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.That agreement was astriking advance over the Columbia deal, since it provided for an advance oneach cartoon of fifteen thousand dollars.It took a year and half for the Dis-neys to work oª their obligations to Columbia, however, and the first car-toons under the new agreement with UA did not appear until mid-1932.Earlythat year, the Disneys and UA began gingerly to explore the idea of makingone or more of the Silly Symphonies in Technicolor.The idea originated withWalt Disney, but it was Roy Disney who exchanged letters with Al Licht-man, UA s vice president and general manager for distribution, at its NewYork headquarters.Moving to Technicolor was not to be undertaken lightly;earlier color films had neither looked good nor been accepted by audiences,and the additional cost for prints (twelve thousand dollars for two hundredprints, Lichtman said) would be substantial.Success might even be a biggerheadache than failure, Lichtman suggested: if the exhibitors wanted color inall future Silly Symphonies, could we get enough additional money [fromthe exhibitors] to pay for the extra cost of colored prints? 84The Technicolor company itself was behind him, Walt Disney said in 1956,because they were not quite far enough along with the color process to gointo heavy production with any big live-action theatrical feature.A cartoonwas ideal for their experimentation. The cartoon Disney had in mind forTechnicolor treatment was called Flowers and Trees.He had completed it inblack and white by early June 1932, when Lichtman told Roy that it was oneof the nicest Symphonies I have ever seen, so nice that UA was going to re-lease it as its first Silly Symphony.85 Roy asked him to hold oª until the colorversion was completed a version no doubt made with the same inked cels,but with the black-and-white paint washed oª their backs.The color version of Flowers and Trees a fantasy in which two young treesare lovers menaced by a jealous stump premiered on July 18, 1932, at Grau-man s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, accompanying MGM s pretentious fea-ture Strange Interlude.It was a huge success, and when Lichtman wrote toRoy a few days later he joined in the applause but worried aloud about whetherthe Disneys should be sinking their money into such expensive films in thebui ldi ng a better mous e, 1 928 1 93 3 89 midst of a depression.Roy was clearly elated by the cartoon s reception, andhe wrote in reply: I realize that Walt and I do not run our business on astrictly business basis, but honestly we have more concern over re-intrenching[sic] ourselves during these difficult times by making our product as desir-able to the exhibitor as we possibly can, feeling that if we can only ride outthese present times we are really doing well in the final analysis.Then whenbetter times do return, we will still be in the front and be able to take careof the old family sock. 86 Roy, as much as Walt, wanted to go into color,and he was working hard to justify such a move, to himself as well as Licht-man.By November 1932, there was no longer any doubt it would be wrong,Roy wrote to Lichtman, to do other than make all the Silly Symphonies inTechnicolor.87At first, when the Disney studio began making color cartoons, colors wereset more in the story department than by the directors or layout men, but inthis area, as in most others, the decisions were really being made by Walt Dis-ney.Wilfred Jackson was a director then. By the time I would talk to [Emil]Flohri [the principal background painter] about the backgrounds, Walt hadbeen there, Jackson said. Flohri was telling me what he was going to do inthe way of coloring, I wasn t telling him. 88In the early 1930s, Disney was still close to the people who worked forhim, literally so in some cases.He lived just a few blocks from the HyperionAvenue studio and across the street from Don Patterson an assistant ani-mator at the studio (and formerly an animator for Charles Mintz).89 But withthe studio more prosperous thanks to the UA release, Disney was ready tomove again.In the spring and summer of 1932, Walt and Lillian Disney built their sec-ond new home, this one a twelve-room house described as Norman-French in style, at 4053 Woking Way in the Los Feliz Hills.90 Like the Lyric Avenuehouse, it was on a winding street not far from the studio, but the new neigh-borhood, north of Los Feliz Boulevard, was, like the house itself, consider-ably grander than its predecessor.Roy Disney marveled in 1968 at the au-dacity of the construction: He hung this swimming pool up on the cornerof this darn thing.It s a granite hill and we were taking bets to see if it wouldstand.It s thirty-five years and it s still there. 91(Even in 1964, Disney was a little defensive about just how grand the housewas. Everybody gets mad at the rich for owning these big places, he toldthe Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, but they forget how many jobsit creates.It takes a lot of people to run a big estate.I built a house in LosFeliz during the Depression.Men used to line up there in the morning hop-90 you' ve got to really be mi nni e ing to get work.I found a graduate of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts andhad him paint my whole ceiling. )92By mid-1932, the enthusiastic, cheerleading voice in Disney s 1928 lettersfrom New York was being heard in the story outlines for new cartoons thatwere distributed throughout the studio with a request for help with gags.Theoutlines typically begin with a summary of the story running as long asfour pages that was probably dictated by a member of the story crew, fol-lowed by notes that sound like Disney himself, right down to the profanity,as in the outline for Mickey s Mechanical Man ( This could lead to a helluvalot of gags and a new type of Mickey ).93In an outline distributed in July 1932, Disney scoªed at the doubters whosaid a Mickey Mouse cartoon called Building a Building could never be made: Production has been started on it twice before, and it was side-tracked bothtimes because it was thought to contain too much detail.I cannot agree withthis.I believe it can be handled in a simplified manner and turn out to be veryeªective.So let s go after it with a vengeance and make something verygood out of it. 94 There was a disingenuous side to Disney s cheerleadingwho else but Disney himself could have side-tracked a cartoon because itwas thought to contain too much detail ? but his enthusiasm was genuine.In his addenda, Disney always adopted a positive, can-do tone.In August1932, he touted the possibilities of Mickey s Good Deed, a Christmas cartoonto be released at the end of 1932: Here is a story that has everything neces-sary to make it a wow [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] |
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