It's the Simple Things . . .

The 1953 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Simple Things is an average and in almost all ways unremarkable production. But what it has come to represent, at least to me personally, resonates on an emotional and sentimental level that goes beyond anything the actual short itself conveys.

The Simple Things certainly lives up to its title. Mickey and Pluto take a fishing trip to the beach where their primary antagonists are a persistent clam and overly annoying seagull. It follows the typical pattern of multi-character shorts, where each character has a separate vignette (Pluto with the clam; Mickey with the gull) and then reunite for an overall climax.

But what distinguishes The Simple Things, was that for all intents and purposes, it was essentially the last Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Granted, Mickey’s Christmas Carol would be produced in 1983, and would be followed seven years later by the Prince and the Pauper. But they were both special productions-- adaptations of literary works with more extended running times, and were not really akin to the typical 7-8 minute shorts produced during the studio’s first three decades. And while both Runaway Brain (1995) and Get a Horse! (2013) certainly match the just described criteria for classification as cartoon shorts, both stand more as happy and refreshing anomalies rather than a return to regularly produced theatrical short subjects.

No, despite these films and even the television-produced Mickey’s MouseWorks, House of Mouse and the current Mickey Mouse Disney Channel/Youtube shorts, The Simple Things represented Mickey’s retirement from the very art form that he as a character certainly defined and revolutionized. It would also foreshadow Walt Disney’s own shuttering of the studio’s shorts department two years later in 1955.

Mickey’s retirement from film did not relegate him to the life of leisure embodied in the carefree fishing trip of The Simple Things. He quickly transitioned into a television personality via the Mickey Mouse Club and appearances on the Disney anthology program, and later into the roles of theme park ambassador and corporate icon. But he would with his costars--Donald, Pluto, and Goofy among others--leave behind the very form of entertainment that in fact had given birth to the Walt Disney Company.

I can’t imagine that director Charles Nichols and his crew ever intended for the title of The Simple Things to imply anything beyond the cartoon’s theme and content. But in my studies and research of the short, it has always been identified as Mickey’s last cartoon and in that context the title has always taken on an additional meaning for me. The song "The Simple Things" that opens and closes the film, provides more than a moment of bittersweet sentimentality when considered in the context of the then declining animated short subject, not just at Disney but across the rest of Hollywood as well.

The theatrical cartoons of 1930s, 1940s and 1950s are in many ways the simple things referenced by that song’s lyrics. As Mickey and Pluto no doubt journeyed to a rocky beach to escape their worries and troubles in The Simple Things, I and countless others still escape in a similar fashion to that simpler, yet always endearing animated entertainment of those bygone days.

What a Character! - Spike

One of Disney's lesser known characters recently resurfaced at the 2018 Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival. So what better occasion than this to revisit that certain cartoon insect who was the bane of a famous duck's existence during the heyday of classic Disney animation.

Alternately referred to as either Spike or Buzz-Buzz, the little fellow proved to be a worthy adversary to Donald Duck. Of the name confusion, author and Disney historian John Grant noted "It is certain that the bee who appeared in Bee on Guard was called Buzz-Buzz; a bee antagonized Donald in six other shorts, and this bee was often called Spike. The two bees are, to this eye at least, hard to tell apart; it is possible that any perceived differences may simply be the result of different artists working at difference times."

Spike made his debut in the 1948 cartoon Inferior Decorator. Fooled initially by Donald's flower print wallpaper, he quickly falls victim to the duck's trademark bullying. While Donald tends to maintain the upper hand throughout the short, the plucky Spike perseveres and comeuppance is ultimately delivered in the end.

Spike switched headliners in his second appearance, trading pratfalls with Pluto in the 1949 cartoon Bubble Bee. The short plays off of two totally oddball premises. First, that Pluto finds himself coveting bubble gum balls from a gumball machine. Second, that for some bizarre reason, Spike is pilfering said gumballs and hiding them in the nearby hive. A succession of bubble gum-based gags quickly follows and similar to Donald's previous fate in Inferior Decorator, Pluto also gets it in the end.

Spike returned to Donald Duck cartoons that same year in Honey Harvester, and remained the malicious mallard's co-star for his remaining five appearances. Slide, Donald, Slide, Bee at the Beach and Bee on Guard all featured similar bee-duck craziness. But Spike's final appearance in 1952's Let's Stick Together turned out to be an unintentionally appropriate swan song. An older version of Spike is seen reminiscing about an earlier, and often contentious partnership with Donald. Most notable about the short was that the older Spike was given a normal voice, distinctly different from prior appearances where he had always communicated via high pitched buzzes and squeaks. This is especially ironic in that longtime Donald Duck director Jack Hannah once noted the benefit of this particular attribute, saying "You can get a funny sound effect out of a bee. They can cuss you out with that little bee noise." This older Spike was also similar in personality to another insect supporting player, Bootle Beetle, who co-starred a few times with Donald during roughly the same time period.

Of the end of Spike's career, John Grant observed, " . . . it is very interesting that this retrospective [Let's Stick Together] should appear so abruptly, and at a time when the bee's career looked to be highly successful -- as if, indeed, he was all set to become a regular fixture in Duck movies in perpetuity. One can only assume that Disney overestimated his popularity."

A Visit to Dr. XXX

It is a near overwhelming task to quantify the sheer brilliance of the 1933 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Mad Doctor.

Director Dave Hand clearly intended to borrow style and design from that era's stark yet very stylized black and white horror films. This seven-minute tour de force is heavy on atmosphere and surprisingly, a little bit more chilling and unsettling than one might expect. So much so that it was considered unsuitable for some audiences by a British film censor, and later, 16mm prints carried a similar warning.

