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.There was in Dumbo a strong sense of caricature, of exactly the kind thatWalt Disney had once espoused but that was almost totally lacking in Bambi.The animators were diªerent, too.Of the four supervising animators onSnow White, only Bill Tytla was still active as an animator, and his anima-tion in Dumbo devoted above all to giving Dumbo and his mother an emo-tional presence on the screen was in striking contrast to the more sophis-ticated animation in Bambi by the younger animators, like Thomas and MiltKahl.The subtlety and complexity that Bambi s animators embraced, andthat required their control over sequences rather than characters, left no roomfor the identification between actor and character that occurs in the best act-ing on stage and in live-action films. While the actor can rely on his innerfeelings to build his portrayal, Thomas and Johnston wrote years later, theanimator must be objectively analytical if he is to reach out and touch theaudience. 46 That had already been disproved by others among the Disneyanimators, and by Tytla, above all.Tytla had animated large, powerful characters in Pinocchio (the puppetmaster Stromboli) and Fantasia (the demon Tchernabog, in Night on BaldMountain ), so the elephants were a natural fit but not necessarily the babyelephant, Dumbo.Tytla had, however, based his animation of Dumbo noton his knowledge of elephants, but on what he knew about human children,1 78 a queer, qui ck, deli ghtful gi nk especially his own two-year-old. I ve bawled my kid out for pestering mewhen I m reading or something, he told Time, and he doesn t know whatto make of it.He ll just stand there and maybe grab my hand and cry.Itried to put all those things in Dumbo. 47Through the animation of its characters, Dumbo validated and extendedWalt Disney s own great central achievement in Snow White.The ideas thatDisney had so often expressed and that had shaped the earlier film the car-icature of life were even stronger in Dumbo.But success had come at a fa-tal cost.It was clear from Dumbo, as it had not been from Snow White, thatvivid characterization could be achieved through intelligent casting and sen-sitive direction but, as a result, Walt Disney s own close involvement hadceased to be essential, a development Disney could not have welcomed.More-over, in Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, Disney had already embraced diªer-ent ideas about his animated features.Other things were now more impor-tant than the immediacy of animation like Tytla s.(Disney rewarded those animators whose work was most consistent withhis new priorities.As of November 1941, when the dust from the strike wassettling, he was paying Tytla $191.25 a week, but Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl,the principal animators of Bambi, were making $212.50 a week.Only HamLuske and Fred Moore were paid more, at $255 a week, and their salaries reflectedthe wider responsibilities of each man in the years just after Snow White.)48Disney had once been enthusiastic about low-budget projects like Dumbo,seeing in them a way to use characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duckin films that would be more profitable than short subjects.Low-budget fea-tures would also be good vehicles for staª artists who were not suited for Dis-ney s more ambitious features, like Fantasia and Bambi.Story work on a ver-sion of Jack and the Beanstalk with Mickey and Donald was under way bylate in 1939, around the time that Dumbo, too, emerged as a potential feature.49In a February 27, 1940, meeting on Bambi, Disney spoke of Dumbo s greatpossibilities.The personalities are the type of thing we can get hold of.that everybody can get hold of. He referred to Dumbo as an obvious straightcartoon.I ll deliberately make it that way.It s the type to do that with.It scaricature all the way through.I ve got the men for it.They don t fit here, that is, in work on Bambi.50 He was still enthusiastic in an April 2, 1940,meeting on Alice in Wonderland: If Dumbo can prove.that you don t haveto have birds and bunnies and [a] wishing well, it would be the picture. 51By May 1940, with Pinocchio unquestionably a failure and Hitler s armywiping out European markets, movies of Dumbo s dimensions were startingto look altogether diªerent than they had a few months before: less like aux-on a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 79 iliaries to the big-deal features like Bambi than like potential lifesavers.Dis-ney still approached them with apparent enthusiasm.In meetings on Jackand the Beanstalk that month, he spilled out a stream of ideas, almost as ifhe found working on that story relaxing, a welcome change from more seri-ous stories.But in a meeting on May 14, 1940, he was frank about the rea-sons for his intense interest: The main idea is that we are trying to get a fea-ture out of here in a hell of a hurry.It s a long story but it can be told ina few words mainly that our European market is shot which you re allaware of, and we have to get something out of here that can go out and makesome money on just the American market alone. 