A Sound Idea2 PDF

"A Sound Idea" Music for Animated Films
Author(s): Jon Newsom

Source: The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Vol. 37, No. 3/4 (Summer/Fall
1980), pp. 279-309
Published by: Library of Congress
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29781862 .
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279
"A Sound Idea"
Music for Animated Rims
by Jon Newsom
The motion picture has been called a collabora? film may begin with something like a score: a
tive art. Indeed, few films can legitimately be fully developed shooting script. But it is a rare
considered the progeny of a sole creator, since occasion when the finished film does not reflect
many fertile competitors contribute to the fin? substantial changes by, and original contribu?
ished work. Certain extreme proponents of the tions from, producers, directors, actors,
auteur theory might consider this a kind of bas? scriptwriters, cameramen, editors, and even
tardy. But let us compromise by condoning the composers. Many of these contributors remain,
principle of artistic polygamy and agreeing that for all practical purposes, anonymous, even if
films and their component parts can be taken they are outstanding names in their fields. (Will
seriously on their own merits. we ever know just how much William Faulkner
A film differs from, for example, an opera, did for or to the film of Ernest Hemingway's To
for which usually just one composer and his Have and Have Not?)
librettist must take all the credit?or blame. A Yet, it would seem animated films can be,
Jon Newsom, assistant chief of the Library's Music Division, A seven-inch disc that contains the musical for this
examples
is currently working on the archives of film music in the essay has been bound with this issue of the Quarterly Journal.
Library of Congress and has recently published an article on This long-playing microgroove record can be played on any
the film music of David Raksin. He has also specialized in standard phonograph; however, for best results itmay be
American to place a record on the
popular music, researching early nineteenth necessary regular phonograph
century brass band music and songs, and has published turntable mat to give rigid support to this small flexible disc.
articles and record notes on the songs of Stephen Foster and If it slips, the disc may be more firmly secured by placing a
Henry Clay Work, improvisational jazz, and the relationship coin or other small weight on the label. Replacements for
between the German composer Hans Pfitzner and Thomas or defective records may be ordered from the
damaged
Mann. Music Division, Library of Congress, D.C.
Washington,
20540.
The quotation in the title is from an interview of Richard

Huemer published inFunnyworld. See note 22.

280
more completely than live-action films, the work Overture, while it is one of the unpaid stars ot
of one author. For an animator creates his own the movies, nevertheless comes at a high price
actors, props, scenery, and special effects. And per frame. On the other hand, film actors have
some animated films are, indeed, the work of contracts that have little or nothing to do with
one author. Such early animators as James numbers of exposures, feet, or miles of film. In
Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl, and Winsor McCay1 live-action films, perhaps one-tenth of the film
had no production staff. For the most part, they exposed is used in the final print and, even after
made all their own drawings. By the 1920s, Fer? the composer's carefully synchronized work has
nand Leger, Hans Richter, and Oskar Fis? been recorded and dubbed on the sound track,
chinger, among other artists, became interested large cuts may be made. Then, at best, the com?
in film and, similarly, created their own work. poser may have the chance to recompose, rear?
Even such feature-length narrative films as range, and rerecord his score to fit the new
Lotte Reiniger's Die Abenteuer des Prinz Achmed editing. At worst, his score may be mangled or
(1924-26), with its delicate and dramatic discarded. But such cutting and editing are
silhouettes animated by stop-frame cinematog? rarely done in animated films. And in some
raphy of articulated two-dimensional puppets, cases, though by no means as a rule, the com?
are fully realized personal creations. Today, poser's score, together with voices and sound
Norman McLaren2 continues to make films that effects, may be recorded before the film has been
are entirely his, including the hand-drawn opti? animated.
cal sound tracks. Let us take one such example, a scene from
But, even before sound films, increasingly Walt Disney's 1953 version of J. M. Barrie's
ambitious animation projects called for produc? 1904 play Peter Pan.2 Early in the story, the
tion staffs. And with the arrival of sound? Darling family children are admonished by their
which many have cited as the critical element father for their preoccupation with the fantasies
that made animated cartoons popular?the of the oldest sisterWendy. They believe in Peter
production staff had to include composers and Pan, the boy who ran away to Never-Never
musicians. It is their contribution to the col? Land where he will never grow up; and Wendy
laborative animated film that we will discuss. has captured Peter's shadow. Wendy and the
nurse-dog, Nana, are sent out of the nursery
Coordinating an Animated Scene: Disney's and Mr. and Mrs. Darling leave for the evening.
"Flight to Neverland" It is a moonlit night, and now Peter, who has
The of producing an been waiting on the rooftop, returns for his
differing techniques
animated, as to a live-action film call shadow and, it turns out, to take and
opposed Wendy
for correspondingly different "working relation? her brothers, Michael and John, with him to
ships between directors and composers?not to Never-Never-Land (along with his jealous and
mention the many others whose special skills diminutive-but-shapely consort Tinker Bell). In
contribute to the art of animation. This is true order to get there, "the second star to the right
because of the relatively complex microcosmic and straight on tillmorning," the children must
planning required for animated films, for which learn to fly; and this provides an opportunity for
the sight and sound elements of each frame one of Disney's musically and visually finest
must be accounted before filming. Such plan? moments. The film's score by Oliver Wallace
ning differs from the broader, and frame-for incorporates a few of his songs. The choral ar?
frame economically more relaxed, approach rangements are by Jud Conlon, and the orches?
taken in films employing live actors. For one tration is by Edward Plumb. For this scene,
thing, the animation director conceives his film songwriters Sammy Cahn and Sammy Fain
knowing that he must control its contents and wrote "You Can Fly!" The final musical sound
one twenty-fourth of a
timing in increments of track?foreground and background?is the col?
second, the time it takes each frame to pass laborative work of all these musicians and many
the an animated others besides.
through projector. Moreover,
be it a flying elephant or a mynah bird What the viewer sees and hears in the roughly
figure,
walking in time to Mendelssohn's FingaVs Cave three minutes of the finished sequence required

281
the coordinated decisions and skills of many
people, including the writers and the actors who
recorded the script; the sound effects depart?
ment; the composers and arrangers who pro?
vided just the right amount as well as the right
kind of music required to accompany the action;
the singers and orchestra musicians who re?
corded the music; the animators who, with
fully
developed character models before them, drew
them in action to synchronize with prerecorded
voices, songs, instrumental music, sound effects,
and preestablished actions; the inkers and color The flight toNever-Never-Land in Walt Disney's 1953 animated
artists who traced and colored the animators' feature version of Sir James Barrie's play Peter Pan shows Peter
drawings on the transparent "eels" that are used withWendy,Michael, andJohnDarlingflyinghigherand higher
in final frame-by-frame above the rooftops and rising through and above the clouds. Four
photography; the
layers of artwork were filmed with Disney's famous multiplane cam?
background artists who painted whatever sta? era to create the illusion of increasing distance between
theflying chil?
tionary scenery was required for the animated dren, the receding background, and the passing clouds. Copy?
figures; and the cameraman who made the fin right? 1952 Walt Disney Productions. World Rights Reserved.

282
ished film with the guidance of an exposure In this scene, Peter Pan instructs the children
sheet containing instructions for shooting the how to fly by speaking the words of the song
backgrounds, eels, and visual effects which are "You Can Fly!" The children respond also by
achieved by moving the camera closer to, or speaking, while the orchestra plays phrases
farther away from the artwork for each expo? from the tune, together with various instrumen?
sure. A mistake on one exposure would throw tal effects (harp glissandi, string tremolos, and
the entire film out of synchronization with the combinations of high flutes and celeste) that
sound track or result in other breakdowns in the suggest their appropriately magical and buoyant
coherence of the picture which would be costly mood. Then, as they begin to follow Peter over
to
repair.
the rooftops of London, the chorus sings.
Moreover, for this scene inPeter Pan, Disney If the multiplane camera sounds complicated,
used his famous multiplane camera. It had been look at the following schematic diagram show?
used first in the Academy Award-winning Silly ing the separate cues?individually recorded
Symphonies short The Old Mill (1937), then in bits of music or takes?that are combined to
portions of the feature Snow White and the Seven make the composite music sound track. It con?
Dwarfs (1938), and even more extensively in sists of separately recorded segments that will
Pinocchio (1940). Capable of creating the illusion result in a balanced sound, when mixed to?
se?
of three-dimensional depth in an animated gether with the other tracks in final dubbing.
quence, itallows superimposition at variable dis? The example begins with the flight to Never
tances, under the camera lens and above the Never-Land. In the conductor's score, it is slated
of a number of on which 03.0.
background, planes sequence
animated figures or additional scenery can be Reading from the left,we have choral cue A,
laid and filmed in optically realistic perspective. an atmospheric effect without words.
The use of this camera requires, of course, a Next, we have orchestral cue 1, a two-measure
correspondingly complex exposure sheet with rising arpeggio that begins on the second quar?
instructions for changes on each layer. ter of measure C of choral cue A. Then, orches?
In addition, the sound track?most particu? tral cue 2, with more colorful wind arpeggios,
larly the musical score?required the combin? resumes at the second quarter of cue A, meas?
ing, or dubbing, of numerous separate recorded ure F. Here the choral cue ends, and the or?
cues as an examination of the conductor's score chestra continues alone up to the choral en?
shows. Here iswhat happens. trance of the tune, beginning with the words
PETER PAN FLIGHT TONEVEKLAND
Vocal Thinkofa wonderfulthought...
CUE 3
strings
3a zb

283
"Think of a wonderful thought." At this point, her commands, and finally entering the screen
cue 2 ends and cue 3, consisting of only strings, himself by having Gertie pick up an animated
cue must be synchronized a film, a
begins. This recorded picture of him in her jaws. For such
to the prerecorded "vocal and guide track." sound track of any kind would have been un?
Then, separately recorded for later dubbing, we necessary, even obtrusive. And while full, con?
have a series of short woodwind cues (3-A and tinuous orchestral accompaniment for dramatic
3-B). Though the diagram shows only two, there films was obligatory in large theaters, the
are five such short woodwind cues in this scene. thought of such accompaniment for animated
Why bother? Why not record everything at cartoons was precluded?at least for the time
once? Later, when we discuss a disastrous re? being.
cording session for Disney's first sound cartoon For one thing, the animated cartoon was con?
Steamboat Willie, the answer will become appar? sidered a novelty with no commercial potential.
ent. There were some interesting educational films.6
But we have left Peter Pan and friends in But most cartoons were really advertisements. It
midair. As they flyoff toNever-Never-Land, the is significant that McCay's first film, Little Nemo,
camera is used brilliantly. Following was regarded as good promotion for
multiplane principally
them from above, we view them over the clouds his syndicated comic strip of the same name.
of a nocturnal city seen in fact, early animated cartoons would
against the background And,
from an increasingly vertiginous aerial perspec? never have been produced had they depended
tive. Below, the clouds, on two separate layers, on profits from theatrical distribution. In an
move at the different speeds appropriate to interview, animator Richard Huemer, who
their relative altitudes. The children are on the began his career in 1916, spoke of the post
top plane, closest to the camera. World War I presound cartoons: "There was a
Technically, this sequence is sufficiently com? time when they were given away with features.
plex in conception and production to illustrate Itwas a package deal. You got a feature, you got
the extent to which the most ambitious and suc? a newsreel, you got some other strange thing,
cessful artists of animation could and would go then you got a cartoon. If the exhibitor hated
to create an exhilarating scene. Consider that, in cartoons, he didn't run them. That's how inter?
order for it to work, there must be perfect coor? ested they
were."7
dination between a voice track, a sound effects William Randolph Hearst, who owned King
track, and a multilayered music track, together Features Syndicate, supported his International
with four multiplane animation levels. This Studio in order to produce animated cartoons as
scene required a time exposure of more than advertising for his newspaper comics, among
one minute for each frame because of the need them, Barney Google, Happy Hooligan, Jerry
to close down the lens aperture in order to on the Job, The Katzenjammer Kids, and Krazy
so that the Kat. These were to
achieve the maximum depth of field productions given away
widely spaced top plane (with Peter and the boost newspaper sales.8
children) and the bottom plane (with the And it was the small Kansas City Film Ad
background) would both be in sharp focus.4 Company that made one-minute theatrical
ex?
commercials, which provided training and
Animated Cartoons Before Sound perience for animators Ub (sometimes pro?
How far this is from the early days of anima? nounced "Ubby," from his full name, "Ubbe")
tion, when Winsor McCay, one of the finest Iwerks, Disney's first collaborator and cocreator
draftsmen, animators, and imaginative geniuses of Mickey Mouse; the team of Hugh Harman
of the comic strip, produced in 1907, with one and Rudy Ising, producers of MGM's Happy
assistant,5 the drawings for an animated version Harmonies under the name Harman-Ising; and
of his "Little Nemo" comic strip, and later, in a the brothers Roy and Walt Disney.9
one-man show, entertained audiences with his What happened to change the status of ani?
"Gertie, a Trained Dinosaur" (1912-14), in mated cartoons from advertising gimmicks to
on stage before his own
which he appeared profit-making films for theatrical distribution?
animated creation, throwing food to her, giving Richard Huemer, in the same interview men

