World Film and Television Progress (1938)

1935 they were discontinued altogether. But the greatest and most important landmark in Disney's career has yet to be dealt with. As early as 1934 Disney had started working on his first full-length cartoon in colour, Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, the most ambitious project he had ever attempted. No time or trouble was spared to make it a success, the fact that it was not destined for completion until 1937 being proof of this. The animation of little Snow-White was considerably in advance of any of Disney's other human figures who had appeared in his Silly Symphonies from time to time (and who had not been very convincing), and the cost of production was far in advance of anything that the studio had ever done before. An ordinary coloured Silly Symphony or Mickey Mouse costs about £10,000 to make and lasts about seven minutes on the screen. The cost of Snow-White has been put at anything between ten and twenty times that figure, and its effect on the film industry may well be revolutionary. In 1935 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood selected Disney's The Tortoise and the Hare as the best cartoon of 1934, and in the following year chose Three Orphan Kittens as the best cartoon of 1935; The Country Cousin completed the treble in 1936. Since the Academy's selections have seldom met with universal approval, their awards in Disney's case need only be mentioned for the honour they confer (it was absurd to suppose that any other cartoonist could ever have been considered as a competitor) and their choice need not be discussed here. The Tortoise and the Hare was undoubtedly one of his happiest inspirations, but it is a little difficult to understand why the other two were considered so outstanding. One further point should be mentioned before leaving the subject of Disney's career and turning to a consideration of his work. As he showed by his refusal to sell out his organisation after the success of Steamboat Willie in 1928, Disney has always been determined that his studio should retain its individuality, and that it should not be influenced by exterior Hollywood influences. What he and his staff wish to do, they do ; if a picture is made which does not altogether satisfy them it is scrapped, even if it seems a good boxoffice proposition, and, as in the case of Snow-White, they are prepared to experiment even if there seems a likelihood of their losing money. Disney has not much use for the rest of Hollywood (the significance of Mickey's Polo Team should not be ignored), and he does not wish his work to become contaminated by Hollywood's factory methods. AT the present time his rivals, if such they may be called, are few and have yet to show that joyous appreciation of fun and fantasy which has made Disney supreme. From the start they were handicapped in the matter of colour by Disney's exclusive rights in the use of the Technicolor process, and have had to wait until his patent ran out before using it themselves. Moreover, they have shown themselves unable to create characters which have the personality and popular appeal of Disney's little people, and their draughtsmanship has always been greatly in ferior. Of these rival cartoons the best are probably those produced by Max Fleischer for Paramount, the "Color Classics" after the style of the Silly Symphonies, and the series in which the notorious Pop-Eye The Sailor, that voracious eater of spinach, is the principal character. (The writer has often wondered whether spinach vendors have some mysterious influence in Hollywood, so persistent is the free advertisement given to this particular vegetable by the Californian studios.) Pop-Eye, whose remarkable bass voice actually emanates from the throat of Billy Costello, the music-hall artist, is a notable figure whose adventures are always entertaining, and he has undoubtedly a forceful personality with a touch of the W. C. Fields pattern about him, for, like Fields, he is given to muttering inaudibly to himself. The Fleischer colour cartoons have also been notable on occasions, and although their colouring has never been in any way comparable to Disney's, they yet possess a pronounced stereoscopic effect which is not seen in Disney's work. This stereoscopic effect was most noticeable in the forest sequence in The Elephant Never Forgets and more especially in Dancing on the Moon, quite a remarkable and imaginative little work in its way and most effective in its shots of the receding earth. Nearly all Fleischer's coloured cartoons have a popular theme song as a background of sound, and the Love in Bloom music and the picturesque settings of Time for Love would have made this quite a noteworthy effort had the colouring not seemed so inferior when compared to that of a Silly Symphony. Besides these, many of the big film companies seem to release cartoons of one kind or another, none of them outstanding. Metro-Goldwyn-Maycr, for example, have a series, Happy Harmonics, depicting the adventures of "Stinkie", the skunk, produced by Harman-Ising ; Universal have the Oswald the Rabbit series already referred to; 20lh Century-Fox distribute Terry Toons, featuring "Kiko the Kangaroo," and produced by Paul Terry; and besides Pop-Eye, Paramount also release a Betty Boop series in black-andwhite. In this country Reunion Films distribute the Anson Dyer cartoons based on Stanley Holloway's "Old Sam." From them Disney has little to fear. His name is so well-known that to the majority of the film-going public the others simplj do not count, with the unfortunate result for Disney that many film audiences are apt to assume that all cartoons are Disney cartoons (certainly all coloured ones) and he is often blamed for work that is not his. There seems no likelihood whatsoever of his competitors ever rivalling his skill and artistry, and the only danger seems to lie in the fact that Disney may one day be forced down to their level. But at the moment he is supreme, and remains in a class by himself. Such, in brief, is Disney's story. Mickey no longer comes to life in a garage, for now his adventures are created in studios as lavishly equipped and as luxuriously fitted as any in Hollywood. Disney's name is a household word throughout the world and the financial resources behind him must be very great. And yet his story may have only just begun. He will always make money — there seems little reason to doubt that — but artistically his future is still hanging in the balance. I Top: An original sketch used to illustrate a Mickey Mouse version of Gulliver s Travels. Centre : Vv alt Disney and some co = workers in conference. Right : A Disney animator at work. 115