"Elmer Elephant"

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1936/elmerelephant.html

Elmer Elephant is a very effective but simple story. When the story begins, we see Elmer skipping along on his way to Tillie Tiger's birthday party. His timing is a bit off; he arrives just at the moment that Tillie has asked Joey Hippo to blow out the candles on her cake for her, and with his tremendous blow sends the entire frosting of the cake right onto the face of the newly-arrived Elmer.

It's fairly easy to see that Elmer is one of Tillie's favorites as she cleans off his face for him and then goes all gushy over his gift; a simple bouquet of flowers. Possibly it's a bit of jealousy from the other attendees (including one bear cub who bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain cartoon mouse) but when Tillie goes up to her jungle penthouse (to do what, we're not told) the other party goers decide to taunt Elmer about his trunk with a variety of disguises, including the ultimate insult of one monkey making a caricature of Elmer out of his rear end and tail!

Without Tillie to defend him. Elmer wanders off dejected, trying to find some way to disguise his trunk. But then he comes across Joe Giraffe, with an extremely long neck. He points out to Elmer that he's not the only animal in the jungle who might look a little silly, and points out a group of pelicans who give their best Jimmy Durante impression. Elmer begins to feel a little better, but suddenly there is an alarm! Somehow, Tillie's birthday party is going up in flames!

Elmer and Joe head off to the fire with the pelicans in tow to find that all the other party-goers have been able to do is run around like chickens panicking. There is some attempt to put out the blaze by a monkey fire-brigade, but the personified flames make quick work of the fire-ladder, as they do a makeshift trampoline the other animals try to use to get Tillie down from her penthouse. The pelicans are able to bring water because of the size of their beaks; Elmer, standing atop Joe Giraffe's head has the proper height to shoot out the flames with water from his trunk. Because of their physical peculiarities, Elmer, Joe and the pelicans are able to put out the fire, rescue Tillie from her precarious perch and save the day!

Elmer Elephant was well-received by the public and some Disney artists felt that it was an important step towards the pathos that would give features such as "Dumbo" it's charm. It was a remarkable step for Disney as Elmer was able to convey a variety of emotions, even though he had not a single line of dialogue in the entire short. It was also unusual for a Silly Symphony as it retreated from the standard form of using the music in the forefront. Although it does have a couple of musical numbers, the story takes center stage. Some, however, felt that the pathos wasn't enough and it had a sense of emptiness at it's core.

One who was disappointed with the way it came out was the original storywriter, Bianca Majolie. Majolie was an anomaly at Disney; a woman in the male dominated story department. Walt approved the first idea she submitted - an original story entitled "The Romance of Baby Elephant" which went into production in mid-1935. However, as it went through the story department, more slapstick ideas were added to the original charming story. It was the brutal aspects of the slapstick that Marjolie objected to but, being the "new kid in town", her objections went unheard.

Most of her ideas for characters and narrative were retained, however, including the moral in her words "that usefulness is more important than beauty ... that things that are not decorative may be extremely useful and should be cherished for that reason."

Rage Against the Machine

Well, I'm not sure who to be ticked off at ... the Rhode Island legislature or Amazon.

The RI Legislature currently has a bill pending that would require any internet sales made in Rhode Island to be subject to Rhode Island state tax. This at a time when the legislature is just about to adjourn for the summer and bills tend to gets passed in a flurry of votes often without being read. Thus is the way of Rhode Island politics; if you want to get a controversial bill passed, submit it in June when most representatives are so anxious to go home they won't even read the darn thing and more often then not will just pass them to clear their desks.

I received an e-mail from amazon.com this morning that says that if this bill passes they will have no choice but to sever ties with any affiliates in Rhode Island.

I don't make a whole lot between Amazon links and Google ads, but it does at least cover the cost of the server space and allows me to justify the sometimes inordinate amount of time I spend working on this site. But if Amazon pulls out I'll lose that justification (and being unemployed right now, I need a LOT of justification) and may have to pull down the site altogether. Or at very least let it stagnate until my server rental agreement is up

So, I'm a little ticked right now, but not exactly sure who to be ticked at.

More as the story develops.

Marriage

I will be taking a short three week break from working on the site. To the chagrin of the female population out there (or maybe the relief!) I have found the love of my life and will be getting married next Saturday and then off for a two week honeymoon.

By all accounts Walt Disney himself had a happy marriage. But in another of those Disney ironies, he rarely allowed his characters to have one. Enough has been written and theorized about the prevelance of one-parent families in Disney features, but they were more often than not a product of the original stories Walt was working with. There is an ongoing controversy as to whether Mickey and Minnie were married. Disney says yes, they were. Quite a few of his animators preferred to think they were not. Disney's view, as always, takes the upper hand. But in the shorts, at least, they were always seen courting and never as husband and wife.