The Mad Doctor employs many standard horror story conventions, beginning with its dark and stormy night opening. It then goes on to blend three somewhat disparate themes--a haunted house filled with booby traps and secret passages, threatening creatures in the form of animated skeletons, and the title character and his ambitious plans of body part amalgamation. Let's face it gang, those early Mickey cartoons were not the benign "strolling in the park one day" and "I'll clean up your yard" efforts that characterized his later Technicolor years.

The tone is established quickly when Pluto is violently kidnapped and taken to a skull rock-perched castle, the ominous and threatening features of which are only clearly revealed in split second lightening flashes. Mickey bravely follows in pursuit and quickly encounters the first in a series of comical yet still decidedly scary booby traps, when the castle bridge disassembles as he moves across it. Still teetering high above the crashing waves of the sea, Mickey is literally pulled into the castle's interior. At the same time, a nameplate near the door reveals the villain to be Dr. XXX. This is a distinct aside to Warner Brothers 1932 film Doctor X. That particular film's art direction and set design no doubt inspired Dave Hand and his crew as Mickey and Pluto's subsequent adventures would reveal.

Mickey finds himself in a set piece with all the standard haunted house embellishments. Cauldrons, chains and manacles, skulls and bones all litter the entrance foyer, while a swarm of bats emerge from the darkened recesses. Most striking is Mickey's journey down a secret passage that is, in my opinion, one of the single most amazing pieces of animation from those still rough-around-the-edges early days of cartoon production. In this sequence, as Mickey travels down a claustrophobic passage, the view follows him in a continuous shot as he pivots around a corner and tumbles down a long shaft. My son, upon viewing this segment of the short for the first time, immediately exclaimed, "Wow, that was 3-D!" No, actually that was hand-drawn, traditional animation at its finest, where the background elements were ingeniously animated along with central character.

Following earlier efforts such as The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House, the comical potential of skeletons is revisited again as Mickey encounters the prank-delivering undead denizens of the doctor's castle. It is here that the very clever designs of the creative team are entertainingly demonstrated, beginning with a coffin-styled cuckoo clock complete with skeletal cuckoo. Equally clever and well-realized is the skeleton-filled stairs that Mickey literally finds himself falling victim too. An ensuing chase scene in which the skeletons lob their own skulls at Mickey builds up the short's kinetic energy, but it's tempered somewhat by the still determined and resilient mouse's encounter with a giant spider skeleton.

At the same time, helpless victim Pluto is mired in troubles of his own. The mad doctor has revealed both himself and his diabolical plans. These plans involve Pluto and an equally terrified chicken and a lot of cutting and dissecting. The doctor's chalkboard diagrams are very funny as is his poetic soliloquy, but Pluto's fear in the scene is so palpable that the short does tangibly shift into a slightly more chilling and for some, no doubt frightening experience. When the mad doctor cuts apart Pluto's shadow, it is almost more disturbing than comical.

Despite his own valiant rescue efforts, Mickey soon finds himself in similar circumstances, and with no hope of escape. The story's happy resolution is only accomplished through the "it's all just a dream" plot device. But subtly, this underlying nightmare context is still a bit unsettling--the villain was never vanquished and the heroes were left to some decidedly grisly fates. I can see why some of those early card-carrying members of the theater-sponsored Micky Mouse Clubs may not have left the theater happily whistling "Turkey in the Straw."

But that was, and is still the joy of those early Mickey Mouse cartoons. Most of these endeavors displayed a plucky irreverence that was ultimately lost or diminished in later years. The Mad Doctor both immersed itself in, and at the same time, satirized Hollywood's then fledgling horror genre to great effect. It is certainly a classic piece of animation, and one of the most notable achievements of the Disney Studio's pre-Technicolor years.

Images from The Mad Doctor © Walt Disney Company

Donald's Diary: Bewitched, Bothered and Bogie

 

It's always fun to mine yesteryear popular culture from a vintage cartoon.  Earlier this week we showcased a Freeze Frame! from the 1954 Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Diary that paid homage to Disney artist Tyrus Wong.  In the same short, the production crew also made reference to a rather famous popular song, and in addition, hijacked one of Humphrey Bogart's notable film quotes.

When Daisy primps before a big date, three of the perfumes on her vanity are identified as Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.  This is a reference to the song Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, written and composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the 1940 Broadway musical Pal Joey.  The show tune quickly transcended its initial venue, evolving into a pop standard performed by any number of notable vocalists including Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Barbara Streisand, Carly Simon and even Sinead O'Connor.

Near the end of the short, Donald abandons his plans for matrimony and instead enlists in the foreign legion.  The narrator extolls, "Though I was born when I kissed her, I died when we parted."  As Donald is shown walking guard duty at a remote desert outpost, the narrator adds,  "But I lived for a little while."

That ending sequence is a riff on one of Humphrey Bogart's most memorable film quotes.  In the 1950 movie, In a Lonely Place, Bogie plays a cynical and violence-prone screenwriter suspected of murder.  In a scene with co-star Gloria Grahame, Bogart's Dix Steele character speaks a line from a script he is writing:  "I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

Freeze Frame! - Ty Wong Chop Suey

Tyrus Wong had been absent from the Walt Disney Studios for more than a dozen years when the Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Diary was produced in 1954.  But he was still very much remembered.  The proof is in this Freeze Frame from the short wherein Wong was immortalized as the proprietor of a Chinese food restaurant.

Wong's tenure with Disney was brief but significant.  He worked at the studio from 1938 to 1941.  According to his Disney Legends biography:

Looking for steady employment, he joined The Walt Disney Studios to work on animated shorts, but quickly moved into feature films after submitting landscape paintings with deer as early concepts for "Bambi," which was in pre-production. Among his paintings, a stunning image of a stag fight filled with dynamic action, strong compositions, and dramatic lightning. 

