Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

In the first pages of the Introduction to Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, author Neal Gabler confronts head-on and convincingly debunks the rumor that Disney was frozen cryogenically from the neck up. The half-dozen end notes attached to this one story show how the book is well-researched: about 20 percent of the volume consists of end notes, many from personal interviews and research in the Disney archives.

Disney wanted to be an animator and Gabler answers a question that puzzled me as a child watching the 1960s NBC TV show: just what did Uncle Walt do? Interestingly, Gabler reports that people in his own company asked the same question. A modern comparison I thought of was Bill Gates, who started out as a code jockey but eventually became the guiding force and first principle that moved everything that the company did.

Money is the subtext of the Disney story. In debt on and off for most of the early years of the company, plowing whatever profits he made back into the firm, Disney jumps the shark when the company becomes wildly successful and art takes a back seat. The dedication to pushing the artists and staff to excel in producing SNOW WHITE and DUMBO for example in the early years, is lost after World War II. The studio becomes an arm of the federal government in producing training and propaganda films and after the war, in a chapter called “Adrift,” Gabler describes how Disney finally succumbs to his partner/brother Roy (and to his creditors) to spend less money on animation and show bigger profits. CINDERELLA and related merchandising (a field that Disney invented) becomes a hit that saves the company from going under in 1950.

From this point on, any of the love and camaraderie that went into making animation is gone and Walt is focused on one goal: to make money to finance Disneyworld. Regarding the declining quality of the cartoons, he told his masseuse, “what the hell. It’s going to help build Disneyworld, kid.”

For a bio of a man who made many comedy cartoons, I was expecting a little more humor in the book, which might mean that comedy is a serious business. If you’ve sat through Charlie Rose with Steve Martin, deconstructing the art of funny, you’ll know what I mean. About the only funny passage in the book is not from a scene in a short or movie, but from animator Ward Kimball. In describing Disney’s attitude toward women, Kimball said, “He didn’t trust women or cats. Almost of his villains were either women or cats.”

Disney creates Mickey Mouse in the 1920s as an edgy bad boy who evolves into a suburban home owner with a dog. Disney also evolves as someone who is hailed as a folk artist in the beginning of his career and vilified as the personification of bland. Gabler is a good reporter and gives you enough information to make your own conclusion.

Regardless of how one feels about the art of Disney (I think the Warner and Fleischer Bros. were funnier) you will come away with a new admiration for Disney’s position as an artist of commerce. He used ABC’s money in the 1950s to produce a TV show (a virtual weekly infomercial) that financed Disneyworld. Then years later, Disney (the company) buys ABC. Corporate synergy doesn’t contribute much to art, but the birth of it as described by Gabler makes an interesting read.

Vintage Books paper back, 2007. Originally published by Knopf, 2006.

JUNO

TOOTSE (1982) was the first major movie I saw featuring a single woman who had a child out of wedlock, presented as a matter of fact, no biggie. The baby isn’t even part of the plot. The situation mirrored the real life of Jessica Lange who played that role in TOOTSOE. Flash forward to the 21^st century and unwed motherhood has hit the zeitgeist (see http://1onthetown.blogspot.com/2007/10/knocked-up-on-dvd-unrated-and.html, http://1onthetown.blogspot.com/2007/11/slam-by-nick-hornby-or-bamboozled.html, et al.).

The latest entry in the series is JUNO, starring Ellen Page as Juno, a 16-year-old who decides to have her baby but give it up for adoption. Also starring are Michael Cera as the Dad, J.K. Simmons as her father, and Allison Janney as the good stepmother. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are the rich couple who want to adopt Juno’s baby.

Juno has a wicked sense of humor that she inherited from Dad. I can’t say enough about J. K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson from the SPIDERMAN trilogy), who is perfect as Mac MacGuff, military veteran turned HVAC repairman, who can tell Juno with a squint that she’s an idiot but he loves her. He’s the rock of the movie.

There’s a subversive flashback shown with voiceover of a sex ed instructor using a banana to teach the boys and girls how to put on a condom. I call it subversive because it illustrates how schools taught sex but not love. JUNO fills in that missing lesson, a primer on how love is the answer, at least when it comes to bringing a life into the world. A rocking soundtrack helps too.