Except in their dreams and unfortunately, dreams didn't always work out exactly as they wished. In the 1932 short "Mickey's Nightmare" Mickey dreams that he is finally getting married to Minnie. And the marriage itself seems to be okay ... until the kids start showing up. Disney seems to delight in the destructive ability of small kids in large numbers and this group is no exception. They tear apart the house using Pluto an a draught horse and tying Mickey to the floor so they can continue his wave of destruction.

Is Disney commenting on marriage or on ill behaved kids? The kids show up in a few other shorts as orphans and are just as bratty and uncontrollable. Marriage itself has little to do with it. One of my contributors wrote:

"It's interesting that this cartoon depicts marriage from Mickey's point of view and not Minnie's. In other words, we see the man's perspective and not the woman's. The storks delivering babies are used to symbolize that they are having kids. We don't see anything like Mickey and Minnie actually having kids the normal way. ... It's almost like Mickey blames Minnie for all these kids that the storks are delivering. It's not his fault that all these kids arrive; it's Minnie's fault. The idea that somehow Minnie is to blame is suggested by the scene where Mickey comes into the house and sees Minnie sitting at a huge table with all those kids. It's like Mickey has had nothing to do with it. I know that this cartoon wasn't meant as serious social commentary; it's just something I picked up on when I saw it for the first time."

Donald Duck's dream marriage doesn't fare any better. In the 1954 short "Donald's Diary" he dreams of what marriage to Daisy would be like and his dreams take a dramatic turn. Far from being the pleasant, happy "Ozzie and Harriet" type of life, he finds himself stuck with household chores, facing Daisy without her makeup, and all the other things that actualy make a well-functioning couple work together well. Did Donald expect his life to be the same? Donald usually has unrealistic expectations of things, but in this case just normal married life appears to him as such torture that he prefers the rigors of the French Foreign Legion to marriage.

That same commentator wrote:

"As a woman, I find it kind of funny that both of these cartoons portray marriage from the man's point of view, not from the woman's. There's a scene where Donald tries to sneak out of the house and Daisy grabs him by the neck and puts him in the stocks so he will do the dishes. He goes to read his paper and she takes his chair and tells him to take out the garbage. I don't know of any man alive who enjoys taking out the garbage. It's very interesting that Donald's experience of a bad marriage with Daisy involves being forced to do the housework like a slave. Who was the one who traditionally did all the housework? The wife, of course. When the man has to do the work he doesn't like it. He feels like he's being treated like a slave. But it's perfectly okay for him to expect his wife to do it. After all, housework is woman's work, isn't it? Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. This cartoon illustrates the classic double standard. Men were expected to go to work and women were expected to do housework and take care of the kids. There was a distinct division of labor."

So, unfairly or not, marriage takes a big hit in the Disney cartoon world. Should this serve as a warning for anyone (like myself) ready to put on the bonds of matrimony? Of course not, in the same way that Goofy's cartoons shouldn't be seen as instruction manuals. But it does go to show a lot of prevailing male additudes towards marriage and that things hadn't changed much from the 30's to the 50's.

"The Golden Touch"

There is a fairly bizarre backstory to the 1935 short "The Golden Touch."

Walt Disney thought his animators had lost it. They didn't know how to tell a coherent story and they didn't know how to bring his ideas to the screen. Disney hadn't personally directed a short since 1929 but he decided to take his two best animators, Fred Moore and Norm Ferguson and, by George, he was going to show him how it was done.

Their project was an adaptation of the old tale of King Midas, who loved gold so much that he is granted his wish that everything he touches would turn to gold. As delighted as he is at first, the tale takes a tragic turn when he finds that he can no longer eat since his food turns to gold; he is robbed of affection since he tries to pet his cat and it turns to gold. (In another version of the story, it is Midas's daughter that is turned into gold; perhaps a too horrible scene for the Disney artists to consider.) Eventually, he learns his lesson and the touch is removed from him, leaving him penniless, but at least now able to enjoy the pleasures of a simple hamburger "with onions!"

Despite Disney's belief that he was going to show his staff how to produce a quality cartoon, the short was a dismal failure, both at the box-office and among the Disney staff as well. There were many theories floated as to why it failed to succeed. For some, the characters themselves weren't defined well enough. The character of Midas isn't given any background upon which to contrast his sudden love of gold. There are no other characters to play him off against and he comes off as almost completely unsympathetic. (Watch the short ... there seems to be no other citizens of his entire kingdom ... except the cat.) Goldie, the magical creature who gives him his magical gift is also given no raison d'etre for showing up, although I suppose the same could be said of the Blue Fairy from Pinnochio. In all, the audience isn't given much of a reason to care about Midas, either one way or the other. We no more rejoice when he's given his golden touch, nor feel any real relief when it's taken back from him.

So, in the long run, this was one of Disney's few artistic failures; a minor blip in an otherwise stellar career. But it grated at him,and his staff knew it. It was said that after this, the best way to get Disney's goat was to mention "The Golden Touch."

