By Stephen Schochet
Chasen's restaurant in old Hollywood was a legendary hangout
were movie stars expected to dine in peaceful private booths on
barbecued chili without putting up with celebrity gawkers. There
were occasional breaks in the quiet. Jimmy Stewart's bachelor party
was thrown there complete with midgets clad only in diapers jumping
out of cakes. Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre got drunk one night
and stole the restaurant's safe, carrying it out onto the street
until they were caught. WC Fields once caused his girlfriend
Carlotta Monti great anguish by dining at Chasens with another
woman. She called up nearby Cedar Sinai Hospital and told them that
the comedian was having a heart attack, resulting in an ambulance
coming to fetch him in the middle of dinner. And in 1938 the
conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the long haired, flamboyant
Leopold Stokowski, in town to carry on a discreet love affair with
Greta Garbo, had his dinner interrupted by a note from a waiter
saying that Walt Disney wanted to meet him.
The cartoon maker and the Maestro were surprised that both were fans
of each other. As always Walt saw meetings with talent as an
opportunity to push the creative envelope. In fifteen years of
running his animation studio, Disney had used music to supplement
gags and stories, now he wanted to reverse the formula. While
recently attending a symphony at the Hollywood Bowl he had been
enthralled listening to The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas.
What if it were combined with a state of the art, twenty minute
animated cartoon? It could raise animation to a higher art form and
introduce new audiences to classical music who had never appreciated
it before. Stokowski loved the idea so much he volunteered to
conduct it for free. He also suggested several other pieces that
could be presented with animation as well. And so Fantasia (1940)
was born.
Disney's other reason to make Sorcerer was to save the career of
Mickey Mouse. A superstitious man, who like many in Hollywood
consulted fortune tellers, he felt that if Mickey died, his whole
organization would go down with him. The problem was that Mickey
like many stars was now type cast. He had gone from being
mischievous to bland. It had gotten to the point where Walt would
get letters of complaint every time the little guy would misbehave
on the screen. He had been surpassed in popularity by the mean-
spirited but more versatile Donald Duck. Walt also felt that the
high pitched voice that he himself provided for the mouse was not
exciting for audiences to hear, his role in Fantasia would be
silent. Disney remained Mickey's strongest advocate, despite his
artist's suggestions the four foot rodent was a dumb character who
should be replaced in the film by Dopey. Their disdain lead to the
phrase,"A Mickey Mouse Operation" used to describe things that are
second rate.
At that time, flush with the huge success of Snow White And The
Seven Dwarfs (1937) the 37-year-old Walt Disney was at the height of
his creative powers. Visitors to the studio were amazed by his
boundless energy, they would have more surprised to find out he had
suffered a nervous breakdown eight years earlier. His anything is
possible attitude carried over to many of his artists who were zany
characters to begin with. Working on Fantasia with highbrow types
like Stokowski and music critic Deems Taylor, Walt would sometimes
feel embarrassed by their immature behavior. Don't be, he was told,
Your cartoonists are like the elves in Santa's workshop.
If Walt was ignorant about some classical music pieces, he made up
for it by plunging into Fantasia with boyish enthusiasm. His
imagination was translated into unique visions by the Disney
animators. A Bach passage reminded him of a bowl of spaghetti, he
was later amused when critics saw something profound in the simple
drawings that appeared on screen. Stokowski suggested they use a
piece called Sacre du Printemps or Rite Of Spring, by Igor
Stravinsky. "Socker, what's that?" Walt asked. After he heard the
music he wired ten thousand dollars to Stravinsky for permission to
use it. The desperate Russian composer needed the cash to get safe
passage out of occupied Paris. Sacre was transformed from ancient
pagan rituals to accompany a powerful depiction of Earth's
evolution. Beethoven's sixth symphony, The Pastoral, was changed
from a peaceful countryside setting to a Mount Olympus spectacle
where unicorns, centaurs and nymphs roamed freely. After seeing the
completed work for the first time Walt said with wide-eyed
innocence,"Wow! This will make Beethoven!" Like what George Lucas
would later do with THX, Walt developed a new recording system
called Fantasound, so that audiences would be able to enjoy the rich
quality of the music. All of this spending was viewed with alarm by
his tightfisted business partner and classical music hating brother
Roy, who annoyed Walt by suggesting they use some Tommy Dorsey tunes
instead.
With past Films Disney had often bowed to pressure from his
financial backers to finish them early while he was still tinkering,
trying to make them perfect. Giving in to the money men always gave
him a sense of loss. He dreamed Fantasia would play forever in some
theaters with new segments constantly being added, an endlessly
ongoing project. But Fantasia was a crushing disappointment for Walt
in 1940. Many movie theater owners refused to pay for the
installation of Fantasound, giving the film very limited
distribution. The exhibitors who did show it charged much higher
admission prices than normal keeping audiences away. The people that
did come were often put off by the lack of a story or the
frightening devil in the Night On Bald Mountain sequence, for whom
Bela Lugosi was the real life model. Roy, who had indulged his
brother because he was certain they would break even overseas, saw
World War II cut off much of the foreign market. Classical music
aficionados like the ungrateful Stravinsky looked down their noses
at Disney's masterpiece. Fantasia was cut in length and went into
mass release as the second half of a double feature. The Disney
brothers took a financial bath they nearly never recovered from.
Fifteen years later Mickey Mouse was back on top with The Mickey
Mouse Club television show and Walt finally got his ongoing dream
project with Disneyland. But unlike other initial money losers he
made, such as Bambi (1942) and Pinocchio (1940), he never lived to
see Fantasia become profitable. Shortly before he died in 1966 he
said,"Fantasia? Well I don't regret it but if I had to do it over
again, I wouldn't."
In 1968 the Beatle's cartoon Yellow Submarine did very well with the
psychedelic crowd. Sensing a new market for Fantasia, the Disney
studio re-released it and the film was finally made profitable by
drug tripping hippies who speculated that Walt must have been on
something when he produced it.
Want to hear more stories? Stephen Schochet is the author and
narrator of the audiobooks "Fascinating Walt Disney" and "Tales Of
Hollywood". The Saint Louis Post Dispatch says," these two elaborate
productions are exceptionally entertaining." Hear RealAudio samples
at http://www.hollywoodstories.com.