disney

Dec

2019

Ten Thoughts on Disney: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

I confess – as a self-proclaimed Disney queen, I am mediocre, at best. Oh, I talk the talk. I could spend an entire day at Disneyland, open to close (and indeed I have). I’ll defend their takeover of Times Square. I own The Life and Time of Scrooge McDuck. But there are huge gaps in my Disney movie knowledge. I’ve never seen Sleeping Beauty. I’ve never seen Mary Poppins. What the hell is WRONG with me?

Because I’m a completist, and because l like lists (and crossing things off of lists – oh, god, crossing things off of lists feels soooo gooooood), I got it into my head to watch every Disney animated feature, in order, from the beginning. Not the shorts – some are lost forever, so that’s not even possible. But all the features, animated and live action – anything released in cinemas by Walt Disney Studios. I might even go for some of those terrible straight-to-video sequels of the classic films, if I live long enough to get that far.

I expect I’ll have a lot of things to say about each film — I could talk forever about all things Disney. To keep this from getting out of control, I’ll limit my thoughts on each movie to ten. Because ten is a nice round number, and I already told you how I feel about lists.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) will start us off. It was Disney’s first full-length animated feature. (Okay, technically their first was a package of previously released shorts called Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons from earlier that year, but I can’t find a copy of it anywhere so I’m pretending it doesn’t exist. I mean, you probably never heard of it anyway, right? Maybe I just made it up, you don’t know!) The studio was already pretty successful with its various series of shorts like Silly Symphonies, and Mickey Mouse had been a household name for almost a decade, but this was their first foray into features. (Okay, their first into original narrative features. Geez.)

We open on a storybook, where in two pages and a few seconds we read all the back story we need to get started. Snow White’s a princess, her evil Stepmother the Queen makes her dress in rags because she’s jealous of her beauty, if the Queen’s magic mirror ever says Snow is hotter than the Queen, it’s curtains. Boom, exposition done, let’s get going. That would be the first half-hour of a movie today.
The Queen is fair and all, I guess, but is Snow White really the only maiden fairer? In the whole land? We never see another woman so, maybe, but still, I wanna know what scale the mirror is measuring by. Queenie needs to learn how to blend her make-up before she gets my vote for Most Fair.
A wandering Prince (who is, not for nothing, way fairer than Snow or the Queen) hears Snow White singing and hops right over the wall to take a looksie. Creeper. Not the best security in that castle, I guess. Where are the guards? Are the Queen and Snow White the only people living there? No wonder they get on each other’s nerves.
Queenie sends a woodsman to take Snow out for a nice day of flower picking and heart removal, but the axe-man can’t do it and tells the princess to run. Snow White does so, promptly running straight into complete madness. Two steps into the forest and she freaks the hell out into a full-blown panic-induced hallucinatory frenzy. Girl, I know you’ve led a sheltered life, but chill. It’s broad daylight. I have no sympathy for your manipulative white woman tears. Stop screaming, those aren’t alligators! They’re just logs! And what do you care, anyway? YOU CAN TALK TO ANIMALS!
Snow’s Xanax kicks in long enough for her to ask some woodland critters to find her a place to crash. They lead her to an empty cottage that’s dirtier than my college dorm and she promptly sets about cleaning it, whistling while the animals do all the work. The titular heptet come back from toiling away in the gem mines to find a princess passed out in their beds. Introductions are made and given how scared she was of a tree a few hours ago Snow is much calmer than you’d expect. Calmer than I’d be, for sure. I’m fine with six of the seven dwarfs but Dopey freaks me out. Always did. Imagine waking up in a strange bed and seeing that swollen cranium gawping at you? Brr. When he stands on top of Sneezy, with the giant coat over them both, pretending to be a prince in “The Silly Song”? Stuff of nightmares. Anyway, Snow agrees to keep house for the brothers in exchange for a place to stay.
Not a whole lot of plot in this movie, honestly. A few minutes at the beginning, a few at the end, but most of the film is just gags with the dwarfs. I’m not complaining. Snow White and the Seventy Minutes of Padding means there’s room for a glorious, gorgeous, drawn-out sequence where the Queen of Drama uses a bonkers magic spell to disguise herself as an old peddler.
The Queen tricks Snow White into biting into a poisoned apple. The animals, who recognize the peddler as evil because they are much smarter than Snow White, fetch the dwarfs, who, before they even know that their hot housekeeper has faceplanted onto the kitchen floor, chase the old woman to her death. Just to leave no room for doubt, the Queen is struck by lightning, which causes her to fall backwards off a mountain, after which a giant boulder falls on her and two salivating vultures swoop down to feast on her carcass. Don’t worry, kids, she’s dead, dead, dead! That’s what you get for being old and insecure!
The dwarfs are awfully upset about Snow White’s death considering they only knew her for one night and she was pretty condescending to them most of the time. A caption tells us she was so beautiful they couldn’t bear to bury her, so they put her in a glass coffin. Um, gross. She’s not going to be beautiful for long, you necros. Things wrap up pretty quickly after that: the Prince comes along, kisses the corpse, she wakes up, goodbye to the dwarfs, ride off into the sunset, angelic chorus sings!
Snow White doesn’t have much agency in this film. She reacts more than she acts and still gets a thoroughly undeserved happy ending. At least, I guess it’s happy? The storybook tells us they lived “happily ever after” but the Prince looks to be in his twenties and she’s supposed to be, what, fourteen? Fifteen? And they barely know each other – she literally does not say one word to him over the course of the entire movie. I give it six months.
This isn’t my first time watching Snow White, but I missed it as a kid, not seeing it until I was already an adult. Somehow I knew all the dwarfs’ names anyway. Cultural osmosis, I guess. This rewatch reminded me of just how beautiful the animation is. It’s so stunning I can’t believe it was made so long ago. Story-wise there’s not a lot of there there, but the visuals and the humor still hold up.