"Out of Scale"

It's been reported at times that Walt Disney had a lifelong fascination with railroading. This is probably not true; even though Disney used the rails as his usual method of continental transporaton in the early years, it was most likely because trains were the only realistic means of coast-to-coast transportation rather than Disney's passion or preference. Railroading doesn't even show up as a major theme in Disney's short cartoons until Mickey goes on vacation in the 1940 short "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip" and then later in 1950's "The Brave Engineer." If anything, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball were the real train buffs in the Disney studio.

Regardless, sometime in the 50's, Disney found a real passion in railroading, one of his many passing fancies, going so far as to built a small scale railroad in his backyard which he can be seen riding and showing off to friends in some photographs of the era. This backyard railroad is obviously the inpsiration for the 1953 short "Out of Scale."

Donald has his own backyard train set and is anal about measuring everything, making sure everthing matches the scale he has setup. When the tree that Chip 'n' Dale live in proves to be too big, he finds he has to get rid of it, leaving the two chipmunks to find other living arrangements. Luckily, the village that Donald has set up as part of his train set proves to be exactly the right size for them. Or, to Donald's view, that they are the right size for it.

For a while things go swimmingly, Donald even providing food for them thinking they're such a cute addition to the village. But, he just can't resist having a bit of fun, using heat lamps to simulate summer and soap flakes to simulate winter. Eventually Chip 'n' Dale get tired of this and decide to head back to their old digs, hijacking Donald's train in the process with their old tree as cargo. Happily, the two decide that it's a giant sequoia, showing that it fits to scale in Donald's world anyway. The ending irony is that the only thing that is out of scale in Donald's world is Donald himself.

I like this short for a few different reason. Many visitors who have been reading here for a while know that I don't really care for Donald Duck too much. But it's nice to see shorts (like this, and the later short with Spike the Bee "Let's Stick Together") where Donald's antagonists didn't so much get the upper hand, but were able to come to a mutually beneficial solution to their problems.

She Blinded Me ... WITH SCIENCE!

First of all, I should apologize for not having updated in quite a while. School work and the redesign of the site as part of my classwork has kept me pretty busy lately. Everytime I think I've got the site nailed down with a new interface and look, I find something else that I want to do with it. But I think I've got the new deisgn pretty well finished and hopefully I can soon start the laborious prospect of changing the entire site over to the new style. It's a big project because I'd like to finish up the project of making sure that every short that is available on DVD has screenshots shown for them and that takes some time to do.

Isn't technology wonderful?

I was thinking about that during a visit to the Boston Museum of Science last week; the way science has enriched our lives and made them easier (in some ways ... in some ways much more complex.) Walt Disney himself embraced technology and was always looking for new ways to do things, even going so far as to invent the multiplane camera to give his films a three dimensional aspect. Ub Iwerks was also instrumental in perfecting a number of cinematic processes for Disney animation and live-action throughout the years.

But it's also one of the ironies of Disney that while he embraced technology, his characters always seemed to have a difficult time with it. In "Mickey's Mechanical Man" Mickey builds a boxing robot which goes completely haywire and refuses to work unless a car horn is played nearby. Goofy's "One-Man-Band" in "Mickey's Amateurs" gets the better of him as he's unable to control it. And much later in the MouseWorks shorts "Mickey's New Car" and "Mickey's Mechanical House" Mickey is presented with a new version of his old car and house which he is unable to deal with and in the end returns to his older, more "organic" versions.

But during my "Museum of Science" tour I was reminded of Donald Duck's tour of the Museum of Modern Marvels in "Modern Inventions." Here is well-intentioned science gone amuck. Donald is bested at every turn by contraptions that, well, you can't exactly say that they perform badly or go haywire. But their performance seems to take over Donald's life rather than enhance it.

The flip side of this is presented by another studio, Fleischer Studio's 1938 short "All's Fair at the Fair." Inspired by the 1933 Chicago World's Fair otherwise known as the "Century of Progress International Exposition" it showed Elmer and Mirandy, two country folk, being impressed by technology that worked well enough to get them ready for a big dance. It's a charming film, and it's sad that Disney, while in real life pursuing technological advances, never let his characters enjoy the benefits of science. But in a larger sense, that's probably what made them more organic and down to earth.

"Symphony Hour" (1942)

www.disneyshorts.org/years/1942/symphonyhour.html

I keep meaning to post about "Symphony Hour" but for some reason never got around to it. I should have, because it's probably the second best short that Disney ever did. (Did I give it #2 in my 10 best list? I can't recall.) It returns to a familiar theme that Disney seemed to mirror in his own life; the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. What philosophers like to call the reconcilliation of opposites. In Hegelian Dialectic; thesis and antithesis finding it's resolution in synthesis.

Too deep? Yeah, possibly. But we'll get back to that.