Wong went on to work for Warner Bros. for twenty-five years as a production artist for live action films.  Beyond Warner Bros., he was a successful commercial artist, designing Christmas cards for Hallmark and providing illustrations for magazines such as Reader's Digest.  Still very active at age 101, he currently designs elaborate flying kites that have been described as "masterful expressions of his artistic sensibilities."


Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:
Freeze Frame! - Daisy's Favorite Spot

Walt Disney's Surprise Package: Peter Pan and the Pirates

Previously here at 2719 Hyperion, we featured material from the 1944 storybook collection Walt Disney's Surprise Package.  This Simon and Schuster publication is especially notable in that it showcased stories from animated projects then still in production at the Walt Disney Studios.  Included in the anthology is Peter Pan and the Pirates, which preceded the actual animated feature by close to a decade.

Peter Pan and the Pirates is an abbreviated tale, likely derived from whatever story notes and concepts that had been produced by the studio at that time.  In the story, Peter takes the children to Neverland where they meet the Lost Boys and briefly spy on Captain Hook and learn of his connection to the alarm clock ticking crocodile.  All but Peter are later captured by Hook.  The story ends with Peter's daring rescue of his friends and his final confrontation with Hook.

Initially, Wendy, John and Michael are wholly ignorant of Peter Pan and Neverland.  It is Mrs. Darling who first sees Peter Pan in the nursery and tucks his shadow away for safe keeping.  This connection between Peter and Mrs. Darling is actually more faithful to Barrie's original story:

   "But George . . . last night, Nana's night out, I was drowsing here by the fire, when suddenly I saw that boy . . . in the room!  I screamed.  Just then, Nana came back.  She sprang at him, but too late.  The boy leaped for the window and was gone!"
   Mr. Darling looked at his watch.  "Come, dear, we're late.  We haven't time for this foolishness tonight."
   "Wait," said Mrs. Darling.  "The boy escaped, but his shadow hadn't time to get out.  Down came the window and cut it off!  I picked it up and and put it there in the bottom drawer."  She pointed to the bureau.
   Mr. Darling laughed aloud.  "Your head is always so full of stories you're beginning to believe them yourself."

Tinker Bell's role had yet to be developed.  Her participation in the story is minimal and the key story element of her jealousy of Wendy is completely absent.  Even the concept of pixie dust bestowing the power of flight was not yet present.

One strange concept that did not survive to the final film was the toxic nature of Hook's tears:

   The pirates dragged the children off.  Now Hook was ready for his prey.  Smacking his lips, he whipped out his dagger.  He squeezed himself into the nearest tree trunk and wriggled his way to the bottom.  But there he stuck.  He was too big to go any further.  He couldn't reach Peter, who was sleeping right in front of him by the fire.  The sight of his happy face made Hook shake with rage.  His iron claw twitched.  Two fiery red spots blazed up in the centers of his blue eyes.  Hot angry tears sizzled down his cheeks.  They splashed into Peter's medicine in the sea-shell on the shelf just below.
   Hook watched them.  The corners of his mouth turned up in a villainous smirk.  He knew that the tears from his red spots were poison!    "I've got you this time, Peter Pan!"  He hissed.

In the original Barrie story, Hook simply dispatches a generic (but virulent) poison into Peter's medicine.  Tinker Bell saves Peter by drinking the medicine and is later revived by the worldwide hand-clapping of little children professing their belief in fairies.  In the Surprise Package story, Tink simply informs Peter of the poison and he believes her.  In the final film, the poison is replaced with a time bomb which very nearly dispatches Tink, but she subsequently revives and without the need of juvenile applause.  

In Peter Pan and the Pirates, the final battle between Peter and Hook ends on an odd and somewhat anticlimactic note:

   Steel blades flashed!  It was Peter Pan against Captain Hook!  The fight to the death was on!  But the fight was short.  Peter thrust with blinding, dazzling speed.  Hook was no match for him.  His sword slipped from his hand.  It crashed to the deck.
   Peter stooped down and picked it up.  He handed it back to the pirate with a joyous, cocky smile.
   This was too much for Captain Hook.  He could not face that hated smile!  He stalked to the ship's edge.  with a last flourish of his hideous claw, he climbed the rail.  He jumped.  Down splashed Captain Hook into the black lagoon!  He did not dream that the crocodile was waiting for him.  The beast had given no warning, for the clock inside of him had a last run down.

All of the stories in Walt Disney's Surprise Package, including Peter Pan and the Pirates, were adapted by H. Marion Palmer (who was interestingly enough the first wife of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss). The artwork, including the examples reprinted here, were credited simply to the Walt Disney Studio.





Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:
Walt Disney's Surprise Package: Happy Valley
Walt Disney's Surprise Package: Lady

What a Character! - The Mountain Lion

The twilight of animation's golden age is littered with potential cartoon stars that sadly faded with their medium.  Numerous new characters were born out of the 1950s-era Disney shorts, but most were simply not granted enough time to establish themselves.  One such case study involves a character who, despite starring in five different cartoon shorts, did not even earn a name for himself--literally.  In historical texts, he is simply the "the Mountain Lion," although he has unofficially been identified by some scholars as Louie.  For practical reasons, we will apply that monicker for the purposes of our discussion here.

Louie was introduced in the 1950 Donald Duck cartoon Lion Around.  He is an undomesticated creature, an inarticulate denizen of the forest, but certainly not in the benign and harmless fashion of Humphrey Bear, who was also a product of the same time period.  In Lion Around, the nephews attempt to fool Donald with a mountain lion disguise, which of course leads inevitably to an encounter with the real McCoy.  In Hook, Lion and Sinker, Louie gains more of a  comical edge and a personality bordering on buffoonery.  He and his young cub attempt to steal fresh fish from Donald, and their antics bring to mind Disney's coyote characters, Bent-Tail and Bent-Tail, Junior.