284
tioned above, said: "Sound was the great savior tions or cross-rhythms, and lyrical melodies col?
of the animated cartoon."10 His view is shared by orfully harmonized in a style that is quite at
many.11 home in the milieu of French music of the
period, the era of Arthur Darius
Honegger,
Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and their contem?
Sound Animation poraries.
Experimental Another Oskar
That animated films support a more symbiotic avant-garde animator,
Fischinger?later to work on the abstract color
relationship with music than do dramatic live
action ones is shown by the interest in animation sequence for Disney's Fantasia based on Bach's
Toccata and Fugue inD minor?created some ear?
of some composers and graphic artists experi?
lier black-and-white films: his Studies made be?
menting with film in the 1920s and 1930s. tween 1928 and 1932 to the music of Brahms,
The American composer George Antheil at?
to write a score to Fernand Mozart, and Paul Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice.17
tempted Leger's also made other musically
Ballet Mechanique Fischinger based
(1924-25) but, having failed to color films, including An American March, based
synchronize his music with the artist's film, pre? on John
sented it as a concert piece instead.12 Paul Hin Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.
These films span the period during which the
demith composed a score to be reproduced on a
introduction of sound on film eliminated the
piano roll for Hans Richter's Vormittags-Spuk
problems of synchronization that had so
(Ghosts beforeNoon). Hindemith also worked on a
troubled Hindemith and completely baffled An
synchronous score for Felix at the Circus, appar?
theil.
ently also using the piano roll.13 It is interesting What all these experimenters shared was a
to note that the piano roll, like film, can be used
common interest in, indeed a fascination for,
to generate a performance that is easily and
the precisely controlled articulation of both au?
precisely measured, and in which the meas?
urements can readily be converted from time to rally and visually perceived rhythm and the pos?
sibility of the precise correspondence between
space (or length) and vice versa. and at first
sight sound, suggested and later,
An important European animated film, La with the development of synchronous sound
Joie de vivre (1934), inspired a significant score.
That film, made possible by motion pictures.
film, by Hector Hoppin and Anthony
Gross, with music by Tibor Hars?nyi,14 employs
highly stylized human figures, two girls and a
boy on a holiday, in a fantastic world where, on Phonofilm and Vitaphone
the one hand, an imposing Piranesian setting of The technique of creating animated moving
an electric station and, on the other, such pictures with rhythmically integrated synchron?
pastoral scenery as a meadow filled with but? ous sight and sound was successfully pioneered
terflies work together to create an idyll not al? by Walt Disney and has long been referred to as
together free from that sense of anxiety that is "Mickey Mousing." Generally discredited and
part of our everyday life.15 misunderstood when applied to the musical ac?
Hars?nyi's score, separately published for companiment of live-action films, it is an essen?
concert performance with the title La Joie de tial part of composing for films. It ismost obvi?
vivre: divertissement cinematographique,"16 has an ously and brilliantly used in the fast-paced
editorial preface that, by its tone, appears to be shorts, of which Disney's Tortoise and theHare
the
composer's
own statement:
(1935) was a landmark.18 His earlier Steamboat
The subtitle "divertissement cinematographique"
em? Willie (1928) was, of course, a first in establishing
phasizes [this piece's] special musical structure, which corre? the popularity of sound cartoons. Among com?
sponds to that of cinematic works: the unconscious
of scenery, the linking of
gliding
of view, the mobility of posers, there have been some masterful "Mickey
changes
clear outlines, the constant movement of the frame itself. . . .
Mousers." Since their work depends on syn?
[The piece's] characteristics are in
opposition to the
purely
chronous sound film, we will now return to the
"scenic" structure of symphonically conceived works.
story of its development.
The music is characterized by brilliant, trans? It is a story that began in 1918 in the mind of
parent orchestration, occasional jazzy syncopa Lee de Forest, inventor of the Audion tube that

285
made him famous as "the father of the radio." made a hit with a series of silent sing-a-long
He wrote in his autobiography that: cartoons that used a bouncing ball moving in
The field of the talking motion picture, the Phonofilm,
. . . musical time over the song text. Richard
irresistibly beckoned me, as one which I might enter almost Huemer, in an interview published in Fun
.. Time had come for the pioneer to search for
nyworld, recalled the success of the first in that
unaided..
new frontiers, and this chose to put voice and music
on the
pioneer
"Song Car-Tune" series, Gus Kahn's and Ted
too-long silent film, to take the noise from the studio
and put it into the theater!19 Fiorito's Oh, Mabel (1924), which Huemer him?
self animated:
De Forest's friend and biographer, Georgette
they ran Oh, Mabel
It was all so successful that when at the
Carneal, reports that he disclosed his plans to Circle Theater, in Columbus Circle, New York, it brought
work on sound film to his patent attorney, Sam down the house, it stopped the show. They applauded and
Darby, Jr., on a trip to Paris in 1918. In 1920 he stamped and whistled into the following picture, which they
ran Oh, Mabel again, to the delight of the
on "Phonofilm," the method of re? finally stopped, and
began work audience. I always say that was an indication of what sound
sound on the edge of motion picture
cording would someday do for the animated cartoon, because itwas
film by photographing the sound waves from a a "sound" idea. The use of sound combined with
basically
photoelectrically controlled variable light action even though the audience supplied the sound,
source. The resulting optical track could be elec? nevertheless, it partook of that feeling. They sang their little
hearts out. It was very successful.22
tronically reproduced in perfect synchroniza?
tion with the picture. In May 1922 his invention And so, with an introduction to de Forest
was publicly announced, with the time of its through Riesenfeld, Fleischer went to the
set two years ahead. Phonofilm studios and added sound to Oh,
probable perfection being
But, on March 13, 1923, a reporter for theNew Mabel and other bouncing-ball films, including
York American published this account of its dem? My Old Kentucky Home.23 Sometime later, when
onstration: "I sat in the dim New York studio of Max's brother Dave actually saw a sound track,
Lee de Forest, inventor, today and heard music he began to experiment with hand-drawn
on the silver sheet. As I watched the movie of an sound.24
orchestra I heard the music it Meanwhile, Western Electric, then a sub?

performing,
made."20 sidiary of Bell Laboratories, was developing and
That the conductor, its disc soon to be called
April, Hugo Riesenfeld, promoting system,
and of silent film music, the process that was to help make
composer, arranger "Vitaphone,"
de Forest's Phonofilm to the Rivoli Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer (1927) famous as the
brought
Theater in New York. One critic was indiffer? "first" successful talking and singing film. Actu?
ent, missing the rich sound of the full orchestra ally, Vitaphone's icebreaker had come earlier
for which the "ordinary phonograph music" was that year with a music track for Warner
considered a poor substitute and questioning Brothers' Don Juan, starring John Barry more.
the need for "talking pictures." With that, recalled de Forest, "the stupid scepti?
Riesenfeld and de Forest persevered and ex? cism of the past suddenly vanished. The dam of
hibited, with Riesenfeld's own orchestral score opposition went out before the overwhelming
on Phonofilm, two reels of Paramount's The Cov? surge of public approval."25 Still more time
ered Wagon, a major feature western that was was required to show the superiority over the
released that year. But despite de Forest's claims Vitaphone disc system of sound-on-film. As
that the film's success was due largely to de Forest mused, it took "six years and three
Phonofilm, it ismore likely that itwas the grand, huge [Warner] warehouses filled with phono
on-location scenery that impressed audiences. platters."26
Yet de Forest continued to seek matter for his
sound films in vaudeville acts (Eddie Cantor), Disney's Steamboat Willie
(Calvin Coolidge), dance se? Warner Brothers was saved from bankruptcy
political speeches
quences (Pavlova), musical numbers (Noble Sis by the success of Vitaphone, and its success with
sle and Eubie Blake), and cartoons. sound forced the film industry to follow suit,
Max Fleischer, whose New York studio was it did so begrudgingly,
though sceptically,
many cartoon characters, was and?from an artistic standpoint?clumsily. As
animating
friendly with Riesenfeld.21 Fleischer had already late as 1935, composer Douglas Moore wrote:

