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| Make my day, Make Mine Music... |
Never heard of it, you say? HISTORY! World War II had broken out in Europe, causing revenue from the overseas sales of Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi to vanish. This came after Walt had decided to put much of the profit from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (that wasn’t put toward the films mentioned above) into the construction of a grand new animation campus in Burbank. Added to this was the US military’s decision to utilize the Walt Disney Studios as a source for training and propaganda films following Pearl Harbor – free of charge, of course – effectively draining much of the studio’s already minimal operating budget. To keep the studio running during the 1940s the features department turned out a number of inexpensive “package films,” consisting of several short sequences that could be worked on by different animators. These Whitman’s Sampler-esque films were released to mixed creative and financial results.
While some of these efforts yielded hidden gems (more on these in future reviews – I know you can’t wait,) for the most part I consider myself lucky to be watching these movies on DVD – so I can skip ahead if need be.
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| I'm going back some day, come what may, to blue bayou... |
Okay, no, I wouldn’t do that to my loyal reader(s). But honestly, this was my second time viewing Make Mine Music, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. In all fairness, some of the sequences are better than others – “Blue Bayou,” featuring a pair of delicately animated egrets gliding through a gorgeously-realized background is a visual feast (likely because it was originally being animated for Fantasia, intended to accompany Debussy’s Claire de Lune.) “All the Cats Join In” is a fast-paced and fun segment, following bobby sock-wearing teenagers jiving to the music of Benny Goodman. The finale sequence, “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met,” with its clever concept and memorably sad ending, could even have been expanded into its own feature.
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| Everybody dance NOW! |
But slogging through “Without You: A Tone Poem” (set to the droning vocals of Andy Russell,) and the seemingly endless “Peter and The Wolf” is a true test of patience. This last opinion is an unpopular one, as many have seen “Peter and the Wolf” separated from the rest of the film on home video compilations or repeated on The Disney Channel - and it’s therefore the most popular portion of the movie. But for me, the whole sequence - where we’re introduced to each character, the instrument that represents them, and then are walked step-by-step through the thread-bare story of a young Russian hunter - begs for judicious editing. Plus, Sterling Holloway’s twee narration only makes me wish he would get to voicing Winnie the Pooh already.
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| In Soviet Union, Mine Makes Music! |
The worst offender, however, is “Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet” - a saga of two hats in love (!?!). Accompanied by a syrupy ballad moaned out by the Andrews Sisters, that this short made it beyond the story-pitch stage and into a feature film mystifies me. It seems like it should’ve been a simple one-off short that could play to empty movie houses while the audience went to the bathroom. Are we supposed to care about hats with eyes, especially when they don’t even speak? This idea was developed much better by Pixar in the Saschka Unseld-directed 2013 short The Blue Umbrella – which didn’t have an Andrews Sisters death-rattle playing against it.
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| Who gives a shit? |
For better or for worse, that’s the nature of these “package films;” much like the facts of life, you take the good and you take the bad.
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| A whale of a tale |
•The entire first sequence of the film, the hillbilly hoot’n’holler “The Martins and The Coys” was cut from the 2000 North American DVD. I suppose because it could insult cousin-marryin’ Ozark-dwellers who likely didn’t own DVD players at the time? I watched my European copy with the (quite entertaining) sequence intact, since owing two copies of Make Mine Music must be my lifelong ambition.
•One segment from this film ended up being represented in a Disney theme park. The “Casey at The Bat” sequence, dramatizing Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem about a star athlete who dramatically strikes out (SPOILERS) is the inspiration for the baseball-themed Casey’s Corner restaurant at the end of Main Street at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. So the next time you find yourself chomping down on an over-priced macaroni & cheese hotdog in the Florida heat, remember you’ve got Make Mine Music to thank.
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| Or Cokes ... just drive in and get a Coke, if you're thirsty. |
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