THE LIVING DESERT (1953)
AND
THE VANISHING PRAIRIE (1954)
James Algar
Walt Disney Productions.
Throughout the 1950’s there was a great shift in the entertainment industry with the arrival of television as a home entertainment center. The first TV with electronic scanning at both ends was Sept. 1 1927. WRGB in Schenechtady claims to be the oldest TV station (experimental) starting Jan 13 1928 (using call letters W2XB). The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were covered by TV which was transmitted by cable in Berlin and Leipzig for public viewing. It isn’t until the 50’s that it becomes significant in terms of numbers of viewers and as an advertising medium. Since then – perhaps until the era of computers – it has become more and more important as the place where people view news and entertainment. The arrival of VHS tapes as something that could be used in the home and sequential developments in laser disks, DVDs and Blu Ray have increased the use of TV sets. If monitors and smaller hand held devices are included here as TV then there has been a constant growth in the media, if not, then there is a shift away to viewers who are a single audience rather than a multiple person audience in a kind of return to the old nickelodeon viewing situations where a single viewer watched the action. (Notice the importance of definition here as to what constitutes a TV and what impact the technology has on viewing.).
Television was shown at the 1939-39 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow, but WWII hindered its production. It isn’t until 1948 that regular commercial network programing begins and major programs begin to appear. Arturo Toscanini, perhaps one of the most famous conductors of the time made his first appearance conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This was the start of “Golden Age” of TV with programs like Studio One, Westinghouse TV Theater and so on. Variety shows like the Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle (the first mega hit) and sitcoms appeared (I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Sgt. Bilko, Father Knows Best, I Remember Mama etc.). There have been many studies dealing with the depiction of American life in some of these (as there have been with films as well) which have resulted in films like Pleasantville.
Since then, technological developments have given audiences the ability to re-watch any program and to have friends watch along has altered the nature of what the demographics are in film watching. When dealing with paid admissions, tracking the numbers was easier. Now it is close to impossible. Early film makers had only theaters in which to show films, but now, films may be released directly to TV or to some media (DVD, etc.) This has altered the nature of the business tremendously.
However, in the 1950’2 TV was live, black and white and growing by leaps and bounds in the number of homes which had it and the amount of time it was on the air. This is an important period for classic films of the 30’s and 40’s since TV was a voracious media and classic (and not so classic) films began to be shown on TV in its infancy since writers could not possibly keep up with the demand for more and more material. Programs like CBS’s The Early Show, The Late Show and The Late Late Show, showed films daily. These three were all on CBS and in NYC there were 6 other stations (NBC (4); Dumont (5); ABC (7) WOR (9) WPIX (11) and WATV (13)).
Color TV appeared in 1953 but the lack of color broadcasting made it unpopular. Stations were unhappy about going to color since it was an expense and there were few sets in homes – not enough to merit the change over. So the problem was clear – people wouldn’t buy color TV because there were few if any programs being telecast in color, and stations refused to broadcast in color because there were too few sets around to merit the expense of the change.
It is into the situation that Walt Disney (Dec 5, 1901 - Dec 15 1966) appears. Disney was born in Chicago to Irish German parents (with a dash of French- the name is a modified version of d'Isigny). The family moved to Canada and back to the US and from about 4 years of age until 8 he lived on a farm in Missouri where Walt became involved in drawing. A neighbor paid him to draw pictures of his horse. Although the family continued to move, Disney studied art and began to meet people who were in the entertainment industry. He maintained his involvement with animals He attempted to enlist in the army but was underage and rejected
Disney was known early for his animated cartoons which moved away from impossible gag situations and is seen as the person who created characters audiences could identify with and react to emotionally.
Although Disney started with shorts, he planned a full length cartoon feature called “Disney’s Folly” which was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film was a great success and he went on to make many more. He also branched out into making films with live actors like 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea.
Probably his most experimental film was Fantasia, a film in which Leopold Stokowski conducted an orchestra in a set of (sometimes abridged and altered) musical pieces which the Disney artists animated. These included works by Bach, Stravinsky, Schubert and so on. Stravinsky was furious at the use of his Le Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring) but was unable to stop it from being used.