Here Mickey, as in "The Band Concert" is the leader of his band of musicians. But in this case, instead of being a neighborhood band, it's a full symphony orchestra. And instead of Donald Duck being the rascally antagonist, here he's a full fledged member of the band as the percussionist. Pete makes an appearance, out of character, as Sylvester Macaroni; patron of the arts and the big money behind Mickey and his orchestra's big debut.

The rehearsal goes well but as one might expect, nothing in a Disney cartoon can go well for long. (There are notable exceptions to this in a few of the Silly Symphonies.) Goofy is in charge of making sure the instruments get to the stage on time and having missed the elevator they all go plummeting to the bottom of the elevator shaft and are promptly squashed.

What happens next is worthy of Spike Jones, although Jones (as far as I know) had nothing to contribute to this short. The orchestra valiantly plays on with their damaged instruments giving the orchestral music more of a jazz feeling than the lush classicism of the original. Jones once said that one of the more difficult things about his music was that you couldn't just use any car horn, it had to be a certain note of car horn or else it woudn't have fit with the music. Here, the spotlight is more on the Disney musicians who make every misplaced note sound like it was written that way.

One of the most surprising parts of the short, though, shows Mickey playing completely out of character (as least for what I feel Disney himself had in mind for him.) Donald, completely disgusted with the way the music is being played and his own difficulties in getting his instruments to work, packs up and tries to leave. Mickey heads him off at the pass and actually pulls a gun on him forcing him back to work. It's a great surprise and one that works well, especially considering the bland non-entity that Mickey would soon become. It makes one wonder what might have happened if the artists had been allowed a little more freedom to develop Mickey's personality in this way.

(It's also amusing to note that the way the music is being played that makes Donald want to leave is exactly what he would have wanted to hear it back in "The Band Concert.")

The sacred and the profane. Classical and jazz. Pete is distraught in his listening box seeing his reputation as a patron of the arts, and the money for his newest find slip out of his grasp. But he's instantly cheered when he hears the cheers of the audience. And here is where we see the reconcilliation of opposites that I alluded to earlier. Where both classical and jazz could co-exist in the same sphere; a theme that finds it's purest and most obvious revelation in the 1935 Silly Symphony "Music Land." But also in the ending of "Fantasia" where the demonic "Night on Bald Mountain" is paired with the sacredness of "Ave Maria." And to a lesser extent in the anthology films of the 1940's where classical pieces like "Peter and the Wolf" were paired with pieces by Benny Goodman.

Lastly, one aspect that rarely gets mentioned when talking about cartoons is the editing. Watch the editing in the opening sequences as the orchestra is playing and the camera shifts from instrument to instrument. The sequence begins with a reflection of Mickey in one of the brass instruments, goes from player to player, finally revealing Mickey on his podium. The editing glides from one scene to the next as the music flows; contrast this with the ending where the music is more chaotic and the editing is sharper and less liquid. It's a wonderful sequence and really shows what good editing and scene planning can do for the effect of a short.

Musings

In my last post I mentioned that I'm busy redoing the site for a Web Developement class I'm currently taking. I've pretty much finished the basic templates of the way I want the site to look and uploaded them. You can see what I'm up to by checking out the 1922, 1923 and 1924 series of pages. Honestly, you're probably not going to see too much difference. I've pretty much left the general style of the site alone; most of the differences are behind the scene. But it should work better now on a wider variety of browser platforms and pretty much meets all current web standards. It also works better on Blackberries or other small, hand held devices.

If you see anything amiss, let me know. I'm curious to know how it looks on other computers, browsers,operating systems, and whatever. I've also had to re-establish some linking so if you see any broken links, let me know and I'll fix them toot sweet.

It's going to be a while before I get the entire site switched over. Between graphics and pages and whatever I have more that 9000 items that need to be moved and sorted out. I'll be doing it consistantly but slowly; it's bull work and I'm much more interested in adding content to the site rather than making cosmetic changes. I still have a ton of animator info to put up. I'm way behind in getting newer DVD releases up. There are newer shorts (like "BURN-E" and the one coming on the release of "Bolt" on DVD) that I haven't had the chance to post. And there are still a lot of the classic shorts that I need to get screen shots put up for. Plus, I've started the work of adding original title cards where I can find them. So there's still a lot of work to do.

So that's where I stand right now. The only other thing I could wish for is ... well ... it's something that I shouldn't actually ask for, but just recognition. I work on this site pretty much any free time I have and I do it as a labor of love for the classic Disney cartoons which I grew up with and rediscovered as an adult. But I can't help but wonder a lot as I'm pouring all this time into it if I'm doing it just for myself or if there's much of an audience out there who appreciates what I'm trying to do. I know not a lot of sites link back to mine; I wonder if that's a matter of my having had to move the site around quite a bit in it's early days so we were a little tough to find. And I don't get a whole heck of a lot of feedback on what I'm doing. So, sometimes I have to wonder if there's anybody out there. Or if anybody would care if the whole thing just dissappeared tomorrow. Not that it will, of course; I've put too much into it to give up now. But it does make me wonder.