286
piece together the events that led to the historic

The cartoon comedies, especially the Silly Symphonies of
Walt have made excellent use of accompanying
Disney, New York launching of Steamboat Willie on
music. Sometimes this takes the form of little songs, like the
sometimes it is a parody November 18, 1928.
vastly entertaining "Big Bad Wolf,"
of familiar music such as the "William Tell" Overture in the In working out the sound track, Disney had
Jackson set his metronome and play whatever
Band Concert. Most critics will agree that Disney is one of
the most original contributors to the new art of the motion
tune seemed appropriate. When the tune and
use of music is no less original and delight?
picture, and his the tempo seemed right for the action Disney
ful.
But, on the other hand, what of the serious musical ac? was contemplating, he would calculate, without
companiment to screen comedies and dramas that was so benefit of musical notation, the number of beats
in the old days of the silent films? This was re? and the corresponding frames on the film. By
promising
to musical ac?
placed by spoken dialogue. Dialogue spoken this time, the projection speed of motion pic?
companiment has never been very satisfactory, and although
the increasing use of pantomime affords space for music tures was established at twenty-four frames per
which could be telling and of interpretative value, few di? second. Therefore, Disney could make the ex?
rectors have taken advantage of this opportunity. You will
posure sheet for his animation based on a reli?
notice that, although inmany of the more pretentious films
able standard. Jackson made what he called a
there is a musical it seldom achieves distinc?
tion.27
background, "bar sheet" or "dope sheet." He describes the
making of the bar sheet this way:
At the time of The Jazz Singer, the twenty
five-year-old Disney was an independent It had a little square for each beat in each measure, and it
had an indication of the tempo; itwas in twelve frames, or
animator, solvent but with limited assets. Early sixteen frames, or whatever, to the beat. Within that square,
in 1928, having just lost the rights to his first the key action and the scene number was indicated, so that
creation, Oswald the Rabbit, he was looking anx? the bar sheet showed that each scene began so many frames
iously for a way to promote his new character, before a certain measure. That way, we were able to syn?
His first two Mickey Mouse chronize the scenes, which were shot separately, of course.
Mickey Mouse. Each individual scene would be shot from the exposure
films, Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho, had been to lay the
sheet, but from the bar sheet, you could tell where
conceived as silents; he decided that in his third, scene in against the music track, once you found out where
Steamboat Willie, not only would there be music the first beat of the music was. My contributions to sound
and sound effects but his characters would make cartoons were that I knew what a metronome was, and I
worked out what was first called a dope sheet and later a bar
appropriate animal noises. Together with an
sheet.30
animator, Wilfred Jackson (later to become one
of his directors), whose musical ability was lim? One evening in July 1928, after the film was
ited to playing the harmonica and using a met? animated, Disney and his studio colleagues
ronome, Disney worked out on paper a fully showed it to their wives, who reportedly
scheme, including a watched with only casual interest, while Disney,
synchronized timing
rudimentary musical score using "Steamboat Jackson, and company, with harmonica and as?
Bill" and "Turkey in the Straw." The latter is the sorted noisemakers, supplied the sound from
"score" for a one-mouse band concert
using pots behind the screen over an impromptu sound
and a cow's teeth, and a number of suck? The screen was a translucent linen sheet
pans, system.
ling pigs attached to their mother,
cum teats. In that allowed the sound-effects crew to see the
later films, the mammary paraphernalia with filmwithout being observed; the noise from the
which Steamboat Willie abounds is suppressed projector was reduced by placing it outside the
(for example, the female centaurs in Fantasia window.
have daisies). Possibly by this time some kind of visible syn?
Mike Barrier has published, in Funnyworld, a chronizing system had been devised whereby
most valuable assemblage of firsthand and ex? appropriately spaced marks or scratches on the
pert accounts of the making of sound tracks for film print would establish, as they flashed on the
the early Disney films.28 To his credit, he has screen, the tempo for the music and sound ef?
allowed various unclear and varying statements fects. These visual metronomic marks would
to stand without attempting to reconcile them have followed Jackson's rudimentary bar sheet.
editorially. From his informative publication, Almost certainly, such a system was devised by
Bob Thomas's detailed Walt Disney: An American the time Disney took the film to New York that
we can attempt to to have his sound track recorded.
Original,29 and other accounts, September

287
But itwas implemented only after the first re? Miller, Edouarde was overconfident and de?
cording session failed
to produce satisfactory clined to use Disney's synchronizing system.
Powers supported Edouarde and promised to
synchronization.
On his way to New York, Disney stopped in pay for retakes if the synchronization failed.
Kansas City to visit Carl Stalling, a friend and Moreover, Power's equipment kept blowing
musician who played organ and conducted the tubes, presumably because of the loud sound
orchestra for films at the Isis Theater. He was effects, an overwhelming string bass player who
soon to work with Disney as composer for Mic? finally had to be moved into the next room, and
key Mouse and the early Silly Symphonies, be? Disney himself, who in doing the "voice" of the
fore going toWarner Brothers where he would parrot got overexcited. Because everything?
sound effects, music, and voices?had to be re?
compose more than six hundred cartoon scores.
corded on one track straight through, each
Stalling recalls:
to breakdown of equipment or missed cue meant
Walt came through Kansas City on his way to New York
our earlier account
record the music for Steamboat Willie (1928). I didn't go with
starting over. If one recalls
him, since he already had that all set up. I had nothing to do of the recording technique exemplified in the
with that. . . .Walt took a taxi to my home, and we talked
of how sound pictures were causing a revolution "Flight to Neverland" sequence from Peter Pan,
principally
in Hollywood. He had two silent pictures?"Gallopin'
one can appreciate the advantage of having the
Gaucho" and "Plane Crazy"?already made, and he left various elements of one's sound track in sepa?
those with me. I wrote most of the music for them at home in rate takes. Not only is it cheaper to rerecord a
Kansas City.31 few measures that can be mixed with the final
In spite of Stalling's claim that he had nothing full track, but it is also safer to have separate
to do with Steamboat Willie, he apparently did tracks for the final dubbing of all the sound and
look at "score." Barrier reports:
voices together. Then, if one cue is too loud or
Jackson's
Walt later told Jackson that when he stopped at Kansas too soft, it can be adjusted in dubbing.
City and showed Jackson's "score" to Carl Stalling, Stalling's When Edouarde finally got a complete, well
balanced recording, it was not in synchroniza?
comment was, "This man's no musician." Jackson says that
and adds,
Walt enjoyed kidding him about that thereafter, tion. Diane recounts that he turned to Disney
"Carl was right."32
apologetically and said: "The next time, I think
Bob Thomas,however, states that "Stalling I'll try that idea you were telling me about when
a musical score for Steamboat you first came in, Disney?you know, using
hastily composed
Willie, timing it to the beats that Ub [Iwerks] had those flashes as a visual metronome."35
marked on the film."33 This is plausible. In view Then Powers letDisney know that his promise
of the fact that when Disney first recorded to pay for the retakes did not include the musi?
Steamboat Willie he had to hire twenty musicians, cians' fees. And so, the next time, Disney re?
including three percussion and sound-effects duced the size of the orchestra, sold his car to
men, itwould have been impossible to proceed pay the musicians?and got a good recording.
without a score and performing parts. But he According to Christopher Finch, Disney also
also had an experienced conductor, Carl "had the film reprinted with the addition of a
accents as
Edouarde.
bouncing ball system, to indicate the
Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller,
re? well as the beat, making it much easier for
calls her father's account: "When Edwardi saw Edouarde to follow."36
the score worked out by Father and Father's But, as an October 20 letter home to his wife
mouth-organ player, he
was amused. Even Lilly shows, he was still having serious problems
Father admits itmust have been a funny-looking finding a distributor.37 However, Harry
score for, after all, it wasn't written by musi? Reichenbach, an experienced showman and ex?
cians."34 And so, possibly Edouarde himself hibitor, had attended a screening of Steamboat
prepared the parts. Willie when Disney was trying to promote it to a
At any rate, on September 17 the first record? distributor, and he persuaded Disney to let him
session took in the studios, exhibit it,with fair remuneration to Disney, at
ing place Cinephone
owned by Pat Powers, who, unknown to Disney, the Colony Theater on the theory that no dis?
was using RCA equipment without a license. tributor would touch itunless audience reaction
The session was a disaster. According to Diane had been tested. React they did, and itwas the

288
break that Disney?and the art of the sound be regarded as musical dramas or "film opera,"
as William G.
cartoon?needed. After that, distributors went King said in a 1938 comment on
to Disney. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.40
If Churchill's greatest strength was as a com?
poser of melodies, Leigh Harline's was as Dis?
Disney's Composers ney's "symphonist," silly or otherwise, and his
When Carl Stalling joined Disney, he became talents led him to dramatic orchestral scoring
the firstof many composers with whom Disney for some of Disney's finest shorts and features.
and his directors would work. During his rela?
Among Harline's scores, Care singles out The
tively brief period with Disney, Stalling helped Old Mill (1937), earlier mentioned as
Disney's
establish a working relationship between the two first multiplane film, as "the finest, most lavish
that prepared the way for methods of musical
original score ever composed expressly for a
collaboration which, over the years, produced short film"; and he cites the feature Pinocchio
some of the'most outstanding film scores of any
(1940), for which Harline wrote both songs and
studio. Speaking of the early days of the dramatic score, as "the longest individual musi?
Disney-Stalling films,Wilfred Jackson recalled: cal contribution ever made by a single composer
Walt and Carl would time the pictures inWalt's office. Tim? to any Disney animated feature."41
ing them consisted of working out what the music would be Harline also assisted with the first feature,
and what the action would be. ... A lot of times Walt would
want more time or less time for the action than could fit the Snow White (1938), for which Churchill wrote
musical phrase. So, there would be a pretty good argu? the songs. Disney's insistence that the songs in
ment. . . . out a thing with Carl. He his films, unlike those in Hollywood
Finally, Walt worked musicals,
let's work it out this way. We'll make two series.
said, "Look, should be woven "into the story so somebody
On the Mickey Mouse pictures you make your music fit my
action the very best you can. But we'll make another series, just doesn't burst into song" was well heeded.42
and they'll be musical shorts. And in them music will take The technique, earlier mentioned with regard
precedence and we'll adjust our action the best we can to to Peter Pan, of having characters work into the
what you think is the right music." Those were the Sillys,
and that was a way of getting and not
song by having lines of song text spoken first
done
something was already being used effectively in Disney's
a
getting in dog fight all of the time.38
earliest feature. The "Whistle While You Work"
Disney produced seventy-seven Silly Sym? moves from dialogue,
sequence smoothly
phonies between 1929 and 1939, with especially text, to the actual singing,
from Frank through spoken song
outstanding musical contributions
with the orchestral
Churchill and Leigh Harline. accompaniment gradually
developing the musical atmosphere. By the time
Perhaps Churchill's most famous piece is
Snow White and her forest helpers begin to sing
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" for the
as they clean up the dwarfs cottage, their song
1933 Silly Symphony The Three Little Pigs. Disney
seems like a natural continuation of the
had no notion that his studio was about to pro? preced?
duce a hit song, but itwas this film that resulted ing spoken dialogue. The songs are throughly
in a contract with the Irving Berlin Music Cor? integrated and dramatically well placed, but
they also stand on their own, and Snow White
poration to publish the Disney songs. As Ross
Care points out in his major essay on the Silly may claim more enduring popular tunes than
any other Disney film. Churchill's next and last
Symphonies, itwas the "high level of sustained,
major work was on the score to Bambi, released
integrated development" and "a synthesis of
plot, dialogue, and music" that made the film
important.39 Disney insisted that musical set
"Who'sAfraid of theBig Bad Wolf" byDisney composer Frank
numbers in his features be a logical part of the
Churchill,was written
for The Three LittlePigs (1933) and was
story, not static interludes; series.It was the
unfolding part of theSillySymphony DisneyStudio's
firsthit
Churchill's score for The Three Little Pigs song, and its popularity led to arrangements with Irving Berlin
exemplifies how music can contribute to charac?
Music Corporation to publish this and
future songs from Disney
terdevelopment and plot. Care's characterization films, including thosefrom Snow White (1938). Sir Laurence
Olivier has said that he used the sinister caricature of the as a
of the film as "a one-act cartoon operetta" un? model when interpreting the character of Richard III
wolf
for his film
derscores the point that not only this film but version of Shakespeare's play. Copyright ? 1933 Walt Disney Pro?
many of Disney's other shorts and features can ductions. World Rights Reserved.

