The Disney Song Encyclopedia - fieldi

xiv A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY MUSIC
go unnoticed by Disney, and it is clear that he made very calculated choices
regarding the music in his projects from this point forward.
When Disney began preparing for his first feature-length animated film,
he was chided by many in Hollywood who thought audiences would never
sit and watch a cartoon that was any longer than ten or twelve minutes.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) proved the skeptics wrong, becoming
the top grossing film to date. It would hold that record for one year
until the monumental run of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Gone with the Wind
absconded with the title. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a visual masterpiece
of storytelling, yet the score by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey
emerged as highly singable to the American public and is perhaps a major
reason the movie held the audience’s interest for eighty-three minutes. The
score was nominated for an Oscar, and many of the titles—including “Some
Day My Prince Will Come,” “Whistle While You Work,” and “Heigh-Ho”—
became radio standards. Disney entered into this project with the idea that
he wanted the music to be part of the storytelling—not just in an expository
or narrative way as it had in the Silly Symphonies, but as an emotional
outgrowth and understanding of the characters’ feelings. The film audience
was to be privy to the internalized monologues of characters, allowing us to
feel with them instead of merely observing their story.
Snow White changed the way Hollywood viewed the feature-length animated
film, but the road ahead was a rough one. World War II changed
the international film market, limiting the studio’s potential for distribution
and financial growth. The cost of making animated features was high, and
in the coming years the studio would not turn a profit on many films until
their subsequent re-release. However, during this time, Disney Studios
produced superb and beguiling work. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941),
and Bambi (1942) offer some of the lushest songs in the Disney canon.
Pinocchio’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” brought an Academy Award to
the songwriting team of Leigh Harline and Ned Washington. The songs
“Baby Mine” from Dumbo and “Love Is a Song” from Bambi were both
nominated for Oscars.
In the late 1940s Disney had to resort to less expensive projects, such as
the animated anthologies Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free
(1947), Melody Time (1948), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
(1949). To appeal to the South American market and to replace the loss of
European ticket buyers during World War II, Disney produced the Latinflavored
Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). These,
as well as two traditional films, Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to
My Heart (1948), employed a clever mixture of live action and animation.