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Documentary, Walt Disney, Episode 1 of 2, BBC Documentary 2016
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00:00Hey, Poodle! Here she comes!
00:05Hey, Poodle! Here she comes!
00:21Walt Disney was as driven a man as I've ever met in my life.
00:26What he really wanted to do was, as we used to say in the Middle West,
00:35make a name for himself.
00:37Walt Disney was an international celebrity by the time he was 30.
00:43Hailed a genius before he was 40.
00:48He built a media and entertainment company
00:54that stands as one of the most powerful on the planet.
00:58Won more Academy Awards than anybody in history.
01:03Created a cinematic art form and invented a new kind of American vacation destination.
01:11Walt loved attention.
01:13He was an extrovert.
01:15He loved to be the center of attention.
01:19He wants to be an artist.
01:21And I think he discovered something early on.
01:24That talent was his way of getting attention.
01:28He's a man of the times.
01:31And the times are exciting.
01:40Kansas City, 1919.
01:46Walt Disney had just returned from France after the First World War.
01:52Not quite 18, he already stood out from the other working class boys returning from the front.
02:05He landed a job as a commercial artist for a local ad company.
02:11Walt had been an enthusiastic artist from the time he was little,
02:15and he was determined to do work he loved.
02:18But Walt lived for the evenings.
02:21Movie houses were springing up all over town.
02:24And he soon became a regular visitor.
02:27Taking in at least one feature film.
02:30A newsreel.
02:33And an animated cartoon or two.
02:36It was an exciting and very dynamic medium.
02:44The industry was very young.
02:47There was no regulations or no customs or no conformity.
02:51It was wide open to what people wanted to make of it.
02:55Disney was captivated.
02:58His only formal training was a few months at art schools in Chicago and Kansas City.
03:05But he was convinced he could make better than what he was seeing.
03:11He took out Edward Muybridge's Human Figures in Motion from the public library.
03:18Then he borrowed a volume that laid out the basics of animation in filmmaking.
03:24Disney read about roughing out a storyline, creating characters,
03:28and carefully drawing each individual frame onto white linen paper.
03:34By mounting each frame on pegs, just as the book instructed,
03:38and shooting them one at a time, he began to create the illusion of movement.
03:43He was really into modern culture.
03:48The pleasure of somehow engaging with the potential of cinema,
03:53the potential of animation, was exciting to him.
03:56And he had this little ability to draw.
03:59He had a knack.
04:05Disney's first efforts were short cartoons he made at night and on weekends,
04:10using a film camera he borrowed from his boss at work.
04:15I gagged him up to beat hell, he would say, and then sold them to a small Kansas City-based theatre chain.
04:31The fees didn't even cover his costs.
04:34But Disney gained something more important than money.
04:38Attention.
04:39Excitement.
04:40A whiff of destiny.
04:42At age 20, Disney quit his day job and started a company.
04:55Laugh-O-Grams Inc.
04:57Walter Elias Disney, President.
05:01He hired a salesman, a business manager, and four young apprentice animators.
05:17Disney and his Laugh-O-Grams crew secured a contract for six animated fairytale shorts.
05:24But when they delivered the work, the distributor wouldn't pay up.
05:29Walt could no longer pay the wages or the rent on his office.
05:33The phone bill, the electricity bill.
05:38Creditors began circling.
05:43Walt needed to make money, and fast.
05:47Taking advantage of a new technique used by his rival, Max Fleischer,
05:52his big new idea was to insert footage of a real girl into animated scenes.
05:58Alice in Cartoonland, he claimed, was bound to be a winner.
06:04Walt was able to scrape together just enough cash to complete Alice.
06:09He finished his cartoon experiment with little help.
06:13While sleeping at the office, bathing at the train station,
06:16subsisting on canned beans and the charity of a Greek diner.
06:21But by the time the cartoon short was finished in the summer of 1923,
06:27it was too late.
06:29His company was headed into bankruptcy.
06:32Alice in Cartoonland would not save Laugh-O-Grams Inc.
06:36Walt Disney had suffered his first real failure.
06:44He packed his cardboard suitcase with two spare shirts
06:47and what was left of his drawing supplies.
06:49Then headed for Union Station, where he treated himself to a first-class ticket
06:55on the Santa Fe California Limited, straight through to Los Angeles.
07:00Hollywood in the 1920s is a beacon of the future.
07:15That's where the action is at.
07:18And I think Disney senses that, and that's where he wants to be.
07:21He's not thinking about animation now.
07:25He's already failed with animation.
07:27So the next step is, I'm going to go out here and I'm going to become a movie director.
07:31That's what I'm going to do.
07:36The wannabe movie man walked past Charlie Chaplin's studio along La Bray Avenue,
07:42rode the trolley to Culver City to see the set used in Ben-Hur,
07:47and talked his way onto the Universal lot,
07:52where he wandered around late into the night.
07:58But after weeks of effort,
08:00Walt had not been able to talk his way into a job.
08:08His older brother, Roy, had little patience for Walt's insistence
08:12on finding a place in the movie business.
08:14He had sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door when he first got to town,
08:20and he admonished his brother to find a similar job.
08:24One that paid.
08:29Walt was considering this advice when a cartoon distributor from New York got in touch.
08:35Margaret Winkler, the only woman in the business,
08:39had remembered Walt's Alice in Cartoonland pitch,
08:43and wanted to see how the young animator's big idea had turned out.
08:46Soon after Disney shipped his Alice reel to Winkler's office in New York,
08:52the distributor wired back an offer.
08:55She wanted Walt to make 12 Alice shorts and was willing to pay $1500 per episode.
09:04When he gets that telegram, the first thing he does is, he goes to visit his brother, Roy.
09:05And Walt is waving this telegram, saying,
09:09Look, we've got a chance here.
09:10Look, we've got a chance here.
09:11His brother is not enthusiastic.
09:12His brother has no entertainment ambitions whatsoever.
09:15His brother is the pragmatist.
09:16But Walt says, you know, we can do this.
09:17Walt says, We can do this.
09:18I need you for this.
09:19You and your dinheiro, and it's worth it.
09:20telegram the first thing he does is he goes to visit his brother Roy and Walt is waving this
09:26telegram saying look we've got a chance here his brother is not enthusiastic his brother has no
09:35entertainment ambitions whatsoever his brother is the pragmatist but Walt says you know we can do
09:43this I need you for this the two brothers scraped up a little cash from friends and relatives and
09:51set up a two-man operation in the back of a real estate office Walt was the artist and idea man
09:58Roy was the fundraiser the bookkeeper and all-round utility man but Walt recognized that he needed the
10:06kind of help Roy could not provide so he convinced an old friend and collaborator up I works to relocate
10:14from Kansas City to Los Angeles I works is incredible and can work fast so it's an early sign that Disney
10:21always wants to work with the very best and isn't afraid of working with someone who's better than
10:26he is at many things I works began restyling the Alice's Wonderland shorts as soon as he arrived
10:36creating films with less emphasis on the girl and more on the cartoon characters the Disney's
10:43distributor loved the new look they wanted more and faster and were willing to pay good money to get
10:49them Walt recruited more of his old gang from Missouri then hired some locals and the number of
10:57employees at the Disney studio swelled to a dozen the brothers enjoyed their early success and expected it to
11:08continue Roy bought an unassuming new sedan Walt a flash moon Roadster they purchased adjoining plots and
11:18built new houses next door to each other in 1925 Walt married Lillian an Inca working at the Disney
11:32Brothers studio he just had no inhibitions Lillian said of Walt he was completely natural he
11:48was fun
11:55by the beginning of 1926 the Disney Brothers studio was churning out a new Alice short every 16 days and
12:09Walt and Roy were ready to take on a more spacious studio building in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles
12:15movies when they moved from the Disney Brothers studio to the Hyperion Avenue facility a very striking
12:22and a very revealing thing happens Walt goes to Roy and he says I've made a decision and that decision
12:30is from hence this will be called the Walt Disney studio not the Disney Brothers studio Walt Disney believed that it was his vision of creativity and entertainment that was the engine of this enterprise and that's what was being sold
12:49by the end of 1926 Disney had become obsessed with his rivals in the cartoon industry he knew his Alice pictures were running out of steam he spent much of his free time in dark and
13:08he was taking aim at the industry's gold standard sullivan's Felix the cat
13:15if you look at animation at that period it's extremely crude it's really violent it's really gag driven and it's very urban
13:22these are older men making kind of crude hard animation and Disney steps in as this young guy and he's like okay well I see what you're doing I'll try this out and then I'll figure out my own voice and my other influence and I'll figure out my voice and my other influence and I'm still
13:41crude, hard animation.
13:43And Disney steps in as this young guy, and he's like,
13:46OK, well, I see what you're doing, I'll try this out,
13:49and then I'll figure out my own voice
13:51and my other influences around me to transform it.
13:55The key to challenging the supremacy of Felix the cat,
13:59Walt believed, was creating his own compelling and likable character.
14:04Disney's distributor suggested he try a rabbit.
14:08Too many cats on the market.
14:11Our bi-works took charge of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's look,
14:17while Disney wrote the storylines and the gags.
14:30The bosses at Universal Pictures were so taken
14:33with the first sketches of Oswald,
14:36they offered a contract for 26 episodes.
14:38Walt Disney Studios seemed to be riding high.
14:46But by the time the team put the finishing touches
14:49on the first order of Oswald shorts,
14:52the animators were increasingly frustrated with their boss.
14:55The old Kansas City hands,
14:58who had helped Disney get started in the business,
15:01were working into the night and through the weekends,
15:03whilst Walt was taking much of the money and most of the credit.
15:08I think the two sides of Disney emerged.
15:12You have, on the one hand, Walt the inspirer.
15:16The other side of Disney was Disney the driver,
15:20who demanded work, who demanded creativity,
15:23demanded productivity.
15:25And if people didn't meet his standards,
15:29he could come down on you like a ton of bricks.
15:33By this time, his distributor, Margaret Winkler,
15:37had married the businessman Charles Mintz.
15:42Mintz saw an opportunity.
15:43They owned the rights to Oswald, not the Disney brothers.
15:49Ub Iwerks comes to Walt Disney and says,
15:52Walt, I've been approached by Charles Mintz
15:54to essentially leave you and to go to work for Mintz.
15:58And I'm not the only one.
16:00All of the animators have.
16:02But they haven't told you.
16:04Disney doesn't believe it.
16:05He just sort of poo-poos the whole thing
16:08and doesn't really believe Ub Iwerks,
16:10who says, you know, there's a problem brewing here.
16:12Walt went to New York in February of 1928
16:20with big hopes for a new contract from Mintz.
16:24But it only took a few days for Disney to realise
16:27that Iwerks had been right.
16:30Mintz had already poached almost all of Disney's artists,
16:34except for Ub.
16:36And the distributor told Walt
16:38he was going to go on making the Oswald cartoons without him.
16:42When Disney boarded the train for the trip back to Los Angeles,
16:49he was despondent.
16:51Almost all of his team had abandoned him.
16:55He had no distributor,
16:57no Oswald,
16:58and very little money in the bank.
17:00When Walt arrived at Union Station in Los Angeles,
17:18Ub Iwerks detected none of his friend's trademark good cheer and enthusiasm.
17:23He looked like he'd just run into a stone wall, Ub would say.
17:30But Walt was not in the mood to give up.
17:33Walt steps up.
17:34Boom.
17:35You think Oswald was good?
17:37I can do much better than that.
17:39I'll show you what I'm capable of doing.
17:41Disney held daily brainstorming sessions with Roy and Ub
17:45and a few other loyalists who had not signed with Mintz.
17:50Intent on dreaming up a bankable new character
17:53and one they would own,
17:55Disney's skeleton team scoured popular magazines for inspiration,
17:59bounced ideas off one another,
18:01and drew figures on their sketch pads
18:03until something began to emerge.
18:08Pear-shaped body,
18:09ball on top,
18:11a couple of thin legs,
18:12Iwerks later explained.
18:15You gave it long ears,
18:16and it was a rabbit.
18:17Short ears,
18:18it was a cat.
18:20With an elongated nose,
18:22it became a mouse.
18:25Walt suggested they name him Mortimer.
18:28His wife, Lillian,
18:30thought that was terrible
18:31and came up with Mickey.
18:34As with Oswald,
18:35Ub took charge of the mouse's look.
18:38Walt gave him his personality.
18:41He doesn't have the financial backing
18:42to support what it is he's doing.
18:44He wants to be a bigger voice than he is.
18:47And it's a perfect metaphor,
18:49him being this small mouse,
18:52this seemingly insignificant figure or individual
18:55within this big industry that he wants to break into.
18:59Disney was unable to find a distributor
19:01willing to take a chance on his new mouse.
19:04But Walt refused to give up.
19:08At a meeting with Roy one day,
19:10as the tiny staff worked up a third
19:12and still unsold Mickey Mouse cartoon,
19:16Walt suddenly blurted out,
19:17Walt will make them over with sound.
19:21How can I do something better with animation
19:24than what everybody else is doing?
19:26He's always the person looking for new technology.
19:28He's always the person trying to find
19:30the newest invention to make animation better.
19:34Just as with Alice's Wonderland,
19:37Max Fleischer had invented the technique.
19:39But it was Walt who would make it work.
19:43At the time, producing a soundtrack in sync with
19:47and music that makes sense with the action on screen
19:51is very difficult.
