Disney’s Fantasia, rightly, is one of the most beloved and appreciated films in Disney history. It’s a film I have loved it my whole life. My experience as a gallery owner though is that it’s also been loved by some of my favorite clients at ArtInsights. So often, the smartest and most engaged kids I meet always gravitate to the film. That makes sense. It’s all about music. It’s full of creative imagery. It’s not a traditional cartoon, by any means. I’ve had adults say it bores them to tears, and that’s fine. I’ve also heard more times than I can count that this client or that friend could only countenance any part OTHER than the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence if they’d just eaten a cannabis-laden cookie.
The point is that It’s not for everyone. It’s for the most creative, inspired, inventive, and imaginative (or, I suppose, drug-fueled) among us.
Disney’s Fantasia has a very fascinating and complicated history. It was a huge risk for Disney and his small staff at his studio. Comprised of eight short segments, all set to music. Seven of those segments were performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Leopold Stokowski, whom Disney had met at a chance meeting in Chasen’s Restaurant in Hollywood, was the director of the orchestra at the time. Though initially he got involved in the project when it was limited to a Sorcerer’s Apprentice short, Stokowski became “instrumental” in the making of a wonderful score, and giving the film its beautiful musical heart. Head of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1912, he had shown himself to be an enthusiastic supporter of teaching children about music, having had children’s concerts starting in the 1920s. Stokowski was known for his baton-free conducting, which, it was said, allowed for a more passionate and sumptuous sound from his orchestra.
Here he is conducting in 1934:
**Here’s a little sidebar for all you movie geeks out there: Stokowski had a highly publicized affair with Greta Garbo, vacationing with her in Capri, much to the delight of movie gossips of the time. He then married heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. Our boy got around! You can read a copy of the New York Times article about it from March of 1938 HERE.
Anyway, the feature started with the development of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as a short. Disney had started the project and hired Leopold Stokowski, getting the rights to the Paul Dukas piece in 1937. After recording for hours with 85 Hollywood musicians, and continuing to develop the project, the production costs rose above $125k. It was decided that a new concept which included a group of separate musical numbers, would compensate for the larger budget. A problem became an opportunity, and a film often copied but never replicated was born.
The film opens with Deems Taylor, masters of ceremonies, introducing the program. The film is composed of Toccata In Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite (which includes “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”, “Chinese Dance”, “Arabian Dance”, “Russian Dance”, “Dance of the Flutes” and “Waltz of the Flowers”), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas, The Rites of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, the intermission, Beethoven’s The Pastoral Symphony, Amilcare Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours (by Amilcare Ponchielli) and Night on Bald Mountain ( Modest Mussorgsky) and Ave Maria, by Franz Schubert.
Originally called The Concert Feature, there were a number of concepts discussed, and little by little, they decided upon the ones we see in the finished film. One that, in later years, reflects a very open-minded view of science, is the The Rite of Spring, which represents evolution and had potential for controversy by the creationists of the time.
SEGMENTS:
Toccata in Fugue in D Minor:
Deems Taylor described the very strange and oft maligned first sequence of Fantasia as “absolute music”, meaning abstract animation was created solely to allow the viewer to become absorbed in the orchestral movement.
“Now there are three kinds of music on this “Fantasia” program. First, there’s the kind that tells a definite story. Then there’s the kind that, while it has no specific plot, does paint a series of more or less definite pictures. And then there’s a third kind, music that exists simply for its own sake. Now, the number that opens our “Fantasia” program, the “Toccata and Fugue”, is music of this third kind, what we call “absolute music”. Even the title has no meaning beyond a description of the form of the music. What you will see on the screen is a picture of the various abstract images that might pass through your mind, if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you’re more or less conscious of the orchestra. So our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination. They might be… Oh, just masses of color, or they may be cloud forms or great landscapes or vague shadows or geometrical objects floating in space. So now we present the “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach, interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates, and in music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski.”
This abstract animation was a first for Disney Studios, and the style of the sequence was largely inspired by the German abstract animator Oskar Fischinger, who worked on it for a short time. His artistry has been shown and collected in museums around the world. Here is his animated short “An Optical Poem”, from 1938, using music by Franz Liszt, and you can definitely see his influence on the Toccata in Fugue sequence in Fantasia!
