Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

[Store Hadji]

Here's an adaption of Disney from 1945, for the This Is My Best series. I've never read what the connection between Walt and Orson was, but it's worth remembering that Jiminy Cricket played the voice of Orson's conscience on at least the first few episodes of The Orson Welles Show (aka Lady Esther) in 1941.

http://www.box.net/shared/kjggsyjfa3

Happy 7th birthday, Christopher!

[Store Hadji]

Interesting that at the end of Snow White, Welles announces the next show was to be an adaption of Number One by John dos Passos. Here's the tawdry 1954 reprint cover:



What were the works of John dos Passos all about? (This is probably a Glenn question.)

I'm sure Number One fit into Welles' political concerns at the time. It must not however have fit in with what the network and/or sponsor wanted, as the show was dropped and the next broadcast was actually The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

I think also that disagreement with the sponsor over what stories to adapt led to Welles leaving This Is My Best after only a short stay as regular director/producer.

[Alan Brody]

I believe John Dos Passos wrote a scathing biography of William Randolph Hearst which was part of the inspiration for Citizen Kane.

[ToddBaesen]

Store:

Another fabulous radio find! Where do you get these shows? Apparently even the Disney archives didn't have this to include this on their SNOW WHITE DVD or Laserdisc collections, and it's really too bad that they didn't!

Now, maybe you can you find us the radio show Welles narrated almost 40 years later for Disney, for Ray Bradbury's SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.

I remember hearing it broadcast on FM-radio in 1983 , but like an idiot did not make a cassette recording of it!! But somebody out there must have a copy of it.


+++++++++++++


CBS Radio presents

THIS IS MY BEST

Sponsored by CRESTA BLANCA wines

(We sell no wine before our time)

March 27, 1945

______________________

ORSON WELLES version of

WALT DISNEY'S

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

Dedicated to CHRIS WELLES, on her birthday

______________________


Narration - ORSON WELLES

Snow White - JANE POWELL

Wicked Witch - JEANETTE NOLAN

Magic Mirror on the Wall - JOHN McINTIRE

Prince Charming - BILL DAVES

______________________


Directed by ORSON WELLES

Adapted by ROBERT TALLMAN
From the Grimm Bros. fairy tale and the animated movie
by WALT DISNEY

Music by BERNARD KATZ

______________________

[Store Hadji]

It appears to be for sale here: http://www.otrsite.com/catalog/mp3catalog/mps1046.htm

[The Night Man]

I've never read what the connection between Walt and Orson was...

Surely it was strictly business. I can't imagine Welles having much to do with the notoriously reactionary Disney, or vice versa.

[Glenn Anders]

Did I hear my dreaded name invoked?

[Glenn Anders doth appear in the scratch of a match.]

Thanks, Hadji, for giving us Christopher Welles' seventh birthday present!

As to your questions, where do I start?

I suppose, with the truism that the rebels of one generation tend to become the reactionaries of a subsequent period.

A case in point is John dos Passos, who undoubtedly would have been an influence on young Orson Welles. In the 1920's and 1930's he was one of America's most important novelists -- right up there with Ernest Hemingway and James T. Farrell [who?] -- a strong cultural influence on FDR's New Deal. His magnum opus, USA, an experimental trilogy covering the history of America from the Spanish American War to the Great Depression, could serve as a blue print for the first two-thirds of Charles Foster Kane's life in CITIZEN KANE. It even has the device of a "Newsreel" to provide a running journalistic commentary on day by day history of the years covered in the lives of various characters. And there are biographical sketches of the men (mostly) who were moving and shaking the times, including one of William Randolph Hearst, and of course, his actual 1898 dispatch to his artist/correspondent, Fredrick Remington, in Cuba: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." [But I doubt that the novel can be thought of as anything like the sole origin of Kane's character.]

Strangely enough, by 1945, when Number One (part of another dos Passos trilogy, District of Columbia) was being published in paperback, and Welles was considering it for a cautionary dramatization on This Is My Best, dos Passos was becoming profoundly disillusioned with the Popular Front politics and milieux he had been such a part of. He came to think of FDR as a usurper of power, and the works of the last fifteen years of his life were quite conservative, increasingly bitter. If you are not familiar with dos Passos, I would suggest The Great Days and Mid Century as later historical novels, similar in form, but different in spirit, to contrast with 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money (the three volumes of USA).

In the last part of his life, dos Passos became like a tough love version of Charlie Kane.

That brings us to Walt Disney and Orson Welles, and their participation in The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, which I've brought up here before.

