Walt & the Professors

Walt Disney on esthetics: "Art? ... I looked up the definition once, but I've forgotten what it is ... you got to watch out for the boys with the dramatic sense and no sense of humor or they'll go arty on you. . . . Hell, Doc ... we just make a picture and then you professors come along and tell us what we do."

Professor Robert D. Feild has done exactly that in a book called The Art of Walt Disney (Macmillan; $3.50), but he insists: "Hell, Doc [Walt himself holds several honorary degrees], this is art." Three years ago Professor Feild stuck his neck out for modern art, Disney's in particular, and his appointment to Harvard University's fine-arts department was "not renewed." Now he is at Tulane University. Professor Feild contends that comic strips and cavemen's scrawls were forerunners of the animated movie that Walt Disney has made into "the great art form that it is today." His book tells the way the medium works, rather than why it is great.

Best Mousetrap. How Disney developed his garage-studio of pre-Mickey days into the world's biggest and best mousetrap at Burbank, Calif, is a typical success story, except that its dollars are inseparably twined with its art. Disney fought for both against distributors, who could see small profit in shorts, small reason therefore to make them better. He preached and proved that quality and nothing else would produce advancing prof its. The demonstration began with hastily sound-dubbed Steamboat Willie -- first successful Mickey Mouse--and became convincing with the first Silly Symphony to use color, in 1931. But Disney never rested on his Q.E.D. In the full-length surprise triumphs of recent years he taught Hollywood what it had once almost known and then forgotten--that quality pays.

With improved pictures came still further refinements of technique, until today the studio is a vast, expensive, bewilderingly geared and specialized team of virtuosos. "We can't have individualists around here, not even me," Disney has said. "Do you know how long it would have taken one man to make that picture [Snow White]? I figured it out--just 250 years.'' But controlling the wheels-within-wheels is of paramount importance, and here Disney is the authentic master craftsman, indispensable and, so far, without a peer. "Without his stabilizing influence," writes Professor Feild. "the art form for which he is responsible would have long since disintegrated."

What, Already? Endless attention is given to big and little details in a studio where the slow evolution of a character sometimes starts with nothing more than a noise, and never stops until every possibility of color, curve, sound and dialogue has been considered. Professor Feild prints for the first time in book form many records of conferences in the Disney-gang. One caught this critical moment in the prenatal life of Jiminy Cricket:

WALT: Do you suppose where the Cricket says, when he trucks back into the clock house, "AND ALWAYS LET YOUR CONSCIENCE BE YOUR GUIDE?" the last time, he has his fingers crossed?

N: I think the first time he comes out his line should be. "WHAT, ALREADY?" WALT: Then he says,"FALSE ALARM --GOODY-GOODY!" ... I think you could get something a little different on that violin, maybe a little more carving.

L: Instead of a conventional violin you could get an old-world violin--they put a little more scrolling on them and it's a different cut.

WALT: Like Geppetto made it ... will you get a chance to see the clock there, Bill?

B: Yes, we're going to pan up. It's "GIVE A LITTLE WHISTLE," and he comes out--then. "GIVE A LITTLE WHISTLE." and tap-tap.

Next full-length Disney feature and last for the war's duration will be Bambi, the story of a deer, four years in production. It will probably be released in July. New shorts for the Government--at cost --occupy 75% of the studio's resources.

Professor Feild's book will not convince standpatters that Disney's art can compare with that of Ye Olde Tymers. Highbrow pioneers will say. "We told you so." Fans know already that Disney is in a class by himself. Walt himself, ever-obliging, has hedged on previous disclaimers to culture. "As I see it," he guardedy admits, "a person's culture represents hi? appraisal of the things that make up life.

And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life, and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. . . ."

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