The Case of the Disney Exodus
Hey everyone, welcome back to our series on Animation! Last week, we ended on a high (ho) note with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This week, we’re continuing to look at the development of other major animated film studios.
There was a time when Walt Disney Studios ruled over all others in terms of animation. Even as other studios created valuable work, Disney was constantly thought of as the leader in animation techniques and innovation. It was THE studio to work for as an animator, and no other seemed to rival it.
But, all fairy-tales must end, even for Disney. Today, we are talking about The Disney Exodus; an event that took place over the course of a few decades, but ultimately occured in the late-70's and early 80's, when animators left the studio to pursue other projects--taking their skills and ideas with them. Before we start discussing the Exodus, let’s take a look at The Disney Era.
The time period of 1928 - 1941 is often known as The Golden Age of animation. To some, it’s also called “The Disney Era.” During this time, there were more technological advancements in animation than any other time period. To put this into perspective, this era starts with Steamboat Willie and ends with the breathtaking “Fantasia.” It only took Disney’s studio 12 years to make these advancements, and the world took notice.
It’s important to recognize that part of this achievement came from Disney’s willingness to sacrifice profit to make his films the best they could be.
One example of this is “The Skeleton Dance.” Disney could have easily stuck to making Mickey cartoons, but his ambition led him to show audiences a glimpse of what animated storytelling could be. This was a mood piece, vastly different from the thousands of cartoons that audiences were used to, and it planted the seeds for Fantasia and other films to come.
While Disney was focusing on realism, other studios continued to animate in a more cartoonish style. Because animation is an incredibly broad topic, we will talk about the Studio cartoons some other time!
Disney's Silver Age
Throughout the 40's & 50's, Disney’s studio experienced its silver age, with classics such as Peter Pan, The Lady and the Tramp, and of course Sleeping Beauty. Even if the stories or characters seemed flat at times, it was the animation that lifted them up. In Charles Solomon’s book, “Enchanted Drawings,” he describes the scene of Maleficent’s dragon:
“Maleficent hurls herself across the sky as a glittering pinwheel of fire, landing before him in a burst of flame. She shouts a wrathful invocation in her commanding voice, and the chartreuse fires that surround her explode into a mighty column of flame, higher than the turrets of the castle. The black form of the sorceress, darkly silhouetted against the fire, twists and elongates. The shadow waxes and solidifies, as if evil itself were coalescing in that inferno, and becomes an enormous dragon with a terrible horned head and glowing yellow eyes.”
The mastery that Disney’s animators demonstrated in scenes like this is the reason that the studio became synonymous with animation over all the other projects they were attempting at the time.
Disney is responsible for elevating the standard of draftsmanship, and their realism in animation was unparalleled. No other studio came close to having their influence. For a while, Walt Disney Studios was the king of animation.
The Disney Strike of 1941 & UPA
When we talk about The Disney Exodus, we often mean what happened with the studio in the early 1980's. But, more studios were born from disgruntled Disney animators than we might realize.
Remember how we said that no one rivaled Disney’s influence? Well, one studio came very close.
United Productions of America or UPA challenged Disney’s realism and incorporated social commentary. Not to mention, they infused experimental graphics in their work
Today we know of UPA for its most popular character--Mr Quincy Magoo. In the early 1960's, UPA created the first animated Christmas special, “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol.”
In 1941, there was a strike at Disney among young men that were interested in the graphic arts, and they thought that animation could be used as a tool for social reform. They were unhappy with the restrictive, Academic style of drawing at Disney, with familiar fairy tales and an emphasis on humor. One member of this group--Bill Melendez--would one day be responsible for bringing Charlie Brown to life in A Charlie Brown Christmas!
These animators eventually formed or joined UPA, which won an oscar for Gerald McBoing-Boing.
Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes described UPA, “Every time you see one of their animated cartoons you are likely to recapture the sensation you had when you first saw, ‘Steamboat Willie,’ the early Silly Symphonies, ‘The Band Concert’--the feeling that something new and wonderful has happened, something almost too good to be true.”
UPA had its own style, but it’s important to note that it wasn’t as uniform as Disney. You could see the different influences from individual animators, and the varying degrees of light to heavy subject matter. They even did a short of The Tell-tale Heart!
Columbia shut down the animation house in 1949, and sold it to producer Henry Saperstein. He turned it into an TV studio.
The Death of Disney--an abrupt end to the Silver Age
The death of Disney caused a shift in the studio, as it would be expected. The films made by Disney leading up to that point were the work of many different creative people, but they all stemmed from Disney’s vision. The films were somewhat uniform, with a signature style and storytelling that animators were not able to vary from drastically. Variances started to appear in the following years, known as the bronze age or the dark age.
Disney’s death ushered in new leadership that struggled to fill his shoes; the company and its films would never be the same.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966.
Walt left behind future plans that carried the company for a few years under the supervision of Roy Disney. The Jungle Book and The Aristocats showed that the company could still make great animation. However it was not the same dynamic company it once was.
The Jungle book is considered to be the end of the Silver Age, mostly because it was the last film that Disney touched before he passed away
Roy did make sure that Walt’s “Florida Project” would come to fruition in 1971, but EPCOT (Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow) never came to be. EPCOT as we know it is not what Walt had in mind.
As for the movie business, from the late 60’s on, Disney survived in a lackluster way. There were even rumors that the company would be broken up and sold.
Because the company had leaned so heavily into theme parks and live action films, when Walt’s creativity was gone, there was little “magic” left. This was the feeling for many for almost 20 years.
Don Bluth
In 1971, Don Bluth was hired as an animator at Disney. Disney had been gone for 5 years, and the studio had been putting animation on the back-burner so to speak. Live-action films were financially successful, and animation cost a lot of money to produce. Gone was the fearless leader that didn’t mind losing money for quality and new advancements.
Many of the animators didn’t question their work, but because he actually first started working for Disney in 1955, he had seen the way the studio worked before Walt had died, and longed for that leadership.
Bluth said in an interview with Steve Henderson that “Everyone was asking ‘What would Walt have done?’ Which is a strange thing for an artist to say.”
Bluth worked on Robin Hood and The Rescuers and stayed on at Disney for 8 years. One detail that bothered Bluth while animating The Rescuers was that they were instructed not to paint the whites of their eyes because it would cost too much money.
In the 1970's, the 9 Old Men--the men known for animating Disney’s Golden Age films--were beginning to retire. There was no mentorship, and as these men left, so did their secrets of creating beautiful animation.
This loss in trade secrets bothered Bluth, as the studio didn’t seem interested in re-learning them. Bluth and a fellow animator named Gary Goldman, knew that they would be expected to take leadership roles in the coming years. So, in order to get directing experience, they started their own project in Bluth’s garage called, “Banjo the Woodpile Cat.”
Don Bluth described it, We would look at the old stuff, such as the beautiful water in Fantasia and ask Frank Thomas (one of the “Nine Old Men”) “How did you do that?” and he’d say “I can’t remember, did anyone write it down?” Little things like that would keep happening and we realized we were losing the war with art so we went out and pioneered again to see if we could discover what they had forgotten to tell us.
The men used their own equipment, and Bluth pulled animators from Disney for help. Some claim that this project caused a division between the animators at the studio, while Bluth maintains that the atmosphere at Disney was already toxic. He says that no matter how much he tried to bring the heart back to Disney Studios, the corporate side only wanted to make money.
“We left because the corporate structure was just too calcified and we couldn’t fix it, we knew they would be angry when we left, and call us traitors and everything else but we knew we had to, to try to resurrect what was beautiful and what Walt believed in and so that is why we left.”-Bluth
In September of 1979, Bluth and Goldman left Disney. They took 16 animators with them, delaying the animated studio’s current projects by a year. Their goal was to create a studio that rivaled Disney animation in such a way, that Disney would work harder to bring heart and soul back to their animated films
Bluth and Goldman’s first full-length animated film was The Secret of NIMH, an animated treasure that was tonally and visually darker than anything Disney had produced at the time. This film was a major success for the studio because it showed critics that this small, rival studio could compete with an animation giant such as Disney. It was, however, a commercial failure.
A New York Times article said of the film: It's just this ''old-fashioned'' look -rich, fully detailed, opulent and painstakingly achieved - that Messrs. Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy have sought to recreate, and in this respect, ''The Secret of N.I.M.H.'' is something of a technical and stylistic triumph.
In the mid-1980s, Bluth teamed up with a man named Morris Sullivan who stepped in just as the studio went bankrupt, and they formed Sullivan Bluth Studios.
Sullivan saved the day by investing in the studio. Without him, we wouldn’t have films like The Land Before Time or Anastasia.
Just as Sullivan Bluth was surging back, famed film director Stephen Spielberg approached the studio in the hopes that they could make an animated film. This was even worse news for Disney, as they were losing their place as the leader in animation.
Together, Sullivan Bluth and Steven Spielberg made An American Tale, the highest grossing non-Disney animated film at the time. It even beat Disney’s current release, “The Great Mouse Detective”!
Disney started working to get their footing back with animation, but nothing could stop Bluth and Goldman from making more successful films throughout the 80's and 90's.
Spielberg's success with Bluth also led him to create his own animation studio, Amblin, with releases like “We’re Back,” and “Balto.”