19:53This was a very precise and intricate process
19:56that Disney had to think through.
19:58Disney saw no good option than to take the chance.
20:04He headed back to New York
20:05and signed a quick deal with a licensor
20:08of one of the most advanced sound systems in town.
20:13Walt didn't have enough money in the bank
20:15to pay for the recording sessions,
20:17so he wired Roy to do whatever he had to
20:20to get the cash.
20:22He told his brother to sell his beloved Moon Roadster
20:26if needed.
20:29Stuck in New York to oversee the sound work,
20:32Walt trawled desperately for a distributor.
20:35He carried his reels from one office to another
20:38for three long months and came up empty.
20:43He did manage to secure a two-week run
20:45at the Colony Theatre at Broadway and 53rd Street.
20:49Steamboat Willie premiered on November the 18th, 1928.
21:00The audience at the Colony Theatre was enthralled.
21:25People had heard sound in pictures before,
21:27but never like this.
21:35It knocked me out of my seat,
21:38one New York reporter wrote.
21:44Some audiences begged the projectionist
21:47to delay the start of the feature
21:49and rerun Steamboat Willie.
21:59Steamboat Willie was such a huge hit,
22:01and it gave Disney Studio
22:02a really sort of a preeminence,
22:05where suddenly this company is now
22:07like taking a step to the front ranks.
22:10This upstart from the West Coast
22:12just erupts in the middle of everybody
22:15with this amazing character.
22:20Mickey was a multi-talented charmer,
22:23a dancer, a comedian, a singer.
22:26And within months, never mind he was just a cartoon,
22:30Mickey Mouse was the newest Hollywood celebrity.
22:33Fan mail for Mickey Mouse poured into the studio
22:41on Hyperion Avenue
22:43with postmarks from across the world,
22:46from England, Spain, the Philippines.
22:49Some were addressed to Mickey,
22:51some to Walt.
22:58Mickey is understood as being the creation of Disney,
23:02and Disney is understood
23:03as being the father of Mickey,
23:05and combined,
23:07that makes for a kind of international stardom
23:10that we really hadn't seen before.
23:26Walt Disney always talked about Mickey Mouse
23:28as being his alter ego.
23:29He would say that, you know,
23:32I'm closer to Mickey Mouse
23:33than I am to anyone else.
23:37Hey, Poodle!
23:38Here she comes!
23:39Mickey and Walt,
23:40they're talking to each other.
23:41Hey, Poodle!
23:42Here she comes!
23:43So he's got to do Mickey's voice.
23:45Someone's got to do it.
23:46So, of course, Walt does it
23:47because it's him talking to himself.
23:49Walt Disney was not yet 30,
23:56and he had made himself
23:57the first celebrity of animation.
24:01A film cartoonist the public could name.
24:06His studio stood atop the industry
24:08and was growing to meet the demand
24:11for new cartoons.
24:12The success of Mickey
24:16attracted some of the best talent to Hyperion,
24:19but Disney insisted on having the final word
24:22on every foot of finished film
24:24that came out of his studio.
24:25He spent long hours at the office,
24:31often until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning.
24:37He was anxious and obsessive,
24:40chain-smoking day and night,
24:43drumming his thumbs impatiently
24:44on the table in story meetings.
24:47His role was changing in the studio.
24:49He was leaving behind the things
24:51that were so familiar to him,
24:52working with his hands,
24:53being an active participant in the work.
24:55becoming more and more a man
24:57who was the intellectual overseer,
25:00evaluating, criticising, editing.
25:04And as he stepped back
25:05from this more active participation,
25:07he initially was, I think,
25:09very distressed by it,
25:10felt uncomfortable doing it.
25:20Outside of work,
25:21Walter talked of having
25:22a big family of his own for years.
25:25He wanted 10 children,
25:27he told his sister,
25:28and would spoil them all.
25:31His wife, Lillian,
25:32had her doubts about raising
25:34any number of children,
25:36especially when she considered
25:37the office hours Walt kept.
25:43Roy's wife, Edna,
25:44had had her first child already.
25:46Walt was ecstatic and made plans for a bigger house
25:59to accommodate the new addition.
26:01Then Lillian miscarried.
26:07Disney waved off the well-wishers and sympathisers.
26:10He threw himself back into his work.
26:14He insisted he was fine.
26:17He was not.
26:19In 1931, I had a hell of a breakdown.
26:24I went all to pieces.
26:28It was just pound, pound, pound.
26:30It was costs.
26:30My costs were going up.
26:32I was always way over whatever
26:34they figured the pictures would bring me in.