Apr

2015

Ten Thoughts on Cinderella

Cinderella (1950) had a lot riding on it. Walt Disney’s feature film output for most of the later forties consisted primarily of a bunch of package films, made up of shorts that were either considered not meaty enough to support a full-length, or were too expensive in the wake of the financial disasters Disney suffered due to World War II. Cinderella would be their first full-length animated feature since 1942’s Bambi, and rumor was that if it were a flop, the studio would fold. You probably know how that went.

Synopsis: You know this one, right? I’ve done a bunch of really obscure Disney flicks by now that could have really used a synopsis before I started, but I didn’t think of doing one until now, on the story that everyone and their godmother knows. Anyway, here’s the gist of it – Cinderella’s mom croaked and her dad remarried a mean old lady with two mean ugly daughters. When dad dies, Stepmom stops pretending to be nice and she and her kids turn Cinderella into a servant in her own home. One night, a ball is held at the palace and all eligible maidens in the kingdom are commanded to attend. Cinderella is prevented from going by the Steps, but with the help of her Fairy Godmother she gets magically dolled up and makes it to the dance on time. She and Prince Charming hit it off and dance all night, but at the stroke of midnight the spell is broken and Cinderella has to hightail it out of there, accidentally leaving a glass slipper behind. The Grand Duke sets off in search of the maiden who fits the slipper – surprise, it’s Cinderella! Happily ever after, yadda yadda yadda.