When Disney ventured into TV with The Wonderful World of Walt Disney, the program had an enormous audience. Since much of the Disney material was in color there was not real problem in telecasting it in color which is what happened. People anxious to see the Disney material in color bought color TVs and this seems to be what broke the grid lock.
Disney’s interest in animals led to him making a series of Nature Films
Disney was a shrewed business man and like Edison would go after anyone who used any of his images and so on without permission. Even the Motion Picture Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was not immune. Disney sued them for a copyright infringement over Snow White when they had the character appear at the Academy Awards. Snow White as a character cannot be copyrighted, but the image of Snow White in a particular costume can be. (Many actors now copyright their images and Celeste Holm successfully sued over someone using her image in a film without her permission).
Questions about “cryogenics, anti-semitism and racism
There have been statements made about Disney being both anti-semitic and racist relative to African Americans. Although there seems to be some indication of this, Neal Gabler whose 2006 biography of Disney claims it is not the case. He had been given total access to the Disney archives and concludes that there were remarks which might be thought to today as insensitive, they were not seen that way at the time.
A major controversy erupted over the film Song of the South, a story dealing with a character named Uncle Remus who tells the stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. The film is set in post-Civil War times, when a woman, who appears to be breaking up with her husband, arrives at a relative’s plantation with her son. He meets one of the “colored” boys his own age with whom he becomes friends and the two come under the influence of Uncle Remus who gives them life lessons by relating stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. The mother finally has Uncle Remus sent away because of his influence on the boy. The boy is nearly killed by a bull and near death, calls not for his mother or father but Uncle Remus, who is brought back and the boy recovers. The story in effect deals with a dysfunctional White family whose son is basically taught by Uncle Remus. The film was withdrawn from circulation and Ruth Warrick (“Mrs. Citizen Kane” and “Miss Phoebe” on All My Children) who plays the mother in the film was unable to get a copy from Disney to show to her grandchild on his birthday. She maintains that Disney had been threatened by a group of Blacks that they would burn down any theater in which the film was shown and hence he removed it from circulation. Copies are available on DVD apparently as a result of the ban not holding in Britain, but this is unclear.
Disney biographer Gabler relates that Disney loved To Kill a Mockingbird and said that that was the kind of film he wished he could make.
Disney is the winner of four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history Disney also won seven Emmy Awards
The Living Desert (1953)
James Algar
Academy Award – best documentary. Cost US$300,000 production grossed US$4,000,000 at the box office.
Film is part of Disney’s True Life Adventures series of documentaries. The film was preceded by Seal Island
. A film maker at UCLA, N. Paul Kenworthy Jr shot a 10 minute film about a tarantula-wasp fight which Disney saw and was impressed by. Disney was supportive of his work and hired him to work as a cinematographer on this and other documentaries (including The Vanishing Prairie). The film one the 1953 Academy Award as best documentary.
Up to this point Disney had been distributing films through RKO Radio pictures, but their relationship had been strained. They were uninterested in a full length documentary and as a result, Disney split with them and formed Buena Vista Distribution which became the Disney distributing company.
This film, like The Vanishing Prairie and the other True Life Adventures is known for its remarkable photography.
The film was criticized for its addition of “jokey music” (scorpion fight has hoe down music) and its anthropomorphism. The latter was mostly from scientists although it should not have been a surprise given his anthropomorphic cartoons. It is easy to see hear how the narration is able to put a spin on the film, since the anthropomorphizing is more in the sound track than the images.
Disney won 4 Academy Awards that year – the most ever won by one person in a year. At the 26th Academy Awards The Living Desert won best documentary. Disney also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom", the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject for "The Alaskan Eskimo" and the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel) for "Bear Country".
The film also got the at the 1954 International Prize Cannes Film Festival, an award at the Berlin Film Festival and a special achievement award from the Golden Globe Awards. The film was, in 2000, chosen for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
Academy Award – Best Documentary
Thus, in this random documentation of the fauna that still may be found in certain parts of the great American prairie lying east of the Continental Divide, they have mixed such sober observation as that brief shot of the birth of a buffalo with such trickery as a metronomic montage of mountain rams banging their heads together in time to "The Anvil Chorus." They have given us beautiful glimpses of the creatures of the prairie as they are, and they have given them to us as the editors at the Disney studio choose to make them seem.
