August 15 - Make Mine Music

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On this day, in 1946, the Walt Disney Studio generally released its eighth animated feature, Make Mine Music. As a big chunk of the staff went off to fight the Nazis and most foreign movie markets dried up, the Walt Disney Studio faced dire financial times during World War II. Even with government contracts for military training films, the studio couldn’t continue to make feature length animated films and turn a profit. The solution was to take all the spare ideas that were lying around (mostly unfinished shorts) and cobble them together into  feature length packages. What makes the so-called package films different from Fantasia, which is also a number of shorts put together, is that Fantasia’s segments were specifically chosen for their artistic merit. In other words, that film was a deliberate choice. The package films were born out of necessity and the segments don’t necessarily belong together. That’s why you rarely see the package films in their entirety but you see their segments individually all the time. It’s kind of like the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which works as a concept because the Beatles said it did and everyone accepts that. Just don’t try to figure any other reason.

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The first two package films, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, came out of a goodwill trip Walt and his staff took to South America at the behest of the federal government (and on their dime, I might add). The third package film, Make Mine Music, came into being because of the financial successes of the first two. They might not have been huge money makers, but the package films kept costs much lower than feature length movies and kept cash flowing into the financially troubled studio. Even though the war was officially over by the time Music was released, Disney would release three more package films while waiting for the world markets to recover.

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The original release of Make Mine Music included ten different segments, ranging from a musical exploration of the Hatfield and McCoy feud to a tragedy about an opera singing whale (and if you don’t remember that part as a tragedy, it’s clearly been a while since you’ve seen it). In between those two shorts are a variety of musical genres, including two swing parts with Benny Goodman and his orchestra, a love ballad sung by Andy Russell, a telling of Peter and the Wolf complete with classical score, songs sung by Dinah Shore, the Andrews Sisters and the Ken Darby singers and Jerry Colonna, who would later voice the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland, reciting the epic poem Casey at the Bat.

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Make Mine Music was never given terribly wide theatrical release as a whole, but many of its pieces were later re-released to theaters individually. The movie proved popular enough that it grossed over $3.2 million all together on a $1.3 million budget. Which is, again, why the studio released three more package films before getting back up to feature length strength.

It should be noted that later releases of Make Mine Music, especially the first VHS and DVD United States versions, were edited for content. In the All the Cats Join In segment, some brief nudity was removed although it was left in for the Japanese home market. The Martins and the Coys segment was also removed entirely because it was deemed unsuitable for children due to its comic gun play. That segment has been reinserted in subsequent releases.

November 30 - Dick Huemer

On this day, in 1979, Richard Martin Huemer passed away in Burbank, California. Dick is one of those animators who was around for the early days of cartoons, did almost every job connected to cartoons and helped make the genre what it is. I would also wager that no one outside of real animation aficionados has any idea who he is.

Born January 2, 1898 in New York, New York, Dick was a student at P.S. 158 in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, he attended the National Academy of Design and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, both in New York City. His first job in animation was at Raoul Barre's Studio in 1916. Seven years later, he'd moved over to the Max Fleischer Studio as an animation director where he also helped develop the character of Koko the Clown. By 1930, Dick had moved to Hollywood and taken a position at the Charles Mintz Studio, pumping out Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. Three years later, Dick joined Oswald's original studio, Disney, and stayed there for the next four decades.

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In his early years with Disney, Dick worked as an animator on Silly Symphonies like The Tortoise and the Hare and Mickey Mouse shorts like Lonesome Ghosts. Fellow animator Ward Kimball said his favorite piece of Dick's animation was Donald Duck in The Band Concert. Dick then directed a few shorts including 1938's The Whalers and 1939's Goofy and Wilbur. He moved on as a story director for features starting with Fantasia. Kimball, only partially tongue in cheek, credits Dick with introducing Walt to music that wasn't Sousa marches and therefore giving Fantasia some quiet, sophisticated moments it might not have had otherwise.

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Dick's writing skills came in handy on several of the features the studio produced during the Forties and early Fifties. The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, Peter and the Wolf, and Alice in Wonderland all benefited from his talents. The technique he employed while co-writing Dumbo may have been instrumental in getting the picture made. Instead of submitting a completed storyboard like typically happened, Dick and his writing partner, Joe Grant, kept giving Walt storyboard chapters that usually ended in a cliff hanger. Walt enjoyed them so much, his enthusiasm for the project just kept growing.

In 1948, Dick left the Disney company to draw a comic strip called The Adventures of Buck O'Rue and create animated commercials for the new medium of television. After three years of freelancing, he returned to Disney to elevate the studios television projects and help with its burgeoning publishing division. Dick's creation of a number of episodes breaking down and explaining the animation process for the Disneyland series rank among the finest work he ever did. He also adapted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Tru-Life Adventure movies into books (or into a new book version in 20K's case). He began writing a Tru-Life comic strip in 1955 and continued it until he retired in 1973.

In 1978, Dick received the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement at that year's Annie Awards. A year later, the man who was there for the birth of animation, suffered through the medium's growing pains and helped shape it into what we all know and love today, passed away at the age of 81. In 2007, Dick was made an official Disney Legend.

September 29 - Charles Wolcott

On this day, in 1906, composer Charles Wolcott was born in Flint, Michigan. By 1927, Charles was part of the growing Big Band scene, arranging music for and playing piano with folks like Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Whiteman. He also worked with radio stars like Rudy Vallee, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

In 1937, Charles started working at the Walt Disney Studio writing scores for the shorts department. He soon moved up to feature films. His credits include Bambi, Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Song of the South, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free. By 1944, Charles had become General Music Director for Disney and had a hit single, his orchestra's recording of the Brazilian choro song "Tico Tico no Fuba."

In 1950, Charles left Disney to become an Associate General Music Director for MGM. At his new studio, Charles gets credit for bringing rock and roll to the big screen. While scoring the 1955's The Blackboard Jungle, he convinced the producers to use "Rock Around the Clock" in the film. The sky didn't fall and, as they say, rock was then here to stay. By 1958, Charles had become General Music Director for MGM. In 1960, he would release another hit single, "Ruby Duby Du," and leave the world of music behind.

Charles was a practitioner of the Baha'i Faith. In 1953, he had been elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. In 1960, Charles was made secretary of that body and resigned his position at MGM. Just one year later, he was elected to the International Baha'i Council and moved to Haifa, Israel. When the Council turned into the Universal House of Justice (think of it kind of like the Baha'i Supreme Court) in 1963, Charles became one of the first nine members. He would hold that position until his death in 1987.