The opening theme croons, “Cinderella, you’re as lovely as your name.” Is it really all that lovely a name, though? Just adding “-ella” to the word cinder? You could add “-ella” to anything and it would sound lovely. Dirtella. Bloodella. Crapella. Vomitella. Oh, Vomitella, you’re as lovely as your name!
Cinderella’s dad is kind of hot. He could have done way, way better on his second marriage. The Wicked Stepmother looks like John Kerry.
Like all pretty, kind-hearted girls, Cinderella can talk to animals. Because why not? Although I think I prefer a reading of this movie where Cindy’s been driven completely insane by her years of isolation and abuse. The mice! The mice made my dress! By the way, did you know that birds can’t control when they poop? If you’ve ever owned a pet bird, you know how utterly disgusting Cinderella’s room should be with all those birds flying around getting into everything. Frankly, mice aren’t too picky about where they drop their bombs either. Forget about sewing them all those cute little jackets and hats, Cinderella – make them some diapers before you get histoplasmosis. (Look it up!)
Stepmother’s room is AMAZING! So purple. Such luxury. Wow. Stepmother’s cat’s name is Lucifer, because the mice are good so the cat has to be evil. Subtlety! Bruno the dog was dreaming of murdering Lucifer and then laughed in his face when Cinderella couldn’t think of a single redeeming quality the cat had. I kind of feel like any actions Lucifer takes from here on out are justified. I know you’re oppressed, Cinderella, but don’t punch down. And I’m jumping ahead a bit, but while we’re on the subject – Lucifer falls to his death at the end of this movie. I know he’s trying to keep Cinderella from getting out of the locked room and meeting her destiny and all, but he is chased out of a window by the dog and plummets several stories to the cobblestones below. They killed a cat. Everyone’s just okay with this?
I don’t think Drizella’s rendition of “Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale” is that bad, honestly. I heard worse in summer stock.
If, by royal command, every eligible maiden in the kingdom must attend the ball, shouldn’t there be a whole bunch of servants there? Not to mention farm girls, tavern wenches…prostitutes… How wide a net are we casting, exactly?
I hope Cinderella is just being polite to the birds and mice out of a desire not to hurt their feelings, because that dress they made for her is fucking hideous. It’s a giant novelty birthday-present bow, Mardi Gras beads, and pool noodle shoulder pads draped over a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. The Steps did her a favor when they tore it apart.
The Fairy Godmother scene is the best thing ever. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” is in heavy rotation on my main playlist, and I’m not the slightest bit ashamed of that. Also, the horse-coachman is way hotter than Prince Charming. Just saying. I would have made better use of those couple of hours before midnight. If this pumpkin’s a-rocking…
The Prince is gay, right? It’s not just me? The whole reason the King throws the ball is because his son has never shown any interest in women, always preferring to go off hunting (with the boys). Charming yawns in the faces of every single eligible girl in the kingdom, only showing interest in the one woman who doesn’t want anything to do with him – she doesn’t get in the receiving line with all the other eager beavers, and by midnight she’s already making up an obvious lie to get out of spending more time with him. He knows he’s got to marry somebody, so it might as well be the one woman who probably won’t push for icky sex stuff. Oh! And the whole glass slipper, hunt-through-the-kingdom-for-his-one-true-love thing? All the King’s idea. Charming doesn’t even go, the Grand Duke conducts the search without him. And we only have the Grand Duke’s word that Prince Bland is pining away – we never see it – and the Duke’s been ordered to get the Prince married under threat of death, so he’s pretty motivated to tell King Dad whatever he wants to hear. Also, the Prince is an excellent dancer. And he doesn’t have a single line on his face. Botox! Case closed. I find the defendant gayer than the Country Bear Jamboree.
In the original tale, the Stepsisters aren’t ugly. Making them hideous might get a cheap laugh, but it’s a pretty terrible message for Disney to send. Unattractive girls are bullies, and they deserve to be alone and unhappy. Poor, abused beautiful girls! Just keep being pretty and you’ll get your happy ending! Once everyone sees how lovely you are, you’ll marry the prince and you’ll be popular and the rightful order of things will be restored. Oh, also, the boy mice all have different appearances and personalities, but the girl mice are identical except for the colors of their dresses. Okay, I’ll stop with the social commentary. Wait, one more. If Cinderella looked like her Stepsisters, would anybody give a shit? Although, even if she started out that way, the Fairy Godmother would give her magic plastic surgery or something. There’s no way this story gets told where Cinderella isn’t conventionally beautiful at the end, and rewarded for it. All right, that’s enough of that. There’s a lot of messed-up stuff to unpack in this movie, but of course none of it takes away from the fact that Cinderella is fantastic. Sure, Cinderella has no agency whatsoever…crap, I’m doing it again. It’s gorgeous, it’s funny, it’s clever, the songs are beautiful, and even if none of that were true, the brief scene with the Fairy Godmother would be worth everything else. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!