26:37And I cracked up.
26:40I just got very irritable.
26:42I got to a point that I couldn't talk
26:45and the telephone, I'd begin to cry.
26:49And the least little thing,
26:51I'd just go that way.
27:00In October 1931,
27:03Walt Disney took his doctor's advice
27:05and escaped on the first real vacation of his life.
27:08He and Lillian went across the country
27:14to Washington, D.C.,
27:16then to Key West
27:17and on to a week's stay in Cuba.
27:20They took a steamship through the Panama Canal
27:23on the way back to Los Angeles.
27:27Once home, Disney told people
27:29that the breakdown had been a godsend.
27:32Life was sweet, he said,
27:35and there was more to it than work.
27:37He threw himself into a new exercise regime.
27:42He went with Lillian on long horseback rides,
27:45learned to play polo,
27:49and joined a league.
27:51Walt comes back from his nervous breakdown,
27:54and he does change his lifestyle,
27:56but does Walt Disney withdraw?
27:59Does he delegate?
28:01Does he do the things
28:02that one might have expected him to do?
28:03No, he does not.
28:07Disney had never shied away
28:24from spending money on his vision,
28:26even when the studio was cash poor.
28:29He had already used up his earliest Mickey profits
28:33in the creation of a new series of cartoon shorts
28:37called Silly Symphonies.
28:39It marked a turning point.
28:42Walt aspired to make not just cartoons,
28:45but art.
28:46The Silly Symphonies were much more about animation as art.
29:01So the skeleton dance and others like them
29:07were understood as these wonderful,
29:10almost avant-garde films
29:11that merged music and dance
29:15and made characters out of nature
29:18and also other kinds of inanimate things
29:21in ways that people hadn't really seen before.
29:41men ruled the studio,
30:09as they did all studios in the 1930s.
30:13The women who came to work at Disney
30:15were relegated to the low-wage ink and paint department.
30:19But in the middle of the Great Depression,
30:22few complained about a steady job with steady pay.
30:26It becomes like the studio to work at,
30:29and all of those animators just thrive
30:31because Disney sets it up as a legitimate profession.
30:35Here, I step in, I will recognize your talent,
30:38I will pay you well.
30:39It was like a renaissance to us.
30:41It was the flowering of the animation industry.
30:45It had never been done before.
30:46It was just fine art, you know, not just dumb cartoons.
30:56Disney's new series was the test ground for innovation,
31:00with firsts in sound technique,
31:02color and multi-plane camera technology,
31:05which produced a three-dimensional depth
31:07never seen before in animation.
31:09Walt intended the studio to be the place
31:18where you created great art.
31:22That was so instrumental to Walt's understanding of the studio.
31:36And that became, in many ways,
31:41the most powerful element in how he dealt with his workers.
31:46They wanted to produce great things.
31:59He made them want to produce great things.
32:02He was very jovial.
32:09He was very informal.
32:15He's the one who first insisted on only being referred to by his first name.
32:19The boss, he wasn't a boss.
32:23He was a friend.
32:25And everybody called him Walt.
32:28If they didn't call him Walt, that was the end of that one.
32:31Walt used to play volleyball at noon over there across the street in the annex.
32:38And Walt used to come over there and watch us, you know.
32:42He used to say, don't play too rough.
32:44He said, here.
32:45And he wanted us to be careful, not hurt our hands,
32:47our drawing hand particularly.
32:49And we'd love to win because they need applaud.
32:51But he was the big daddy there.
32:54He didn't miss anything, you know.
32:57Disney offered drawing classes at the studio
33:00and brought in professors from the Shwinar Art Institute to teach them.
33:05He invited experts to lecture on impressionism, expressionism,
33:10cubism, the Mexican muralists.
33:14He was always very much about not only hiring the artist,
33:17but providing a safe place for them to do their job.
33:19And by safe, I mean a place to make mistakes
33:22and a place to fail and a place to take criticism
33:25without the fear of being fired
33:27and a place to be able to learn.
33:40He wanted a family, a community, a place.
33:44I can actually create a little world
33:48bordered, mine, just what I needed to be.
33:54Inhabited by all these people.
33:56A community marked Disney.
34:02Walt Disney, not yet 35,
34:05appeared to be on top of the world.
34:08His studio was a technicolor rainbow
34:10in the middle of the pale, grey, depression-era America.
34:18His home life was thriving, too.
34:20Lillian had given birth to a daughter, Diane,
34:24and the Disneys would soon adopt a second daughter, Sharon.
34:27But Disney wasn't satisfied.