289

290
in August 1942, three months after his early of orchestration could be heard. The music
death at forty. would have to be prerecorded, and following
Disney's first feature, Snow White and theSeven the animated action plan would require exten?
as artistically a as well as Stokowski's cus?
Dwarfs, was financially as well sive rearrangement
success. ButPinocchio, more elaborate and expen? tomary reorchestrations. Highly regarded to?
sive to produce, was still in the red when he Fantasia met with lukewarm popular re?
day,
even
premiered Fantasia in November of 1940. Thi? sponse, as well as some critical hostility,
enormous fated for even more be? from Disney's staunchest champions. Otis Fer?
production,
lated acceptance and financial returns than guson, who in reviewing Snow White had said
Pinocchio, had been conceived as a relatively that "it is among the genuine artistic achieve?
small musical vehicle which would revive the ments of this country"45 and who had praised
of Mickey Mouse, the ani? Pinocchio's "high sense of color and the unsur?
faltering popularity
mated creation to which Disney was most closely passed design and synchronization of sound
attached. Leopold Stokowski, the musical force [that] brings the cartoon to a level of perfection
that inspired the ultimately lavish project, was in that the word cartoon will not cover,"46 wrote of
Hollywood in 1938 when Disney was worrying Fantasia:
about Mickey's future. Stokowski recalls meet? In a general or show-business way, I think Mr. Walt Dis?
ing Disney unexpectedly in a restaurant and ney has made his first mistake. Someone told him about the
letter in Music, or more someone intro?
conversing as follows: capital specifically
duced him to Dr. Leopold Stokowski. This is a wrong-foot
He told me of a French composition about a kind of a great start for describing Fantasia, which I intend to review here,
magician and a bad boy. He liked that music very much and but I do wish that people who are simply swell in their own
so we discussed it. . . .He said "You know?how would you about art and stuff and going
right would stop discovering
like the idea of making a picture of that? I have some learns about the class struggle; now
swish. First Chaplin
thoughts of how that magician looked and how the bad boy Pole. And it'sworse in Disney's
Disney meets the Performing
looked and it is very picturesque, brilliant music." So gradu? his studio has always turned out the most
case, because
to do it and it was completed. we
ally we decided Then in films.47
original sound-track
looked at it together when itwas all finished and Disney said
"You know I think that we should add that to some other With two major films in major financial
things and make
a
long picture of regular length."43 trouble, an outstanding bank loan of four and
The "picture of regular length" turned out to one-half million dollars, and a third elaborate
be exactly two hours long, included eight pieces production, Bambi, still in the works, Disney
of arranged concert music, and made the first took a practical turn. At his brother Roy's sug?
commercial use in film of a multichannel record? gestion, he reluctantly issued stock, which
ing and playback system called "Fantasound." brought fiscal security; and he began another
Four sound channels were dubbed on a film to feature, Dumbo, on a tight budget and produc?
be run separately and synchronously with the tion schedule that, among other things, called
of for no multiplane animation. It was released in
picture. The system required the installation
special sound systems in theaters, which cost October 1941, before Bambi and before the U.S.
$100,000 for the New York Colony Theater Armed Forces were to take over his studios for
where the system remained for the duration of training and propanganda film production.
each for Dumbo was a success. The unhappy Otis Fergu?
the one-year showing, and $30,000
twelve other more portable units.44 Stokowski, son, among others, was
appeased:
who had made the first (noncommercial) Every time you think the Disney Studio can't do any more
turn around and
in because they have done everything,
stereophonic recordings for Bell Laboratories do it again, the new and never dreamed
they
of, the thing lovely
1931, was an ideal choice for such an experi? and touching and gay. ... I say that nothing, not even Alice
ment since, apart from being a great musician, inWonderland, has turned nonsense into such strictly sensible
he had an unusually keen interest in new devel? beauty
as the sequence of the pink-elephant dance; I have
use to it and neither have you,
opments in sound recording. He made good
never seen anything approach
because there hasn't been anything. . . Dumbo
. ends in al?
of the possibilities that separate channel record? are you will come
most a blaze of music and the chances
the balancing of some
ing afforded, including away from it singing with the crow choir: "I done been
seen
passages in the selections used from Stravinsky's 'bout most everything." And that sums it up: you have done
Rite of Spring so that normally inaudible details been?until next time.48

291
Oliver Wallace composed "Der

Fuehrer's Face" for a Donald Duck
short of the same title. (At one time it
was to be called Donald Duck in
Nutsy Land.) Published in 1942,
the same year thefilm was released,
when Disney was making World War
II training and propaganda films for
theU.S. Armed Forces, it is viewed by
some with embarrassment over the
seemingly naive and inappropriate
reduction to slapstick humor of a sub?
ject too terrible to make fun of. The
song proved an invaluable vehicle for
launching the career of Spike Jones,
who recorded it. The film won the
1942 Academy Award for best short
subject cartoon. Copyright ? 1942
Walt Disney Productions. World
Rights Reserved.
The music for Dumbo, including the famous Duck short of the same title in 1942 and intro?
"Pink Elephants on Parade" number?that sur? duced on a commercial recording by Spike
real sequence in which we see and hear what Jones and His City Slickers.50 Wallace had a flair
Dumbo hallucinates after accidentally getting for the zanier aspects of musical characteriza?
drunk on champagne?was the work of Oliver tion called for by Disney, and he was accordingly
Wallace, with assistance from Frank Churchill. put to work on many Donald Duck shorts. But
The 1941 Academy Award for "scoring of a Ross Care has suggested that his talents "were
musical picture" went toDumbo. perhaps never employed as cannily as they
Wallace, who had been composing in Hol? might have been."51 Disney, it has often been
lywood since 1930, worked for Disney from noted, tended to typecast members of his anima?
1936 until he died in 1963. Born in London in tion staff, especially when one was particularly
1887, he had appeared as a theater organist for strong in one kind of work, and this approach,
silent films in Seattle as early as 1910.49 Perhaps successful as itwas, may, if itwas carried over
his most famous song was "Der Fuehrer's Face," into his music department, have been responsi?
made for the Academy Award-winning Donald ble for limiting Wallace's opportunities.

292
The dramatic music for Disney's animated four suitors for Aurora's hand will be arriving
features remained at a high level?even when that a group of old women with spinning wheels
the music was not by a Disney composer. In his has been discovered. Suspecting foul play on the
last major animated feature, Sleeping Beauty, part of the suitors, he goes into a rage; the music
conceived in 1950 and released in 1959 as Dis? proves equally effective for both his and Malefi
ney's ultimate and most expensive achievement cent's rage. Other effective musical scenes from
in animation, Bruns the ballet interpolated into the Disney sequence
George arranged
Tchaikovsky's ballet score based on the story by are the portentous chords at the "death" of Au?
Charles Perrault. For anyone who has never rora and the
flight of the four princes after
composed music, and for whom the whole proc? Carabosse vanishes before their drawn swords.
ess of composing seems utterly
mystifying, the Disney's animators created, with the Bruns
recourse to using, by skillful rearrangement, score, a most explicitly violent "car?
Tchaikovsky
preexisting music, may seem an easy way out. toon" sequence. Compared to it, Fritz Lang's
That is not necessarily true. Indeed, unlike ar? depiction of Siegfried slaying his dragon seems
ranging the kind of music made for travelogues like a vignette about the demise of a tube of
that has the consistency and spreadability of tomato paste. However, Disney's
dragon scene is
whipped margarine, the bending, the cutting, not even as disturbing as the nonviolent but
and welding of such cohesive stuff as a major terrifying "Pleasure Island" transformation
work of Tchaikovsky's can be more difficult scene from Pinocchio, in which a bad boy's
than starting from scratch. Wilfred Jackson un? metamorphosis to a donkey, accompanied by
derstood the problem as well as any musician. the cries of the protesting victim which range
Recalling Leigh Harline's arrangement of Ros? from the voice of human confusion to the bray
sini's William Tell Overture for The Band Concert of an evolving animal, presents a vivid image of
(1935), a Silly that was Mickey the horrors of ego loss. Transformation and
Symphony
Mouse's color debut, Jackson stated: identity are the subject of that fantastic film in
Leigh composed the score for The Band Concert though I which Disney creates a convincing drama of a
puppet, on the way to becoming a real boy and
don't think he would have agreed with my putting it that
way. As I remember it, our musicians spent more time and
effort on patiently working and reworking their music to fit bearing the stigmata of "Pleasure Island," who
with what us crazy, dumb artists drew and
throws himself to the bottom of the sea in search
perfectly
dreamed up for the action, than they did writing whatever
of his toy-maker parent, Geppetto, who has
original music we needed for the cartoons. I do not recall been swallowed by a monstrous whale. There,
specific instances of reshaping The Band Concert's original
too, violence of a most awesome kind is waiting
music, but I would be very surprised ifon close examination
and unleashed.
you did not find Rossini's score bent a bit out of
original
shape here and there. Our studio musicians were
amazingly
ingenious at altering the natural structure of their music to Funny Music: The Violent Shorts
accommodate the requirements
Disney's critics noted these violent and fright?
of the animation, without
the end result to sound as if the music had been
ening episodes with serious interest and con?
allowing
overly tampered with.52 cern. But the moral purpose that the scenes so
Bruns's reworking of the Tchaikovsky score is
in the scene in clearly exhibited mitigated against their con?
impressive, particularly terrifying demnation. Indeed, itmay have helped ensure
which the wicked Maleficent (Carabosse in Per
approval while the generally not-frightening but
rault's original), upon discovering the prince has
gratuitous violence of the absurd cartoon com?
a literally
escaped, goes into depicted towering edies, exemplified by MGM's Tom and Jerry,
rage, sends a dark cloud to surround Aurora's
was attacked. As John Culshaw wrote in 1951:
castle, pursues the prince there, then changes
The Tom and Jerry series is based entirely on the familiar
herself into a fire-breathing dragon to battle
cat-and-mouse chase, but with the difference that the chase
Prince Philip (Desire in Perrault). Bruns takes as is endless and pointless, like some trivial symbol of the per?
his point of departure the music from scene 5 petual and meaningless warfare that George Orwell envis?
the aged in his "1984." There is no question of reconciliation, no
(Act 1), where king, having banished all
hint of Donald Duck's conscience. ... I am not
sharp objects from his kingdom since Carabos all-pervading
suggesting that these cartoons are anything less than hilari?
se's prophetic curse that his daughter would die it is simply that our conception of what is
ously funny:
by pricking her finger, learns on the very day funny, or what is admissible as funny, has
undergone
a

293
Similarly, the Bugs Bunny character of the "funny music" style of his own. As he charac?
radical change.
Warner cartoons is the animal embodiment of the spiv, a
terized his composing:
character no code of behaviour the
recognizing beyond
selfish and accepting values the welfare of It seemed to me that almost anybody could collect a lot of
concerning
others. His actions are
frequently deceitful, cowardly, nursery jingles and fast moving tunes, throw them together
malicious and violent beyond description, but he is invari? along with slide whistles and various noise makers and call
as a that a cartoon score, but that didn't satisfy me and, I felt
ably presented figure for sympathetic amusement; he is
the modern hero.53 sure, wouldn't really satisfy the public. So I set about to work
out musical scores that would add to the picture,
significance
that would be musically sound and would be entertaining.55
It is important to keep in mind some of the But what is "funny music?" It may be funny because of
more thoughtful contemporary criticisms of the funny circumstances surrounding it.
popular animated cartoons of Disney and others