Mar

2015

Ten Thoughts on The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), in addition to being the last Disney feature of the 1940s, is also (mercifully) the last package film produced by the studio. Disney was still burning off films left unfinished due to their financial problems during the war, and these two adaptations, deemed unsuitable for feature-length, were reduced to shorts and smashed together into one picture. The two halves of the film were split up and shown elsewhere quite often since its initial release – on television, as shorts before other features, and on home video. I had seen Ichabod’s story before, but Toad and his friends were new to me.

There isn’t a whole lot of commonality between The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the two stories upon which this film is based, and the seams are fraying in the framing sequence tying them together. They couldn’t even come up with a decent theme song – the lyrics are just the names “Ichabod” and “Mr. Toad” repeated again and again. After the credits we zoom into a library for the once original, now done to death conceit of introducing us to the tale by just showing us the book it’s based on. The narrators (Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby – an even less likely pairing than Ichabod and Mr. Toad) essentially just say, “Hey, here are two interesting characters,” and don’t bother to provide any other justification for why we might watch their stories back to back.
Mr. Toad is up first. Never having read The Wind in the Willows, my only prior knowledge of this story comes from “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at Disneyland. The shots of the interior of Toad Hall take me right back and I’m instantly terrified. (Shut up. Don’t tell me it’s not a thrill ride. They die and go to Hell at the end.) Basil brings us up to speed on the setting and characters very quickly – Toad, Ratty, Moley, and MacBadger – and we’re into the action. Ratty looks just like the Basil Rathbone version of Sherlock Holmes, which I’m assuming must be intentional. Good in-joke if so. Also, MacBadger has a really sexy Scottish accent. I’d be into him, if he wasn’t an elderly cartoon badger. (Although, I’ve done worse…)
The song “We’re Merrily on Our Way” is pretty great. I love Cyril the horse and I want him to take me for a wild ride in his cart. Any horse who wears a hat with holes cut out for his ears is okay by me.
I like Toad, but I’m not particularly sympathetic towards him. He’s definitely a one-percenter and will be the first amphibian against the wall when the revolution comes. The plot mostly concerns his friends’ attempts to save him from himself – he’s the owner of Toad Hall, the stateliest of stately manors in the Wild Wood, and his mania for fads is causing him to burn through all of his cash. MacBadger is worried that if they don’t stop him, he’ll lose the Hall. I say, let him lose it. Turn it into a museum. (But I’m a dirty socialist so don’t listen to me.) Toad is arrested for stealing a car and put on trial. His defense is that he legally traded Toad Hall to a gang of weasels for the car. Weasels, according to Cyril, are “deceitful and not to be trusted at all.” DAS RACIST! Toad’s found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in the Tower of London, which seems a little severe for a first-time offender, especially a rich one. Rich people don’t go to jail – doesn’t Disney know how the legal system works?
Cyril and Toad dress in drag to escape the tower. Love it. He runs to his friends and Ratty is instantly ready to turn him back over to the police. Man, a toad really learns who is friends are in situations like this, doesn’t he? SNITCHES GET STITCHES RATTY. There’s a big fight scene against the weasels, which is pretty great, and they get the deed to Toad Hall back, which proves Toad’s innocence somehow. The end. Wait, they never go to Hell? What a rip-off! YOU LIED TO ME MR. TOAD’S WILD RIDE
Part two, and Bing takes over from Basil as our narrator. He spends an awfully long time describing Ichabod Crane’s appearance considering we’re looking right at him. Ichabod is an odd outsider walking through the center of town with his nose buried in a book while all the townspeople, including the ruggedly handsome leader of a gang of drunken roughnecks, sing about how strange he is. So it’s the opening to Beauty and the Beast, several decades early. That ruggedly handsome leader is Bram Bones, and hot damn. I’m not saying I searched DeviantArt for one of those “sexy Disney heroes” drawings of him, I’m not saying I didn’t. (I did.) Ichabod, on the other hand, looks exactly like Pepper, the microcephalic woman from American Horror Story.
I guess Bram is supposed to be the villain, but it’s pretty hard to sympathize with Ichabod. The two are rivals for the love of the beautiful Katrina, but Ichabod wants her because she’s rich, and fantasizes about her dad dying so he can take over their farm. There isn’t really a hero here.
At the dance at the farm, Bram dances with a plump woman only so he can swap her for Katrina, who’s dancing with Ichabod. He’s disgusted by her plumpness because ha ha ha fat women have no value! Blergh. I’d blame it on the 1940s but it’s not like this joke has gone away. This nameless woman is relentlessly cheerful, laughing uproariously as Bram drags her around the dance floor. She’s the most likable character in this and in a right and good world both men would be fighting over her instead of that manipulative tart Katrina.
FINALLY we get to the whole point of this story, the Headless Horseman and holy crap, it’s pretty scary. It’s a little discordant, though, the interplay of the realistically terrifying Horseman with Ichabod’s cartoonishly overwrought reactions. The story isn’t quite committing to either the fear or the humor, and each somewhat undercuts the other. Of course, that’s me as an adult saying this – as a kid, I remember freaking the hell out when the Horseman throws his pumpkin head right at the camera.
Ultimately, this odd pairing works so long as you take each of the two on their own merits. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow drags a bit but is worth it for the ending, whereas The Wind in the Willows is fun throughout but gives the sense that something wonderful was lost when the decision was made never to develop it into a standalone feature. Like many of these forced package films, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is probably better served by splitting up its component parts and watching them separately.

