Those of you who saw Walt Disney's Saludos Amigos didn’t know you were in on the première of something new, but you were, actually. You probably thought that Walt had gotten tired of confining his Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to one-reelers and wanted to expand, to entertain his audiences for a longer period of time. Not true at all. This is what happened: Walt and a crew of his experts had taken a flying trip through Latin America at the behest of the Motion Picture Society for the Americas. You know, Good Neighbor Policy. After the Disney gang returned, they made four shorts, depicting four of the countries they had visited. Walt and his economic advisers hated to put these one-reelers out on the shorts market and sell them for the same price the other shorts were getting; it didn’t seem enough for as good as they were. So, said Walt, why not hook them together and present them as a feature? The notion was tried and tested before west coast audiences. The ticket buyers loved it. Thus was the idea born. And that is why you are about to see ten shorts rolled into one and presented as Make Mine Music.
Make Mine Music will run about an hour and fifteen minutes-shorter than the usual feature-length movie. But, because Walt gives you his entertainment in such concentrated doses, he shows you more in that time than the rest of them do in twice the footage. Or at least, that’s the feeling you get. He’s got a wonderful package put together for Make Mine Music. Ted Weems and his orchestra do a hillbilly number. There’s an orchestral rendition of Blue Bayou, a ballad of those good ol' Louisiana marshes. Benny Goodman and his combination do a jive number so the rugcutters will be happy. Dinah Shore sings Two Silhouettes and the animators give you a Lichine and Riabouchinska ballet to look at while you’re listening. The Andrews Sisters beat out Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet. Jerry Colonna does Casey at the Bat. Sterling Halloway narrates Prokofieli’s Peter and the Wolf. Andy Russell sings a Latin American ballad called Without You and Benny Goodman’s, quartet does its famous After You’ve Gone. Nelson Eddy is heard in the section of the whale who thinks he’s an opera singer and Eddy, sometimes singing as many as three and four parts, will do Largo Al Factotum from the Barber of Seville, an aria from Donizetti’s Lucia, and excerpts from Tristan und Isolde and Martha.
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