Music may be funny because it distorts a familiar phrase,
such as Gracie Allen's "Concerto for Index Finger." You
not only because those criticisms are historical
remember how she played the C-major scale, but always
documents in themselves but because they help missed the top note and played C#? My own method, if you
place those cartoons in perspective. My particu? could call it such, is in trying to maintain a continuous
lar interest in quoting Culshaw will become ap? melodic line, and follow the action with new harmonization
parent at the conclusion of this essay when I

and orchestration of conventional patterns. This sometimes
leads to very harsh dissonances, but remember, we are try?
discuss the brief halcyon days of UPA (United
ing to make it funny. . . .
Productions of America), whose films, even as I would like to tell you about a problem which I ran into
Culshaw was writing, were being produced at recently in one of our "Tom & Jerry" cartoons. A little
least partly in reaction to the cartoon fare of mouse was
running around with the mask of
a
dog over his
saw only the little fellow's feet
Warner Brothers and head?you carrying this big
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. and funny, but I was
head, and it looked very grotesque
Although UPA produced Gerald McBoing Boing stuck for a new way of describing the action musically, and
(1950) and Giddyap (1950) mainly for children, for a whole day I worried about a two-measure phrase.
the studio also wanted to satisfy the grownups' Everything I tried seemed weak and common. Finally, I
taste for something more palatable?and less tried the twelve-tone scale [i.e., a row], and there itwas IThis
scene was five times within the next fifty seconds
nerve-racking?than the frantically paced major
repeated
and I had only to use my scale?played by the piccolo, oboe
league competition. The UPA studio also made and bassoon in unison. I hope Dr. Schoenberg will forgive
the lyrical and appealing Madeline (1952), a pic? me for
using his system to produce funny music, but even the
ture for all ages, and a most successful animated boys in the orchestra laughed when we were recording it.56
version of James Thurber's Unicorn in theGarden In an article on Bradley, composer Ingolf

(1953), really a sardonic adult film which at least Dahl makes a particularly important point about
a few children I know find entertaining. As one instrumentation in characterization. He speaks
might expect, the musical treatment of these of "the marionette quality of the characters and
was not conceived to existing their action [that] finds expression
pictures according through the
patterns and tended to be quite different from comparably 'impersonalized' wind instru?
film to film. ments."57 Thus, he implicitly cites the bowed
This is not to disparage the music composed stringed instruments?traditionally
associated
for the more standard fare. Indeed, an exami? with the realm of the sentimental but also fine
nation of some vintage Tom and Jerrys will give for certain atmospheric effects?as being gen?
us the opportunity of acquainting, or reac for the accompaniment of
erally inappropriate
some best ani?
quainting the reader with of the funny little cartoon characters. This idea, in its
mation and music for animated shorts whose application to both woodwinds and strings, can
technical quality was equal to Disney's best. be illustrated by an excerpt from Bradley's score
Scott Bradley54 was the eclectic composer who, for a Tom and Jerry film, The Two Mouseketeers
by his masterful combination of styles and (1951). It was MGM's seventh Academy
techniques?ranging from Franz Liszt's or short and itmaintained a con?
Award-winning
Richard Strauss's bombastic best and pungent sistent sense of plot, atmosphere, and style un?
Stravinskian tritonic and polytonic harmonies ? usual for the "one gag every ten seconds" car?
laPetrouchka to some straight swing band riffs of toon. It was a
seventeenth-century
French
which Count Basie might have been proud? swashbuckling satire. In it,Tom is instructed to
managed to follow Tom and Jerry throughout protect a fully set table from the Two
banquet
the height of their career. He really created a Mouseketeers: Jerry and a smaller sidekick, a

294
charming French-speaking mouse, who has the

last word when Tom is guillotined for his inevi?
table nonfeasance (we only see the upper por?
tion of the apparatus in action, silhouetted on a
a nocturnal
parapet against deep blue sky). At
the fall of the blade, the littlemouse, plumed hat
on head and sausages in both hands, says:
"Pauvre, pauvre cat. C'est la In
poosie guerre."
an early scene (disc side 1, band 1), Tom,
having
received his orders, struts into the banquet hall,
saber at his side, to a grand sounding orchestral
accompaniment worthy of Errol Flynn.
Example 1
Then, as the violins execute a melodramatic

one as or?
figure that might well characterize
chestral eyebrow raising, we pan to a window
through which the Two Mouseketeers are mak?
ing their entrance.
Example 2
Copyright ? 1951 by Loew's Inc.
At this point, the solo woodwinds take the

principal role and, with their entrance, the har?
monic as well as instrumental
styles change.
Compare the tonally disjunct woodwind arpeg?
gios with this famous passage from Stravinsky's
Petrouchka.

Example 3A
BRADLEY 1WoMouseketters
flf\? entertfirouah
?rtie.
window ft^fe**^
8 Sir.
n ?? ^ - ^^T-l
it
?1
2CI,
Copyright ? 1951 by Loew's Inc.
Example 3B
S1TUVINSKY fetruskkn.i&sktsfromriittheatre Moor

pursuedfay-tVi?.
3_ - >s2^1 . I^i
This colorful "wrong note" style of composing keyboard virtuoso versus Jerry, the piano's resi?
is not easy; it is, in fact, often more difficult to dent technician who helps considerably with re
find the right "wrong" note than to fall back on composing Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody?
the traditionally established "right" note and discomposing Tom. Bradley did more than
methods. Bradley was expert in both styles and adapt Liszt's music ? la Vladimir de Pachmann,
could glide smoothly from one to the other or the flamboyant Polish showman whom Bernard
make abrupt shifts, as the action required. Shaw called a "pantomimist and pianist" while
like his colleagues at the Disney on the
Bradley, speculating happy results that might be
studios and elsewhere, was also expert at arrang? obtained were de Pachmann to omit the audible
ing the war-horses that supported the cartoon features of his concerts.58 For Bradley had to
takeoffs on the musical classics. Perhaps his show the animators how to make Tom's man?
most memorable contribution in this depart? nered pianistic performance believable, which
ment was for the Cat meant that even the details of the often
Academy Award-winning closely
Concerto (1946), in which Tom appears as the observed finger work had to be realistic. For this

296
effect, the animators used a simple and invalu? of some Disney workers beyond the breaking
able tool, the "rotoscope," with which a live point. When UPA began theatrical distribution,
action film can be projected by holding one ithad no established style. The studio's guiding
frame at a time on an animator's easel so that the principles were based partly on the determina?
action can be studied and traced in the style of tion to make the most of its financial limitations
the cartoon. Fleischer and Disney pioneered the by experimenting with stylized, two-dimensional
use of the rotoscope, and in The Cat Concerto artwork. UPA was not the first to work along
MGM's William Hannah and Joe Barbera, the these lines, but itwas very successful, artistically
directors of the Tom and Jerry series, used and commercially, if only for a short while, and
live-action film of Bradley-de Pachmann to a few of its films from the early 1950s have
make Tom-de Pachmann a most believable vir? deservedly become classics.
tuoso. It is of general as well as musical interest to
note that Disney himself made a successful,
United Productions of America Academy Award-winning "limited animation"
cartoon, Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom (1953), a
In the 1950s, UPA embarked upon a brief
of artistic and success. We have rather fanciful review of the ancient origins and
period popular in?
mentioned its antithetical relationship to the technical principles of modern orchestral
of such characters as Warner's struments. Perhaps to impress viewers with the
producers Bugs
and MGM's Tom and Jerry. These fact that he was not resorting to such animation
Bunny
creators had, in turn, been reacting to and de? techniques for economic reasons, Disney made
it in Cinemascope with stereophonic sound.
parting from, in content if not animation style,
the Disney short. They did this by skillfully Promotion for the new UPA-type of anima?
the of art design, tion pointed out the sophistication of the new
using Disney techniques
"art" films, with their obvious indebtedness to
draftsmanship, and animation, but changing the
content by introducing not only the violence such popular and established twentieth-century
deplored by many but also elements of broad painters as Matisse and Picasso. (There was a
satire and outright silly lampooning not found deliberate effort among UPA proponents to
in Disney's films. Warner's cartoons denigrate the Disney style. In the long run, this
actually
made fun of Disney. Corny Concerto (1943), di? helped neither the development of traditional
rected by Bob Clampett, is a Fantasia parody, animation, already economically threatened,
in which, among other things, Bugs Bunny, in a nor that of UPA itself.) Aline Saarinen's 1953
scene designed to illustrate the beauties of article "Cartoons as Art" documents the con?
temporary receptiveness to UPA;
Johann Strauss's Tales of the Vienna Woods, re?
covers from what had appeared to be a fatal Unlike most animated cartoons, UPA ones never try to
imitate a photographic or "artistically" realistic, three
hunting accident wearing a blue brassiere and dimensional setting. Space is treated as abstractly as desir?
matching tutu. He dances off into the forest, able. . . .The is on line rather than modeling. . . .
emphasis
and commentator Elmer Fudd remarks percep? There is the distillate of an image (and here one recognizes
the debt to such fine artists as Picasso, Matisse,
tively: "Wasn't dat wuvwee," and drops his
and above all, to Modigliani). . . .
Steinberg,
Warner cartoons also offered caricatures
pants. . . .
Ideas are part of these cartoons' distinctions. They are
of the studio's own stars, including Edward G. ideas which for all their humor and entertainment value
Robinson and Lauren Bacall. have serious implications, such as McBoing Boing which tells
However, UPA was not originally formed to of society's callousness to an individual's
idiosyncrasy?a les?
son in tolerance.59
reform animation. Before distribution ar?
rangements were made with Columbia Pictures, Gerald McBoing Boing (1950), Academy
this studio was making mostly industrial films. Award-winning short cartoon for 1951, was
Headed by a former Disney man, Steven Bosus conceived to be prescored by Gail Kubik using a
tow, UPA attracted other important Disney film story in rhymed verse by Dr. Seuss (Theo?
staff, some of whom, like Bosustow, left or were dore Geisel). The result was not only a fine film
forced to leave as a result of unionization and but a film score that makes an excellent concert
the enusing strike of 1941. That a
dispute piece for narrator, chamber orchestra, and
strained both Disney's tolerance and the loyalty battery of percussion instruments.

