeleton Dance was not an original narrative concept, but

instead drew upon “danse macabre” imagery from the European Middle Ages. Such imagery

often features skeletons, ghouls, grim reapers and other dark fantasy creatures joining each other

in dance, reminding the audience about the inevitability and universality of their death (the Latin

phrase for that sentiment is “Memento Mori”). 10

In Disney’s cartoon, however, the sight of skeletons dancing together while joining hands

conveys not so much a sinister allegory but rather comic mischievousness, drawing upon the

famous nursery school dance, “Ring Around the Rosie,” and the Charleston knee­crossing dance

of the Roaring 20’s. This is an early example of Disney toning down his source material for the

sake of commercial appeal, a trend which he would expand upon in later episodes of the Silly

Symphonies. His final result was “a humorously macabre concoction that... makes you shiver and

makes you laugh.” 11

The most significant technological achievement in Skeleton Dance was that it was the

10 Patrick Pollefys. "Danse Macabre." La Mort Dans L'Art. Accessed March 25, 2014. http://www.lamortdanslart.com/danse/dance.htm. 11 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. pg. 38.

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first animated film to make use of non­post­sync sound. This means that the sound was

developed alongside the animation, rather than being dubbed over in post­production as had been

tradition up until that point (Disney’s team had banged on pans and blown whistles while the

finished version of Steamboat Willie was playing in order to create the sound effects for that

cartoon, for instance). Such an experimental procedure arguably led this cartoon to have more

precise sound synchronization in contrast to its predecessors— one of many ways in which the

Disney studio’s experimental take on filmmaking paid off many times over during the creation of

the Silly Symphonies.

From a visual standpoint, the animation in Skeleton Dance is not terribly more

sophisticated than that of Steamboat Willie, both which were created in black and white on

standard 1.33:1 35mm film. Nor are the characters or storyline significantly more compelling.

The film itself has been described as a “plotless fantasy” without any distinguished character

development. The skeletons do not exhibit any strong personality traits, other than their

playfulness in dancing together around a cemetery. Just as all of the skeletons are visually

identical, their personalities are indistinguishable; no one skeleton is more of a “hero” or a

“villain” than are any of the others.

Perhaps this is because “la danse macabre” has no full­fledged storyline, but rather

serves to promote an allegorical message about life and death merely through visual imagery.

Consequently, Skeleton Dance has far less plot and characterization than do other Silly

Symphonies which drew upon actual fairy tales and folk stories, including The Three Little Pigs

and The Ugly Duckling.

Given these features, Skeleton Dance can be thought of as a transition piece between

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Disney’s pre­Symphonies work and the narrative complexity which later entries in that series

were to exhibit.

“THE FROLICKING FISH (1930)”

The year after “Skeleton Dance,” Disney further treated the topic of black­and­white

animated creatures dancing playfully to classical music in The Frolicking Fish, the ninth of the

Silly Symphonies overall. This six­minute cartoon, featuring dancing sea creatures on the

seafloor, marked the first time that the action of a Disney cartoon had ever taken place

underwater, making this piece a precursor of sorts for the ocean scenes in later productions,

including Pinocchio (1940) and The Little Mermaid (1989). The sight of various sea creatures

dancing giddily throughout a coral reef brings to mind the cherished Under the Sea sequence—

complete with instrument­playing crustaceans— and one of the fish “rides” a seahorse in a

similar fashion as Jiminy Cricket would do ten years later as he and Pinocchio go on a seabed

search for Monstro the Whale.

The Frolicking Fish was particularly notable for being the first cartoon to make use of

continuous movements, also known as “overlapping action,” rather than stop­and­go movements.

This made the animated action in this piece appear a lot smoother and less choppy as its

characters switched from pose to pose with each frame, which made a particularly great

difference during the dance sequences of this film.

The credit for overlapping action belongs to animator Norm Ferguson, who had joined

the Disney studio the previous year and who would go on to animate some of the most famous

Disney characters, including Pluto the Dog and the queen­turned­hag in Snow White. Wilfred

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Jackson— another animator who worked on the Silly Symphonies and would later become

best­known for his work on Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria, the two closing segments of

Fantasia— noted that the fluidity of Ferguson’s animation was “a big step forward in Disney

animation.” The dancing fish would never stop and stop woodenly, as was the norm for many

previous animated characters, including those of the Laugh­o­Gram series. “When one part

would hold, something else would move,” Jackson observed. “So there was never a complete

stop.” 12

“Overlapping animation was an invention of Disney’s,” his fellow 1930’s animator Dick

Huemer observed. “That’s why Disney’s animation looked so different.” After another two 13

years, the animation in the Silly Symphonies would look even more different than that of any

cartoons preceding them for an even more obvious reason: the animation was now presented in

full­out Technicolor.

“FLOWERS AND TREES” (1932)

Released in 1932, Flowers and Trees earned Walt Disney his first­ever Academy Award, in the

brand­new category of Best Animated Short Subjects (currently, “Best Animated Film”). It was

in fact the first animated film of any kind to ever win an Oscar, and the short has continued to

garner critical admiration to this day. “Flowers and Trees gathers all the best elements of the

Silly Symphonies into an archetypal story,” Leonard Maltin writes, and “set the Silly Symphonies

12 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. pg. 133. 13 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf,

2006. pg. 170.

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on a course of success that lasted for more than six years.”

Flowers and Trees featured an especially eloquent score, one which combined elements

of Rubinstein, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Schubert, and Chopin. As author Robert D. Field remarks,

this put this film at a considerable contrast to the Mickey Mouse shorts from just a fews prior,

which had relied on simple, popular tunes such as “Yankee Doodle” and “Rock­a­by­Baby” as

musical accompaniment.

