December 24, 2019 • 29 mins
Salvador Dali and Walt Disney weren't just two of the greatest artistic innovators of their time — they were also close friends with a bromance for the ages. Learn more about Dali and Disney's friendship (and how they almost made one of the weirdest cartoons of all time) in part 1 of this 2-part episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:27):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. I for one, am excited
about this episode because it allows me to use a
pun that I wrote years ago, and I've never found
a good use for that pun. I will reveal in
the course of today's show. But first, I'm Ben really
gonna bate and switches like that? Ben. That is hurtful. No,
(00:49):
it's foreshadowing. It's big switch if we don't get to
that's true. But you know, sometimes we forget. I'm gonna
I'm gonna bug you about him, like Ben, where's that pun?
That pun? Give me that pun? Buddy system, keep accountable?
Who are you know? Your buddy in this buddy system
of fools? And there, of course, as always, is our superproducer,
Casey Pegram. So today's episode touches on a lot of things.
(01:14):
That touches on art, it touches on surrealism, it touches
on the mouse capital M, touches on what's that my heart? Ah?
That's sweet man, And I think it's sincere too, right. Yeah, always,
I'm nothing if not perpetually sincere to a fault. So
Salvador Dolly. It should be well known to anyone, even
(01:36):
people who don't just save themselves for some reason or
another fans of art. Salvador Dolly is perhaps the most
famous surrealist in modern history. I mean you should know him,
if if not only just for his mustache. Yes, yeah,
and uh, while we're while we're on the subject of
facial hair. Very quickly thanks to our good friends over
(01:57):
on the Ridiculous Historians community page, who specifically requested that
we talked more often about our facial hair. I don't
know how I feel about that. I don't know either,
because you know, I thought our French mustache episode was
pretty good. You know, what else is there to say
about facial hair? About our facial hair in particular, I
guess we'd have to do some changes, do some updates,
(02:19):
or something that gonna happen. Well, I I don't know, man,
I if we have to. One of the interesting things
was the idea of having to disappear like we had
to disappear. We we probably end up change our facial hair.
But you can only use that move once. Yeah, then
you get into uh, you know, the thing is, don't
believe what you see in fiction. Fake facial hair never
(02:39):
works for a long term disguise. No, absolutely not. It
always looks just that looks like fake facial hair. You
mean the genuine article if you truly want to stage
some sort of grand escape. But we're not talking about
our facial hair today. We're talking about somebody else's facial hair.
Uh barely in passing right, right, Salvador Dolly, one of
(03:00):
the most famous artists of his day and one of
the most famous mustache rockers of all time, was approached
by another fan of the mustache uh fellow named Walt
Disney in nineteen and Walt Disney came to Dolly with
with a pitch, Right, he pitched him on something he did, indeed.
(03:24):
But before we get into the specifics of that pitch,
we should talk a little bit about Disney and Dollies
respective childhoods and kind of what led them to become
the geniuses that they ultimately did become. Yeah, they had
a lot of they had a lot of parallels. They
were actually born in a relatively uh similar time, right,
(03:47):
they were born three years almost three years apart, so
they were around the same age range, but they were
born in different parts of the world. They both were
coming up in this game called life in the ninth hundreds.
And when you think of Salvador Dali and you think
of Walt Disney, other than the fact that they're fans
(04:07):
of mustaches, uh, they may not seem to have very
much in common. But as you said, no, if we
look a little deeper into into their professional lives and
to their artistic inclinations, we see that they actually had
a lot in common. Thematically. Yeah, they both grew up
in very small towns. Um. They were sort of big
(04:29):
fish in little ponds. There wasn't a whole lot going
on um in terms of like the arts or any
kinds of culture in these towns. Uh. Disney was born
in Chicago, which would have been great, but he actually
grew up in uh Marshaling, Missouri, Marcelline, Missouri. And Salvador Dali,
on the other hand, spent his youth on a small
rocky coastal town of Costa Brava in Spain, um, which
(04:54):
was near another place where he spent some of his youth,
which was a fishing village called katta Quas Yep yep.