297
The story is about a boy, Gerald McCloy, captain of industry shows the cynicism of the
whose vocal prowess includes making every con? message the happy ending. But the
underlying
ceivable sound?except Initially, he is film is entertaining and the music
speech. perfectly con?
as a
given up hopeless case by doctor, teacher, ceived to carry the picture and the story
through
schoolmates, and finally his own parents. In de? its humorous, sad, frightening, and happy
spair, he leaves home on a cold winter night phases.
and, about to hop a freight train for nowhere, is David Raksin60 composed scores for four UPA
suddenly stopped by the owner of a radio sta? cartoons, two of which we will examine: Giddyap
tion who has heard of the boy's skills and wants (1950) and Unicorn in theGarden (1953).
to capitalize on them. In the end, Gerald be? The first was directed by former Disney
comes rich and famous, much to his parents' animator Arthur Babbitt, who had been instru?
delight; and, in the final scene, they drive off in mental in the animation and development of
a limousine long enough to accommodate the Goofy. He also animated the queen in Snow
entire symphony orchestra that Gerald will re? White, Gepetto in Pinocchio, and the marvelous
place in the next McBoing Boing film,McBoing Chinese mushrooms in the "Nutcracker" portion
Boing9s Symphony (1953). That Gerald is os? of Fantasia. More recently, he animated the
tracized at home until he is discovered by a stuffed camel in Richard Williams's
Raggedy Ann
David Raksin's working score or "bar

Detailfrom sheets"for UPA's out), Raksin has written "tap track"
indicating percussive effects to
Giddyap (1950). These measures correspond to mm. 9 ff. in the synchronize with thefootwork of the dancing horse, which the com?
full score of the horse's dance, "Hoofloose and Fancy Free," repro? poser has analyzed to theframe. The numbers below indicate frames
duced m this article in full score. On the lower "sound" line at which the action occurs. "1" is the
first frame of each clik.
("sound?' crossed out) Raksm has indicated "(16 fr.)," meaning clix, The thirdmeasure,
originally
to 8
frame clix but crossed out, and
made by punching the sound track of thefilm, heard every sixteen thefollowing fourth measure with itsmany erasures, show
stages of
frames. Clix may be indicated byframe and sprocket (4 sprockets per composition and revision. The cancelled measure with three 8-frame "
frame). For Unicorn in the Garden, Raksin chose a clik track of clix was an attempt "to
keep the rhythmfrom being too 'square,' as
10-2s for one sequence, meaning one clik every ten
frames plus two Raksin explains it.He continues: "Then I
found that this would
sprockets, or 10.5 frames. bring
me to Sc. 31 Bb and the cartwheels 8
frames too earlyfor the
The "x"s are thepoints where the clix are heard
by the conductor muted trumpet solo towork as
planned; so I rewrote the thirdmeas?
over over the second
earphones during recording. The "(370.12)" ure in alia breve (bar 199). This was necessitated, in
part, by the
clikis theexactpointon the
film, infeet (370) andframes (12), at director's inserting Sc. 31 Ba, which was 3 feet
long, and for which
which the clik occurs. On the higher "sound" line ("sound" crossed I had to compensate later." 1980 byDavid Raksin.
Copyright ?

298
and Andy (1977).61 In Giddyap, Babbitt's eques? read music but wish to follow the action (count
trian ham and his "Jolly Frolics" are described by fast!) the entire cue line with beats, called "clix"
Raksin: and marked with little x's, is provided. Each clik,
It's the story of a fellow and his daughter, who operate a with the exception of two measures, is at sixteen
horse-drawn milk wagon. They're not really making it, be? frames, or the equivalent of metronome mark?
cause there's a guy with a truck who always beats them there.
The horse turns out to be a former vaudevillian who once
ing 90.63 I have provided a few timings to help
orient people who, like myself, have trouble
played the Palace in New York. He tells his story and I wrote
this dance to accompany it. It's called Hoofloose and Fancy counting beyond the fingers on both hands
Free, or What Killed Vaudeville. It was a joy doing a picture while speed-reading and listening to music at
which had a horse in it, having done pictures previously that the same time.
had just parts of horses in them.62 This joyful score was composed after the film
Both a portion of Raksin's pencil sketch and had been animated. Since no regular met?
his manuscript full score for the horse's dance ronomic beat had been established for the ac?
are reproduced herein, and the entire piece can tion, it required painstaking efforts to find the
be heard on the enclosed record. Raksin has right tempo, especially for a dancing quad?
cues on to effort is not seen,
placed the and synchronization marks ruped. Needless say, the
the line above the score. For readers who do not much less heard.
GIDDYAP "Hoofloose and Fancy Free" Clik Track with Action and Timing
"DANCE ROUTINE"
Horse & pulls turns^hll'd^step
dip 13p^ step step
prepares^ ISjggkuggrabs
tordance Ilst j^ j 2nd .^p ^ as hemakes| j j tap [ tap tap taj
taps
CLIX: strap. J open
sfrap "open
J
10:13.61 4 into,,
forward step r father
jb'ath? comes looks at ;ismall
*wagon look
tap stepstepj step j step dashing up
|tep j_
|(steps heard o. s) o. s. '
[right
[ Horse dances onmanhole cover, dances on street on street.
onmanhole
into
k ' j 1 taii
A
(cow bells) j (blox) (cowl bells) (blox)
(stepjj
Jantic,
rFather; f?cut" (0:25. 61
near to [
wagon ,'Horse cartwheels
iv r_*_
*step j
manhole
i cover n continues to dance o.
street_(Horse s,J
- 10:32. 3| hold for ;step and cop
cop eenters |0:37h>Horse skids fCrowd"
antics - down steps into pose Japplauds
step
gos^^ook^ do1
step step | T
tap(tapj^
H?rse &
1 |?740HorseDai shakes [*"sRe "grabs
Cop 111 looks hands with- . P^3|. <.v . ' ,bridlejand
Horse Daisy: You?re great" i Iwhispers
up^
|step step (stop) i~~ Tzrrtr
l0:51.6i 10:54.3l
Horse: ^reparation step step
Entrechat I step
"Television? You mean its here?" "I - a ? make
. istep i ll,
he straij
lightens flips
lup, inhales hoof rt. foot
down
Father leans to wagon he hops
I?T571 and
against wagon, which starts downhill picking up
' [speed
step step [~~ (holdon |i T J (steps)
step Father) he,, lands he runs after it
falls
J o. s. Father inwreck?
EM Eon Daisy
runs back ofwagon and tries to stop it eyes
frtiuts CRASH! age. (Wheel still
spinning)
1 16fr.

UNICORN in the GARDEN
RF'^^^^D
Producer' Stephen Bosustow
Director* t.Hurtz
IVilliam
Dranko ^^KP^^f^t^Klk
Robert
Designer?
& Rudy
Ammators^PhUMonroe I^Br^7^-^w??8^W
Larrrva^HHr9^^^H|p

^ ^^^^^^
j^^l^
|^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ j^^^^
|^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ?1953 U.P.J., inc.

303
Unicorn in the Garden
The action here is broken down according to the composer's score, and possibly theperformers, use earphones over which they can hear
not the animators' work sheets. Each part has a different basic met? the "clik" (plural "clix"). Sections which have differing clik tempos
ronomic beat. It is the lowest common denominator with which' the are recorded as separate takes and then are joined by themusic editor
a so that themusic on the sound track will be continuous.
composer can work when writing music to rigid, predetermined
at the left. The letters refer to the
tempo or beat. This beat is created bypunching the sound portion of Approximate timings appear
a work print of the at regular intervals, expressed in terms of colorframe enlargements which correspond most closely to the action
film
as inPart 3, sprockets). When recording, the composer, described.
frames (and,
Part 1: "Introduction" (16 frameclix) 3:34 M pulls blinds down, room growsdark
walks out
0:00 TITLES: 3:38 N MAN: (stickinghead back indoor) "But he has a golden horn
0:02 "Columbia PicturesPresent a U.P.A. Cartoon" in themiddle of his forehead."
0:10 "A Fable ofOur Time" WIFE stalksout of room
0:14 "ByJamesThurber" 3:44 O her head appears at topof staircase
0:18 "The Unicorn in theGarden" 3:48 P MAN, ingarden, looksforUNICORN. MAN: "Oh, unicorn."
0:23 startCREDITS 3:51 Q WIFE: (on telephone) "Hello, hello! Give me thepolice."
0:41 fade out CREDITS, cloud, and man, but hold night sky 3:54 R MAN: "Unicorn?oh, unicorn."
0:45 dissolve togarden with bird flyingin crazy figure8s 3:58 S WIFE: (on telephone) "I'm absolutely sure officer that you're
dissolve tomorning (birdyapping), and going toneed?a straightjacket."
0:46 TITLE: "Once upon a sunnymorning" 4:03 hand slamsdown telephone
0:51 A dissolve fromTITLE togarden
0:54 dissolve tobreakfastnook
0:56 pan tokitchen (kitchennoises) Part 7: "The Wife" (20 frames)
0:58 end pan: MAN at icebox
1:11 drops egg 4:05 T MAN, ingarden, looks right,then left
1:13 WIFE: lVWhat's going on down there?" MAN: "Here, unicorn," then
MAN reacts,puts down pots and pans, 4:16 turnsand walks lifelesslyto tree,stops,
1:17 B wipes up egg sitsdown, foldsarms on chest,head drops
MAN: "Nothing,dear." stirsinpan 4:26 WIFE: (on telephone again) "Hello, doctor.Doctor, ifyou
1:24 dissolve toMAN at tablegrindingpeppermill only knewwhat I've been throughthismorning."
dissolve toDOCTOR'S office
4:30 U DOCTOR: "Yes (etc.)."WIFE's yackleheard over phone
Part 2: "The Discovery" (24 frames) DOCTOR: "Now then." sitsup
4:44 V dissolve tohouse withWIFE, DOCTOR, and POLICEMEN
1:28 UNICORN startsforward, DOCTOR: "Tell us all about it (ah)."
1:30 stopsand bites flower WIFE gets up fromchair,goes towindow,
1:34 C MAN stopsgrinding 4:51 peeks out, runs back and sits
1:36 tracktoUNICORN 4:55 WIFE: "My husband saw a unicorn thismorning."
1:50 D MAN tapshorn, dashes out 4:59 close up ofDOCTOR, nodding
POLICE lookat DOCTOR
5:04 WIFE talkingtoDOCTOR
Part 3: "There's a Unicorn" (10 frames,2 sprockets) 5:07 POLICE look atDOCTOR
DOCTOR looksat POLICE
1:51 MAN runs intohouse 5:10 WIFE: "He toldme . . ." (WIRE leans forward)"ithad a golden horn"
1:54 looksback 5:13 W (DOCTOR recoils,WIFE forward)
1:55 E runs again "in themiddle of itsforehead."
1:59 entersbedroom, Venetianblinds up 5:16 WIFE back down,DOCTOR slumpsdown
2:00 garden color floods in
2:02 MAN shakesWIFE
MAN draws back Part 8: "Of Course Not" (16 frames)
2:04 WIFE: "Go away!"
MAN holds, then leansdown 5:20 DOCTOR looksat POLICE
2:07 MAN: "There's a unicorn in thegarden." 5:22 points three timeswith his pince-nez atWIFE
WIFE moves up, MAN draws back 5:24 X POLICE spring intoaction, chair falls,struggle
2:10 MAN: "Eating roses." 5:32 WIFE: "Eek!"
2:12 F WIFE looksat him, narrows eyes blinds clatteras room lightstogarden color
2:15 WIFE: "The unicorn isa mythicalbeast." 5:34 MAN walks in
2:21 MAN turnsand walks away WIFE's muffled cussingheard as MAN raiseshead and
2:23 pulls blinds, room growsdark 5:39 stops
2:27 dissolve toMAN walking downstairs pan over toWIFE in straitjacket
5:41 MAN looksat her
5:44 DOCTOR: "Ahem ..."
Part 4: "The Unicorn" (24 frames) 5:45 "Did you tellyourwife you saw a unicorn thismorning?"
5:48 MAN: "Of course not . . ."
2:37 G MAN ingarden
3:00 H MAN: "Here, unicorn." holds up lily
I UNICORN eats lily Part 9: "A Mythical Beast" (12 frames)
5:49 "The Unicorn isa mythicalbeast."
Part 5: "It's True" (11 frames) 5:52 DOCTOR: "That's all I wanted toknow . . ."
5:56 Y "Take 'eraway."
3:08 MAN runsout of garden 5:58 & police hoistWIFE up, and trotforward,and out
3:10 intohouse 6:04 DOCTOR: "I'm sorrysir,but yourwife is as crazy as a jaybird."
3:11 J upstairs 6:09 DOCTOR turnsand walks out
3:12 intobedroom 6:11 MAN turnshead left
3:14 K blinds up, lightfloods in 6:14 turnsto audience
6:16 Z smiles
dissolve toyappingjaybird
Part 6: "You Are a Booby" (16 frames) 6:22 "Moral:"
fade out, bird fade in
3:16 stirs
WIFE 6:25 "Don't count yourboobies until theyare hatched."
3:18 MAN: "The unicorn ate a lily." dissolve to: "A U.P.A. Cartoon."
3:21 L WIFE: "You are a booby, and I'm going to have you put in the finalfade out
booby hatch." 6:38 end of picture
3:32 MAN: "We'll see about that."