Flowers and Trees also showcased Disney’s ability for granting human qualities to each

of his animated subjects. In this cartoon, an entire world of trees, flowers and mushrooms are

brought to life, dance and play together, then resolve to join forces after an evil old tree tosses

fire in the middle of the forest. Not only was this a narrative improvement over the studio’s past

efforts, but “the qualities of anthropomorphism and personification that run throughout the

Symphonies are seen to best advantage in this short,” one in which such qualities “somehow

seem natural and appropriate— so much so that the story can be told entirely in pantomime.” 14

This was a significant achievement for the Disney studio, which went on to put such

personification on display in many other of the Silly Symphonies, as well as in its feature­length

productions such as Snow White and Fantasia.

As influential as it was in many respects, the most significant and obvious achievement

of Flowers and Trees was its use of Technicolor. This was the first commercially­distributed

film, animated or otherwise, to have been entirely produced in the Technicolor company’s

three­strip color process. This afforded the cartoon a medley of red, yellow, blue, brown, black,

green and multiple others of a kind which audiences had never before seen onscreen. That alone

14 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 40.

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would have been dazzling enough, but the ways in which the cartoon employs all of these

colors— using them to create particular tones and distinguish character personalities— makes

this piece an especially noteworthy achievement.

As critic Robert D. Field notes, the Technicolor employed in this film contributed a great

deal its value as entertainment. “It wasn’t just color for the sake of color; it was color as an added

enrichment,” Field explains; the Technicolor process had effectively made this a more immersive

and engaging viewing experience. Leonard Maltin agrees, writing that “right from the start

Disney was concerned with creative use of color, not just color itself” and used this brand new 15

feature as a means of further improving the creative content of his worth.

Not only did Flowers and Trees display a whole new world of color to audiences, but it

also proved Disney was committed to employing new technology as a means of enhancing and

strengthening his productions, rather than merely including these technological features for

exhibition’s sake. By upholding such a strong standard, the Disney studio was able to make the

Silly Symphonies into the memorable and pivotal series which it ultimately proved to be.

“THE THREE LITTLE PIGS (1933)”

Winner of the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, The Three Little Pigs (1933)

has been hailed as a narrative breakthrough which went far beyond any of the earlier

Symphonies in terms of plot and character development.

This is probably the most famous entry in the Silly Symphonies catalogue, in large part

because it is based on a very famous story— a classic folk tale which originated in 19th century

15 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 40.

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England— and because it introduced a set of Disney’s best­known animated figures. These are

the titular pigs— whose names are not revealed in the movie, but who have come to be known as

Fifer Pig, Fiddler Pig, and Practical Pig— and the Big Bad Wolf, arguably the original “Disney

villain.”

Whereas the skeletons in Skeleton Dance were all identical in their limited personalities

as well as their physical forms, these four characters all exhibit distinct characteristics. Fifer and

Fiddler Pig are carefree and idle, not taking the time to build their homes out of adequate

material, and mocking their older brother on the grounds that “He don’t take no time to play,

time to play, time to play, all he does is work all day!”

Meanwhile, Practical Pig, evidently the most dedicated and hardest­working of the trio,

retorts “You can play and laugh and fiddle, don’t think you can make me sore. I’ll be safe, and

you’ll be sorry, when the wolf comes to your door!” The brothers dismiss him at first, but

Practical Pig’s reasoning proves justified when the Big Bad Wolf— who distinctly comes across

as cunning, vigilant and clumsy, in addition to being “bad”— enters the arena.

This successful characterization distinguished The Three Little Pigs from earlier Disney

shorts and made this the rare finished project with which the notorious perfectionist ever

pronounced himself to have been satisfied. “At last, we have achieved true personality in a

cartoon!” he exclaimed upon viewing the film for the first time. “The characters had a real

existence of their own,” author Christopher Finch notes, “something which, to that point, had

only been achieved with Mickey and Minnie.” 16

When Chuck Jones, one of Disney’s best­known imitators, first viewed the film at age

16 Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1973. pg. 89.

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21, his initial reaction was that “this was the first time that anybody ever brought characters to

life... there were three characters who looked alike and acted differently; the way they moved is

what may them the way they were.” Jones remarked that this put the film in direct contrast 17

from other cartoons from this era, in which the difference between heroes and villains was

mainly emphasized by which character was bigger than the other. In Steamboat Willie, Mickey

was far smaller and leaner than the antagonist, Pete the Cat; similarly, “in Fleischer’s stuff, the

basic difference between Popeye and Bluto was the size difference, not the action difference.” 18

In The Three Little Pigs, not only is the Big Bad Wolf much larger than the pigs, but he is also

given evident character qualities and a particular style of movement— the way he discretely

sneaks up on the pigs the moment he appears onscreen, for instance— which establish him as the

distinct villain of the story.

The Three Little Pigs was a genuine breakthrough for Disney the storyteller, not just in

terms of producing clearly­defined characters, but also in terms of modifying a classic fairy tale

to suit his personal and commercial needs. This was one of the benefits of adapting from fairy

tales, as opposed to other types of stories. “Because the tales already existed in numerous

well­known versions, the animators were free to adapt and embellish them,” author Charles

Solomon writes. “As long as they retained the basic plot, the artists could change details and add

comic business as well.” 19

Today’s popular culture has come to embrace the term “Disneyfication,” which is even

defined in the Merriam­Webster dictionary as “the transformation (as of something real or

17 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 4. 18 Ibid. 19 Solomon, Charles. The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation. New York: Hyperion, 1995. pg. 60.