Note on Updates

Friends ...

Unemployment brings some benefits, not the least of which is the ability to work on the website a bit more than I usually do. But it also gives me the ability to go ack to school. I'm a flexo printer by trade, but since printing jobs have pretty well dried up here in Rhode Island I'm taking the time to head back to college and get my ceritficate in Information Technology.

As part of my course work in Web Site Development I'm being allowed to rework this site in XTHML and bring it up to W3C standards which I've been lacking in the past. This is going to be a major project but I think in the end, a worthwhile one. Consequently, I'm not going to be able to update the site as much as I would like for the next 3 to 4 months. I will try to keep posting comments that come in but everything else will be put on the back burner for a bit.

So, wish me luck ... I think the site will benefit from the extra time I'll be putting into the architecture of it.

"Mickey's Polo Team"

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1936/mickeyspoloteam.html

First of all, I'd like to introduce you to a newer blog on the blogosphere. The Disney Films Project is the log of Ryan Kilpatrick's attempt to view every Disney short and feature film in chronological order and give us his thoughts and impressions on them. It's a very interesting project and it will be fun to follow him and see what he comes up with!

As part of transcribing and building the online Disney Reasearch Library I've been reading a lot of Don Graham's action analysis classes and Boris Morkovin's gag classes. It's interesting to see what works and what doesn't, but it's had an odder effect on me than I expected. To wit, I'm finding myself watching the shorts and finding what could have been done better and maybe getting a bit more detailed than I should.

"Mickey's Polo Team" is a fun little short and gave the Disney artists a chance to show off their cariacturing skills again after the success of "Mickey's Gala Premiere." Here, they don't overload the short with Hollywood caricatures (as they would later in "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.") But neither do they give some of them a lot to do. Mickey and Goofy appear in the line-up at the opening and then are pretty much forgotten for the rest of the film. Since Mickey was based quite a bit on Charlie Chaplin, I would have loved to see them in a scene together. Goofy and Stan Laurel would have made an excellent pairing as well; Laurel was animated by Art Babbit who later gave Goofy much of his elastic personality.

For me, the Laurel and Hardy sequence goes on too long and completely stops what should have been a frenetic and exciting film throughout. There's no real polo playing seen until almost the end. And too much emphasis is placed on Donald Duck towards the end when they had a cast of Hollywood stars to work with. One scene that was cut out which I would have enjoyed featured Mae West (possibly in her role as Jenny Wren) and the grasshopper from "The Grasshopper and the Ants" meeting. One can only imagine what that might have been like. And for some of the Disney artists, the ending gag came out of left field with no real set-up to it. So it feels like a showcase of individual episodes rather than a well-thought out storyline.

But these are minor quibbles for what is a thoroughly enjoyable short. And it leaves me wondering if studying anmation deeply robs us of something. The Action Analysis Classes and all the criticisms that Disney seemed to crave made the Disney artists better animators in the long run. But for me as a spectator, it makes me feel a bit like Mark Twain wrote in "Life on the Mississippi":

"Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. ... All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river. ... A day came when I ceased from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face. ... All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. ... [I] sometimes wonder whether [I] have gained most or lost most by learning [the] trade."

Library

Just a small heads-up. One of the new things I'm starting to do on the site is to start transcribing a small library of Disney documents; initially that refer to the shorts directly but also some of the more general animation classes and bulletins that were passed around for the animator's continuing education. Many have been posted on Hans Perk's blog but I found a few more here and there and have a few in my own collection which I'll be posting.

You can see what I'm up to here : http://www.disneyshorts.org/library/index.html. As always, I'm interested in your comments or ideas.

"The Nifty Nineties"

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1941/niftynineties.html

I'm reading Neal Gabler's biography of Disney right now (since my copy of Barrier's "The Animated Man" hasn't come in yet ... sorry, Mike ... it's next up!) One of the salient points that Gabler makes is how Disney's view of "Main Street USA" was an idealized version of his youth in Marceline, Missouri. And as much as all of Disney's shorts were idealized versions of reality, no where is his view of turn of the century romance and the times better seen than in the 1941 short "The Nifty Nineties."

Here was have a sepia toned introduction showing Mickey besides his Model T ... wandering through the park to the tune of "I Was Strolling Through the Park One Day" ... and then taking Minnie to the vaudeville show. Goofy rides by on a high wheeled bicycle as do all the ducks on a bicycle built for five. It's a rather idyllic scene.

Mickey and Minnie's romance, however seens to be almost a subplot. The highlight of the short is the vaudeville show and it seems that the artists had a lot of fun putting it together. It begins with a slide show of the song "Father, Dear Father" about a young girl pleading for her drunken father to sober up and come home. It was really rather an unexpected subject for a Disney cartoon. The show continues with a song and dance from "Fred and Ward : Two Boys from Illinois." The characters are caricatures of Disney animators Fred Moore and Ward Kimball; oddly named since Moore was originally from California and Kimball from Minnesota.