In 1942, beginning a crusade which led to the Supreme Court decree separating the Studios from their theater chains, in 1948, Charles Chaplin, Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda, Miss Mary Pickford, David O. Selznick, Walter F. Wanger and Orson Welles formed the above organization, issuing a proclamation rather like Charles Foster Kane's "Statement of Principles." Among these individuals were some of most creative artists of the time, and they wanted to break the economic hold of the Big Studios, which they felt stood in the way of their artistic freedom. They had produced great landmarks, and would continue to do so, and the organization continued to exist, and even function, for many years, but the founders gradually drifted away. A few like Chaplin and Welles never lost their desire for that artistic freedom, nor their anti-fascist convictions, but others made their peace. Walt Disney, for instance, prospered in the new reactionary climate of the 1950's, and as you note, Hadji, became one of the arch conservatives of Hollywood.

As I've suggested when bringing up the little commented upon Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers before, Welles' membership could not have helped his career after his Mercury Theater Unit was slashed from his control in the very year he helped form the Society.

Still, as late as 1945, he might have entertained the idea of an artistic collaboration with Walt and his wonderful cartoon factory.

If you want more information, there is a quite handsome website devoted to the Society:

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/index.htm

BTW: if you can find the original "trashy" cover art for Number One, or that of other similar paperback editions from those years, buy them all up.

Eminently collectible.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

Thanks, Glenn, that was fascinating.

I became confused when I read that dos Passos became a McCarthy supporter - that didn't sound like the sort of author whose work Welles would want to adapt, unless it was in an ironic or satirical way. The philosophical arc of dos Passos sounds very ironic indeed.

Yeah, that reprint has a trashy cover. Here's the original:

[Store Hadji]

Welles in the SIMPP seems ironic too. He lamented for decades the end of the studio system, which with 70 films a year had room for an Orson Welles feature. According to that link, it was the SIMPP who managed to get the government to end the studio system. I didn't hear Welles ever mention that!

[The Night Man]

Walt Disney prospered in the new reactionary climate of the 1950's, and became one of the arch conservatives of Hollywood.

Uncle Walt's arch conservatism was well-established before the 50s when he denounced union organizers as communists before congress (and claimed the Screen Actors Guild was a communist front organization). His anti-union sentiments are well-known, but less well-known is the fact that, beginning in 1941, he spied for the FBI on union activity in Hollywood and continued to do so until his death. Even earlier, in 1938, he was the only major Hollywood figure to meet with Leni Riefenstahl during her promotional tour for Olympia. Disney later claimed he didn't know who she was!

It's hard to imagine Welles and Disney together even in an organization like SIMPP, but Hollywood makes strange bedfellows.

Welles in the SIMPP seems ironic too. He lamented for decades the end of the studio system, which with 70 films a year had room for an Orson Welles feature.

Beware the law of unintended consequences.

[Glenn Anders]

Quite right, night man. "Be careful what you pray for."

But Welles was fascinated with the cinematic stage machinery of Hollywood, also the idea of having a "school of artists" working away like the Seven Dwarfs while a wise genius lay down a concept here, and made a correction there. Welles could admire Walt Disney's operation, his ability to entertain, and to innovate, without accepting his political ideas.

Hence, he could enter with Disney the gathering of disparate business artists that made up The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers.

Once Disney had created the basic Mickey Mouse of the 1920's, and formed the better mouse trap known as Disney Studios, he was at some pains to keep the subsequent creators, like Ub Iwerks, in the background. That motivation, among others, fueled his hatred of that bitter strike of creative people. He was, in his way, another Kane, imprisoned and distorted under corporate economic necessities by what he had built. He, too, wanted FREEDOM, but freedom for what?

The Faust Legend, after all, is Welles' basic tale. Disney, and I might add, a talented technician like Leni Riefenstahl, fit into the legend's matrix.

Glenn

[Alan Brody]

He was, in his way, another Kane, imprisoned and distorted under corporate economic necessities by what he had built. He, too, wanted FREEDOM, but freedom for what?

So I guess Disneyland would have been his Xanadu? And in fact, didn't Welles use leftover animation cells for Snow White's castle for the long shots of Kane's castle?

His anti-union sentiments are well-known, but less well-known is the fact that, beginning in 1941, he spied for the FBI on union activity in Hollywood and continued to do so until his death.

There's a funny section from the unauthorized biography Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince where, in the early 60's, several mid-level FBI bureaucrats, unaware that Disney had been an FBI informant for years, began to investigate him for possible communist activities in the early 40's. Especially ironic, since Disney's "activity" had been his attending a Pan-American conference undercover as an FBI informant! A furious Disney later got revenge by portraying two FBI characters as inept buffoons in the 1963 film That Darn Cat, much to Hoover's displeasure.