Dec

2014

Ten Thoughts on So Dear to My Heart

So Dear to My Heart (1949) is the fourteenth feature film from the Disney studios, and, like Song of the South, it’s a mixture of live-action and animation. The animation only makes up a small portion of the film, though – early drafts had no animation at all, and the cartoon segments were added mainly due to a requirement in Disney’s distribution deal with RKO. But enough background – what did I think?

Hey, Burl Ives is in this, yay! Oh, goddamn it, so are those irritating kids from Song of the South. Jeez Louise, Walt, weren’t there any other child actors you could get on the cheap? I appreciate loyalty, but come on. This is the third picture for Bobby Driscoll and the fourth in a row for Luana Patten. She’s not that cute.
Welcome to Fulton Corners, Indiana, in the year 1903. Well, that may be the precise setting of the film, but really we’re in Disney-fied Americana. Main Street, USA, at the turn of the century. A general store, horse-drawn wagons, lots of open space for kids to play in, and the train’s arrival at the tiny depot the biggest source of excitement for miles. This is the first real appearance of Walt Disney’s idealized old-time America in a feature, but get used to it – you’ll be seeing it again and again.
Dan Patch, the famous racehorse (or a reasonable facsimile) stops briefly in our little town, led off the train to stretch his legs. This inspires our hero, Jeremiah Kinkaid, known as Jerry and played by that awful Song of the South boy I wished so much ill upon, to one day own a champion racehorse of his own. Good luck, kid! We also meet Tildy, played by the so-adorable-you-want-to-punch-her Luana Patten. Tildy is Jerry’s friend – or maybe his cousin? I’m never clear on this. Our other two main characters are Jerry’s Uncle Hiram, played by Burl Ives (in his first major film role), and Jerry’s Granny, played by Beulah Bondi (who I am unfamiliar with, but who is amazing). Tildy hangs out with this crew all day and night, but she doesn’t seem to be related to them. Unless she is? She mentions parents, but we never see them. She refers to Hiram as “Uncle” but Granny is explicitly not her grandmother. But Hiram also calls Granny “Granny” so maybe “Uncle” and “Granny” are nicknames as well as relationship indicators? It’s all very confusing. Disney movies always seem to have some little inconsequential plot point like this that I spend way too much time thinking about. Details matter, people!
Finally we get to the meat of the movie (so to speak). Granny’s sheep give birth, and one of them, a black lamb, is rejected by its mother. Jerry takes the lamb as a pet, despite Granny’s objections, and his dreams of owning a champion racehorse are replaced with dreams of his little lamb, whom he names Danny, becoming a champion instead. I know there’s no racial message intended here, but there’s something about the black lamb, particularly Granny’s warnings – “I know the nature of them black sheep, especially a ram. He’ll be into everything.” – that makes me uncomfortable. Casting Song of the South boy doesn’t help.
The incidental music in this film is a little heavy-handed. Every single line is underscored, the slightest motion is accompanied by a dramatic chord. “Jeremiah!” (Duh-duh-duh!) His head whips around! (Dum-dummmmm!) Granny scowls! (Bum-bum-ba-bum!) Close-up on the lamb! (Tweetle-dee-dee!) Jimmy smiles! (Doot-doo-do-doo!) Granny softens! (La-la-la-laaaaa!) STOP TELLING ME HOW TO FEEL!