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unsettling) into carefully controlled and safe entertainment or an environment with similar

qualities <the Disneyfication of a downtown>.” This word often refers to a certain product or 20

region which had become toned down and regulated for mass consumption. “Today, it looks like

Disneyland,” Robert De Niro bemoans modern­day Las Vegas, which has lost its former

Mafia­born grittiness for the sake of commercialism and beautification, at the end of Casino

(1995). Not even the Live Entertainment Capital of World was safe from such an overpowering

cultural phenomenon.

The Three Little Pigs is arguably the prototypical example of “Disneyfication,” given the

considerable modifications which it makes to the traditional European folk tale. Of the four

characters in the original story, only one survives— the eldest pig, who boils the wolf, who has

just consumed his two younger brothers, to death in his cauldron after tricking him into climbing

down his chimney. By contrast, all four characters live on through the end of the Disney

cartoon— the two brothers flee to Practical Pig’s home after the wolf destroys the home, while

the wolf himself, after falling into the cauldron, shoots back up the chimney and runs away in

pain from his burnt behind.

The creative liberties which Disney took with The Three Little Pigs would come to

produce many payoffs. Eliminating death from the story made the product more commercially

viable, both by making it a less traumatizing experience for young viewers and by shifting to the

comic lightheartedness for which the genre is best­known.

Moreover, Disney was now free to bring the characters back for sequels, three of which

were featured in the Silly Symphonies canon: The Big Bad Wolf (1934), Three Little Wolves

20 "Disneyfication." In Merriam­Webster. http://www.merriam­webster.com/dictionary/disneyfication

21

(1936), and The Practical Pig (1939). All three recycled the plot and moral of the original, with

some key adjustments: Three Little Wolves, for example, heightened the stakes by giving the Big

Bad Wolf three sons, while also incorporating aspects of the Aesop fable, “The Boy Who Cried

Wolf.” More sequels meant more creative and commercial opportunities— something for which

Disney’s innovation as an adapter allowed.

His full­length features would similarly eliminate the death and gruesomeness of their

source material in the style of The Three Little Pigs. Snow White removes the epilogue in which

the Queen is sentenced to death for her crimes by “dancing to death” in a pair of white­iron shoes

(in Tomie De Paola’s 1999 memoir, 26 Fairmount Avenue, the cherished children’s author

memorably expresses his childhood displeasure at seeing the movie end without having included

this creepy epilogue). Similarly, Cinderella (1950) omits the scene in which the ugly stepsisters

slice off part of their feet so that their feet might fit in the glass slipper, only to have their eyes

pecked out by a pair of pigeons who caught them in the act.

By lightening the narrative tone of the fairy tales he was adapting, Disney certainly

increased the commercial appeal of his products. “Disneyfication” would ultimately become a

significant cultural process, and its origins can arguably be traced to The Three Little Pigs and

the Silly Symphonies, another example of the profound impact of this series both on Disney’s

career and on the world of entertainment at large.

Another way in which The Three Little Pigs is a true milestone in the Disney canon is

that this is the first of his films to feature an original song. Like most animators of this era,

Disney was generally unable to secure the legal rights to use existing recordings in his

productions. Oftentimes, this led him to modify well­known tunes to the point where they would

22

be recognizable but outside the grounds of copyright infringement.

“March of the Dwarfs,” by Edward Grieg, had received this treatment in Skeleton Dance

(1929), in which the music is oftentimes reminiscent of the Norwegian composer’s piece,

although never quite a perfect replication of it. The Tortoise and the Hare (1934), one of the

most popular Silly Symphonies, also exemplifies this trend in the scene in which Max the

over­confident Hare pauses during the race to play sports by himself, much to the amusement of

his lady admirers from Miss Cottontail’s Girls’ School. As Max gathers his baseball equipment,

brass and violin instrumentals are head which have undoubtedly been lifted from the classic

sports’ anthem “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” This music sets the appropriate atmosphere for

this baseball­oriented moment in the film.

The rights to that now­public domain song were at the time owned by its original authors,

Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer— neither of whom had even attended a baseball game

before completing this composition. Nonetheless, composer Frank Churchill of the Disney staff

claimed this song in The Tortoise and the Hare as an original piece entitled, “Battin’ the Balls

Around”— and no questions were asked.

With The Three Little Pigs, however, Disney took a major creative initiative when he

assigned Churchill to compose an original song which would reflect the carefreeness of Fifer and

Fiddler Pig. This song was called “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?” and is sung at multiple

points in the film whenever these pair of brothers feel as though they have gotten the better of the

film’s antagonist, only to be proven wrong moments later.

As simple as the song was lyrically, it certainly helped Disney to achieve the

characterization which had been his primary target in this production. Moreover, the song

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became Disney’s first major hit when Irving Berlin, Inc. published it in sheet music­form. “By

the end of 1933, at least a dozen recordings of "Who's Afraid" had been issued by various record

labels,” and the song has since been covered by such diverse acts as Barbara Streisand and LL

Cool J.

Disney seemed to have found a formula that suited him well, as it soon became common

practice for original songs to be included in the Silly Symphonies. Among the most memorable

numbers were “Help Me Plant My Corn” from The Wise Little Hen (1934) and “The Penguin Is

a Very Funny Creature” from Peculiar Penguins (1934). As had been the case with “Who’s

Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” these songs all played an important role in characterizing the

animated figures who sang them, as well as in maintaining a fanciful, light­hearted tone which

was deemed appropriate for cartoons of this nature.