The Mountain Lion's finest moments would however be achieved with a different co-star.  He shared the screen with Goofy in both with 1950's Lion Down and its 1952 followup, Father's Lion.  Lion Down brings the lion to the city where he has to deal with a blissfully ignorant Goofy.  In Father's Lion, a true Goof classic, Louie again falls victim to Goofy's exaggerated and wholly unintentional bravado, and Goofy Junior's always dead-on aim with his pop gun.

Louie's final appearance was in the Cinemascope cartoon Grand Canyonscope, where he reunites with Donald Duck and encounters J. Audubon Woodlore, who has been displaced from his usual patrols at Brownstone National Park.  It is a widescreen tour de force of sight gags and pratfall comedy, of which Louie is a prominent player.

Disney historian John Grant described the Mountain Lion as, "a rather anonymous character," and noted that, "this indeed was his strength, for it was as a mysterious lurking presence that he had his greatest effect."  And it was through such anonymity that he has at least happily gained some degree of historical notoriety.

Consider the Source: Folly, Buzz and Fifteen Puppies

The novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith was first published in 1956.  Walt Disney secured the film rights to the book in June, 1957.  The completed film was released on January 25, 1961.  It was an exceptionally fast journey from author creation to screen realization, and hence, despite the original novel emerging over time as an unsung classic of children's literature, the film 101 Dalmatians has always dramatically overshadowed its own source material.

When Dodie Smith first set to write The Hundred and One Dalmatians in the mid-1950s, she was already recognized as an accomplished playwright, screenwriter and novelist.  The inspiration for the story came from her own love of dalmatians.  With her husband Alec Beesley, she had owned a dalmatian named Pongo, who passed away in 1940.  Shortly after Pongo's death, the couple acquired two new dalmatians, Folly and Buzz.  In 1943, Folly gave birth to fifteen puppies, one of which appeared to be stillborn.  Alec revived the pup, and those events, combined with a somewhat insensitive comment from a friend ( . . . their skins would make a nice coat) became the basis of the book she would write a decade later.

Upon acquiring the rights to Smith's book, Walt immediately handed the project to studio veteran Bill Peet.  In his autobiography, Peet related:

"Walt wanted me to plan the whole thing: write a detailed screenplay, do all the storyboards,and record voices for all the characters . . . I scrawled my manuscript for Dalmatians on large yellow tablets and worked at it with a frenzy every day and on through the weekends.  I left out some parts of Dodie Smith's book and enlarged on others without losing the strange twists and turns in the wildly suspenseful story."

There are quite a few name changes from book to film.  The Dearlys in the book (no first names are ever provided) become Roger and Anita in the movie.  The couple's servants, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler, are combined into one character for the film.  In the book, the name of Pongo's wife is Missis; Perdita is in fact a wholly different character.  She is a stray who is found by Mrs. Dearly and brought home to act as a wet nurse for some of the puppies.  The elimination of the book's Perdita character was perhaps the only major disappoint Smith expressed with Peet's adaptation.  Perdita and her backstory were the basis of a clever plot twist that Smith revealed in the final chapter of the book.

Peet stayed generally true to Smith's story but did eliminate a number of book's sequences and created an entirely different final confrontation between the dogs and the villainous Cruella de Vil. The journey of Pongo and Missis across country to Hell Hall is significantly shortened, and a dramatic scene in which Cruella stands atop her car and applauds a burning building is eliminated completely.  There is no climactic car chase in the book.  Instead, Pongo and the entire brood are provided entry into the de Vil home by Cruella's white Persian cat, at which point they set about destroying Cruella's quite large and extensive collection of furs:

There was not enough space in one room to finish the whole job, so the pups spread themselves throughout the house.  After that, the fur flew like a vengeance--in every direction.  Chinchilla, Sable, Mink and Beaver, Nutria, Fox, Kolinsky and many humbler skins--from kitchen to attic the house was filled with a fog of fur.  And the white cat did not forget the ermine sheets.  She did good work on those herself, moving so fast that it was hard to see which was clawed white ermine and which was clawing white cat.

Cruella arrives home shortly thereafter with Mr. de Vil (also eliminated from the film; "he was a small, worried-looking man who didn't seem to be anything besides a furrier"), at which point Pongo and Missis steal her elaborate mink cape. After entering the house, " . . . Cruella could be heard shrieking with rage."  It is subsequently learned that the destruction of the furs impacted the de Vils financially and they were forced to flee England to escape their debts.

Other interesting variations from the book:

• Mr. Dearly is not a songwriter, but an accountant.  "He had done the government a great service (something to do with getting rid of the national debt) and, as a reward, had been let off his income tax for life."
• The Dearlys purchase Hell Hall and turn it into their "dalmatian plantation," although Smith never used that particular play on words.
• Smith created the television show What's My Crime, but the program Thunderbolt was exclusive to the film.
• The puppy that is resuscitated by Mr. Dearly, called Cadpig, is never identified by name in the film.

Smith enthusiastically endorsed the film, although she in good nature chided Walt about how small her name appeared in the opening credits.  She wrote a sequel to the book that was published in 1967.  The Starlight Barking was distinctly different from its predecessor with a storyline that involved an extraterrestrial character, Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, attempting to evacuate all dogs from the planet in order to save them from the threat of nuclear war.

Walt Disney had also secured the rights to Smith's earlier adult novel, I Capture the Castle.  He had hoped to cast Haley Mills in the starring role, but the proposed film was ultimately never made.

Illustrations from The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.

Disney's Hollywood: Gower Gulch and the Drugstore Cowboy

It's always fun to find trace evidence of bygone popular culture lingering in the background of a classic Disney cartoon.  Such evidence is on display in the 1943 Goofy short Victory Vehicles, and it serves to remind us of a long-faded but still quite memorable Hollywood archetype: the drugstore cowboy.