The animation sequences are gorgeous, but they’re sort of shoved into this movie – they’re meant to be springing from Jerry’s imagination, and they mostly consist of advice for animated Danny the Lamb from a Wise Old Owl, who comes from a series of postcards Jerry has in his scrapbook. (Oh, let me interject to say that Jerry is really, really good at scrapbooking. His scrapbook is to die for, even before it comes to life as a cartoon. If this were set in the present he would be majorly internet-famous on Pinterest.) The songs are a lot of fun, particularly “Stick-To-It-Ivity,” which features an animated Robert the Bruce getting advice from an animated spider which inspires Robert to get off his lazy ass and go and slaughter some more Brits. My pride in my heritage might have caused me to find the spider’s cliched Scottish appearance and dialect offensive if it hadn’t looked so cute when it did the Highland Fling.
Most of the movie consists of Danny the Black Sheep getting into exactly the kind of trouble Granny predicted, and Jeremiah apologizing for it. Danny destroys Granny’s living room, Granny’s yard, Granny’s screen door, Granny’s rocking chair, plus the town general store for good measure. Granny shows remarkable restraint in not serving up a plate of her famous Black Lamp Chops. I keep going back and forth as to whose side I’m on, but ultimately I decide that the lamb is pure evil and his destruction is completely on purpose, so I’m on his side.
Jerry and Tildy go to the swamp to look for bees – long story – and they find a complete cow skeleton, stripped to the bone. An entire cow skeleton, just lying there on the ground. Tildy is freaked out, since she’s been warned again and again about how dangerous the swamp is and also WHAT THE HELL LIVES IN AN INDIANA SWAMP THAT CAN SKELETONIZE A COW but Jerry is all, “Whatever. I’m following a bee. You can come or not.” I wish I could say it’s bad-ass, but coming from Jerry it just reads as slack-jawed vapidity. “Huh, yeah, a cow skeleton, that’s OH LOOK ANOTHER BEE!”
Little Jerry’s an asshole, by the way. He’ll be all doe-eyed one minute to get his way, but he’ll tear your fucking head off if you come between him and his lamb. Tildy goes to feed Danny, who escapes and disappears into the swamp. Jerry rips Tildy apart for feeding him, chews Granny a new one for not keeping better watch, and then denounces God for taking his lamb away. It’s…kind of awesome. My liking of this kid is growing faster than Annette Funicello’s sweater size. (That’s a Mickey Mouse Club joke. Look it up, kids.) Granny – and the narrative of the film – aren’t down with the blasphemy, and she gives him a severe spiritual smack-down. Jerry relents, promising God that if He returns Danny, Jerry will abandon his dreams of winning a blue ribbon at the County Fair. (That’s been the main plot of the movie this whole time. Sorry I haven’t mentioned it before.) Granny is touched by this, and when Danny is found, she tells Jerry that she promised God that if Danny was found, they would go to the Fair, and since she’s older she’s the one who has to keep her promise. As an atheist, I don’t really get the whole religion thing, but that seems like a dubious doctrinal lesson for a parental guardian to impart. It’s okay to break your promise to God, as long as it was a really, really cute promise.
They go to the fair, and Danny doesn’t win the blue ribbon. I’m really hoping he’ll go on a rampage and raze the whole ring to the ground while Jerry screams and cries and blames everyone else for his problems (and really, their behavior throughout the entire movie thus far suggest that’s exactly what should happen), but alas. They take their loss with dignity, and the judges give him a special award, a big pink ribbon. It feels a little “Everybody Gets a Medal Day” to me, but the movie seems to think it’s a happy ending, so who am I to argue? All in all, So Dear to My Heart is basically a harmless bit of fluff. It’s a shame the animated sequences haven’t been lifted out and shown separately, as they’re the best bits of the movie, but there are worse ways to pass an hour and fifteen minutes. If you’re curious about the genesis of whitewashed Disney America, this is a reasonably inoffensive place to start.

