Pinocchio Part 12A

The one shot sequence 4-7, where Geppetto and Pinocchio cross paths, is a typical melodramatic convention where characters just miss each other and don't know it. It's a convention because it works. It worked for Dickens and D.W. Griffith and it certainly works for Disney.

The next sequence starts out with Pinocchio and Jiminy realizing their mistakes and wallowing in self pity. The appearance of the Blue Fairy puts both of them in a panic as they each feel guilt for their actions. Unfortunately for Pinocchio, that guilt isn't enough to make him tell the truth and he tells the Blue Fairy one whopper after another, causing his nose to grow. It's Jiminy who persuades the Blue Fairy to give them another chance, and in a neat structural reversal, he bats his eyelashes at her the same way she did when she convinced him to become Pinocchio's conscience.

The Blue Fairy gives them a fresh start and vanishes, leaving them to head home, presumably wiser for their experiences. Unfortunately, Pinocchio still has a lot to learn.

The self-pity scenes are a duet between Ollie Johnston on Pinocchio and Ward Kimball on Jiminy. Both characters hold their left hands to their faces, visually reinforcing their similar failures and emotional states. Pinocchio's tears, which drench Jiminy, are parallel to the rain that poured down on Jiminy and Geppetto.

Jiminy blows Pinocchio's nose, reminding us that it functions as a nose before Pinocchio's lies turn it into a branch.

With the arrival of the Blue Fairy, Kimball steps out and Bernie Wolf steps in for Jiminy. Once Pinocchio's nose starts to sprout leaves, John Elliotte replaces Wolf and Frank Thomas takes Pinocchio over from Ollie Johnston. However, the animators keep changing. Wolf comes back for Jiminy's eyelash batting and Les Clark and Walt Clinton do Pinocchio scenes inbetween those done by Thomas and Johnston.

What we have here isn't casting by character and certainly not casting by shot or sequence. It's surprising that the sequence works as well as it does in terms of emotional consistency. The animators do get extended acting chances here, but the character arcs are split among many animators. Without tight story work and good character layouts, this sequence could deteriorate into a mess. While the sequence works, you can't say that the work has been logically assigned.

Switching gears for a moment, I want to talk about the assistant director for this sequence, Ford Beebe. I can't imagine how he came to be involved with Disney. Beebe, for those who don't know, is probably best known as a director of live action serials and B movies. He was writing films as early as 1916 and directing as early as 1922, working heavily in westerns. In the 1930s, he specialized in live action films based on comic strips such as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tim Tyler's Luck, Jungle Jim and Secret Agent X-9.

I have no idea how he came to Disney or what caused him to leave. Alberto Becattini credits Beebe as the director of the "Pastoral Symphony" in Fantasia (1940) as well as The Thrify Pig (1941), Seven Wise Dwarfs (1941) and Donald's Decision (1942). And we know from this draft that he was also an assistant director on Pinocchio.

After Disney, he went back to live action B movies, helming the series Bomba the Jungle Boy starring Johnny Sheffield. Sheffield wrote about working with Beebe and makes him sound like a typical B movie craftsman: pleasant, unpretentious and efficient.

If anybody knows more about Beebe's time at Disney, I'd love to hear about it.