Symphony Hour Part 3

I have to admit that I've been referring to this cartoon as The Symphony Hour, but its official title is just Symphony Hour. My mistake.

This is another Riley Thompson cartoon where he has cast the animators by character. Mickey is mostly done by Les Clark and Marvin Woodward, with a bit of Ken Muse and a sprinkling of Bernie Wolf. Les Clark gets the confident, in-control Mickey at the start of the cartoon. The animation is slick as a whistle and beautifully drawn. For all of that, Marvin Woodward actually gets the more interesting Mickey scenes. Instead of being in control, Woodward's scenes have Mickey react to everything going wrong. As great as Clark's animation is, I'm betting that Woodward had more fun.

Ed Love does Pete in a somewhat old-fashioned way. By this I mean that by the time of this cartoon, there was a streamlining of characer design going on. In the mid-thirties, the Disney characters have lots of wrinkles in their clothing and all kinds of follow-through in their fleshy bodies. By this time, a lot of that was pared away, but Love's Pete still has that fleshiness.

I wonder the final shot is a satirical jab at Walt Disney himself. Pete ends up hiding Mickey behind him while he takes the bows for Mickey's work. Is Pete a stand-in for Disney and the hidden Mickey a comment on the artists who didn't get screen credit at this point in time?

Bernie Wolf does a very interesting Donald. He catches Donald's temperament without resorting to the kinds of fireworks that Dick Lundy used when Donald's temper exploded. His Donald is also thick with multiple images and dry brush streaks to sell the idea of fast action. Wolf draws a great, mean Mickey when he's holding that gun.

With the exception of a couple of Muse shots of Mickey, the rest of the animators just do 'bits.' There's not a lot of acting here for Horace, Clarabelle, Clara or Goofy. They're all slickly animated, but they're just there to put across gags. Only Horace reacts to what's going on with other characters in scene 61 by Jack Campbell. Clarabelle, Clara and Goofy exist in a kind of limbo, playing their instruments in a vacuum.

In many ways, this is a 'high concept' cartoon. It's based on a funny idea that's well executed; the gags themselves are nothing special. The fun comes from Riley Thompson giving the animators lots of room to work, and in the case of Clark, Woodward, Love and Wolf, it pays off.

The Symphony Hour Part 2

This cartoon is built on two conflicting musical styles. The first is based on broadcasts of symphony orchestras, the most notable of the time being Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC orchestra. The second style is that of Spike Jones and His City Slickers, who were popular in Los Angeles prior to the release of this film. Spike Jones has a couple of other connections to animation; he later recorded the theme from the Disney cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face, which became a #2 selling record. At one point, Tex Avery was writing gags for Jones' TV appearances.

I didn't realize it until I did the mosaic, but this is the last appearance of Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow and Clara Cluck in Disney shorts. Clara only appears during the audition segment and disappears during the actual radio broadcast. There is some confusion as to how to treat the old designs now that Mickey has been updated. At times, Horace has white in his eyes and other times a flesh colour. Clarabelle only has flesh colour in her eye region.

While the story has a straightforward structure, the supporting characters are not really in character. Goofy really doesn't do anything goofy except for smashing through closed elevator doors. Donald never utters a word during the cartoon and while he clearly gets annoyed, he never explodes. Mickey goes overboard by pulling a gun. Is there another cartoon hero (as opposed to villain) who was featured with a gun as often as Mickey? It's odd that one of the mildest of characters was so often seen with a weapon.

I know Leonard Maltin from when we both lived in N.Y. and have enormous respect for him, but I do have to admit that some of his disclaimers for Disney cartoons leave me puzzled. For this one, he makes excuses for Billy Bletcher's Italian accent for Pete. However, there's no comment on the visual gags which turn Donald into stereotype Chinese and Indian characters and nothing about Mickey pointing a gun in Donald's face. Leonard does disavow the cat's attempted suicide in Plutopia, so I guess that it's all right to threaten people with a gun so long as you don't turn it on yourself. I often wonder if these disclaimers don't create more problems than they solve, but if they're the price we pay for getting these cartoons released on DVD, I'm happy to pay it.

The Symphony Hour Part 1

More on this cartoon in future entries.