Dec

2014

Ten Thoughts on Melody Time

Melody Time (1948) is (sigh) yet another package film from the Disney studios. After The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free, I’m kind of running out of enthusiasm for the format. Disney’s still feeling the financial hit of the war, so he’s still throwing a bunch of shorts together on the cheap and calling them features. Better things are coming once we hit the fifties, but for now, let’s put our heads down and see what he’s served us this time, shall we?

We’re off to a promising start. Lots of stars in the opening credits, although I confess the Andrews Sisters, Roy Rogers and Trigger are the only names I immediately recognize. And the sequence for the title song is well done – “Melody Time” is sung by some stylized masks, created by a paint brush. That whole “brush creates the characters” thing has been done before, but it’s cute here and I like the design of the masks. It’s making me hopeful that maybe this wasn’t slapped together as haphazardly as Fun and Fancy Free seemed to be.
“Once Upon a Wintertime” is our first story. Two young lovers are enjoying a sleigh ride pulled by two enormous horses – they’re like the horse from “What’s Opera, Doc?” with longer necks. There’s not much of a story, at first – they stop and go ice skating and make lots of hearts in the snow so we know they’re in love. But then he does something dopey and she gets mad and storms off and because women – am I right, fellas? – she doesn’t see the “Thin Ice” sign. The ice shatters and he tries to save her but he fails miserably and knocks himself unconscious. Her chunk of ice drifts through some rapids towards a deadly drop over a waterfall – wait, where the hell were they ice skating? Whoever made that “Thin Ice” sign was really underselling the danger. Anyway, the animals, led by the poster children for Horse Growth Hormone, rescue her, and she’s back in love with her man even though he did nothing but make the situation worse. Then a close-up on their loving faces fades to a photo of the two of them in a living room. It’s meant to suggest that they lived happily ever after, except I swear that it’s a different woman in the photo. I guess at some point she wised up. Or drowned.
“Bumble Boogie” gives us a jazzy rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee” while the titular bug tries to escape a Dali-esque hellscape of plant/musical instrument hybrids trying to kill him. It’s an acid trip worthy of Fantasia and I love it.
“The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” is next. The whole thing is a little too Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know for my tastes, but given John Chapman’s real life religiosity that’s probably appropriate. John’s a scrawny little fella who wants to head west with the pioneers (because there’s “plenty of room” – nobody out there already, nope, just unclaimed, uninhabited land as far as the eye can MANIFEST DESTINY), but he doesn’t think he has the suitable skill set to survive out there. His guardian angel appears in a vision, because Johnny is out of his god-damned mind, and convinces him to head west with just a pot on his head, a bag of apple seeds and a Bible. Pretty sure the angel was muttering, “Kill them, Johnny, kill them all and take their eyes,” but my copy didn’t have great sound so he might have been saying something else. Long story short, Johnny spends the rest of his life planting apple orchards all over the country and becomes beloved by the good-hearted pioneer folk for providing them with God’s chosen fruit. After forty years of walking and planting, looking like someone you’d change subway cars to get away from, he dies underneath an apple tree (cyanide poisoning from eating too many apple seeds if I had to guess), and his angel comes to take him to Heaven. They need him, you see, because the afterlife doesn’t have any apple trees. And in a twist worthy of a Christmastime stop-motion “secret origin of Santa” special, it’s revealed that clouds are actually Heaven’s apple orchards, planted by the ghost of Johnny Appleseed. Betcha they didn’t teach you that in your Godless public school, did they, sonny? I hate apples but luckily I’m unlikely to ever get to Heaven.
I did some research on John Chapman after watching this movie (damn you, Disney, for prompting me to learn), and apparently the apple trees were beloved by the pioneers mostly for real estate reasons – orchards were required to maintain their claim on otherwise unclaimed land. Johnny had religious objections to grafting, so the wild apples that grew from his trees were pretty much inedible and only used for making hard cider. Thanks for getting our ancestors drunk, Johnny! Your legacy lives on today!
