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EVER since the first talking picture coughed and stuttered its way to movie fame some years ago, a few thousand music lovers and I have cherished the fond hope that some day Hollywood would turn out a brand new art form, would combine great music, color and action so that the result would be, as it were, music in three dimensions. Our hopes grew dim as year after year went by with no progress – except for a few sporadic, still-born attempts – along that line. But Mouse-maker Walt Disney had the same idea in the back of his head and he had been mulling it over.

Now, at long last (to coin a phrase) he has turned up with Fantasia which, unless I miss my guess, will provide a successful new medium of entertainment for music-lovers and movie-lovers alike. Composers, who long have felt that writing for the movies was writing for oblivion, will no longer find their compositions tossed in as “back­ ground music." Instead, Disney and Fantasia are offering them a whole new field for their talents – a field which will demand good music rich in pictorial value. And more than that: Fantasia may possibly – even probably  – open new paths to television. I may, in the near future, settle back in my chair to listen to a concert on my television set and see compositions illustrated by Disney characters.

It all started two years ago in Hollywood when Walt first started ruminating about the possibilities of doing a Mickey Mouse short based on Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice. Leopold Stokowski heard about the idea, offered his ser­vices, suggested doing a full length picture.

In the fall of 1938 Disney, Stokowski and I rolled up our mental sleeves and got to work. For two weeks we listened to records and finally decided upon seven compo­sitions – plus the Sorcerer's Apprentice. These eight (see next page) were played over and over for the art depart­ment, and it was their impressions of the music and Dis­ney's which were used in Fantasia. Preliminary sketches were made, then the Character Model Department made figurines (sec CLICK'S GUIDE cover) from which anima­ted creatures that prance across the screen were drawn.

Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia's Academy of Music, Stokowski and members of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra were at work making sound tracks to supply the music for Fantasia. The sound is – to put it mildly – ter­rific! The orchestra used eight sound tracks instead of the usual one, and numerous microphones were placed ju­diciously about to pick up every not£ of every instrument.

Fantasia will never be old. Already we have made sound tracks of three or four compositions which will be periodically substituted – after the film has appeared in major cities – in the present version: compositions like Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel. Debussy's La Mer and Claire de Lune. Thus Fantasia is, in effect, the first movie with no end. Fantasia will stand as one of Disney's major contributions to the arts of sight and sound.