52Even though Disney spoke of completing the Beanstalk feature in fourmonths, story work dragged, and the film did not go into animation untilearly in 1941.It was unfinished when the strike began.So was another low-budget feature, The Wind in the Willows, based on Kenneth Grahame s book;animation did not begin until April 1941.Neither film was ever released as afeature, although animation from both was salvaged and reused in postwar package features. Jack and the Beanstalk was the first casualty, shelvedsoon after Disney s return from South America in October 1941.RKO s re-luctance to distribute the film was probably decisive, but Disney himself de-cided to halt production of Wind in the Willows.From all accounts, bothfilms threatened to be fatally thin and dull if released as features.(The Reluctant Dragon, the live-action studio tour with animated inserts,was completed before the strike and released in the summer of 1941, just intime for its portrait of a cheerful studio to collide with the reality of the strike.Even though its cost was lower even than Dumbo s, around $635,000, rentalreceipts fell almost $100,000 short of covering that cost.)53Bambi was finally released in August 1942 it opened at Radio City MusicHall in New York on August 13, after a premiere in London five days earlier.The Disney studio s share of the rental receipts ultimately fell short of thefilm s cost by about $60,000.54 Dumbo did not return as much in rentals,about $400,000 less than Bambi, but its much lower cost made it highlyprofitable.In other words, the public would turn out for a Bambi, the kindof film that Disney now wanted to make, but not quite in numbers that werelarge enough.(Bambi played at Radio City for only two weeks.)It was one thing to make low-budget features as part of a broader pro-gram, each B picture alongside a big-budget A, but low-budget films wereconfining when there was nothing else.People who had been animating onmore expensive films with what one of Disney s directors, Bill Roberts, called straight drawing were not necessarily well equipped to make the transition [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.There was in Dumbo a strong sense of caricature, of exactly the kind thatWalt Disney had once espoused but that was almost totally lacking in Bambi.The animators were diªerent, too.Of the four supervising animators onSnow White, only Bill Tytla was still active as an animator, and his anima-tion in Dumbo devoted above all to giving Dumbo and his mother an emo-tional presence on the screen was in striking contrast to the more sophis-ticated animation in Bambi by the younger animators, like Thomas and MiltKahl.The subtlety and complexity that Bambi s animators embraced, andthat required their control over sequences rather than characters, left no roomfor the identification between actor and character that occurs in the best act-ing on stage and in live-action films. While the actor can rely on his innerfeelings to build his portrayal, Thomas and Johnston wrote years later, theanimator must be objectively analytical if he is to reach out and touch theaudience. 46 That had already been disproved by others among the Disneyanimators, and by Tytla, above all.Tytla had animated large, powerful characters in Pinocchio (the puppetmaster Stromboli) and Fantasia (the demon Tchernabog, in Night on BaldMountain ), so the elephants were a natural fit but not necessarily the babyelephant, Dumbo.Tytla had, however, based his animation of Dumbo noton his knowledge of elephants, but on what he knew about human children,1 78 a queer, qui ck, deli ghtful gi nk especially his own two-year-old. I ve bawled my kid out for pestering mewhen I m reading or something, he told Time, and he doesn t know whatto make of it.He ll just stand there and maybe grab my hand and cry.Itried to put all those things in Dumbo. 47Through the animation of its characters, Dumbo validated and extendedWalt Disney s own great central achievement in Snow White.The ideas thatDisney had so often expressed and that had shaped the earlier film the car-icature of life were even stronger in Dumbo.But success had come at a fa-tal cost.It was clear from Dumbo, as it had not been from Snow White, thatvivid characterization could be achieved through intelligent casting and sen-sitive direction but, as a result, Walt Disney s own close involvement hadceased to be essential, a development Disney could not have welcomed.More-over, in Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, Disney had already embraced diªer-ent ideas about his animated features.Other things were now more impor-tant than the immediacy of animation like Tytla s.