Of course, Disney films remained dependent on original compositions well after this

particular series had concluded. According to independent film historian J.B. Kaufman, the

studio’s post­Symphonies projects “increasingly usurped the role of the Symphonies by

absorbing the studio's top talent— including its composers. Accordingly, within a few short

years the Disney features began to introduce popular songs that would become standards:

"Someday My Prince Will Come," "Whistle While You Work," "When You Wish Upon a Star,"

and many more. In this domain— as in so many others— the Silly Symphonies led the way.” 21

By incorporating original songs in his work on such a regular basis, Disney set himself

apart from his competitors and achieved what has now become an iconic element in almost any

Disney movie. Twelve songs from Disney feature films have won the Academy Award for Best

21 Kaufman, J.B. "Who's Afraid of ASCAP? ­ Popular Songs in the Silly Symphonies." Animation World Network. Last modified April 1997. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.1/articles/kaufman2.1.html.

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Animated Song, beginning with “When You Wish Upon A Star” from Pinocchio (1940) and

continuing on through the most recent recipient of the award, “Let It Go” from Frozen (2013). 22

These and countless other Disney songs have achieved classic status and become inseparable

from the movies in which they are featured. Somewhat remarkably, it was a silly little ditty

named “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” which gave rise to the studio’s remarkable

catalogue of original musical compositions.

Overall, The Three Little Pigs initiated many concepts which are now deeply ingrained in

the consciousness of popular culture, from “the Disney hero” and “the Disney villain” to “the

Disney musical” and “Disneyfication.” All of these groundbreaking components make this film a

most significant entry in the canon of the Silly Symphonies, in addition to animation cinema in

general.

“THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE” (1934)

One of the most famous and entertaining of the Silly Symphonies is The Tortoise and the Hare,

the third straight entry in the series to receive the Academy Award for Best Animated Short

Film. The film stays true to the formula established by The Three Little Pigs in the sense that it is

a Technicolor piece backed by a fanciful score composed by Frank Churchill and derived from a

traditional European tale. Like the rest of Aesop’s fables, this story uses anthropomorphic

animals as a means of promoting morals regarding human society— namely, that “slow and

steady wins the race,” as reflected in the tortoise’s defeat of the overconfident hare.

This short film remains quite faithful to the original piece. It is a simple, lighthearted tale

22 "Disney Animated Movies Academy Award nominations and wins." Disney World of Wonders. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://www.disneyclips.com/newsinfo/awardnom.html .

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without any dark elements to cut, much the opposite of many of the other stories which the

Disney studio brought to the screen. Some additional story elements are added for entertainment

value, such as the scene in which Max Hare flirts with a group of schoolgirl bunnies by playing

several sports all by himself.

In terms of characterization, The Tortoise and the Hare was as much of a success as was

The Three Little Pigs; Max Hare is evidently cocky and rude, refusing to shake his opponent’s

hand before they begin the race, while Toby Tortoise is far more gracious, sportsmanlike and

serious about the task at hand. It is clear which character is more likable than the other and which

one is more worth rooting for, thereby increasing audience investment in the plot.

There are some important innovations in this cartoon. It features a greater total number of

animated figures than had ever appeared in any one Disney cartoons, largely thanks to the

bookend scenes at the finish line in which a large crowd of animal spectators are seen cheering

on the two competitors. This is also the first cartoon to feature “the first successful animation of

speed” during the scenes in which Max Hare zips across the race course, first to establish a firm

lead on Toby Tortoise, then in a futile attempt to catch up as Toby crosses the finish line first. 23

On a most basic level, The Tortoise and the Hare represents Disney’s continued efforts to

produce cartoons which were not only funny and entertaining, but also told stories, featured

well­defined characters, and presented viewers with a definite moral. This was one of several of

the Silly Symphonies “that promoted traditional values like hard work, thrift, and discipline,”

qualities which set this series apart from “the impertinent Mickey Mouse cartoon” which had

preceded it and showcased Disney’s determination to produce more sophisticated and profound

23 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 51.

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works of animation than anything his peers had achieved before him. 24

“THE OLD MILL” (1937)

From the mid­1930’s onwards, Walt Disney’s prominence in the entertainment industry

was undeniable. The Silly Symphonies had brought him considerable commercial rewards, the

number of employees at his studio had exploded, and he had assembled a lineup of outstanding

artists— most notably the “Nine Old Men,” Disney’s most significant core team of animators—

who would make invaluable contributions to the studio’s efforts over the decades that followed.

It was during these later years of the Silly Symphonies period that one of the most

technologically advanced entries in the series was released. “The Old Mill” was nothing

extraordinary on a narrative level; it was “essentially a tone poem about animals nesting in an

abandoned mill as a storm approaches.” Yet the piece was beautifully animated and its use of 25

the Johann Strauss composition, “One Day When We Were Young,” from the 1885 operetta The

Gypsy Baron, proved that the studio had lost none of its touch for seamlessly blending classical

music with modern­day animation.

In the words of film critic Leonard Maltin, this short film “marked yet another milestone

for the studio; aside from being an outstanding cartoon, it introduced Disney’s latest technical

marvel, the multiplane camera.” This $70,000 camera brought considerable intricacy to the 26

studio’s animation, especially in its ability to create multi­layered landscapes. Roger Ebert noted

24 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf, 2006.

pg. 447­448, 25 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf,

2006. pg. 258 26 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 51.

27

that the animation born from this expensive gadget “gave the illusion of three dimensions by

placing several levels of drawing one behind another and moving them separately— the ones in

front faster than the ones behind, so that the background seemed to actually move instead of

simply unscrolling.” 27

The opening moments of The Old Mill mark the first occasion in the history of animation

in which the multiplane camera was seen in action. As the title credits of the short film fade out,

the landscape is brought into the frame, revealing a windmill, a pond, and the rest of the natural

setting. Several layers of the painted landscape are visibly stacked upon one another, with the

bush leaves in which the spider is spinning its web placed closest to the foreground. The

multiplane camera is then able to “approach” the mill in the distance, creating an effect similar to

that of a live­action camera zooming in on a background object.