But one of the best thing about the short is the asbestos curtain that is shown before the show begins. Most of the ads on the curtains refer to various Disney artists; so we have "Wilfred Jaxson Feed and Fuel," a reference to Wilfred Jackson, one of Disney's earliest animators. Also noted are "Clark's Confectionery" for animator Les Clark, "T. Hee Shoes" for storyman T. Hee, "Gen. J. Sharpsteen Dentist" for animator Ben Sharpsteen, among others.

There is also one for "Walter D's Hats That Please", an obvious reference to Walt Disney himself. But one of my correspondents notes : It seems there is a hat manufacturer that uses the Disney name (I spotted their ads in the New Yorker Magazine, and it seems they been making hats longer than Walt has making cartoons) and probably Riley Thompson (or his gagmen) knew of this. So that gives that joke an extra edge.

It's a fun little short; certainly not one of Disney's best, and there's no real plot to it, but it's a nice pleasant way to spend seven and a half minutes.

Disney's Christmas Part 2 : Mickey's Orphans

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1931/mickeysorphans.html

If "Mickey's Good Deed" represents the good side of Christmas, with Mickey's benevolence being rewarded in the end, "Mickey's Orphan's" shows the opposite of the spectrum.

It might be an interesting theme for another post, but the lack of parental responsibility seems to be an ongoing motif throughout the shorts. The kittens that Mickey rescues have a close brotherhood with the mice orphans that appear in "Orphan's Benefit" and "Orphan's Picnic" and both sets are as ill-behaved. Maybe, as some have posted, it was Mickey's fault for giving them presents of instruments of mass destruction, but throughout the short they make Mickey, Minnie and Pluto's Christmas a living hell. And even at the end they completely destroy their Christmas tree without a sympathetic thought about what they are doing. It's fairly humorous in a bent sort of way but it does tend to leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

There are two valid connections that we can make. One is to the 1936 Fleischer cartoon "Somewhere in Dreamland" where the poor boy and girl are given their dreams come true, but are at least grateful for their patrons. The other is the 1952 Disney short "Pluto's Christmas Tree" where Mickey's tree is destroyed again (this time by Pluto and Chip 'n' Dale) but there is a trio of carolers afterwards who arrive at Mickey's front door to redeem the evening.

Disney's Christmas Part 1 : "Mickey's Good Deed"

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1932/mickeysgooddeed.html


I know it's a bit early for Christmas; we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving yet. But I thought we'd get an early start and examine some of the Christmas themed shorts that Disney produced through the years. And since time seems to be against me (especially this time of year) we'd better get an early start.

"Mickey's Good Deed" was one of the first shorts where Disney dealt with Christmas specifically. (The first was the 1927 Oswald short "Empty Socks" which I have not had the chance to see and later "Mickey's Orphans" which we'll look at next week.) And it paints a fairly Dickensian view of the season with the poor and destitute helping each other while the rich get their just desserts. It begins with Mickey as a street corner musician playing his cello for what turns out to be a can full of nuts and bolts. To make matters worse, his cello gets run over by a passing car so even his last possibility of making any money to provide for himself at Christmas seems to be gone. But his love of Pluto is deep enough that when he is offered money for him, he refuses. At least for himself.

At this point it seems that Mickey has nothing. It's when he sees a family of destitute children and a weeping mom where his emotions overcome him and he realizes that there's one thing he has that they don't and that is hope. He sells the last thing he has, Pluto, to the rich family in order to provide a Christmas for the starving family. And at this point he really does have nothing in the way of tangible goods left to him.

Pluto, on the other hand, is ending up getting abused by the rich kid Adelbert. It's interesting to note the contrast between the poor kids who are grateful for the gifts given to them and the rich kid who has everything and is never satisfied with what he has. The father, finally tired of the abuse which reins him in as well, kicks Pluto out and gives the kid a well-deserved spanking. Meanwhile, Mickey is feeling a bit sorry for himself but then a newly freed Pluto finds him again. And with a turkey tied to his tail for dinner! So, Mickey's good deed ends up rewarding him in ways he didn't expect.

Why did this mean so much? Lee Suggs wrote in a comment:

Remember that the Christmas of 1932 was probably the worse time of the entire Great Depression. Hoover was still president, and it was probably impossible for most families to buy gifts for their children. They might not even be able to afford a Christmas Dinner. Most Americans must have felt pretty hopeless, and it must have seemed like things were never going to get better. Enter Mickey portrayed as one of them, in a situation similar to their own lives. By being selfless he is able to overcome his own hopeless situation to make a difference in someone else's life.

It's very heartwarming and it has a very simple moral: selfless good will be rewarded, evil will be punished. It didn't always end up that way though. Next week, in "Mickey's Orphans" we'll see how Mickey's big hearted ways turned on out just the opposite.

