Always a rare hand at constructive ideas, Walt Disney is currently devoting a considerable amount of time each week over the ABC-TV network to the greater interests of harmony. While the Disney programs are packed full of fun, laughter, and topical interest, their deeper lying purpose is to demonstrate the fact that motion pictures and television complement each other instead of functioning as cut-throat competition. Mr. Disney's corner on harmony bids fair to open a new era in entertainment relations. Also, the programs rest firmly on the harmony of music.
Many of the songs used on these telecasts are familiar Disney favorites since the days of The Three Little Pigs; some are new; all bear the distinctive Disney hallmark. To a large extent, this derives from the unique way in which Disney music is created.
All Disney music stems from motion picture production which means that first emphasis is placed on story value. The initial step in any Disney animated cartoon film is taken by the animation department. A staff of competent artists and cartoonists submit story ideas, not as written notes, but in the form of drawings. When an idea is accepted (and many more are worked out than are ever used) , the cartoon-story is again not written but drawn. Characters and incidents, in continuity, appear in a series of sketches which are mounted on picture-boards all around the studio. When the work has progressed to the point where aural details are needed, the words (dialogue) are filled in by the writing staff. The next step is to select the moments of action most suitable to music, and to produce the songs which are written to suit the action, exactly as is done in the writing of an operatic score. Each step in the complicated development is supervised and directed by Walt Disney himself. Walt Disney Productions buys some outside musical material. More important, it maintains a staff of composers and musicians in its Burbank headquarters, who, over the years, have turned out such perennial favorites as Who’s Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?, An Actor's life, When You Wish Upon A Star, Whistle While You Work, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, and many more, culminating in George Bruns' Ballad of Davy Crockett. Occasionally, Mr. Disney accepts suggestions from persons familiar with his production routines even though they are not normally associated with song-writing. Fes Parker (who plays the part of Davy Crocket in the Disney film which made new men of young Americans), Buddy Ebsen wrote the song Be Sure You're Right, heard on the Mickey Mouse Club program which also introduced thirty-two songs written by singer-dance-songwriter Jimmie Dodd. Singer Peggy Lee wrote the lyrics for the songs used in The Lady and The Tramp.
Miss Lee's contribution illustrates the way which Disney songs come to life. Engaged to appear as one of the in the then-forthcoming film, […]
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[…] first introducing The Mouseketeers, a group of twenty-four talented children. With the co-operation Jimmie Dodd, the youngsters sing, dance, act, presend musical surprises, audition new members, and generally have fun with music. In outlining this program to the eighteen advertisers who pay $15,000.000 to sponsor the Mickey Mouse Club, Walt Disney said:
"I know, of course, that this is described as a children's show. Yet there is something about the expression 'children's show' that I always find disturbing. At our studio, we regard the child as a highly intelligent human being. He is characteristically sensitive, humorous openminded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and a healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Essentially, the real difference between a child and an adult is experience. We conceive it to be our job on The Mickey Mouse Club show to provide some of the experience, happy, factual, constructive experience whenever possible."
The music used on the Mirkcy Mouse Club programs is also partly new, partly old, and always distinctly Disney. Mr. Disney himself is enthusiastic about the abilities of the young Mouseketeers, chosen, after careful screening, from all over the country. He feels that, besides providing straight entertainment, the children create a strong secondary value by way of stimulating music interest. Observing the Mouseketeers in action, boys and girls all over the land will feel impelled to discover and develop talents of their own, in a manner that suggests pleasure rather than drudgery. Disney also believes that many of the entertainers of tomorrow may come from prsent and succeeding companies of Mouseketeers. Acting on this belief, he has cast 14-year-old Mouseketcer Darlene Gillespie as the juvenile dramatic lead of a full length production.
The music for all Disney productions is enhanced to an unusual degree by sound effects. While all entertainment media rely, to some extent, upon normal sound effetcs (the sound of rain, wind, telephone bells, closing doors, etc.), the nature of the Disney films, with their talking animals and their fantastic adventures, calls for effects which demand long preparation and unususal care in the establishing of their unreal reality. Much experimentation, for instance, went into determining the exact horn tones which would best express The Big Bad Wolf, and the exact flute tones to represent the Three Little Pigs. Hence Disney's sound effects department is composed of men who are trained and highly competent musicians. Musical ability is a prime requirement in this department, as is fluent reading of musical notations; nearly all sound effects must he recorded from a score, so that animation, music and sounds may be perfectly synchronized. Further, the sound effects men never know when they will be called upon to devise strange new instruments (and then to play them into the recording microphone) that will reproduce sounds that never existed previously — the sound of a nose being tweaked, of a goose waddling down the road, of voices talking under water.
The singular nature of the Disney animated pictures makes it virtually impossible for the sound effects men to borrow their material from libraries or other studios. All sound effects are created especially for the scenes in which they are used; and, since sound and action tracks are made separately, the sound effects men must know exactly how many feet of visual film a sound effect is to take up; what the animation consists of; exactly where the accents must fall in relation to the action. Hence, all Disney sound effects are done in the studio.
Mechanical gadgets, and all sorts of inventions born of the resourcefulness of the sound effects men, as well as voice effects, and various speeds in recording and re-recording to alter pitch and quality of tone – all these join with the actual composition of music to spell out the strange and usually comical repertoire of tones so vital to the special Disney brand of fun with music.