(Disney rewarded those animators whose work was most consistent withhis new priorities.As of November 1941, when the dust from the strike wassettling, he was paying Tytla $191.25 a week, but Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl,the principal animators of Bambi, were making $212.50 a week.Only HamLuske and Fred Moore were paid more, at $255 a week, and their salaries reflectedthe wider responsibilities of each man in the years just after Snow White.)48Disney had once been enthusiastic about low-budget projects like Dumbo,seeing in them a way to use characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duckin films that would be more profitable than short subjects.Low-budget fea-tures would also be good vehicles for staª artists who were not suited for Dis-ney s more ambitious features, like Fantasia and Bambi.Story work on a ver-sion of Jack and the Beanstalk with Mickey and Donald was under way bylate in 1939, around the time that Dumbo, too, emerged as a potential feature.49In a February 27, 1940, meeting on Bambi, Disney spoke of Dumbo s greatpossibilities.The personalities are the type of thing we can get hold of.that everybody can get hold of. He referred to Dumbo as an obvious straightcartoon.I ll deliberately make it that way.It s the type to do that with.It scaricature all the way through.I ve got the men for it.They don t fit here, that is, in work on Bambi.50 He was still enthusiastic in an April 2, 1940,meeting on Alice in Wonderland: If Dumbo can prove.that you don t haveto have birds and bunnies and [a] wishing well, it would be the picture. 51By May 1940, with Pinocchio unquestionably a failure and Hitler s armywiping out European markets, movies of Dumbo s dimensions were startingto look altogether diªerent than they had a few months before: less like aux-on a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 79 iliaries to the big-deal features like Bambi than like potential lifesavers.Dis-ney still approached them with apparent enthusiasm.In meetings on Jackand the Beanstalk that month, he spilled out a stream of ideas, almost as ifhe found working on that story relaxing, a welcome change from more seri-ous stories.But in a meeting on May 14, 1940, he was frank about the rea-sons for his intense interest: The main idea is that we are trying to get a fea-ture out of here in a hell of a hurry.It s a long story but it can be told ina few words mainly that our European market is shot which you re allaware of, and we have to get something out of here that can go out and makesome money on just the American market alone. 52Even though Disney spoke of completing the Beanstalk feature in fourmonths, story work dragged, and the film did not go into animation untilearly in 1941.It was unfinished when the strike began.So was another low-budget feature, The Wind in the Willows, based on Kenneth Grahame s book;animation did not begin until April 1941.Neither film was ever released as afeature, although animation from both was salvaged and reused in postwar package features. Jack and the Beanstalk was the first casualty, shelvedsoon after Disney s return from South America in October 1941.RKO s re-luctance to distribute the film was probably decisive, but Disney himself de-cided to halt production of Wind in the Willows.From all accounts, bothfilms threatened to be fatally thin and dull if released as features.(The Reluctant Dragon, the live-action studio tour with animated inserts,was completed before the strike and released in the summer of 1941, just intime for its portrait of a cheerful studio to collide with the reality of the strike.Even though its cost was lower even than Dumbo s, around $635,000, rentalreceipts fell almost $100,000 short of covering that cost.)53Bambi was finally released in August 1942 it opened at Radio City MusicHall in New York on August 13, after a premiere in London five days earlier.The Disney studio s share of the rental receipts ultimately fell short of thefilm s cost by about $60,000.54 Dumbo did not return as much in rentals,about $400,000 less than Bambi, but its much lower cost made it highlyprofitable.In other words, the public would turn out for a Bambi, the kindof film that Disney now wanted to make, but not quite in numbers that werelarge enough.(Bambi played at Radio City for only two weeks.)It was one thing to make low-budget features as part of a broader pro-gram, each B picture alongside a big-budget A, but low-budget films wereconfining when there was nothing else.People who had been animating onmore expensive films with what one of Disney s directors, Bill Roberts, called straight drawing were not necessarily well equipped to make the transition [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]