DVD Review: POPEYE 1933­–1938

Don’t be fooled by any overnight cable versions, ‘80s VHS public domain slap-togethers, or YouTube streams. This collection of POPEYE is the one for which fans have salivated for a long time. Full disclosure: I love Popeye and would excuse any minor flaws but this nearly seven-hour package is perfect and what the DVD player was made for: pristine prints of classic toons.

The four-disc set contains:

• sixty Popeye cartoons, many with commentary
• eight Popumentaries
• 16 silent cartoons starring Krazy Kat, Mutt and Jeff, and others from the dawn of animation

Disc 1 opens with Popeye the Sailor’s 1933 film debut, a cartoon eponymously titled but presented under the banner of another Fleisher Bros. cartoon star, Betty Boop. Popeye was already a popular King Features comic strip character, created by E. C. Segar, and the one-eyed* sailor’s first appearance in the movies is heralded in the first scene. Newspapers (remember them?) come rushing off the presses and a close-up of one paper reveals the headline:

POPEYE A MOVIE STAR
The Sailor with a “Sock” accepts Movie Contract

A “photograph” of Popeye on board a ship magically comes to life and instantly we get the first of several trademarks and recurring themes in the series: the “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” song, the “toot-toot” of his pipe, and the fluidly circular motion of his arms and hips as he swaggers along. Gags 1 and 2: he smashes an anchor and turns it into hooks, then pulverizes a ship’s clock and the pieces reassemble into over a dozen little clocks. “So keep good behavior that’s your one lifesaver,” he sings. About two minutes in we meet girl friend Olive Oyl at the dock and learn that she can take care of herself against a masher, one of Popeye’s shipmates heading for shore leave. Interestingly they include barnyard animals in sailor suits. These non-human characters in human jobs disappear in later cartoons. Then Bluto, Popeye’s rival for Miss Oyl, makes a play for Olive. She fights him to a draw to the tune of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” (the tune is used again in another Popeye cartoon in this set, “Beware of Barnacle Bill”). When Popeye shows up he just pushes Bluto aside and takes Olive to the carnival. Bluto is angry and you can tell from the raging battleship on his bare chest that he’s plotting revenge. For all the action described so far, and I left out some, we haven’t even hit the three minute mark.

We have a long shot of the carnival to the tune of “The Band Played On.” There’s an unbelievable amount of movement in this scene: a tunnel of love that pours people out and up into a spinning Ferris wheel, which drops patrons in two directions: onto a floating-in-air/ rotating merry-go-round and into the cars of a moving roller coaster. Here come the laughs: Bluto brutalizing the peacock ticket taker followed by Popeye eschewing the hammer to test his strength and using his fist to hit the block, which rings the bell so hard that it flies 93 million miles to give the sun a black eye.

A near-topless pre–Hayes Code Betty Boop does the Yaaka Hula and Popeye jumps on stage with her and busts a move as he dances (looks like rotoscope), grabbing the Bearded Lady’s beard and making a hula skirt out of it. A kidnapping and attempted murder-by-locomotive of Olive by Bluto is thwarted by our hero, aided by a can of spinach.

I’m in Disc 2 now and every night I watch one or two cartoons with one of my sons. He’s an aspiring voice artist and theater major. He’s learning a lot from Popeye, Olive, Bluto and the genius of the Fleisher’s Bros. and Segar’s greatest and long-missed creation. The Popumentaries are great too, especially the one on the men (and 1 woman!) who voiced Popeye.

__________

*One-eyed or just permanently squinty? I’m not sure.

Three-Hour Philly Phormat Phlush on WPHT-AM

Sid Mark was on the big talker WPHT-AM in Philly live on New Year’s Eve last night and rebroadcast today from noon to three (not available as a stream) playing Sinatra et al. He does local and syndicated weekend Sinatra shows in Philly. [When I was courting my wife in the early ‘80s we loved Sid’s syndicated Sinatra show, Saturday nights on WYNY-FM. Sunday nights WYNY ran the Dr. Ruth sex advice show and the rest of the week was MOR. No narrowcasting back then.] During that period I remember Mark Simone and Jonathan Schwartz on WNEW-AM having fun at Sid’s expense, claiming that “there’s this guy on another station” that just lets the Sinatra albums track without offering any special insight to the music. They joked about Sid calling his show the “official” Sinatra show. Twenty-five years later Sid is still going strong on AM radio with a signal that anyone would love to have. Although I get some static from the speaker and from my wife (who doesn’t enjoy radio static), it was great to hear Tony, Lena, Lou Rawls in glorious AM mono from Philadelphia.