34:33He needed a new adventure, he would say,
34:35a kick in the pants to jar loose some inspiration and enthusiasm.
34:40One evening in 1934, Walt sent his entire staff out for an early dinner,
34:53but told them to hurry back to the Hyperion soundstage
34:56for an important company meeting.
35:00The room was buzzing by the time Walt took the stage.
35:03Disney is lit on the soundstage.
35:10And he then proceeds to act out, alone, just him,
35:15a one-man show, the story of Snow White.
35:20What he did was to go through the whole movie as he saw it,
35:24acting out all of the parts, impersonating all of the characters,
35:29going through all the emotions, all the ups and downs,
35:31the queen, the princess, the seven dwarves, even the animals.
35:38What Disney was proposing had never been done,
35:42never even been tried.
35:45A feature-length, story-driven cartoon.
35:51Snow White would have to captivate its audience
35:54in a way no cartoon ever had before.
36:01In the shorter cartoons, you can make people laugh.
36:06And the gag is the basic component of these things.
36:09You get people to laugh.
36:12But Walt Disney now is asking another question.
36:15Can you make people cry?
36:18Can you make people cry over a drawing?
36:21One key, Disney believed,
36:25was to infuse his animated film with a natural realism.
36:31He brought live animals into the studio
36:33so his artists could study their movement.
36:37He had his animators throw heavy objects
36:40through plate-glass windows
36:42just to analyse the shattering effects.
36:44Disney hired a teenage dancer
36:51to act the part of Snow White
36:53so his animators could study how she looked
36:56when she leaned over or laughed or smiled
37:00so they could see the movement of her dress as she danced.
37:04They would bring in actors
37:12and they would have them impersonate these characters
37:15in front of the animators
37:17who would try to capture certain qualities of their movements.
37:23They would even film them
37:25to try to get a sense of personality,
37:27of movement, of realism.
37:28What he was after was something different.
37:38Making thought and emotion visible
37:42in a way that seems natural and not artificial.
37:53Disney really kind of took the art of animation
37:55and pushed it towards the animator as an actor
37:58and about performance.
38:00He wanted his animators to take acting classes
38:03studying their facial muscles,
38:05how you say certain words, you know,
38:07how is your lips shaped when you say V
38:10or how is it like O or OO, you know,
38:13how does it affect your eyes?
38:18Walt's stubborn insistence on getting the story right,
38:22on innovation and on attention to detail,
38:26meant the pace of production at Hyperion
38:28was glacial.
38:30To draw each of these characters,
38:34to draw these backgrounds,
38:36to do it in a way that transcends anything
38:38that it had done before,
38:40is excruciating.
38:43It's painful.
38:44It's tormenting.
38:46We were the crew that did most of the Snow White drawings.
38:55And we'd sometimes take a whole day for a close-up of Snow White.
38:58That's how intricate the drawing was.
39:01It was so precise.
39:03It was like making watches, you know.
39:05It was just such fine detail.
39:07You know, one little line to throw the whole thing off.
39:09The production process did not change.
39:13The production process did not change.
39:15Key animators would draw the main characters in Snow White.
39:17In-betweeners would draw the movements between the key frames.
39:28The ink and paint artists would add colour to the drawings,
39:32and transfer them to the transparent sheets or cells to go to camera.
39:38At 24 frames per second,
39:41and often multiple cells per frame,
39:43Snow White would require more than 200,000 separate drawings.
39:49Making the film required an army of people.
39:52And I'm not sure that Disney thought of all of them as talent.
39:56There are real workers here who are doing the grunt work.
40:06As the production dragged into its second, and then its third year,
40:11Walt's demands began to look dangerous.
40:14He repeatedly pushed deadlines,
40:17and by the start of 1937,
40:19with the premiere set for that December,
40:22the studio was behind.
40:24Way behind.
40:26Ten months to the premiere date,
40:30and not a single animation cell had been shot on film.
40:35With little regard for the consequences,
40:38Walt insisted that Snow White could not be rushed,
40:41and could not be done on the cheap.
40:49Walt kept upping the ante,
40:52which meant Roy had to raise Walt's original budget number
40:55six times over.
41:02The trade papers were beginning to write stories about the delays.
41:06People were calling Snow White Disney's folly.
41:09I was working the 12-hour deal where you come in at eight and go home at eight.
41:22And we really were cleaning cells and patching cells and fixing mistakes and things like that.
41:29There were a lot.
41:30And the queen, the queen was, she had the kind of paint that was kind of sticky.
41:38And so those things would come back from camera.
41:42And we'd have to clean them up and patch them and send them back to camera.