In Victory Vehicles, Goofy briefly played the part of a drugstore cowboy, aptly demonstrating lasso-powered mobility as a form of alternate transportation.  The narrator even refers to him as a "Hollywood drugstore cowboy."  So, just what exactly is a "drugstore cowboy," at least in context to the Hollywood of Walt Disney's time?  The answer can be found in that very same scene, if one looks beyond the mugging Goofy to the background behind him.  The Gower Gulch Pharmacy is the clue that unravels the story of this particular piece of silver screen folklore.

Gower Gulch is the nickname for a very specific piece of Hollywood geography: the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street.  This was a location central to a number of well known movie studios, including Columbia, RKO, Paramount and Republic Pictures.  Located at the southeast corner of Gower and Sunset was the Columbia Drug Co., famous for both its soda fountain and newsstand.  Both Columbia and Republic specialized in westerns during this time period, and aspiring actors, many of whom were actual working cowboys, would congregate in and around the drugstore, hoping to be selected by the studio casting agents who would frequent the area.  Many of these hopefuls would come to Gower Gulch fully outfitted in their cowboy clothing and gear, and thus the moniker "drugstore cowboy" was born.

For more information about Gower Gulch, check out today's post on our companion site Boom-Pop!--The History and Mythology of Gower Gulch.

Freeze Frame! - Donald in Wonderland

 . . . or even possibly Alice in Mathmagic Land?

Relating to our Alice in Wonderland media review also published today, we thought it would be fun to take a look at a slightly more unconventional Disney interpretation of Lewis Carroll material.  It was rare indeed that a Disney character had the opportunity to cross-dress in the manner of say, Bugs Bunny.  But Donald Duck was drafted for just such a moment, in of all things, the 1959 educational cartoon Donald in Mathmagic Land.  Donald assumes the role of Alice, outfit and all, in a demonstration of how mathematics relates to the game of chess.   Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, was after all a well know Oxford mathematician, as the cartoon's narrator is quick to point out.

Retro Review: You're Going to Rattle the Stars, You Are

I just recently revisited Treasure Planet for the first time since its home video release in spring of 2003.  Even though I enjoyed the film very much when it was released in 2002, it faded rather quickly from my memory, no doubt in part due to its lukewarm critical reception and rather disastrous box office returns.  People for the most part, including even the most passionate of Disney fans, simply stopped talking about it.  It even seems that the Walt Disney Company itself has subtlety disowned it.

It deserves better.

Treasure Planet does have its passionate supporters of which I now include myself.  Voyages Extraordinaires author Cory Gross called the film an "unsung Disney classic" and noted, "It proposes a swashbuckling, romantic aesthetic for the Hubble Age that prefigured the popularity of Disney's pirate band and silhouettes them against beautiful novae and nebulae."  You can find Cory's intelligent and very articulate review of Treasure Planet here; he pretty much states all of the things about it that I wish I could have included here in this Retro Review.  Needless to say, I wholly agree with his conjecture that it is perhaps the company's most underrated film since Fantasia.  Similar to Fantasia, Treasure Planet, in concept, design and execution, was most certainly years ahead if its time.

I was drawn back to Treasure Planet, primarily due to my recent fascination with Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romance and Retro-Futurism.  (Again, a nod to Cory and his Voyages Extraordinaires site, where I have been extensively educated in these matters, and in the nuances and ambiguities of what many people now refer to as "steampunk.")  My Hawkins Strongbox project reflects this passion, and my interest in matters of this regard can be easily traced back to the formative Disney years of my youth.  This was when I had only a passing interest in animation and had yet to experience a theme park, but was drawn like moth to flame to Disney live-action adventure films.  In Search of the Castaways and The Island at the Top of the World are among the Saturday matinee memories that I still cherish to this day, and I have no doubt that those experiences laid the subconscious groundwork for my most recent explorations into these aforementioned genres that encompass almost every known category of entertainment.  (Yes, there is even a steampunk category of music; check out Abney Park for starters.)

Treasure Planet is in my opinion, a creative amalgamation of themes attributed to three of the 19th century's most recognized authors of fantastic fiction: Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.  The connection to Stevenson is of course direct, being based on that author's classic adventure tale, Treasure Island.  From Verne and Burroughs come notions of space travel and otherworldly settings.  Treasure Planet filmmakers John Muskers and Ron Clements (writers-producers-directors) married these notions to some retro-modern technologies and crafted a stunning and often visually complex masterpiece, for which they have never been given enough credit.

One consistent criticism of the film is that it "lacked heart."  I have always found this to be a particularly shallow critical cliche and one all too easy to get away with.  Visually dynamic films frequently fall victim to this conjecture and Treasure Planet proved to be no exception.  The centerpiece of any Treasure Island adaptation is the relationship between the young Jim Hawkins and the always questionable Long John Silver.  Treasure Planet serves well that story element and brings to bear an emotional resonance that culminates with film's final interaction between the two characters.  Silver's journey of redemption rings especially true when he tells Jim with unabashed pride that, "You're going to rattle the stars, you are."

Hopefully in the years to come, Treasure Planet will shed some of the critical and box office baggage it has been forced to burden and move beyond the general apathy that continues to plague it.  It will certainly never receive the top-tier status afforded the likes of Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, but perhaps it will at least be able to rise to a more respectable level within the rankings of Disney animated features.

What a Character! - Hiawatha (Little and Otherwise)

Should you ask me,

whence these stories?