Identity Development

One theme that runs through a few of the Disney shorts (especially the later Silly Symphonies) is the idea of identity development. That is, that the lead character has to discover who he is and his place in the world. The paradigm for this idea is "The Ugly Duckling" made in 1931 and remade in 1939. The earlier version doesn't play much with the idea. It is simply the story of an outcast duckling who has to earn his place in his family by rescuing them from certain death. The later short, however, stays truer to the original story of a duckling who doesn't realize that he is going to grow into a beautiful swan.

"Elmer Elephant" is a good example of this. Elmer, teased unmercifully because of his big ears and prominent trunk is another outcast until he meets Joe Giraffe. Joe teaches him that he should be proud of who he is even though others may find him funny looking. And, indeed, it is because of his, the giraffe's, and the pelican's physically peculiarities that they are able to save Tilly Tiger from an all-consuming fire.

Another is "Lambert, the Sheepish Lion." A lion cub mis-delivered to a mother sheep, Lambert cannot understand why he is different from the other sheep. It is only after the flock is threatened by a wolf that he discovers his "lion-ness" and is able to use that to save the flock.

But the theme does have it's downside. There are also examples of where identity development shows characters trying to reach beyond what they were created for. In "The Country Cousin", Abner Countrymouse finds himself completely out of his element trying to fit in with the demands of city living and his attempts to grow beyond himself are thwarted. Of course, it would have also helped if he hadn't gotten drunk.

The theme reaches it's nadir, hoevever, in "The Flying Mouse." Here, a small mouse dreams of being able to fly. After saving a fairy, he is granted his wish for wings. But in the Disney universe that makes him "nothin' but a nothin'." It's rather sad that his dreams of reaching beyond what he was born with lead him to disaster. But it did give us a catchy little song, at least.

... and the worst.

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1953/simplethings.html

"The Simple Things" (1953)

I'm trying to keep this blog as positive as possible and highlight the good things that came out of the Disney studios. But since last time it was all about the best, I thought I might as well get this out of my system and showcase what was probably one of the worst.

And it makes it doubly tragic that this was Mickey's last short; Disney couldn't even let him go out with a bang. What the thinking behind it was,I can't even begin to guess. It certainly wasn't a lack of imagination on the artists part. This was the same year that saw the secellent "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom" and the 3-D experiment "Working for Peanuts."

But by this time Mickey has become too bland to support a short on his own. It's sad, really.

In lieu of a specific short of the week this time around, I decided to give a list of what I consider the ten best Disney shorts. They may not be the most popular, or the most historically significant, but just the ones that I enjoy the most, are the most entertaining, or for whatever reason.

Note : this list is subect to change at any time due to the whims of the author. These are only the top ten in my opinion; your mileage may vary.

1 : The Band Concert : I think this would be at the top of any Disney lovers list. Mickey's first full length appearance in Technicolor also had great gags, some nice dramatic action, lots of tension between Mickey and Donald and a lot of subtle touches that you don't realize unless you almost watch it frame by frame.

2 : Der Fuehrer's Face : I'll admit it; I've never been a big fan of Donald Duck (which is proabably why his sections of the website go untouched for inordinant amounts of time.) But this short is Donald at his best against a (thankfully, only seemingly) unstoppable foe. Plus it has the great opening song which became a big hit by Spike Jones.

3 : The Old Mill : I've talked about this one before as the very first post in this blog, so I won't repeat myself too much here. But for animation, mood and drama, this short is as close to perfection as you can get. All without a single word of dialogue.

4 : The Whoopee Party : A lot of the early Mickey shorts were just singing and dancing shows which got tiring after a few minutes. This one doesn't. It's a party with everyone involved. The cops show up and they join the party. Even the house itself joins in the dancing. Everything is tuned in to the music and dancing so at the end when the house falls down around their heads, all they can say is "whoopee!"

5 : Lonesome Ghosts : It's a toss up here between this one and "Clock Cleaners" but I give this one the nod from all the "trio"shorts just because of the way the gags set up. The house looks haunted. The artists were able to give it a real atmospheric feel that makes you think it could actually be full of spooks. And the ending is just a delight and doesn't feel forced at all.

6: Woodland Cafe : This was one of the first shorts that Ward Kimball worked on. It was an homage to old jazz clubs of the 20's and 30's. This cafe full of jitterbugging bugs has a bucketload of style, and some crazy music that just won't quit.

7 : Mickey's Good Deed : Here, Mickey is at his best. He's caring, self-sacrificing and the short (one of Disney's first Christmas themed cartoons) has a lot of pathos for those who deserve the better things in life. And very little for the ill-mannered Adelbert.