304
Unicom in the Garden is UPA's animated ver? much as action, articulates the pace or rhythm
sion of James Thurber's story of the same title of the story with its rapid changes of mood.
that first appeared in his Fables for Our Time and Basically, the colors alternate between the sunny
Famous Poems Illustrated.64 The principal yellow of the garden and the somber green and
characters?a man and a woman, and a
purple hues of the house interior into which
unicorn?are modeled after Thurber's own car? some rays of light stream when the man pulls up
toon figures; even such elastic, Thurberesque the Venetian blinds in the bedroom. Conversely,
properties as the telescoping arm were incorpo? when he lets down the blinds, it grows gloomy
rated in some scenes. The story, which the again and, as Raksin has written in his score,
reader can follow in detail on the schematic tim? "dark color floods in." Also, there is one amus?
ing chart which is keyed by letter to the frame ing, and clearly intentional, coloristic anomaly:
on the foldout, can be sum?
enlargements the unicorn's horn, described by the man as
marized concisely. "golden," is, in fact, aside from the man's bow tie
One bright morning, a man is having break? and the roses, the only red thing in the film.
fast while his wife is sleeping upstairs. He sees a Raksin has described the musical form of his
unicorn eating roses in his garden. Full of won? score, which was written before the film was
der, he goes out to see if it is real. He touches its animated, as "rondoesque."65 Indeed, this log?
horn and rushes upstairs to the darkened bed? ically corresponds to the pattern of the film,
room where his frowsy spouse lies dreamless. with the lyrical "man-unicorn" episodes alternat?
"The unicorn," she informs him, "is a mythical ing with the increasingly agitated "wife"
beast." The man returns to the sunny garden, episodes that progress from bed to booby hatch.
feeds the unicorn a lily, and rushes back into the
dark house where his wife greets this report
with the announcement: "You are a booby, and a: man in kitchen sees unicorn
I'm going to have you put in the booby hatch." b: wife in bed: "The unicorn is a mythical
Undaunted, the man returns to the garden. But beast."
the unicorn has gone; so he sits under a tree. a: man returns to
garden
Meanwhile, his wife calls the police and a psy? c: wife in bed: "You are a booby."
chiatrist. They come and, after her a: man returns to
hearing garden
story, put her in a straitjacket. The man enters d: wife calls police
the house and they ask him if he saw a unicorn. a: man looks for unicorn
"Of course not," he replies. "The unicorn is a e: wife calls psychiatrist
mythical beast." The wife is carried away. Moral: a: man sits under tree
"Don't count your boobies until they are f: Police and psychiatrist with wife
hatched." a: man comes in from garden
In addition to the effective animation of g: Psychiatrist orders wife taken away
Thurber-style characters, the use of color, as a: man smiles at camera

305
The principal theme, lyrical and diatonic,
played by the alto recorder, is the "unicorn"
motif. Of it, and the score in general, Thurber
wrote to Raksin: "I am not a music maker my?
self, but I loved the music for Unicorn in the
Garden, especially the tune that was played
whenever the unicorn appeared. It sounded just
right for unicorns."66
4
Example
alto .
^recorder
strtnss
harpsichord
ii
Copyright? 1980 byDavid Raksin
For the wife, Raksin uses the high soprano

saxophone.
Example 5
soprano
11
ore
Wift:wybu have
AndI'm 301*113*0
f\i put Intheboobykatck*
ftbooty"
Copyright? 1980 byDavid Raksin
Its whining sound and chromatic line are not

pretty. But in itsmelancholy way, the saxophone
melody corresponds more to the pathetic than
the sinister side of the wife's nature. She is drab,
unimaginative, and the victim of her own cun?
ning. Raksin, who indulged enthusiastically in

306
working on this piece born of Thurber's notori? tains about the same degree of credibility tome as a petrified
ous misogyny, nevertheless a score salamander. I can't believe the salamander ever salaman
composed
dered, and the tapestry looks about as human as a geological
that reveals deep sympathy with the human suf?
fault. We can do something about it ifwe will, and there are
fering that underlies and motivates Thurber's several reasons why we should?among them a personal one
fable. The fine hand of Scott Bradley might of my own concerning a seventeenth-century bucolic tapes?
have turned this film into something funnier try called "Apollo and the Muses." The thing is crowded
with variously voluptuous and idiotically unconcerned ladies
and quite different; but itwould not have been
in deshabille, a handsome rube, dressed in a
true to Thurber, as is implicit in the author's surrounding
shirt, with a twenty-five-pound lyre poised lightly in his off
own appreciation of the film's music. In con? hand. His other hand is daintily uplifted, preparatory to a
templating Thurber's superficial nastiness, I am downward strum. He apparently is a past master at his
reminded of Mark van Doren's instrument because his head is upturned toward a sort of
story?told Stuka angel whose power dive has carried him within about
shortly after Thurber's death?of how Thurber,
three feet of our hero's face. This little monster is on the
in 1941, tormented by his failing eyesight, con? of a very lethal-looking arrow. For three
point releasing
fided in him at their first meeting that he be? hundred and forty years this scene has remained in a state of
lieved it was God's way of punishing him for suspended animation, and I, for one, would like to unsus
to determine whether our friend succeeds
pend it?if only in
having made a career of writing vicious things or gets
was stunned. The finishing his piece spitted. His girl friends may be
about people. Van D?ren but I am not.88
unconcerned,
affirmative side of Thurber's prickly nature was
manifested in his best satirical Of course, only Chuck Jones or his distin?
abundantly could realize for us the out?
pieces, and Raksin's affirmative score plays an guished colleagues
come of this suspenseful story. But their finest
indispensable role in setting the humane tone of efforts would be futile unless they could find the
UPA's Unicorn in the Garden. Just one musical
composer to show us at least how the tune
joke asserts the cause of male chauvinism: As convince us that itwould be worth
the wife is taken away, the triumphant strains of began?and
finishing. That the piece should ever be allowed
Mendelssohn's Wedding March proclaim the
to be finished today?except perhaps in the
husband's liberation (disc side 1, last band).
merciful hands of Mr. Jones and a few of his
The entire music sound track is presented on
more sensible colleagues?is doubtful. Probably
one side of the enclosed disc. With a watch, one
can check against the time chart opposite the itwould follow the historic procession of comic
frame enlargements to see what action or musical classics in the great cantus interruptus
to the music. tradition that range from Walther's Act 1 con?
dialogue corresponds frontation with Beckmesser in Wagner's Die
Raksin had intended to play the alto recorder
Meistersinger to the innumerable foiled
himself for the recording of his score. When he warblings
of funny ducks, cats, mice, rabbits, and other
realized that he could not both play and conduct
animated "cartooniana." And perhaps that is as
to clix, he entrusted the part to a virtuoso
it should be, for the comic tradition, like
clarinettist who had but two days to familiarize
Beckmesser, does not suffer beauty?at least
himself with the instrument. Regarding his
tuneful beauty?gladly. As the cartoon com?
choice of recorder?quite unusual for 1953?
Raksin wrote that "unicorns make you think of poser Scott Bradley (perhaps in a mood of tem?
porary resignation over a Tom and Jerry with
tapestries, where you saw the beast for the first a high opus number) said of music?and there
time. And that leads to the Renaissance and to
are others who would say itof life?"[It] can't be
the sound of the recorder."67
both funny and beautiful."69
But can't it?Unicorn in theGarden?Thurber's
fable, UPA's animation, and Raksin's score?is
funny and beautiful. Indeed, itmust be both
Postscript
an article on "Music these things for, were it not, it would be un?
Speaking of tapestries, in
and the Animated Cartoon" animator Chuck bearable since the story is both horrible and
wrote: true. Only the fantasy, which is the beauty and
Jones
Mosaics and tapestries have enchanting stories to tell?in
the humor, makes that marital cold war tolera?
fact, will become understandable to most of us
only when
ble. Thurber's suave, gentle, Freudian mythical
they become
more human. The run-of-the-mill tapestry con beast and Raksin's acoustically informed and

307
sinuous unicorn melody for the ancient re? palaces, scattered from Yorkville to Broadway,
corder give hope through their art. Amid such and its art deco Trans-Lux theaters. Today, we
painful truths, one needs artful fantasy, for can hear medieval music
performed at the Clois?
without it the normally life-saving sense of ters in upper Manhattan, surrounded by
humor turns tomere cynicism which only serves the most famous unicorn
perhaps tapestries in
to sustain a state of emotional and sensory the world. The Cloisters were moved, stone by
numbness. To maintain that balanced humor is stone, in this century from France to an em?
never easy, for creators
continually teeter pre? bankment overlooking the Hudson River.
cariously between the brutal and the mawkish, Perhaps someday, 500 years hence, someone
leaving themselves open to a degree of self may find an old movie theater and move it,
which few have the courage to risk. block by block, to some colonized
exposure planet and
Cartoon those sometimes brutal, show cartoons. And some
characters, latter-day Chuck
sometimes mawkish creatures, while they have Jones in the Twenty-Fifth will
Century
not become mythical beasts
by virtue of being humanize those cartoons by
realizing them as
obsolete fantasies, remind me of the places tapestries, while his Raksinian counterpart plays
where I once saw them which are the recorder, undisturbed by
becoming having to conduct
increasingly obsolete: Manhattan's rococo movie to clix.
NOTES
1. James Stuart Blackton, a British-born artist, was a same year a
they produced fifty-minute film, only partly
significant pioneer in the early American film industry. He animated, called Evolution. Both films survive. The existence
was cofounder with Albert E. Smith of the Com? of an animated instructional film on Lee de Forest's Audion
Vitagraph
pany of America in 1896, using a converted Edison tube is attestedto by five extant dated October
project? recordings
as a camera. animation was 17-18, 1922, that contain the narrative portion of the film.
ing Kinetoscope Experimental
only a part of his contribution to film. His first "cartoon" was
They are the earliest electronic recordings in the Library of
made in 1906, about a year before Frenchman Emile Cohl, a collections.
Congress's
jeweler and amateur artist, experimented with the one film 7. Joe Adamson, "From This You Are Making a Liv?
essential to animation that the magician
technique George ing?" AFI Report: The American Film Institute 5 (summer
Melies seems not to have used: single frame exposure 1974): 10.
cinematography. Winsor McCay is discussed later in this 8. Ibid., p. 16; and Heraldson, Creators of Life, p. 34.
article (Animated Cartoons Before Sound). He worked for 9. Grey Ford and Richard "Interview with
Thompson,
Blackton at one time. Chuck Jones," Film Comment 11 (1975): 21. See also: Bob
2. Norman McLaren is best known for his animated Walt Disney: An American Original
Thomas, (New York:
films made by drawing directly on film. For a discussion of Simon and Schuster, 1976), p. 57. Ub (Ubbe Ert) Iwerks
his and others' use of "synthetic sound," see his essay "Ani? animated the firstMickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy (1927).
mated Sound on Film" (from a pamphlet published by the He left Disney in 1930 to work
independently but returned
National Film Board of Canada, It is reprinted in in 1940 to form Disney's For a
1950). Special Process Laboratory.
Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, Experimental Animation: An discussion of Harman and Ising see Mike "The
Barrier,
Illustrated Anthology (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Careers of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising," Millimeter
Company, 1976), pp. 166-68. (February 1976): 46-49.
3. Disney had conceived the project in 1935 and though 10. Adamson, "FromThis You Are Makinga
Living?" p. 15.
he worked on the idea he did not begin pro? 11. Yet, it is not entirely true that silent animated car?
sporadically,
duction until 1951. The film was released on 5, toons were commercial failures. One ani?
February very successful
1953. mated cartooncharacter of the silent era was Felix the Cat,
4. Donald Creators of Life: A History of Anima? created
Heraldson, by Pat Sullivan and drawn by Otto Mesmer. Felix the
tion (New York: Drake Publishers Inc., 1975), p. 151. Cat lucrative
inspired spin-offs, much like the Disney
5. His collaborator was John A. Fitzsimmons, whose ac? whose
characters, features, protected by copyright, were
count of making Little Nemo is in Judith O'Sullivan, "In of everything from toy
profitably exploited by purveyors
Search of Winsor AFI
McCay," Report: The American Film balloons to fruit juice. Felix's
popularity declined with the
Institute 5 (summer 1974): 7. advent of sound.See Heraldson, Creators of Life, p. 41.
6. Max and Dave Fleischer made a ani? 12. See Wayne "Another American in Paris:
twenty-minute Shirley,
mated film, Einstein's Theory ofRelativity, in 1923. Later in the Antheil's with Mary Curtis
George Correspondence Bok,"