It began as a simple eight-minute cartoon and then quietly blossomed into a low key four-color franchise that lasted close to two decades.  The concept would also feature prominently in an ambitious 1950s era slate of proposed animated features, only to fade back into obscurity almost as quickly as it emerged.  This is the legacy of the Disney version of Hiawatha, hero of verse as originated by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longfellow penned The Song of Hiawatha in the mid-19th century.  He was inspired by Native American legends, mostly from the Ojibwe peoples in and around the upper Great Lakes region.  Ironically, the name Hiawatha was not in fact Ojibwe in origin; it referred to a historical personage associated with the Iroquois.  It was a mistake first made by early 19th century historian and ethnologist Henry Schoolcroft, and then subsequently perpetuated by Longfellow's epic poem.

The Song of Hiawatha has long been the object of parody, almost since its inception in 1855.  Walt Disney brought such parody to the movie screen, but in a more gentle manner with the 1937 Silly Symphony Little Hiawatha.  Disney employed typical Silly Symphony cherub-inspired design to its rendition of a very young Hiawatha, and the cartoon's narrator employed trochaic tetrameter, the same meter used by Longfellow in the original poem.  The cartoon is largely derived from just a few lines of The Song of Hiawatha:

Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrows;
And the birds sang round him, o'er him,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
 
Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches,
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" 

And the rabbit from his pathway
Leaped aside, and at a distance
Sat erect upon his haunches,
Half in fear and half in frolic,
Saying to the little hunter,
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"

It is essentially here where Disney departed from Longfellow.  The more adolescent Hiawatha from the poem goes on to kill the red deer; the cartoon Hiawatha mixes it up with an angry bear and must be rescued by the small forest creatures that his literary counterpart largely ignores.  Longfellow's Hiawatha proudly bears home the fallen red dear with its impressive rack of antlers.  Little Hiawatha, prone to his pants dropping at inopportune moments, beats a hasty retreat from his overly ambitious hunting expedition.

Simultaneous to the development of the original Little Hiawatha cartoon, Walt Kelly and Grace Hunnington prepared an additional Hiawatha Silly Symphony entitled "Minnehaha," whose title character was an innocent and sweet young girl.  An adult Minnehaha was the lover of Hiawatha in the original Longfellow poem.  According to author Charles Solomon, "Kelly and Hunnington considered various adventures for their child characters.  Minnehaha might befriend small animals, spoiling Hiawatha's attempts to hunt them; she might fall into a river trying to rescue a doll and be saved by Hiawatha in a canoe.  Hiawatha might get caught in one of his own animal traps and escape injury by falling into a pile of blankets that Minnehaha had folded."  The proposed short went unrealized.

Although Little Hiawatha would never reappear again on the big screen after 1937, his tenure as an active Disney character was far from over. Beginning on November 10, 1940, Little Hiawatha became the star of the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip, distributed by Kings Features Syndicate.  The series was written by Hubie Karp and drawn by Bob Grant.  The strip introduced the character of Minnehaha, which was reportedly based on Walt Kelly's original designs.  The newspaper strips lasted until July 12, 1942 and were later reprinted in the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories comic book in issues #28-35.  In 1944, Minnehaha was the star of her own, albeit brief, series of stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.  The series was entitled Little Minnehaha and consisted of three stories by writer-artist Roger Armstrong.  Little Hiawatha was a very prominent costar.

Little Hiawatha then took a seven year comic book hiatus before reemerging in a new series of stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, beginning in 1952.  These six-page stories were created by a variety of writers and artists and remain somewhat controversial due to some obvious ethnic stereotyping.  Gone was the pantomime and poetry of the earlier comic strips, replaced with language brimming with "me" pronouns and -um suffixes ("me want-um," "it look-um pretty awful").  The stories also featured Hiawatha's sister Sunflower and his father Big Chief, who was portrayed in a quite unflattering manner as an overweight and exceptionally lazy buffoon. The series was terminated in 1954 when the page count of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories was reduced from 52 to 36 pages.  Little Hiawatha was then showcased in four issues of Dell Four Color Comics through 1959, but beyond reprints and some one-page gags for Gold Key in the early 1970s, his comic book career essentially came to an end.

But Walt Disney did not in fact completely abandon Longfellow's character in regard to a big screen treatment beyond the original Silly Symphony and its unrealized sequel.  According to Charles Solomon, "The push to develop Hiawatha [as an animated feature] took place shortly after World War II.  A crew of artists led by Dick Kelsey sought to trim and reorganize Longfellow's sprawling 'Indian Edda' into a straight-forward story that could be told in a single film."

An Associated Press newspaper account from  September 12, 1948 discussed a proposed research trip by Kelsey to the Great Lakes Region:

Dick Kelsey, one of Disney chief staff artists will spend six weeks (starting Sept 25) touring the Great Lakes Region sketching and documenting the settings of Longfellow s famous narrative poem. His Itinerary includes Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, the shores of Lake Superior and Michigan, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Detroit across Lake Erie to Buffalo then through Rochester the Finger Lakes district the Mohawk Valley down the Hudson to New York and on to Washington for museum data.  Color camera records will supplement his sketches The finished cartoon likewise will be in color. Kelsey's will be no easy task in this modern era since he insists he will try to recapture both the spirit and the look of Hiawatha's land.  Every remaining forest, prairie, lake and river associated with the Indian legend will be visited by boat, automobile, train, horse or on foot, he declared.  He has arranged to study museum material in Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis, and Rochester the American Museum of Natural History and the Heye Foundation in New York and the Smithsonian Institute and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.  At Naples, NY he will confer with Dr. Arthur C. Parker, director emeritus of the Rochester Museum, an authority on American Indian life and lore.

Hiawatha production art by Dick Kelsey.

The project was developed as a very serious interpretation of the story, and it was potentially akin to Fantasia in terms of being somewhat high-brow.  Numerous individuals within the studio expressed strong concerns about the various treatments that were put forward, and according to Solomon, the project was abandoned sometime late in 1949.  However, newspaper accounts from as late as 1951 reported the project was still active.  The New York Times noted on August 26 of that year that:

. . . the animated 'Hiawatha' is coming right along, too.  It was learned that story and camera crews are back from scouring the Great Lakes country.  The hero of Longfellow's poem is to be an Indian superman, "a sort of God-man, very much like Persia's Zoraster," our informant explained.  "There'll be some romance, though, with what's-her-name--Minniehaha."

Had the feature version of Hiawatha come to fruition, it would have certainly marked a stark contrast to that cherubic little character that had emerged from the Silly Symphonies more than a decade before.  "Mighty little Hiawatha" would have finally had the opportunity to grow up.

Special acknowledgments to Charles Solomon and his book The Disney That Never Was as a resource for this article.

Iconography: Floppy Slippers, Red Robe and a Blue Cone Hat

The Walt Disney Company has long and without shame exploited what they identify as Mickey Mouse's greatest role, in ways as widely varied as company logos, merchandise, studio architecture and theme park attractions.  It is not an exaggeration to say that the nine-minute sequence that is The Sorcerer's Apprentice has eclipsed the animated feature that it is a part of.  Fantasia is masterpiece of filmmaking; however, the image of Mickey, in floppy slippers, red robe and iconic moon and star emblazoned blue cone hat, has evolved into a phenomenon of popular culture.

Walt Disney had already purchased the rights to The Sorcerer's Apprentice, composer Paul Dukas's interpretation of Goethe's poem Der Zauberlehrling, prior to a chance meeting in a restaurant with Leopold Stokowski during the fall of 1937.  The two agreed on a collaboration of what was initially conceived as an enhanced and expanded Silly Symphony.  Though at one point Stokowski suggested they create for the title role, "a new personality which represents every one of us," Walt had always envisioned Mickey for the part, and remained firm that he should be the star and centerpiece of the production.

The decision to expand the scope of the project into a full-length feature was more the result of economics than any further creative inspirations.  When Stokowski recorded the score for The Sorcerer's Apprentice in January of 1938, expenditures on the project were already escalating and it was realized that as a two-reel short it would not be able to earn back its production costs, let alone generate a profit.  By rolling the short into a larger feature film, the initial financial investments in The Sorcerer's Apprentice were better protected.  By September of that year, an overall musical program was determined and production of the Concert Feature, or Fantasia, began in earnest.

Recognizing the importance and stature of the picture, animator Fred Moore was assigned the task of visually "upgrading" Mickey Mouse.  Considered the studio's "mouse" expert, he made one very important revision: eliminating Mickey's trademark "pie-eyes" and replacing them with more expressive pupils.  Although they were all seemingly minor changes on the surface, Moore's modifications in fact quantified a dramatic visual benchmark in the evolution of the character.

Author and Disney historian John Culhane made a symbolic but telling observation in his own chronicling of the making of Fantasia:

"Disney had the strongest possible reason for wanting Mickey to be the hero.  He may have dressed him like Dopey, in a long robe and soft slippers, but the Mickey in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is Walt Disney at the time of Fantasia, having risen in just a few years from conducting a few associates in The Band Concert to becoming the dreamer on the mountaintop, conducting the stars."

The image of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice has evolved into probably the most prominent and prolific of all Disney icons.  To the point where even the costume's various components, most especially Yensid's hat, can stand apart from Mickey, yet remain identifiable and memorable in almost every context in which they are used.

How to Catch a Cold . . . as Taught by Disney and Kleenex

As I sit here and tap out these words on my keyboard, I have a box of tissues close by.  I am hopefully near the end of a seasonal head cold that has plagued me for the last week or so.  It's a topical subject this time of year and one with a distinct, historical Disney cartoon connection.

In 1951, the Disney Studios produced a ten minute cartoon entitled How to Catch a Cold.  On the surface it was a public service film meant to educate; on a more subtle level it was a commercial for Kleenex tissues, or Kleenex disposable handkerchiefs as they were called back then.  Disney was commissioned by International Cellucotton Products Company (ICPC) to produce the film.  ICPC was a marketing subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark who owned the Kleenex brand.  The company had previously worked with Disney in 1946 on a similar but more specialized animated film, The Story of Menstruation, which became a health class standard for many young girls throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and related specifically to Kimberly-Clark's Kotex brand.  How to Catch a Cold was less sensitive in nature, opting for a more comical approach to its subject matter.  It could almost be considered a slightly more benign cousin to the Goofy cartoon Cold War that was also produced in 1951.

How to Catch a Cold was directed by studio veteran Hamilton Luske and produced on a budget of $150,000.  It featured the character of Common Man, being lectured on cold prevention by an alter ego sprite appropriately named Common Sense.  Most notable to the effort was Bill Thompson who voiced both Common Man and Common Sense.  Thompson was a veteran Disney voice-actor (Ranger Woodlore and numerous film roles) and is probably best known for voicing Droopy at MGM.  Despite its corporate pedigree, Kimberly-Clark did not want the film to appear overly commercialized.  A company marketing executive on the project noted at the time that, "[W]e do not want to load [How to Catch a Cold] with commercials.  I would think that credits at the beginning and at the end of the picture, plus a few shots of cold sufferers taking tissues from the Kleenex package in the picture itself would suffice."

The film was initially distributed to schools and community organizations.  Then in 1952, it became something of a minor pop culture phenomenon when NBC used it as a demonstration vehicle for color television.  In that regard, the short was seen by more 200 million viewers over the course of the next few years.  Despite such dramatic market penetration, Kimberly-Clark never experienced any significant increase in sales or market as a result of the film.  It was updated in 1986 but has since essentially faded into obscurity.  Ephemera dealers however seem to do a brisk trade on a series of posters that were distributed to schools and organizations that screened the film.

Consider the Source: Radish Obsessions and a Blind Prince

It's a rather bizarre tale of radish obsessions, a physically abusive witch and a wandering blind prince.  Sure, there's a young girl with long hair held captive in a tower, but the original Brothers Grimm story of Rapunzel is not quite the same as the Tangled affair that currently graces theater screens around the world.  It's time again to consider the source.

As with much of their works, the Brothers Grimm version of Rapunzel is rooted in older folk tales and mythologies, most significantly the story of Rudaba by 11th century Persian poet Ferdowsi, and the Italian story of Petrosinella, penned in the late 17th century by Giovambattista Basile.  Jacob and Wilhelm distilled these earlier tales into a rather cold, harsh and often disturbing account.  It is indeed a far cry from the upbeat musical interpretation that the Walt Disney Studios has presented in the form of Tangled, its latest animated feature.

Unlike her movie counterpart, the Grimm Rapunzel is not a princess by birth.  Her parents are commoners and quite a nutty pair.  Childless and unhappy, the mother dearly covets her neighbor's beautiful radishes.  Convinced his wife will die without the desired vegetables, he raids the nearby garden so to satisfy his spouse's obsession.  Upon returning to the garden a second time, the man is caught by the old Witch whose radishes he as stolen.  The Witch demands the couple's unborn child as payment for the radishes.  The man complies.  Not exactly the best of parents and wholly different from the noble and loving royal couple in Tangled.

Equally at odds with the Disney version is the Grimms' male protagonist.  He is but a handsome and charming prince who is drawn to the captive Rapunzel by the young girl's beautiful singing.  He climbs her tresses, seduces her, proposes marriage, concocts a long-term escape plan and at some point also manages to impregnate her.  Disney's Flynn Rider instead gets walloped multiple times with a frying pan and then blackmailed by a much more chaste heroine.

Upon learning of Rapunzel's affair the old Witch cuts off all the girl's hair.  The brothers then relate that the Witch was " . . . so hard-hearted that she took the poor maiden into a great desert, and left her to live in great misery and grief."  The Witch then surprises the prince upon his next visit and he accidentally tumbles from the tower.  He survives the fall, " . . . but the thorns into which he fell put out his eyes."  In comparison, Flynn Rider just gets stabbed to death.

The Grimms' prince then wanders in a blind state, " . . . eating nothing but roots and berries, and doing nothing but weeping and lamenting for the loss of his dear wife."  After a few years, he manages to find his way to the great desert where he discovers Rapunzel living with their twin children.  She weeps in great joy and her tears fall upon the prince's eyes and cure his blindness.  In Tangled, Rapunzel's single tear brings about Flynn's resurrection.

In the film, Mother Gothel meets her end due to rapid aging and ultimately turns to dust.  In the Grimm story, "What became of the old Witch, no one ever knew."

Noticeably missing from the original Grimm tale:  an island kingdom, a mysterious healing flower, Pascal the chameleon, floating lanterns, the Stabbington brothers, the Snuggly Duckling Tavern, Maximus the horse, hair with healing powers, and a whole lot of singing and dancing.

Four Color Tinkering with Toy Tinkers

It is neither heartfelt nor sentimental, and it does not convey its holiday theme in gentle, subtle strokes.  The 1949 Donald Duck cartoon Toy Tinkers is Christmas mayhem of the highest order, pitting our favorite mallard against Chip and Dale, who invade the duck's otherwise calm and bright, holiday-trimmed home.  That setting is quickly transformed into something analogous to a world war battlefield.  The antics drew heavily on guns and armaments; so much so that the short was heavily edited when broadcast on the Disney Channel throughout the 1990s.  Likely the most over-the-top sequence in this regard showed a Santa-clad Donald threatening the two chipmunks with a revolver.  Veteran duck director Jack Hannah was known for pushing at the boundaries in Disney cartoons and he certainly did not pull his punches with Toy Tinkers.

And lest you think that it was modern era political-correctness that first put the damper on Toy Tinkers, its premise was actually tinkered with just one year after its initial release when it was adapted into a comic book story that appeared in Walt Disney's Christmas Parade #2, published by Dell.  The story's writing was uncredited but the art was done by well-known Disney comics artist Paul Murray.  The story appeared without a title, providing some distance from its cartoon counterpart.  A 1991 reprint by Disney Comics gave it the title "Christmas Fray;" Gemstone Comics named it "Such a Clatter" when they republished it in 2003.

Though the comics adaptation retains much of the mayhem of Toy Tinkers, the cartoon's "war-esque" tone and set pieces were distinctly minimized or altered, likely at the direction Dell's editorial staff.  The implementation of the comics code may still have been a few years away, but even so, many comic book publishers worked to keep their content suitable for the smaller tykes.  Among the elements not migrated from cartoon to comic:

• A music box featuring two pistol-dueling gentlemen, albeit with cork-pop revolvers.

• Dale donning battlefield gear including a World War I-era gas mask.

• Donald fighting Chip and Dale with a toy Tommy gun during the penultimate artillery battle; in fact Donald does not take up arms whatsoever during that particular sequence in the comic.

• Donald uses a stick of dynamite against the chipmunks in the cartoon; in the comic it is clearly identified as a "giant firecracker."

The aforementioned cartoon sequence in which Donald holds the two at gunpoint is softened considerably in the comic story.  The gun itself is of a wholly different and less threatening design, and is ultimately revealed to be a water pistol.  The comic also adds a sequence not found in the cartoon:  Chip drops tree ornaments on Donald while flying a model airplane intended as a gift for Huey, Dewey and Louie.

It all very much speaks to the dynamic that cartoon shorts were originally produced for the broadest audience possible and were not always subservient to kid-friendly sensibilities.  But the vast majority of comic books of that era did cater almost exclusively to the younger demographics.