The Nutcracker Suite:
Animation historian John Canemaker calls The Nutcracker Suite in Fantasia “one of the most exquisite examples of Disney fantasy ever created.” The second segment of the film was inspired by Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, which is now a Christmas classic, which is what most gives Fantasia the holiday feeling. Directed by Sam Armstrong, the animation was done by Art Babbitt, Les Clark, Don Lusk, Cy Young, Hawley Pratt, and Robert Stokes. Babbitt was important to the design of the dancers in each part of this segment, in part because he had been married to dancer Margarie Belcher, who later became famous as Marge Champion (herself a dance model for Snow White). She was credited as the model for Hyacinth Hippo in the Dance of Hours sequence, but he studied her movements in the process of his work on the Nutcracker sequence as well, which was choreographed by animator, director, and artist Jules Engel. Babbitt is particularly known for the Mushroom Dance. He found inspiration for part of that sequence from The Three Stooges:
“He told me his three stooges story, which my father told in the documentary, it comes with the deluxe video of the Fantasia film, this last year. “You may not have recognized it, Michael,” he said, “but his anticipation for his steps at the beginning of the dance is almost a direct swipe from those three zanies who keep slapping each other around. The Three Stooges always did a funny little action where the knees overlap. When he’d get angry he’d do this furious little step, with his knees crossing, one over the other. And instead of just an ordinary anticipation, I used this, because the music called for a trill. So during that trill, he did this little anticipatory act.’” – as told to Michael Culhane from an interview with Art Babbitt
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:
Once again, a sequence directed by Sam Armstrong, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is where Fantasia began, since, as mentioned before, it was originally meant to be released as a short. The music was by French composer Paul Dukas, who had written and released it in 1897. While most of the film’s music was recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra, this segment had been recorded in 1938 with a collected group of 100 LA session musicians, as conducted by Stokowski.
The story is of sorcerer Yen Sid (DISNEY SPELLED BACKWARDS!) and his apprentice, who happens to be Mickey Mouse. Early concepts for this sequence used Dopey, and if you look at Mickey’s outfit, you can see remnants of the oversized robes worn by Dopey in Snow White. Animation supervisors were Bill Tytla and Freddie Moore. Much has been made of the way Mickey Mouse’s redesign for this sequence, which Moore spearheaded in 1938. Yen Sid was not only named after the studio’s founder, the character’s design was based on Disney, right down to the facial features displayed during the cartoon.
Here’s rare (silent) footage of Freddie Moore drawing at his desk. One of Disney’s Nine Old Men, Moore died as a result of a car accident in 1952, and was an artist gone too soon.
The Rite of Spring:
Written by composer Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring premiered in 1913 and caused a huge sensation and controversy, at one point causing such reaction that the music could barely be heard above the crowd. It is the longest sequence in Fantasia.
“When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet, The Rite of Spring, his purpose was, in his own words, to “express primitive life.” And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have take him at the word. Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form, as a simple series of tribal dances, they have visualized it as a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth. It’s a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on during the first few billion years of this planet’s existence. So now, imagine yourselves out in space billions and billions of years ago, looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet, spinning through an empty sea of nothingness.” – Deems Taylor
Not enough can be said about how risky this sequence was, given it was so soon after the Scopes Trial, and the fact that there were still a large number of creationists who didn’t believe in evolution. Disney was committed to the idea of showing what likely happened in the first billion years of Earth’s existence, so we brought on Julian Huxley, Barnum “Mr. Bones” Brown, and Roy Chapman Andrews as scientific consultants for the project, along with Edwin Hubble. What an amazing collection of consultants! Originally, the sequence was meant to be longer, and include the dawn of man, with humans dancing around a fire circle, but the controversy around creationism and concern for backlash led to them scrapping that part of the idea.
A narrated version of the sequence was created in 1955 for use in schools, and continued to be part of school curriculum through the 1960s:
Here is concept work from that sequence, used for a limited edition available through ArtInsights:
The Pastoral Symphony:
“The symphony that Beethoven called the “Pastoral”, his sixth, is one of the few pieces of music he ever wrote that tells something like a definite story. He was a great nature lover, and in this symphony, he paints a musical picture of a day in the country. Of course, the country that Beethoven described was the countryside with which he was familiar. But his music covers a much wider field than that, and so Walt Disney has given the “Pastoral Symphony” a mythological setting, and the setting is of Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods. And here, first of all, we meet a group of fabulous creatures of the field and forest: unicorns, fawns, Pegasus the flying horse and his entire family, the centaurs, those strange creatures that are half man and half horse, and their girlfriends, the centaurettes. Later on, we meet our old friend Bacchus, the god of wine, presiding over a bacchanal. The party is interrupted by a storm, and now we see Vulcan forging thunderbolts and handing them over to the king of all the gods, Zeus, who plays darts with them. As the storm clears, we see Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, and Apollo, driving his sun chariot across the sky. And then Morpheus, the god of sleep, covers everything with his cloak of night as Diana, using the new moon as a bow, shoots an arrow of fire that spangles the sky with stars.” – Deems Taylor
The sequence was directed by Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, and Ford Beebe, and the animation was supervised by some of the greatest animators in Disney history: Fred Moore, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, Art Babbitt, Ollie Johnston, and Don Towsley. A number of issues sprang up as the sequence was being designed, for example, originally the centaurettes were bare-breasted, but the Hayes Office required them to be covered up, hence the strategically placed garlands on each of the centaurettes. There were two objectionable characters, especially in light of the fact that there were centaurettes of multiple colors, but the only one servicing the others is the Black one. A Black centaurette called Sunflower was depicted polishing the hooves of a white centaurette, and a second named Otika appeared briefly during the procession scenes with Bacchus and his followers. I have seen cels and drawings of these characters. Here is a comparison of the uncensored and censored sequence (which I think is important to keep as part of our history, racist though it may be, so we don’t forget!)