8 : Symphony Hour : Yes, you might have noticed that most of the shorts I consider the best revolve around music. That seems to be where the artists could really let themselves shine. There are few shorts where the plot is very involving and characterization can be such a subjective thing. But if there was music involved, it almost always made a top notch cartoon. This is no exception as the Spike-Jonesish shenanigans at the end was a omic highlight of the Disney shorts.

9 : Music Land : As if to cement the point made above, here is another one where the story is told almost completely through the medium of the music. And here, the medium is the message as the Isle of Jazz goes to wat against the Land of Symphony only to be joined by the Bridge of Harmony.

10 : Runaway Brain : This "late in the game" Mickey Mouse short was a shock to many, but a revelation to those who thought that Mickey had become too much of a cultural icon to be really interesting in the short format. Sadly, it was a one-shot deal, but it was an exciting break from his bland, nornal character.

That's it! I'd love to hear yours and the reasons behind them. Maybe if I get enough, I'll set up a special section of the website for them.

"The China Shop" (1934)

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1934/chinashop.html















I had told myself that I wasn't going to feature another Silly Symphony quite so soon. And yes, I am updating early since the fiance and I will be heading to NYC for the weekend to catch "The Lion King"on Broadway. But while reformatting the site I rediscovered the 1934 short "The China Shop" and was struck by how the Disney artists made everything work together to achieve their goal.


The short begins by focusing on the proprietor of the store and Disney seems to spend an inordinate amount of time examining the character and his relationship to the shop. He is shown to care about his shop to the extent that even the positions of the figurines on the shelf draws his attention. This may seem like needless padding, but this is not a time wasting device at all, as we will see later.


"The China Shop" unfolds on two levels and as the proprietor leaves for the night the second level reveals itself as the figurines and pottery come to life and begin to dance. I'm tempted to think that the Silly Symphonies series might have evolved differently had Ub Iwerks stayed with Disney. (Note the number of qualifiers in that sentence!) Most of the early Symphonies were simply dancing montages and it appears that this one will be as well.


But it is an abbreviated sequence. One of the critiques of a later Symphony, 'The Cookie Carnival" was that it had so many characters that you never had the time to get invested in one before moving on to the next. Here, Disney chose not to overpopulate the china shop, but instead focuses in on two figurines; a boy and a girl who dance (in a departure from the usual style) not for the camera but for each other.


Another thing that strikes you as you watch the short is the way the backgrounds are used to help establish mood and character. These are not static backgrounds, but reflect the action on the screen. Where things are happy and jolly, the plates in the backgrounds are all smiles. When the demon is introduced, snakes are added (actually to the foreground.) As the action evolves the expressions on the plates become more fearful. And even as the fight progresses and shattered pottery is flying everywhere, the broken parts of the plates become part of their expressions as well.


The story within the story concludes as the proprietor returns the next morning. We can now sympathize with his view of the ruined shop because of the way his character was set up in the opening scenes. Contrast this to the lamplighter in "The Clock Store" who introduces the short, but is never an integral part of the story. This also gives the "story within the story" a context to work in and gives the short more depth than it would have had had it been just another "anthropomorphic items singing and dancing" short.

"Clock Cleaners"

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1937/clockcleaners.html

When I started this blog I thought that I would mostly feature shorts that were hisorically important or showed some insight into Disney's creative process. But every now and then it's good to feature one that's just fun."Clock Cleaners" is one of those. I've said pretty much all I wanted to say in it's entry on the website. But the Disney artists were at the top of their form in this short. From the almost balletic dance of Goofy's tightwire act to Donald's fight with the mainspring; this short has it all.

I had to laugh a bit at something else just tangentially related to this short. The Rev. Donald Wildmon successfully had a video compilation ("Fun on the Job") removed from Wal-Mart's shelfs because he thought he heard Donald saying a dirty word. Whether WalMart actually believed him or not is a moot point; it didn't stop them from bringing it back in for their bargain bins two years later!

"In the Bag" (1956)

http://www.disneyshorts.org/years/1956/inthebag.html














Herewith, your constant correspondent changes his mind. I mean, I'm going to be 53 in a few weeks, I think I've earned the right. And you kids stay off my lawn as well!



But ... Humphrey the Bear ... hmmm. I've written before that I thought Humphrey could have been one of the more major Disney characters had not the company closed down the shorts department after this "In the Bag" was concluded. But watching this one again I'm not so sure.


It's one of the most popular shorts that Disney has ever done, at least going by the number of comments and questions I get about it. Most of the questions are "What is the title of that cartoon with the song"do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do BUMP BUMP?" People love that song. And if the entire short had revolved around that song it might have been a much better cartoon. But it seems to run out of steam after that and doesn't really give Humphrey much to do except move piles of trash around. I've already noted the unfairness of Humph having to go from cleaning up a small square to virtually the entire park. It says something for the quality of a cartoon when the high point is a cameo from Smokey the Bear.


I used to love this short, but it just doesn't do it for me anymore. Sorry, Humphrey ... but you had your fifteen minutes of fame.