“As the camera seemed to move through the layers or panned across the landscape,

animation gained for the first time a sense of real perspective and a three­dimensionality so

astonishing,” biographer Neal Gabler wrote. Disney himself took great pride in the invention,

considering it “a key to his much­desired realism and a monument to his own success,” and

resolving to make the most of this camera when tackling his future projects. 28

Not only was The Old Mill able to photograph multiple landscapes at once, but the

animators were able to make those landscapes intricate and lively enough so as to warrant such a

luxurious multiplane treatment. Earlier Silly Symphonies such as The Three Little Pigs had made

27 Ebert, Roger. "The Great Movies: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)." Roger Ebert. Last modified October 14, 2001. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great­movie­snow­white­and­the­seven­dwarfs­1937. 28 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf,

2006. pg. 258.

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excellent use of Technicolor— but the landscapes of the films were largely static, featuring

clouds that did not move, water that did not ripple, and leaves that did not blow in the wind.

That would change when Disney established a new effects department, featuring a team

of specially­trained animators who would be in charge of adding such details, while a separate

team of character animators were free to concentrate on their “actors” as before. The results of

this division of labor can be seen in full splendor in The Old Mill; in contrast to the unmoving

background of Three Little Pigs, the landscape of this film is one of rippling ponds, clouds

passing through the sky, and many other elements which help bring the animated world of this

film to life.

4) THE LEGACY OF THE SILLY SYMPHONIES

As a stand­alone series, the Silly Symphonies were a fine achievement. These seventy­five short

films were funny, charming, and technologically sophisticated enough so as to be collectively

considered a milestone in the era of early animation.

The series is so well­regarded today, however, because of the ways in which its influence

carried on well past the release of the series finale, The Ugly Duckling (1939). Through working

on these shorts, Walt Disney had forged himself a remarkable lineup of talent, an unrivaled

collection of technology, and a work ethic with left him determined to strive for innovation and

improvement with each of his project. All of these qualities were perfectly preserved as Disney

moved on to the next phase of his legendary career: the development of full­length animated

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productions. In effect, “the entire Silly Symphonies series was a training ground for techniques,

both visual and musical, employed in the features.” This reality, along with the vast inspiration 29

which Disney’s peers drew from the Silly Symphonies, solidified the series’ status as one of the

most transformative achievements in animation history.

“SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” (1937)

As fine of a work as the Silly Symphonies had been on many levels, Disney was still

eager to achieve more. He concluded that working on a full­length animated feature would be the

best way to make the most of the talent and technology which his studio had harvested through

creating the Silly Symphonies. “The culmination of all this technical and talent development was

the production of Disney’s first feature­length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). 30

The Grimm Brothers’ tale of Snow White had been one of Disney’s childhood favorites,

and it had actually been his original intention to retell the story as one of the Silly Symphonies.

He changed his mind, however, after viewing the Fleischer Brothers’ 1933 approach to Snow

White, featuring Betty Boop in the title role. This is considered a culturally significant film, and

it is currently preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress; however,

Disney felt as though “the Fleischers had compressed too much story into too little space,” and

decided that it would take more than the length of a short film to do justice to his beloved tale. 31

29 Goldmark, Daniel, and Yuval Taylor. The Cartoon Music Book. Chicago, Ill.: Cappella, 2002. pg. 27. 30 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 53. 31 Eliot, Marc. Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince : a Biography. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 1993. pg. 99.

30

Hence, rather than adapt this story into one of the Silly Symphonies, Disney instead set “Snow

White” aside until it came time to work on his first stand­alone feature­length project.

All the same, the animated world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one which has

very much been lifted from the Silly Symphonies, and many of the defining aspects of that series

helped to shape this unprecedented animated achievement as an imaginative piece. On the most

basic level, animation and music are bridged together in Snow White in largely the same manner

as occurred throughout the Silly Symphonies. Disney relied on many of the same musicians for

these projects, including composer Leigh Harline and songwriter Frank Churchill, both of whom

had contributed heavily to the Symphonies series.

The classical­inspired music in these films helps to establish and cheery atmosphere to

the scene when appropriate, as had repeatedly occurred in many of those short films. Conversely,

dark and frightening scenes of a sort which never were featured in the lighthearted Silly

Symphonies are made even more powerful and effective by the accompanying sinister score.

The songs in the film— which were eventually featured on the first commercially­issued

movie soundtrack in history— follow the standard which Disney had established for himself

from the moment he first made a film with an original song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad

Wolf?” from The Three Little Pigs. None of these songs exist in the film simply for exhibition—

they all play a key role in advancing the plot and establishing character. For instance, the songs

“I’m Wishing” and “Some Day My Prince Will Come” characterize Snow White as a romantic

hoping for a better life, while the immortal “Heigh­Ho” helps the story to transition to the point

where the dwarfs first come into contact with the protagonist, thereby setting the stage for the

remainder of the story to unfold.

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The characterization in Snow White is achieved by far more than just the music, however.

One of Disney’s greatest priorities as a filmmaker was to achieve true personality in his cartoons,

a breakthrough which he believed he first achieved with The Three Little Pigs. The plot and

dialogue of the film vividly illustrate the Queen as evil and determined, the Prince as heroic, and

Snow White as innocent and sweet­hearted.

The film’s most significant feat in characterization, however, was in the treatment of the

Seven Dwarfs. In the original Grimm tale, the unnamed dwarfs exist as a unit; they have no

individual characteristics or defining personality traits, aside from showing Snow White pity

when they find her in her cottage and sadness when the princess is slain. The film would have

lost a great deal of its entertainment value had this aspect not been modified significantly.