41:47I worked my tail off.
41:52I was put in charge of the cleanup and in-between.
41:56That's where it was lagging.
41:59We went in at seven instead of eight.
42:01And we went to dinner and we came back and usually worked to almost ten.
42:08The ink and paint gals were, you know, some of them were losing their eyesight and it was a hell of a thing.
42:18They were just slaves.
42:19They were doing it.
42:20But they believed in this thing so much they were going to drop dead on the job.
42:24The animators finished in early November.
42:27But the last cells weren't painted until November the 27th.
42:33Rumors were flying around Hollywood that there would be no print of the film ready for the December 21st premiere.
42:41But he would confound them all.
42:47Glace Hollywood, accustomed to gala openings, turns out for the most spectacular of them all.
42:54The world premiere of the million and a half dollar fairy tale fantasy, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
43:00Replicas from the first feature cartoon thrill thousands who turn out for a glimpse of lovely Marlene Dietrich with Doug Fairbanks Jr. and a parade of stars.
43:11Shirley Temple is just as enthralled as are the grown-up stars and moviegoers with the Seven Fantastic Dwarfs.
43:19Walt was in a state of high anxiety.
43:20He had no idea how the audience was going to respond.
43:26He didn't know if it would really work.
43:30And one part of him was almost agonizing over, well, if people don't buy this, this will just fall flat and then I will be done.
43:39Audience members gasped at the opening shots of the Queen's Castle.
43:54Slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space.
44:08Through wind and darkness I summon thee.
44:12Speak!
44:16They howled with laughter at the dwarf Santex.
44:19Sue!
44:25Sue!
44:41Just a minute!
44:46the heart of a pig and i've been tricked
44:52they hissed disapproval at the evil queen
44:59and still walt was anxious don't let the wish grow cold
45:07oh i feel strange he sat gripping lillian's hand for nearly
45:1575 minutes nervously anticipating the scene that would put the power of his
45:21personal vision to the ultimate test
45:23when it arrived
45:44the apparent death of snow white the theater was hushed
45:51the audience started weeping
45:58and that's when walt knew that's when they all knew
46:11the audience had suspended its disbelief so thoroughly so believed in the reality of the situation
46:24that was really the triumph of the film
46:31really the triumph of the film
46:38when the curtain came down the audience rose from their seats and broke into a thunderous ovation
46:54i could not help but feel one rival movie producer gushed that i was in the midst of motion picture history
47:11now a celebrity from london to new york disney had finally achieved everything he had dreamt of
47:26but at home he was still just plain dad
47:41walt made a point to drive his two young daughters to school every day
47:48chase them around their house cackling like the wicked witch
47:54and read them bedtime stories
47:56there's no question he adored them absolutely adored them
48:01he was a man who had a lively sense of play that he'd never lost from the time he was a child
48:09he was very domestic very nurturing in a way that usually in that day and age was associated more with mother's role
48:20Lillian was a bit of a aloof a bit reserved a bit cool
48:27even with her children and walt was just the opposite he was overflowing with enthusiasm
48:33i think in a way he was reacting against his own childhood
48:40disney often said i want to spoil my children terribly i just want to spoil them
48:46walt disney had been a player in the movie business for more than 15 years
48:53and a celebrity for nearly 10
48:56but the acclaimed filmmaker still did not think of himself as a hollywood instructor
49:02as a hollywood insider he complained that other major film producers refused to acknowledge animation as serious cinema
49:11and he wasn't wrong
49:13when the academy of motion picture arts and sciences announced the 10 nominees for the best picture of 1938
49:21snow white and the seven dwarfs was not on the list
49:25instead disney was given a special oscar for his pioneering work in feature length cartoons
49:32i'm sure the boys and girls in the whole world are going to be very happy when they find out
49:37the daddy of snow white and the seven dwarfs mickey mouse bird and anne and all the others
49:42is going to get this beautiful statue
49:44isn't it bright and shiny
49:48oh it's beautiful
49:49aren't you proud of it mr disney
49:51why i'm so proud i think i'll bust
49:53stung by hollywood's consolation prize walt determined to push the bar even higher
50:05and create what he hoped would be genuine works of art
50:12walt disney once exploded during a story session
50:14he pounded the table and he said we're not making cartoons here
50:18we're not making cartoons
50:22walt disney had made
50:24this separation
50:26between mickey mouse