Here is concept work from that sequence, used for a limited edition available through ArtInsights:
Dance of the Hours:
This sequence was directed by Norman Ferguson and Thornton Hee
Both the movements of animals at the Griffith Park Zoo and human dancers were studied so the animators could correctly create caricature ballets. John Hench was assigned the sequence but knew little about ballet, so Disney got him season tickets to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo with backstage access. The lead ostrich, Madame Upinova, is based on real Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo prima ballerina Irina Baronova. Here she is in 1940:
Here is concept work from that sequence, used for a limited edition available through ArtInsights:
Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria:
“The last number on our Fantasia program is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly. The first is “A Night On Bald Mountain” by one of Russia’s greatest composers, Modest Mussorgsky. The second is Franz Schubert’s world-famous “Ave Maria”. Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle between the profane and the sacred. “Bald Mountain”, according to tradition, is the gathering place of Satan and his followers. Here, on Walpurgnisnacht, which is the equivalent of our own Halloween, the creatures of evil gather to worship their master. Under his spell, they dance furiously until the coming of dawn and the sounds of church bells send the infernal army slinking back into their abodes of darkness. And then we hear the “Ave Maria”, with its message of the triumph of hope and life over the powers of despair and death.” – Deems Taylor
With music written by Mussorgsky and animation showing Bill Tytla at the top of his form in his work on Chernabog, Night on Bald Mountain has become more influential and appreciated, especially by art lovers and, oddly, goth fans, over the years since its release. Tytla was inspired by an image by illustrator and artist Albert Hurter sitting on a mountain unfolding his wings. Bela Lugosi was brought in to provide reference poses for the character, but Tytla didn’t use them. Instead he used shirtless images of sequence director Wilfred Jackson, which you can see in this 1988 interview with Wilfred Jackson HERE. Although the Hayes Office caught the potential scandal of bare-breasted centaurettes in the Pastoral sequence, they didn’t notice the breasts on the harpies in Night on Bald Mountain. Ok, yes, they aren’t OFFICIALLY HUMAN, but it always gives me a smile to see them coming at the screen, knowing Disney got away with a little something:
With the Ave Maria sequence, the story goes from darkness to light, with the faithful bringing dawn and a bright new day. This procession represented a challenging and incredibly longest sequence using a multi-plane camera, and was only completed a day before the film’s premiere in New York.
“And then we hear the “Ave Maria”, with its message of the triumph of hope and life over the powers of despair and death.” – Deems Taylor
Here is concept work from that sequence, used for a limited edition available through ArtInsights:
There was one sequence cut from the film that you can actually see, and it’s just so gorgeous, it’s hard to imagine why they thought it wouldn’t be a wonderful addition to Disney’s Fantasia. Footage from the original sequence was recut and rescored for the Blue Bayou segment of Make Mine Music. Here it is, again, conducted by Stokowsky, and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra:
One of the biggest obstacles to the success of Disney’s Fantasia was the fact the music was recorded in the way Disney wanted to have it performed…The soundtrack was recorded using Fantasound, a pioneering sound system developed by Disney and RCA that made Fantasia the first commercial film shown in stereo and a precursor to surround sound.. Only 13 cities premiered the film between 1940 and 1941, and financial success was a challenge, especially with the war raging in countries around the world. Even hobbled by those challenges, in subsequent years, Fantasia has not only been lauded as one of the best animated features in the history of film, but is indeed seen as one of the best films, ranked by the American Film Institute as 58th greatest American film in their 100 Years…100 Movies.
You can see a lot more information about the making of Fantasia in this great documentary from 1990:
To see all the art available from Fantasia at ArtInsights, click on the images below: