Artist Profile
Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur, born 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. Although not a musical composer or performer himself, Disney transformed the role of music in cinema by treating it not as background accompaniment, but as an active storyteller that dictated visual pacing, character motion, and emotional resonance. Though he had no formal musical training, his vision reshaped animation and film sound design. Disney's creation Mickey Mouse first appeared in May 1928 as a single test screening of the short Plane Crazy. Following the 1927 sensation The Jazz Singer, Disney used synchronized sound on the third short, Steamboat Willie, to create the first post-produced sound cartoon. To improve the quality of the music, Disney hired the professional composer and arranger Carl W. Stalling, on whose suggestion the Silly Symphony series was developed, providing stories through the use of music; The Skeleton Dance and Silly Symphonies series from 1929, were both successful. Perhaps the most ambitious of Disney's early musical projects was his third animated feature film, Fantasia, which was conceived as an elaborate Silly Symphony cartoon to revive the declining popularity of Mickey Mouse. It consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor acts as the film's Master of Ceremonies who introduces each segment in live-action. Featuring compositions by European classical heavyweights Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Mussorsky and Schubert, the resulting animation was likely to have given countless adults and children their first (and possibly only) taste of serious classical music. To accommodate the ambitious soundtrack, Disney and RCA developed Fantasound, a pioneering sound system that made Fantasia the first commercial film released in stereo and a precursor to surround sound. A small sample of outstanding recordings of Disney musical productions includes Fantasia (1940), Sleaping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmations (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), and Robin Hood (1973). Disney Studios continue to make big budget productions to the present day, including blockbusters such as Frozen and Toy Story. Disney's first music release was a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (1956) performed by Frances Archer and Beverly Gile from the Mickey Mouse Club. While the first album officially released directly under Disney's own Disneyland Records label was Walt Disney Takes You to Disneyland (1956) which was narrated by Walt Disney with orchestral suites for Main Street, Adventureland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland.