Disney kept pushing his artists to sharpen their skills, initiating art classes and seminars as he prepared to make his first full-length picture. Industry pundits predicted that no one would sit still for a cartoon feature. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved otherwise and blazed the trail for the industry. A joyous film filled with indelible songs, it also had heart. When Disney’s animators saw moviegoers shed tears at the climax, as a distraught Grumpy breaks down at the sight of Snow White on her funeral bier, they knew they had accomplished something truly extraordinary.

Here again, Walt defied conventional thinking. Audiences clamoured to see more of Dopey, Doc, and the other lovable characters from his hit movie, but unlike today’s sequel-crazed studios, Walt wasn’t interested in repeating himself. Instead, he embarked on a wildly ambitious project that was almost destined to lose money.

Dumbo and Dalí

Fantasia came about because of a dinner Disney had with the great conductor Leopold Stokowski. The maestro suggested a collaboration in which Mickey Mouse would bring to life a piece of classical music, to be recorded by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra: Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The idea gradually mushroomed into an even more elaborate project initially called The Concert Feature.



Even though Fantasia met with a mixed reaction and failed to earn its money back in 1940, the idea of marrying music and imagery lingered with Walt through the rest of that decade. Most of the pieces in his omnibus features Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948) were popular tunes, but the artists’ approach to many segments was as innovative as anything in Fantasia. The Benny Goodman Quartet’s lively rendition of After You’ve Gone in Make Mine Music is illustrated by a playful series of interactions among an anthropomorphised clarinet, bass fiddle, piano and drum kit. Bumble Boogie from Melody Time is even more abstract and inventive, as a bee is pursued through a surreal musical landscape, chased by piano hammers and such, to the strains of a jazzy riff on Rimsky-Korsakov’s of Flight of the Bumblebee.

A surreal sensibility also found its way into the sweetest of all Disney features, Dumbo (1941), in the eye-popping Pink Elephants on Parade. I have shown this sequence to young audiences on many occasions and enjoyed watching their open-mouthed reaction. Nothing in Disney’s canon could prepare anyone for this phantasmagoria of crazy visuals, inspired by the innocent Dumbo’s accidental drunkenness.