Fantasia nearly sunk Disney animation, but Dumbo helped rescue it

As the Walt Disney Company enters its centenary, marking 100 years as a film studio whose humble Midwestern beginnings didn’t hint at its coming transformation into a pop culture bulwark, it’s important to recall a common thread running through many of Disney’s early animated features. These were daring films that pushed the technological boundaries of their eras — often resulting in instant financial failure. Walt Disney Animation Studios is home to many of the greatest creative breakthroughs. They were created while Walt was alive. They also drove the studio to financial collapse.

Those same titles eventually became some of the studio’s most beloved films, thanks to generational nostalgia, constant re-releases, the advent of home media,And Disney’s corporate skill at mythologizing its work. And there are no better examples of that reversal than two of Disney’s Golden Age titles, released one after the other: Fantasia and Dumbo.

FantasiaIt remains Disney Animation’s most ambitious movie, on both a superficial level as well as deeper analysis. At 126 minutes, it’s the longest Disney animated film ever (and one of the longest animated films, period). It’s largely free of dialogue, apart from the interstitial sections overseen by opera commentator Deems Taylor. It’s scored to various pieces of classical music, so it has no overarching story. Some of its eight animated shorts are experimental enough that they don’t have identifiable characters or story arcs. And again, it’s a film Overseas by opera commentator.

Getty Images photo of LMPC

The way is still the best! FantasiaThe presentation was what most drove Disney to its financial collapse. The same way James Cameron would like audiences to experience, The Way of Water AvatarWalt Disney wanted to give the audience the complete orchestral experience in 3D with high frame rates. FantasiaHe used a technique called Fantasound to achieve this.

Phantomsound, which is basically stereophonic sounds, is becoming more common in home and professional theaters. In the 1930s however, this technology was extremely rare and not available in theaters. Disney and his creative partner, conductor Leopold Stokowski, wanted to use the proposed short film “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (the initial source of their partnership) to record stereophonic sound of Paul Dukas’ classical piece of the same name to accompany a story featuring Mickey Mouse as the eponymous apprentice.

After Fantasia premiered in November 1940, Disney explained his way of thinking to Popular Science: “We know that music emerging from one speaker behind the screen sounds thin, tinkly, and strainy. Such beautiful artworks were what we wanted to recreate […] so that audiences would feel as though they were standing on the podium with Stokowski.”

This was a great idea but it came at a high price. Each theater would have to spend $85,000 for Fantasound’s 96 speaker system. That is approximately $1.8 Million in 2023 dollars. So few theaters offered Fantasound — just 12 of them opted for the technology to play FantasiaIn a roadshow format. Since FantasiaIt cost over $2 million to make and it didn’t recoup those costs for many years.

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Over the years, Hollywood came to realize that stereo sound was an enhancement of the theatrical experience. FantasiaNew generations were attracted to re-releases. Disney even managed to briefly lure audiences to the film’s 1969 re-release by leaning into the notion that the film could be a psychedelic experience for younger crowds. This re-release poster makes it seem quite trippy.

It took just 11 months to complete the project. Fantasia’s release, Dumbo succeeded by being, as Variety’s review at the time dubbed it, a “pleasant little story.” Loosely based on a never-published children’s book, DumboIt is experimental but more approachable for broad audiences. Name character Dumbo, an inexplicably bullied little elephant who has large ears and a cruel mother, is not able to speak. Her mother, however, only speaks a handful of words. Although Dumbo’s triumphant flight in flight is an iconic image in Disney animation, it only appears in the last 15 minutes. The story is pleasant, but it features Dumbo with his friendly friend Timothy Q. A drunken Mouse inhale champagne before hallucinating pink elephants, a rare moment in Disney animation history.

Where? FantasiaThe longest animated Disney film is DumboIt takes 64 minutes, making it almost the longest. (According the animation historian Bob Thomas’ book Walt Disney: American OriginalRKO, Walt’s distributor, demanded that the film be made longer. Walt refused.

Fantasia’s box-office failure was one of a few aspects that contributed to Dumbo having a drastically lower budget of $950,000 — half the cost of Snow White and Seven DwarfsIt is two-thirds cheaper than the original PinocchioPer Michael Barrier, animator. World War II, at that time, was wrecking havoc in Europe’s culture. It further emphasised the necessity to reduce spending.

Getty Images photo of LMPC

Dumbo was deliberately designed to be cheap without feeling sloppy — just as with FantasiaEvery dollar of the production budget is evident on the screen, even the less complex and cartoonish character designs. A part of the budget was seen in animation styles: Disney movies use very few animated characters. Dumbo’s less expensive background style, with watercolor images used to set the scenes. (While Snow White also has watercolor in some scenes, the other most famous Disney animated movie with watercolor backgrounds is 2002’s Lilo & Stitch.)

The simpler design is more creative. Dumbo’s comparatively small story, just as the more expensive and highfalutin choices make sense for Fantasia’s ambition. One of the best ways to achieve your goals. Dumbo hints at its children’s-story background is by depicting Mr. Stork delivering animal babies, soaring over the United States as visualized with an elementary-school-style depiction of Florida, with the state’s name hovering above it.) These choices are not an option. Dumbo doesn’t come across as a cut-rate or compromised production, unlike some later Disney animated movies.

Economizing pays off. Dumbo well outgrossed its production budget upon its initial release, and was easily the studio’s most financially successful film of the fairly lean 1940s. The Second World War saw Disney struggling to produce feature-length films that were popular, so the studio began a strategy of re-releases in 1944. This not only brought back memories but also reminded viewers how much they are loved. Snow WhiteNevertheless, it helped movies like FantasiaThey will eventually get their money back.

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It’s harder to square that long-term strategy against the current state of American theaters, when audiences are far less likely to return to multiplexes to watch movies they’ve already seen or can watch at home. There are exceptions, given a long enough timeline and a popular enough film: Cameron’s 2022 Avatar Worldwide, theatrical rereleases made $76 millions. Water is the Way. And many local theaters still hold special matinee screenings of popular kids’ movies — but that’s more on a scale to help those theaters make a profit than to boost movies’ long-term bottom lines.

Also, the Walt Disney Company has seen a lot of change since 1940. Like the other major studios, it’s risk-averse and aimed more at the coveted four-quadrant blockbuster release and the international crossover hit than at changing the medium of animation. While big changes like pushing into PG content with 1985’s The Black Cauldron or moving away from h-drawn cel animation in 2013, have periodically raised concerns about the company’s future, those concerns have rarely been as acute as they were in the 1940s, when the animation unit hovered on the precipice of disaster.

But in part, that’s because Disney has weathered so many crises over the last century, and survived so many risks like Fantasia and DumboBecause it is too large an institution, the company feels impossible to fail. The company is now able to make big technological leaps, knowing that its legacy and Disney brand will continue to attract viewers. Take on new risks, like this ambitious and challenging theatrical disaster Strange World suggest that Disney is still willing to try new things to interest an increasingly busy and distracted audience, and it’s still willing to push the boundaries of animation — even if it sometimes seems like a risk without an easily predictable reward.