Fantasia, 1940
The 1940 Walt Disney Studio production of Fantasia has introduced classical music to several generations. The score was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and was narrated by composer Deems Taylor. The music included Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J. S. Bach, orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski; selections from The Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikowsky; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas; The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky; Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 6) by Ludwig van Beethoven, “Dance of the Hours” by Amilcare Ponchielli; and Night On Bald Mountain by Modest Moussorgsky, coupled with “Ave Maria” by Franz Schubert. In addition, Fantasia was the first animated feature to be released with stereophonic sound, dubbed “Fantasound” by the Disney public relations team. Read more about Fantasia, 1940 »
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Krazy Kat, 1922
Cartoonist George Herriman’s popular cartoon Krazy Kat was the inspiration for a collaborative “Jazz Pantomime” which opened at New York’s Town Hall in January 1922. Composer John Alden Carpenter scored the show, and Herriman wrote the scenario and created the scenery and costumes. The published score included many drawings from the production. Krazy Kat was published in many American newspapers between 1913 and 1944. Read more about Krazy Kat, 1922 »
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The Unicorn in the Garden, 1953
James Thurber’s modern fable “The Unicorn in the Garden” first appeared in the New Yorker on October 31, 1939. David Raksin composed a charming score for chamber orchestra and recorder for the 1953 United Productions of America film. The studio elected to recreate Thurber’s original illustration style. The Unicorn in the Garden has sparse dialogue, because Raksin tells the story with the sounds. Raksin’s score calls for a recorder to be the thematic voice for the silent unicorn. Members of the animation field voted The Unicorn in the Garden one of the fifty greatest cartoons of all time. Read more about The Unicorn in the Garden, 1953 »
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The Little Mermaid, 1989
Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Little Mermaid created a whole new generation of Disney animated film enthusiasts. The songs were composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Howard Ashman. Ashman contributed several changes to the original concept by changing Clarence, the English-butler crab character, to a Jamaican Rastafarian crab, Sebastian. The musical score was also revised to reflect this character change. The Little Mermaid won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Original Music Score. One of the original inspirations for the distinctive design was a series of pastels created by Kay Nielson for the “Night On Bald Mountain” animation sequence in Fantasia, found in the Disney archives. Read more about The Little Mermaid, 1989 »
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Beauty and the Beast, 1991
Beauty and the Beast was based on the traditional French fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête” by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Walt Disney had discussed the possible animation of this classic tale in the late 1940s, but could not find a satisfactory way to deal with the tale’s imprisonment sequence. In 1989, producer Don Hahn took the project off the shelf and created one of the Disney Studio’s masterworks. As occurred in the case of several Disney animated productions, Beauty and the Beast was transformed into a highly successful stage adaptation in 1994. Read more about Beauty and the Beast, 1991 »
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Aladdin, 1992
The concept for Aladdin was pitched to Disney’s president Jeffrey Katzenberg by lyricist Howard Ashman. The final score by Alan Menken had lyrics added by Tim Rice after Ashman’s death from AIDS in 1991. Aladdin was the most successful film of 1992, earning of $217 million in the U.S. and $504 million worldwide. Aladdin owes much to Douglas Fairbanks’s 1924 silent film The Thief of Bagdad. Disney animators abandoned realism in favor of surrealism and some of the visuals are considered among the finest in the animated arts. Read more about Aladdin, 1992 »
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