50:28and some of the early slowly symphonies
50:30they're cartoons
50:31but now we're not making cartoons
50:35we're making art
50:37his animators were already in the early stages of creating two new characters
50:42a boy puppet and a young deer
50:48but walt was far more interested in an enticing new experiment going on right down the hall
50:55the project had begun as a cartoon short based on a symphony entitled the sorcerer's apprentice
51:17starring mickey mouse with the backing of an orchestra conducted by the celebrated leopold stokowski
51:24this was the opportunity walt was looking for
51:41he decided to expand it into a feature-length film
51:45fantasia
51:47he and stokowski selected eight separate classical symphonies
51:51and walt and his team began thinking about imagery to match
51:58the disney studio was crawling with musicians
52:01dancers
52:02even famous scientists like the astronomer edwin hubble
52:06and composers like igor stravinsky
52:09so these experts are coming and going and there's a ballet company in the next room dancing
52:15and here's hubble talking about theories of deep space and where the cosmos came from
52:20there's a dinosaur expert
52:21and it is this cultural uh... kind of petri dish of people together working and collaborating
52:28creating fantasia and he loves it
52:30he's dealt with realism and realistic emotions
52:37but now he's trying to get to emotion
52:41in a different way circumventing realism
52:45to try and see if you can reach emotion
52:47directly through abstraction
52:49he's saying i want to try what heroes of art do
52:56you know i want the great artists of the time to join in here
53:00you know i want to create art that last centuries
53:04by the time the studio was ready to launch pinocchio in new york city in february of 1940
53:22walt's push for new heights of creativity was paying off
53:27his animators were developing new techniques that once again broke through the boundaries of what was possible
53:46and always let your conscience be your guide
53:49little puppet made of pine
54:00wake
54:02the gift of life is thine
54:06puppet
54:09for the first time in the field of animation
54:12disney proclaimed
54:14audiences will see in pinocchio
54:16underwater effects that look like super special marine photography
54:20can you tell me where we can find monster
54:23gee
54:26they're scared
54:28you really have to stop yourself and say
54:30this was all blank paper
54:32this all began as blank paper
54:34it doesn't exist
54:35you know we believe it's water
54:37and we believe those characters are real
54:39and that's the summit of the animators art
54:41that's the pinnacle of what we call personality animation
54:44which is creating a completely artificial world
54:48that we accept
54:49father
54:51mmm
54:54wonder of you
54:55you will be
54:57Pinocchio has richness and dimensions that other animated cartoons don't have
55:02when you
55:03I mean he's swallowed by a whale for christ's sake
55:07he is in peril
55:22throughout the movie
55:24hey
55:26blopper mouth open up
55:28I gotta get in there
55:29and
55:30at the same time
55:31there's Jiminy Cricket
55:32you know
55:33who's delightful and charming
55:35and takes
55:36some of the sting off of this movie
55:38but that's a pretty dark movie
55:40that's a pretty dark movie
56:01oh what's happened?
56:03I hope I'm not too late
56:05what'll I do?
56:07Pinocchio is just a wooden boy
56:11who is trying to be human
56:13one would think that that means he can make mistakes
56:16that he would be allowed to have the fault of being a boy
56:21prove yourself brave
56:23truthful
56:24and unselfish
56:26and someday you will be a real boy
56:30that's what the goal is
56:32I want to feel my life most fully
56:35and then once I feel my life
56:41I will have a chance to feel
56:43the big truths
56:45the things that give us sustenance
56:48I'm alive, see?
56:50and
56:51and I'm
56:52I'm
56:53I'm
56:55I'm real
56:57I'm a real boy
56:59I'm a real boy
57:00you're alive
57:01and
57:02and you are a real boy
57:03and
57:04and
57:05you are a real boy
57:06and
57:07a real life boy
57:08this card's for a celebration
57:11audiences across the country
57:13walked away from Pinocchio emotionally drained
57:16and enormously satisfied
57:18the critics raved
57:20Walt Disney has created something that will be counted in our favour
57:24in all our favour
57:26when this generation is being appraised by the generations of the future
57:30the New York Times movie critic wrote
57:32well
57:34this is practically where I came in
57:39for it will be said that no generation which produced a Snow White and a Pinocchio
57:44could have been altogether bad
57:46I'm
57:47I'm
57:48I'm
57:49I'm
57:50I'm
57:51I'm
57:52I'm
57:53I'm
57:54I'm
57:55I'm
57:56I'm
57:57I'm
57:58I'm
57:59I'm
58:00I'm
58:01I'm
58:02I'm
58:03I'm
58:04I'm
58:05I'm
58:06I'm
58:07I'm
58:08I'm
58:09I'm
58:10I'm
58:11I'm
58:12I'm
58:13I'm
58:14I'm
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