Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
From Fantasia’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence (1940, dir. James Algar) (online here) “Walt Disney sure had me fooled. I always thought he was an Establishment square, the pious merchant of every virtue that middle America cherishes and young America hates. Who else could make cuteness so commercial? Or extract so many millions from a mouse? But suddenly the young have embraced this king of squares. His Fantasia was revived recently at a New York theater and, overnight, there they were, lined up outside, making such a box-office hit of the 30-year-old film that it’s now being booked into cities and college towns all across the country. Obviously Fantasia is saying something to the young in 1970 that it wasn’t saying to me — or anyone — in 1940. I remember it then for its heavy cultural pretensions: Uncle Walt bringing good music to the masses by wrapping it in easy-to-take animated cartoons. The other day I went to the movie again and saw just what the young have discovered - that Disney was zonked out of his mind while making the movie and so was his entire studio. Safely hidden behind the chaste pillars of classical music, he was a hippie 30 years ahead of his time, producing a psychadelic light-and-sound show that was his only flop because nobody was freaked out enough to dig it. Knowing this, I now feel sorry for Disney. It’s no fun to be a secret pioneer. In Fantasia he anticipated by a whole generation the ideas that were to bestow instant priesthood on Marshall McLuhan, Timothy Leary, & Allen Ginsberg, and he died without getting any of the credit. Long before TV made us a visual society feeding on picture images, long before McLuhan announced that ‘the medium is the message’, Disney was giving us a sensory experience, America’s first acid trip.”  -William Zinsser, “Walt Disney’s Secret Freakout”, LIFE magazine (April 1970)

From Fantasia’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence (1940, dir. James Algar) (online here)

“Walt Disney sure had me fooled. I always thought he was an Establishment square, the pious merchant of every virtue that middle America cherishes and young America hates. Who else could make cuteness so commercial? Or extract so many millions from a mouse?

But suddenly the young have embraced this king of squares. His Fantasia was revived recently at a New York theater and, overnight, there they were, lined up outside, making such a box-office hit of the 30-year-old film that it’s now being booked into cities and college towns all across the country. Obviously Fantasia is saying something to the young in 1970 that it wasn’t saying to me — or anyone — in 1940. I remember it then for its heavy cultural pretensions: Uncle Walt bringing good music to the masses by wrapping it in easy-to-take animated cartoons.

The other day I went to the movie again and saw just what the young have discovered - that Disney was zonked out of his mind while making the movie and so was his entire studio. Safely hidden behind the chaste pillars of classical music, he was a hippie 30 years ahead of his time, producing a psychadelic light-and-sound show that was his only flop because nobody was freaked out enough to dig it.

Knowing this, I now feel sorry for Disney. It’s no fun to be a secret pioneer. In Fantasia he anticipated by a whole generation the ideas that were to bestow instant priesthood on Marshall McLuhan, Timothy Leary, & Allen Ginsberg, and he died without getting any of the credit. Long before TV made us a visual society feeding on picture images, long before McLuhan announced that ‘the medium is the message’, Disney was giving us a sensory experience, America’s first acid trip.” 

-William Zinsser, “Walt Disney’s Secret Freakout”, LIFE magazine (April 1970)

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964, dir. Robert Stevenson) (via drmacro)

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964, dir. Robert Stevenson) (via drmacro)

“I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man. I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.” -Walt Disney (via)

“I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man. I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”

-Walt Disney (via)

via Dumbo (1941, dir. Ben Sharpsteen) “[Walt Disney] has accomplished something that has defied all the efforts and experiments of the laboratories in zoology and biology. He has given animals souls.” -William Lyon Phelps

via Dumbo (1941, dir. Ben Sharpsteen)

“[Walt Disney] has accomplished something that has defied all the efforts and experiments of the laboratories in zoology and biology. He has given animals souls.”

-William Lyon Phelps

via Cinderella (1950, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske) “Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. In this new dimension, whatever it is, nothing corrodes or gets run down at the heel or gets to look ridiculous like, say, the celluloid collar or the bustle.” -Walt Disney

via Cinderella (1950, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske)

“Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. In this new dimension, whatever it is, nothing corrodes or gets run down at the heel or gets to look ridiculous like, say, the celluloid collar or the bustle.”

-Walt Disney

“Art was always a means to an end with me. You get an idea, and you just can’t wait. Once you’ve started, then you’re in there with the punches flying. There’s plenty of trouble, but you can handle it. You can’t back out. It gets you down once in a while, but it’s exciting. Our whole business is exciting.” -Walt Disney (photo by Edward Steichen, via)

“Art was always a means to an end with me. You get an idea, and you just can’t wait. Once you’ve started, then you’re in there with the punches flying. There’s plenty of trouble, but you can handle it. You can’t back out. It gets you down once in a while, but it’s exciting. Our whole business is exciting.”

-Walt Disney (photo by Edward Steichen, via)

Bambi (1942, dir. David Hand) “All right. I’m corny. But I think there’s just about 140 million people in this country that are just as corny as I am.” -Walt Disney

Bambi (1942, dir. David Hand)

“All right. I’m corny. But I think there’s just about 140 million people in this country that are just as corny as I am.”

-Walt Disney