"...Disney knew what he liked, felt absolutely certain that others were exactly like him, and went after it, cutting no corners..."
A few years ago when you mentioned Walt Disney at a respectable party - or anyway this is how it was in Califomia, where l was then - the standard response was a headshake and a groan. Intellectuals spoke of how he butchered the classics-from Pinocchio to Winnie the Pooh-how his wildlife pictures were sadistic and coy, how the World’s Fair sculptures of hippopotamuses, etc., were a national if not international disgrace. A few crazies disagreed, and since crazies are always the people to watch, it began to be admitted that the early Pluto movies had a considerable measure je ne sais pas quoi, that the background animation in Snow White was “quite extraordinary,” that Fantasia did indeed have one great sequence (then it became two; now everyone says three, though there’s fierce disagreement on exactly which three). […]