This is not to be classified as wicked. The Disney boys do not aim to mislead. They simply desire to shape and order nature so that it will captivate and amuse. And that they have done without exception in the continuously interesting material in this film, which ranges from the extraordinary shot of the buffalo giving birth to a sequence showing a "dance" of whooping cranes.
FULL REVIEW
NOW that the New York State censor has agreed that a film may show a buffalo's birth without tending to corrupt morals or incite to crime, "The Vanishing Prairie" of Walt Disney should be very much in evidence for some time on the unhindered screen of the Fine Arts, where it opened yesterday. For this second feature-length True-Life Adventure from Mr. Disney's versatile studio is a thoroughly innocent and fascinating nature picture in the daffy Disney style.
By now, it should be fairly evident that Disney's nature boys do not intend to be either solemn or literal in picturing the great outdoors. To them, the many aspects of nature—the birds and the beasts, the rocks and rills—are but vital and colorful materials for their new type of animated films. They hold up a mirror to nature, but the mirror isn't always flat and clear. Sometimes it is willfully angled or distorted for the sake of a gag.
Thus, in this random documentation of the fauna that still may be found in certain parts of the great American prairie lying east of the Continental Divide, they have mixed such sober observation as that brief shot of the birth of a buffalo with such trickery as a metronomic montage of mountain rams banging their heads together in time to "The Anvil Chorus." They have given us beautiful glimpses of the creatures of the prairie as they are, and they have given them to us as the editors at the Disney studio choose to make them seem.
This is not to be classified as wicked. The Disney boys do not aim to mislead. They simply desire to shape and order nature so that it will captivate and amuse. And that they have done without exception in the continuously interesting material in this film, which ranges from the extraordinary shot of the buffalo giving birth to a sequence showing a "dance" of whooping cranes.
Slow-motion shots of wild ducks landing on frozen prairie ponds are in the amusing category. So are shots of the wooing and nesting of western grebes, those crazy, mixed-up creatures that Disney introduced in "Water Birds." A splendid slow-motion picture of a jackrabbit vaulting across a plain is a poem in bodily movement, and numerous pictures of scuttling prairie dogs and ponderously shuffling old bison have the flavor of authenticity.
It is noticeable that Mr. Disney's cutters have gone light on the violence this time. There is very little mauling or killing done by the creatures in this film. And when it occurs it is felicitous. A breath-taking sequence in which is shown a falcon dive-bombing at a gopher ends happily with the gopher getting away. That is to say, a gopher—not necessarily the same one—gets away. And the gory details of the killing of a deer by a mountain lion are shunned.
Though "The Vanishing Prairie" is not nature in its absolute aspects all the way, it is a handsome and entertaining look-see at various enactments of nature's characters.
Also on the program at the Fine Arts is "Willie, the Operatic Whale," a Disney cartoon that first appeared in "Make Mine Music" under the title of "The Whale That Wanted to Sing at the Met." Nelson Eddy provides the voice of the cetacean. It is a good, roaring animated spoof.
THE VANISHING PRAIRIE; a full-length documentary on the wild life of the Western prairies; script by James Algar, Winston Hibler and Ted Sears; directed by Mr. Algar; narrated by Mr. Hibler; presented by Walt Disney. At the Fine Arts Theatre.
Some cinematographic aspects::
James Algar
5th Berlin International Film Festival
Big Gold Medal (Documentaries and Culture Films)
The film had some problems with the NYS censor which finally “agreed that a film may show a buffalo's birth without tending to corrupt morals or incite to crime” For this second feature-length True-Life Adventure from Mr. Disney's versatile studio is a thoroughly innocent and fascinating nature picture in the daffy Disney style (Bosley Crowther)
Some problems with use of "civilization", "primitive" and the opposition of "natural" with "human" - i.e. that somehow humans are not a part of nature. There are continued problems with anthropomorphism or the bestowing of human attributes on animals.