308
QJLC (January 1977): 14-16. On Antheil's view of his score, 29. Bob Thomas, Walt Disney: An American Original (New
vis-?-vis the Leger animated film, see his jacket note on York: Simon and Schuster, 1976).
Columbia recording ML-4956: no one seemed 30. "An Interview with Carl Stalling," p. 21 n.
"Previously,
to have bothered with time as a musical ingredient, except to 31. Ibid., p. 21.
observe whetheror not a movement, or a section of tonal 32. Ibid., p. 21 n.
music was
'too long' or 'too short.' TIME-SPACE does not 33. Thomas, Walt Disney, p. 91.
leave this to chance, but attacks itmathematically, and upon 34. Diane Disney Miller as told to Pete Martin, The Story of
the basis of structure, musical Walt Disney (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1956), p. 110.
engineering."
13. On Richter, see Arthur
Knight, The Liveliest Art: A 35. Ibid., p. 113.
Panoramic History of theMovies, rev. ed. (New York: Macmil 36. Finch, The Art ofWalt Disney: From Mickey
Christopher
lan, 1978), p. 83; and Paul R?tha, The Film Till Now: A Survey Mouse to theMagic
Kingdom,
new concise ed. (New York: H.
of World Cinema (New York: Vision-Mayflower, 1960), pp. N. Abrams, 1975), p. 27.
113 ff.On Hindemith's work with animated films, see Darius 37. Thomas, Walt Disney, p. 95.
Milhaud, Notes without Music, trans. Donald Evans (London: 38. Funnyworld 13 (1971): 22.
Dennis Dobson, Ltd., 1952), p. 174; and Geoffrey Skelton, 39. Ross Care, for the Sillies: The Compos?
"Symphonists
Paul Hindemith: The Man Behind theMusk (New York: Cres? ers for Shorts," Funnyworld 18 (summer 1978):
Disney's
cendo Publishing, 1975), pp. 91-92. 38-48.
14. John S. Weissmann, "Tibor Hars?nyi: A General Sur? 40. Ross Care, "The Film Music of Leigh Harline," Film
vey," The Chesterian 27 (July 1952): 14-17. Music Notebook 3, no. 2 (1977): 36.
15. About the animated figures, Emmanuel Vuillermoz 41. Ibid., p. 37.
said: "These human are almost schematic. The sup? 42. Thomas, Walt Disney, p. 44.
beings
ple body of the young girls has undulations that belong to 43. "Fantasia-Impromptu; The Editor in Conversation
the realm of the vegetable: [the undulations] are of with Leopold Stokowski," Royal College ofMusic Magazine 47
tropical
climbing vines, of plants, of flowery stalks that the wind (Easter 1971): 19.
blows up and down." (Trans. JN.) Quoted in Giuseppe 44. Newsweek (November 25, 1940): 51-52; and Hermine
LoDuca, Le Dessin Anim'e (Paris: Prisma, 1948), pp. 35-36. Rich Isaacs, "New Horizons: Fantasia and Fantasound,"
16. Tibor Hars?nyi, La foie de vivre: divertissement Theatre Arts (January 1941): 55-61.
cinematographique (Paris: Editions Maurice Senart, 1934). 45. Otis Ferguson, The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, ed.
17. See Maria Luisa Crispolti, "Cinematography: Films Robert Wilson Press,
(Philadelphia: Temple University
Produced by Modern in Encyclopedia
Movements," ofWorld 1971), p. 209.
Art, vol. 3 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), col. 627. 46. Ibid., p. 290.
18. In Film Comment 11 (1975): 22, Chuck Jones is quoted 47. Ibid., p. 317.
as "The
saying: pace thing started with The Tortoise and the 48. Ibid., p. 392.
Hare (1935) at Disney's." 49. Funnyworld 18 (1978): 40.
19. Lee de Forest, Father ofRadio: The Autobiography of Lee 50. Bluebird B-11586, recorded 1942.
July 28,
de Forest (Chicago: Wilcox and Follett Co., 1950), pp. 358-59. 51. Funnyworld 18 (1978): 40
20. Georgette Carneal, A Conqueror of Space: An Authorized 52. Ibid., p. 45.
Biography of the Life and Work of Lee de Forest (New York: 53. John Culshaw, "Violence and the Cartoon," The Fort?
Horace 1930), p. 283.
Liveright, nightly 1020 (December 1951): 830-35.
21. Leslie Cabarga, The Fleischer Story (New York: Nostal? 54. Ingolf Dahl asked Bradley for a biographical sketch.
gia Press, 1976), pp. 16-18. He is quoted as "METRO GOLDWYN MAYER.
writing:
22. Joe Adamson, "Working for the Fleischers: An Inter? INTER-OFFICE COMMUNCICATION To: Dahl SUB?
view with Dick Huemer," . . .Russelville,
Funnyworld: The World of Film Ani? JECT: Dis-a and dat-a FROM: Bradley. Born
mation and Comic Art 16 (winter 1974-75): 26. Arkansas (but not an "Arkie" I hasten to add) . . . Studied
23. Mark "Max and Dave Film Com? instruction . . . and
Langer, Fleischer," piano, private organ harmony with the
ment" 11 (1975): 49. . . .Otherwise
English organist Horton Corbett entirely self
24. Cabarga, Fleischer Story, p. 31; and "With the Unpaid . . . fed
taught in composition and orchestration large doses
Stars of the Movies," Popular Mechanics (July 1931): 8. "A of Bach, which I absorbed and asked for more. Conductor at
long painstaking search to find a method of creating syn? KHJ and KNX in early thirties . . . entered the non-sacred
thetic sounds on film has recently been rewarded by a patent realm of pictures in 1932 and started cartoon in
composing
to the Fleischer studios." 1934 with Harmon-Ising Co. [sic] Joined MGM in 1937 . . .
25. Lee de Forest, Father ofRadio, p. 395. have so far been able to hide from them the fact that I'm not
26. Ibid., p. 397. much of a composer. Personal: dislike bridge, slacks and
27. Douglas Moore, "Music and the Movies," Harper's mannish dress on women, all chromatic and diatonic scales,
Monthly(July1935): 183. whether written by Beethoven or
Bradley. Also, crowds and
28. "An Interview with Carl Funnyworld 13 most (and especially Favorite
Stalling," people biographers). compos?
(spring 1971): 20-27. ers: Brahms,
Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bartok. This will be

309
to most everyone, so cut it as short as you wish. Arthur Babbitt.
boring
Signed: Scott." Ingolf Dahl, "Notes on Cartoon Music, Film 61. For an article Raksin's work, see
discussing Jon
Music Notes: Official Organ of theNational Film Music Council 7 Newsom, "David Raksin: A Composer inHollywood," 35
QJLC
(May-June 1949): 4. (July1978): 142-72.
55. "Scoring for Cartoons: An Interview with Scott Brad? 62. Allan Ulrich, The Art of Film Music: A Tribute toCalifor?
ley," Pacific Coast Musician (May 15, 1937): 12. nia's Film Composers (Oakland: Oakland Museum, 1976), p.
56. Scott Bradley, "Music in Cartoons: Excerpts from a 27.
talk given at the Music Forum, October 28, 1944,"F*7m Music 63. For a comprehensive manual on sound
synchroniza?
Notes 4 (December 1944): n. p. tion in film see Ruby Raksin, Technical Handbook
ofMathemat?
57. Dahl, "Notes on Cartoon Music," p. 6. icsfor Motion Picture Music Synchronization, 2d ed. (Sherman
58. George Bernard Shaw, Music in London,1890-1894, Oaks, California: R-Y Publishing Co., 1972).
vol. 2 (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1932), p. 177. 64. James Thurber, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems
59. New York Times, August 23, 1953. Reprinted in Lewis Illustrated (New York: Harper 8c Brothers, 1940).
Jacobs, The Emergence ofFilm Art (New York: Hopkinson and 65. Ulrich, Art of Film Music, p. 37.
Blake, 1969), pp. 254-57. 66. Ibid., p. 28.
60. John Canemaker, The Animated Raggedy Ann and Andy: 67. Ibid.
An Intimate Look at theArt of Animation, Its History, Techniques, 68. Chuck Jones, "Music and the Animated Cartoon,"
and Artists (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977); contains HollywoodQuarterly1 (July1946): 367.
on individuals who worked on this film, including 69. "Music in Cartoons," n. p.
chapters Bradley,


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"A Sound Idea" Music for Animated Films

Author(s): Jon Newsom

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"A Sound Idea"

Music for Animated Rims

The quotation in the title is from an interview of Richard

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PETER PAN FLIGHT TONEVEKLAND

Vocal Thinkofa wonderfulthought...

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orchestra I heard the music it Meanwhile, Western Electric, then a sub?

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piece together the events that led to the historic

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Oliver Wallace composed "Der

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popular animated cartoons of Disney and others

parent at the conclusion of this essay when I

version of James Thurber's Unicorn in theGarden In an article on Bradley, composer Ingolf

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charming French-speaking mouse, who has the

Then, as the violins execute a melodramatic

Copyright ? 1951 by Loew's Inc.

At this point, the solo woodwinds take the

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Copyright ? 1951 by Loew's Inc.

S1TUVINSKY fetruskkn.i&sktsfromriittheatre Moor

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David Raksin's working score or "bar

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For the wife, Raksin uses the high soprano

Its whining sound and chromatic line are not

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