The Mouse-dom Strikes Back
When we last left Disney, their animation studio was falling apart. Some of their best animators had quit, production was delayed, and some feared that this was the end.
In came Michael Eisner (CEO) and his partner Frank Wells (President)
They could see the untapped potential that Disney still had and set about revitalizing the company.
Despite their initial efforts, Disney saw one of its darkest moments with “The Black Cauldron.” It was a financial and critical failure. Not only had the studio lost respect in the animation world, average movie-goers were looking at Disney a little differently.
Imagine how we feel right now about Disney animation. When we see a Disney movie is coming out, we all expect good reviews and box office records. This was not the case in the 1980s.
While the studio was staging its comeback, a new film was set to go into production with animator John Lasseter to direct. Lasseter approached the powers in charge and pitched for a film that was a combination of computer and hand-drawn animation. According to Lasseter, they were not interested in this idea since it would not cost any less. They seemed to only want to use a new process if it increased the cost-efficiency of the project.
After that meeting, Lasseter was fired. He was then hired full time at The Computer Division Graphics Group--an early name for PIXAR.
Much of the team that worked on The Brave Little Toaster would go on to work at PIXAR as well--some consider it to be a spiritual prequel to Toy Story.
Lack of Teamwork Makes the Dreamworks
In 1984, Michael Eisner hired Jeffrey Katzenberg to run the animation studios. During his tenure, Katzenberg put Disney animation back on the map and created what is known as the “disney Renaissance.”
It’s important to note that animation was not the only thing that made the films of the renaissance so successful, but it appeared that the studio was returning to its roots. Before the release of The Little Mermaid, the studio was closer than ever to shutting down.
Producing what some call the best Disney movies of all time, such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994).
During this time Frank Wells kept the peace between Eisner and Katzenberg, being essentially their counselor as well as colleague.
Disney was doing so well that Katzenberg naturally wanted to advance his career within the company. There was a back and forth as to whether Katzenberg would be leaving the company before the end of his contract or not. There was also a lot of discussion about the amount of money he would be given or giving up if he left.
Katzenberg has said that Eisner promised him the position of President if Wells ever left the position in pursuit of another job. According to Katzenberg he said "If for any reason Frank is not here … you are the number-two person and I want you to have the job."
When Wells tragically passed away due to a helicopter accident, tension came to a boil between Katzenberg and Eisner.
Eisner made the decision to eliminate the position of President and force Katzenberg into resignation. He hired two people to take his place; Joe Roth and Richard Frank.
Katzenberg later sued the DIsney company and cost them $270 million dollars.
Once he was let go from Disney he formed a studio called Dreamworks SKG with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg. All of whom called Eisner “Machiavellian.”
This is where the story gets interesting. According to Steve Jobs and John Lasseter, of Pixar, they had pitched the movie concept for “A Bug’s Life” before Katzenberg left Disney. Katzenberg still claims today that he knew nothing about their pitch. His claim is a little hard to believe since Dreamworks’ first movie was “Antz” which had a very similar storyline and name. Recently some new light was shed by Chris Weitz, a writer behind Antz. In an interview with Huffpost he said “We didn’t know that there was that much of a race [to the box office] until late in the process,” he explained, “when it turned out there had even been a fake schedule, which had us completing after ‘Bug’s Life’ was going to be released. We’d been working on this accelerated pace without really knowing exactly why.”
Antz ended up beating A Bug’s life to theaters by just over a month in 1998 but made less in ticket sales worldwide.
While working on Antz, Dreamworks had also been working on what we would say is their crown jewel. Released just a few months after Antz, The Prince of Egypt was a project Katzenberg had wanted to do for a long time but had not been able to undertake with Eisner at Disney. We discussed this amazing movie in our Top 10 Non-Disney Animated Classics.
Since its beginning Dreamworks has shown that it can and will compete with the Disney machine. They have produced such memorable movies such as Shrek, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Madagascar.
Katzenberg said in an interview that their mission statement is that they “make movies for adults, and the adult that exists in every child.”
If the Disney Exodus teaches us anything, it’s to recognize our own talent and worth. Imagine if these people never spoke out about their ideas? These men picked a battle with a giant, and because of that, we have a much more diverse catalog of animation today.
In the fight of Disney VS Bluth or Katzenberg, neither side could be declared triumphant. Instead, the audiences that get to share in animation and storytelling are the winners.
Sources:
https://www.skwigly.co.uk/don-bluth-and-gary-goldman-part-one-leaving-disney/
https://www.cnn.com/videos/international/2013/06/28/talk-asia-jeffrey-katzenberg-c.cnn
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/epic-disney-blow-up-1994-694476
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-bugs-life-antz-rivalry_n_5b7eb6c3e4b0348585fe2ecd