Next up is…oh, dear…”Little Toot.” (Must…resist…fart jokes…) Little Toot is a tugboat and he’s adorable as hell, and the toe-tapping song is sung by the Andrews Sisters, so I pretty much love this from frame one. Toot doesn’t take his job seriously – he just wants to play! – and he accidentally sends an ocean liner crashing into the city, toppling buildings and (presumably) killing thousands. Oh, Toot! You scamp! (Toot doesn’t talk so you could say he’s silent but deadly.) He gets banished to the deep ocean where he saves another ship and all is forgiven and Toot’s a hero. Hooray! Three toots for Little Toot! Toot! Toot! Too – oh, excuse me. I had cucumbers with lunch.
Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” is set to music for the next segment, in which we watch a tree experience the changing seasons. Snore. I fell asleep just typing that. Nothing that wasn’t done better in Fantasia, or even Bambi. On the line, “Only God can make a tree,” the camera pulls back and the tree is in the shape of a cross with a glowing nimbus of light around it. Even the Veggie Tales cast would look at this and say, “A little heavy-handed with the religious stuff, don’t you think?”
“Blame It on the Samba” has…can it be? José Carioca! Donald Duck! Is that Panchito Pistoles? Could it be the Three Caballeros reunited? Oh, no, it’s not Panchito, it’s that irritating Woody Woodpecker rip-off, the nameless Aracuan bird. Oh, well. This segment is still pretty great, despite being a Caballero down. The music is fun and the birds never speak so I don’t have to worry about their complete incomprehensibility. I get worried when a live-action woman shows up, as the unnatural carnal lusts of cartoon fowl are well-documented, but the birds seem to be too caught up in the music to bother her. Also, unlike in other movies, they’re scaled to actual bird size compared to her, which I find weird for some reason. Like most cartoons with José and Donald together, the animators say goodbye to sanity about halfway through and things get really fun. This is definitely a highlight of the film.
Our next, and final, segment opens with tumbleweeds rolling across the desert at dusk while a lonesome voice croons, “Bluuuuuueeee shadooooows…on the traaaaaiiilllll…” Consider the mood well and truly set. It’s the story of “Pecos Bill,” told by live-action Roy Rogers to those two annoying kids from Song of the South, Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten. (Luana was also the little girl in Fun and Fancy Free, so I guess she was not murdered by the living ventriloquist’s dummies as I hoped feared.) Trigger’s there too, but unfortunately he doesn’t do too much. (I say unfortunately because he’s a better actor than either of the kids.) So, yeah, Pecos Bill, lost in the desert by his parents as they headed west, found and raised by coyotes. (We actually see baby Bill headed to the coyote’s teat to nurse, but just as he’s about to get his lips around her we cut to mama’s face as her expression turns from surprise to pleasure. It’s…unsettling.) Bill basically gets super-powers from living with animals, and Roy sings a bunch of tall tales about Bill’s adventures, which are a lot of fun (apart from the one about the “painted Indians” – I won’t go into it, but…ugh). Then he meets Slue-Foot Sue and falls instantly in love. When we first see Sue she’s riding a giant catfish down a river, while the catfish jumps through the hoops she’s making with her lasso. I kind of fall in love with her, too. Sue meets an unfortunate end – on their wedding day, she gets bucked from Bill’s jealous horse and lands on the moon, stranded there forever, never to be seen again. And that’s why coyotes howl at the moon, Roy tells us in another Rankin-Bass kind of moment. The ending is meant to be silly but it disturbed me a little. Poor Sue, another strong female character fridged to provide motivation for the male protagonist.
And that just about exhausts my thoughts on the subject. Melody Time had more hits than misses, which is about the best you can hope for in these package films. It’s hard to judge them as features, since they’re really collections of cartoon shorts with only the flimsiest of connecting themes. This one’s worth having on in the background while you do housework, I guess. But Disney can do better.

Newsletter!

Thank you!