Thankfully, Walt Disney took it upon himself to name the Seven Dwarfs— Happy, Doc,

Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey and Grumpy were finally chosen out of a list of dozens of other

options— and to have them personify their names through their speech and body language.

Such clever personification techniques served this feature­length project as well as it had

his earlier short films such as The Three Little Pigs. The dwarfs play off each other’s

personalities to often­hilarious effects and the thorough establishment of a clear hero and villain

serves this classic story very well when brought to the screen. The standards which Walt had set

for himself while making the Silly Symphonies proved just as rewarding when upheld in Snow

White, resulting in a film that is cherished as a piece of entertainment, rather than simply for

historical reasons as the first full­length animated feature in color.

Like many of the Silly Symphonies, Snow White drew upon old European folklore; more

specifically, the fairy tale of “Snow White” (or “Sneewittchen,” in the original German) made

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famous by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. The movie stays relatively true to the basic

premise of the Grimm fairy tale, while omitting some elements deemed too gruesome for his

audience— such as the Queen’s original death, in which she is forced to “dance to death” in a

pair of hot­iron shoes— or necessary to cut for reasons of plot and length— including the

Queen’s first two attempts at murdering Snow White, first by suffocating her with laces and then

by planting a poisoned comb in her hair.

Disney’s reasoning about adapting fairy tales— that he could take plenty of creative

license while adapting them, as long as he maintained their basic format— applied to Snow

White just as much as it had to The Three Little Pigs and other Silly Symphonies which had been

inspired by such stories. Later fairy tale­based projects, including Sleeping Beauty and

Pinocchio, further demonstrated Disney’s preferred formula as a visual story adapter.

The theatrical poster for Snow White proudly promoted the feature as one which had been

made “in the marvelous Multiplane Technicolor.” This indicated that two of the signature

breakthrough elements of the Silly Symphonies had made the transition to Disney’s first

full­length feature.

Technicolor, which had been a major preoccupation for the Disney studio ever since

Flowers and Trees, was used to its most glamorous effect to date in Snow White. Ever the

innovator, Disney decided to be more adventurous than ever with his use of Technicolor in his

feature­length debut. “Where the colors in the shots were typically bold and unsculptured,

requiring that the paint girls simply fill in the outlines, Snow White had a soft, modeled,

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chiaroscuro effect that broke sharply with animated tradition,” biographer Neal Gabler wrote. “It

was painterly.” 32

Knowing what a groundbreaking project he was pursuing with Snow White, Disney was

determined to make the most of the most technologically­advanced tool in his studio. The

multiplane camera plays a significant role in Snow White right from the opening shot, in which

we approach the queen’s hillside castle from a distance. The the effect is greatly similar to that as

the first scene in The Old Mill, in which the camera gradually draws upon the faraway mill in a

delicate, intimate manner.

The multiplane camera is used again on multiple occasions, allowing us to see deep into

the forest which Snow White traverses and granting three­dimensionality to plenty of other

landscapes throughout the film as well. Perhaps its most memorable and unique usage occurs in

the scene where the queen transforms into the old hag in order to track down Snow White in

disguise.

The camera filmed the animated foreground and background moving at a fast pace in

opposite directions— notice that as the Queen finishes swallowing the potion, the pots and

kettles close to the camera quickly shift to the left, while the dungeon walls behind her shift

quickly to the right. This innovative technique which creates the sense of the Queen’s world

“spinning around her” as the potion consumes her. This is an example of how the technology

which was pioneered in the Silly Symphonies was further developed when Disney began working

on his feature­length projects, yielding more exciting results than ever before.

32 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf, 2006.

pg. 255.

34

Overall, working on the Silly Symphonies had made the Disney studio into the most

professional and advanced animation studio in the world by the mid­1930’s. Disney was

determined to make the most of the unrivaled capacity of his studio by putting its employees to

work on the most ambitious project in animation history— perhaps in all of cinema history— up

until that point. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the final product of that determination,

and the influences of the Silly Symphonies on this picture run through the finish product in

multitudes and help to make this movie the career­defining achievement which it turned out to be

for Disney.

“FANTASIA” (1940)

If any Disney film deserves to be thought of as an extension of the Silly Symphonies

project, it is 1940’s Fantasia, “perhaps the greatest experiment of Disney’s early career.” As a 33

matter of fact, the film’s most famous sequence, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” had initially been

proposed as being one of the Silly Symphonies. Disney had decided that having Mickey Mouse

finally make his debut in this series might be an effective way to revitalize his iconic character,

whose popularity had declined in recent years.

After Disney’s aforementioned chance encounter with Leopold Stokowski, the famed

conductor immediately began to work on the orchestration and recording of French composer

Paul Dukas’ 1897 symphonic poem, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” (in the original French,

“l’apprenti sorcier”). Inspired by Johann Goethe’s poem Der Zauberlehrling, published exactly

33 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. pg. 67.

35

100 years earlier, Dukas’ composition employs a variety of instruments to evoke the story of a

young boy who disobeys his magic­conducting master, tries to makes his job easier for himself,

and then creates utter chaos which he is unable to control.

As it turned out, Stokowski loved working on this project so much that he persuaded

Disney to let him adapt further classical compositions which could then be paired with

accompanying sequences of narrative animation. Eventually, the two decided to create a number

of such sequences and, rather than add them to the Silly Symphonies canon, instead assemble

them into “a full­length film: a series of vignettes based on classical works of contrasting tempo

and tone” which would take the form of “animated representations suggested by musical 34

abstractions.” 35

In many respects, Fantasia can be considered a compilation of the Silly Symphonies into

a two­hour feature. Among the numerous ways in which the film merits comparison to the series:

it draws from old folklore, including Greek mythology and 18th century German poetry. It

features a wide variety of classical music, as the Philadelphia Orchestra treats pieces by Bach,

Beethoven, Stravinsky and others. It brings the natural world to life through Technicolor and

anthropomorphism— the “Nutcracker” sequence, with its dancing flowers and mushrooms,

brings to mind “Flowers and Trees.” Also, like the Silly Symphonies, the sequences of Fantasia

are divided between fanciful settings with limited plots (“The Pastoral Symphony”) and

structural narratives with overarching morals (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”) In a film without

dialogue (aside from the interim narration of Master of Ceremonies Deems Taylor), the

34 Goldmark, Daniel, and Yuval Taylor. The Cartoon Music Book. Chicago, Ill.: Cappella, 2002. pg. 76. 35 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. np.

36

animators had to achieve personality in their mute subjects largely through pantomime— just as

had been the case in many of the dialogue­free Silly Symphonies.

Overall, it is evident that many of the defining traits and techniques of the Silly

Symphonies were put to expanded use in Fantasia. Nevertheless, Disney’s artistic achievement

in Fantasia goes considerably beyond that of the Silly Symphonies, in the sense that this feature

“took both the realistic naturalism and the fluid fantasy of the Disney style to new heights.” 36

Compared with the subject matter of the Silly Symphonies, Fantasia takes on stories of a

much greater scope (the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth, as seen in the

“Rite of Spring”) and also tackles more sinister and sophisticated elements of old folklore (the

cosmic battle between the sacred and the profane, as seen in “Night on Bald Mountain”). The

animation and use of color in Fantasia is visibly more advanced than they were in most of the

studio’s previous output, and the film became the first major movie to be shown in stereophonic

sound, thanks to the use of “a special multiaural sound system [used] to duplicate the rich texture

of a classic orchestra.” 37

“Disney’s concept of marrying classical music and abstract animation reflected his

adventurous nature,” writes essayist Charles L. Granata. “Classical music is spiritual and

descriptive, and few men possessed the sensitivity, skill, or audacity to blend the two art forms as

provocatively as he did.” If Disney had initially demonstrated this talent with the Silly 38

Symphonies, he unequivocally proved it with Fantasia. It was a film which may not have taken

36 Ibid, pg. 115. 37 Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. pg. 68. 38 Goldmark, Daniel, and Yuval Taylor. The Cartoon Music Book. Chicago, Ill.: Cappella, 2002. pg. 76.

37

its ultimate format had it not been for the influence of the Silly Symphonies, but which also

indicated that Disney would not settle for the standards of that series now that it had been

discontinued. Fantasia drew upon many elements of Disney’s back catalogue, while also proving

that this man would continue to engage in stylistic experiments throughout his career.

BEYOND THE DISNEY STUDIO

As inventive and engaging as the Silly Symphonies were as a stand­alone series, they

would not be considered such an important cinematic landmark had Disney’s contemporaries

simply chosen to ignore it. Instead, however, they obsessed over it. Nearly all of the animated

cartoons from the late 1930’s onwards adopted some of the primary innovative features of the

Silly Symphonies in some way or another.

Just as feature films were culturally expected to incorporate dialogue after the release of

The Jazz Singer, leading silent films to swiftly go out of style, so too did the Silly Symphonies

essentially lead to the death of the black­and­white cartoon. As the Disney studio began

producing Technicolor features on a regular basis from Flowers and Trees onwards, rival

animators realized that their best chance of retaining their relevancy would be to follow suit.

Perhaps the greatest impact of the Silly Symphonies, therefore, is that this is the series that

launched the era of the color cartoon. Given that Technicolor appeared almost invariably in the

hand­drawn cartoons released during and following the period of the Silly Symphonies, this

influence is readily apparent.

38

The Silly Symphonies also demonstrated what an important role original and classical

music compositions could serve in animation. Many animators took after the example of “Who’s

Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” by incorporating brand­new sing­along songs in their pieces. Max

and David Fleischer— who had already demonstrated masterful use of jazz music in their work,

thanks in large part to the collaborative efforts of Cab Calloway— capitalized in trend with the

release of films like Gulliver’s Travels (1939), which featured original songs such as "All's

Well", "It's a Hap­Hap­Happy Day", and "Faithful Forever.” This would soon be a common

practice in productions by major studios such as Warner Bros. and MGM, which demonstrate

how popular certain components of the Silly Symphonies series proved to be amongst Disney’s

peers.

One of the greatest testaments to the influence of the Silly Symphonies is the number of

spin­off franchises which it inspired. Many of Disney’s peers took it upon themselves to make

their own series of fanciful, musical short films filled with anthropomorphic animals who

became engaged in a series of gags and misadventures, but who ultimately presented important

morals to their audiences.

Color Classics, a series of 36 short films which the Fleischer Brothers produced for

Paramount Pictures between 1934 and 1941, was designed to be a competitor to the Silly

Symphonies. Like that series, the Color Classics drew upon traditional fairy tales and folklore—

as seen in Poor Cinderella (1934), starring Betty Boop in the title role— and aimed to achieve

three­dimensional landscape backgrounds, though through the Fleischers’ “Stereoptical process,”

rather than through use of the multiplane camera. Leonard Maltin observed that these films “tried

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to emulate Disney’s Silly Symphonies with gentle fables and atmospheric mood pieces,” and 39

although not as successful— he called the finished results “some of the most treacly cartoons

ever made” — the Color Classics do demonstrate just how far­reaching an impact the Silly 40

Symphonies had on the works of Disney’s competitors.

A similar observation can be made of the Happy Harmonies series which

Metro­Goldwyn­Mayer launched in 1934. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, two of Disney’s

former colleagues, signed a contract with the studio that year and proceeded to turn out between

eight and twelve shorts a year through 1938. The Happy Harmonies aimed “to rival Disney’s

award­winning series, with its appealing characters, imaginative stories, and elaborate

trappings,” and shared Disney’s oft­stated ambition of achieving “personality animation.” The 41

series best accomplished this goal through the character of Bosko, who was the studio’s first

recurring character and who later became the star vehicle of the most universally­recognizable

spin­off of the Silly Symphonies series: the Looney Tunes.

“Warner intended the new Looney Tunes series to compete with Walt Disney’s Silly

Symphonies cartoon series,” according to author Henry T. Sampson. The Warner Bros. series 42

which ran for nearly 40 years and which introduced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and so

many other icons of animation to the world has certainly been compared to the Silly Symphonies

in a number of respects.

To begin with, the title “Looney Tunes” alone is a clever paraphrasing of “Silly

39 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 114. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid, pg. 282. 42 Sampson, Henry T. That’s Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900­1960. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998. pg. 11.

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Symphonies.” Furthermore, many of the animators and artists who had once worked for the

Disney studio later contributed to the Warner Bros.’ efforts, including Carl Stalling, the original

Silly Symphonies composer who went on to produce some of the best­known themes from the

Looney Tunes over a thirty­year period. Because many of the same artists contributed to both

series, they shared considerable overlap on a stylistic level which reinforced the comparisons

made between them.

Lastly, the general premise of the Looney Tunes— to have anthropomorphic animals

engaged in a series of comic misadventures over the lively sound of classical music— is

comparable to the premise of the Silly Symphonies. The difference, in the words of Leonard

Maltin, is that the Warner Bros. series eventually “initiated a distinctive style and format that had

little in common with Disney’s work. These films were bold, brash, and innovative. Most

important, they were funny in a way Disney’s cartoons had never been.” 43

As summarized by author Mark Eliot, “the smart­aleck cynicism of Warner Bros.’

Looney Tunes not only borrowed Disney’s original concept of Silly Symphonies but modernized

it. While the style of Disney’s cartoons remained fixed in the chilly clasp of their prewar

Fundamentalist vernacular, Warners’s offered the kind of warm, streetwise Yiddish humor

postwar America now lovingly embraced.” 44

Perhaps the reason why the Looney Tunes have endured while other Silly Symphonies

spin­offs fared much less well is because the creators of the Looney Tunes were not content to

produce mere imitations of the Disney catalogue, which had seemingly been a pitfall for series

43 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 223. 44 Eliot, Marc. Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince : a Biography. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 1993. pg. 216.

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such as the Color Classics. Instead, the Warner Bros. studio made use of the basic format of the

Silly Symphonies while also bringing their own stylistic innovations and original characters to the

project. One could say that the mentality which Disney demonstrated while at work on the Silly

Symphonies— to consistently draw upon material from the past, while always taking on each

new project with innovation and resourcefulness— proved just as effective for the makers of the

Looney Tunes as they produced a classic musical cartoon series of their own.

5) CONCLUSION

“The span of twelve years between Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey with sound, and Fantasia

is the bridge between primitive and modern animated pictures,” Disney declared before the

Society of Motion Picture Engineers in the fall of 1940. “No genius built this bridge. It was built

by hard work and enthusiasm, integrity of purpose, a devotion to our medium, confidence in its

future, and, above all, by a steady day­by­day growth in which we all simply studied our trade

and learned.” 45

This is a bold statement on Disney’s part, but it is validated many times over by the fact

that ten of those twelve years were dominated by the production of the Silly Symphonies. This is

the series which launched the color era for animation; which proved the value of personality

animation; which demonstrated how music from many time periods could be successfully woven

into the fabric of a cartoon feature; which introduced the notion of a “cartoon villain” and a

“cartoon hero;” which challenged animators to achieve three­dimensional landscapes with

45 Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1987. pg. 29.

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moving, lively scenery. It is staggering indeed to consider the number of ways in which this

series established standards which animators around the world were immediately compelled to

uphold.

Perhaps the most overarching impact of the Silly Symphonies series was upon the work

ethic of its creator. As Walt Disney continued to produce these short films, some seventy­five in

all, he grew increasingly determined to have each one improve upon the last in some respect, be

it in characterization, musical complexity, or in use of up­to­date visual effects. Disney hired a

team of first­rate composers, animators and effects artists whose job it was to see this man’s

vision fulfilled.

As the series carried on for ten years, this team achieved considerable artistic growth.

Skeleton Dance, the first of the Silly Symphonies, is a delightful comic short which demonstrated

Disney’s ability to entertain and engage the audience. Yet the film is in standard

black­and­white, its plot and characterization are minimal, the animated landscape is unmoving,

and the score is recycled from a previous composition, rather than being an original piece.

By contrast, later entries in the series, such as The Tortoise and the Hare and The Ugly

Duckling, are far more successful than Skeleton Dance and other early entries in the series in

terms of telling a definite story with clearly­defined characters and a concluding moral. The

animation in the pieces advanced just as much over the years, as well. The pasture setting of The

Old Mill is so rich and elaborate, filled with moving clouds and multiple forms of life moving

about, that the collective efforts of the artistic team backing the Silly Symphonies are seen to

have been entirely justified.

In conclusion, what the Silly Symphonies demonstrated for moviegoing audiences

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everywhere was that Walt Disney was a man of enormous talent and creativity, a sweeping

cinematic vision, and a commitment to teamwork and technological innovation. The seventy­five

entries in this series proved every one of these qualities many times over, and ultimately granted

Disney the means of moving on to work on the full­length productions which cemented his status

as the indisputable master of the world of animation. “The bridge between primitive and modern

animated pictures,” which Disney himself describes, was made possible by what his studio

achieved through the Silly Symphonies projects.

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