Walt's Era - Part 2: Fits and Starts (1940-1942)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a smash success, redefining what animation could be in Hollywood. The film funding a brand new, custom built studio in Burbank, from which Disney artists could push their craft even further. The company, and the man for whom it was named, were on top of the world.

Disney, all smiles, at his new studio. Photo: Disney.

Disney's bread and butter was still the ongoing series of shorts featuring Mickey Mouse and his friends. The Silly Symphonies upped their game, with a noticeable rise in quality between the early half of 1937 and into 1938 and 1939. Wynken, Blynken and Nod, Moth and the Flame, Farmyard Symphony, and The Ugly Duckling learned from the lessons of Snow White, as did the one-off short, Ferdinand the Bull (1938). The Ugly Duckling (1939) ended up being the final Silly Symphony. That testing ground for new processes ran its course. Now Disney's attention was turned to feature film.

In this period between 1940 and 1942, we find a Walt Disney Productions trying to find its footing, experimenting and exploring with what an animated film can be. Creatively, films like Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi are triumphs (with The Reluctant Dragon sandwiched in there too). But these films also challenged Disney's credibility as a populist. Like any great artists, sometimes they innovated too far beyond the pale of what the audience was receptive to. It would take some time for them to settle on working formulas that allowed them to break new ground while responding to market forces. The raging war in Europe didn't help matters much, nor did the infamous animators strike that landed on Disney's doorstep on May 29, 1941. Disney was trying to figure itself out artistically and organizationally.

Disney Runs Away With the Circus

On the dustjacket of their impressive tome Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Theme Park, Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon reiterate one of the "primal myths" of Disneyland’s origins: “Fifty years ago, Walt Disney utterly transformed the concept of outdoor entertainment venues from tawdry carnivals and seedy amusement piers called ‘amusement parks,’ to an entirely new destination that would come into common vernacular as the ‘theme park.’” When the Imagineers of today added a new area to Walt Disney World's Fantasyland based on the circus – ostensibly the most “tawdry” of American amusements that are legal in most States – it certainly raised some eyebrows and some ire. How could they so betray the spirit of Walt Disney himself by including an area themed to the very thing he tried to get away from?

For as brilliant and creative as they are, I think one always has to take what Imagineers say with a grain of salt. For example, when they are criticized for poor artistic choices, they frequently dust off the thought-terminating cliche that “Disneyland is not a museum.” Nevertheless, when Walt explained what Disneyland was, he had this to say (emphasis mine):

The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be sometimes a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make these wonders part of our own lives.

Oh, sometimes Disneyland is a museum. Walt did a brisk business in nostalgia, and the very first incarnation of Disneyland was very much the sort of thing we would recognize today as a “living history museum” or “historical village.” In 1951, Walt intended to build a quaint historical village in a parcel of land adjacent to his studios in Burbank, where today one finds the headquarters of ABC and Walt Disney Animation. The following rough blueprint was sketched by Harper Goff, showing the intended attractions in this “Mickey Mouse Park.”

You may have noticed the paddlewheeler plying a man-made river, a hub-like town square, a boating canal, a steam train, and other features that would work their way into the park that would come to be built in Anaheim. But what is that in the left-hand corner? Could it be? Yes... A circus!