And Walt Disney is the elder though not by much.
He was born on December five, nineteen o one. Dali
was born on May eleventh, nineteen o four, and, as
pointed out on Walt Disney dot Org of all places, uh,
(05:16):
the two men had some common parenting themes when they
were growing up. Their fathers were described as domineering, but
their mothers were deeply affectionate and warm. This is sadly
not an unfamiliar situation to a lot of people listening
to the podcast today. They always felt like dreamers. You know,
(05:39):
what's How's that old saying go in English? Walking around
with your head in the clouds? They were. They were
those sorts of people prone to flights of fancy, but
they were also very driven figures. So without making the
entire podcast about Walt Disney, it's important to know just
how driven he was and how driven Dolly was. Disney
was the cartoonist for his high school newspaper, which sounds
(06:01):
like a cool job, but while he was doing that,
he was also attending In addition to attending high school,
he was attending night classes at the Chicago Academy of
Fine Arts. Talk about an honor student. Yeah, it's almost
like by the time he finished high school. He was
firmly um educated, uh and ready to kind of jump
right into a career as a cartoonist and elevate that
(06:25):
to what would be essentially a very new art form
of the time, which was animation. Dali was also in
a slouch when he was a youth. He had his
first public art show at the Municipal Theater in Figueres, uh,
and that was when he was just fifteen. And then
he later a couple of years later, would enroll at
the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and that's
(06:46):
where he kind of started to develop his reputation as
not only an incredible artist and innovative thinker, but also
a very eccentric personality, which was a big part of
his brand. And because they were both unorthodox, because they
were pioneers doing new things, they faced a lot of
initial bumps in the road was be bumps, a lot
(07:08):
of obstacles. You know. Disney was a groundbreaking animator and
Dolly was a genius fine artist who was just notoriously weird.
He was a weird dude. Disney focused on stuff like
developing new technologies for audio visual equipment. Him along with
(07:30):
his partner of eye Works developed things like the optical printer,
which allowed you to insert, you know, animation, like compositing
things together. It was basically the earliest analog version of
after effects, where you could take different elements and put
them together, whether it be you know, things that were
filmed in the real world and combined with like sell
animation like you would see in bed nobs and brimsticks
(07:52):
for example. That was all the results of these crazy
inventions that he and of Eye Works came up with together.
Dolly was more of a creative kind of innovator, and
he was pushing form. He was pushing kind of the
idea of what art is. And it was part of
the surrealist movement, which was an offshoot of the datast movement,
(08:13):
which was like the idea of anti art, you know,
are like like Marcel Duchamp and his ar mutt, you know,
toilet bowl. That was literally just the idea of art
can be whatever I say it is. Uh. It makes
me think of this big thing that's making the rounds
right now, banana, the banana taped to the wall, which
is this idea that this idea is worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars. But the banana itself is ephemeral and replaceable,
(08:36):
and it's really funny it almost not to get too
off the subject, but it makes me think of like memes,
because really the idea is what is proliferating, and people
are reposting it and turning into different forms, and you know,
there's like a silver Kanye like with like as as
a piece of duct tape over the banana. It's just
become this like taken on a life of its own.
So you could say initially, oh, that's a really b
(08:59):
s idea, but then you start to see it really
like infiltrate the zeitgeist an interesting way. What do you
think about that, Casey, Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
I think it's part of almost a sort of meta
art idea. You could look at somebody like Damien Hurst
or maybe Jeff Cohns, who are sort of you know,
their their pieces self for millions of dollars, but they're
almost about a commentary on the art world and how
(09:21):
it's all just money and it's all just kind of
rich people sort of almost laundering their money or or
protecting their investments their assets by by buying art. But
it's sort of no longer about just that experience as
a human being of seeing a piece of art and
like having an emotional response to it. Agree with you
their case you because because there's there's a commentary about process, right,
(09:43):
and so many quote unquote avalante guarde artists have made
their fortunes and their careers by essentially proclaiming the emperor
has no clothes. The emperor in this case being the
value assigned to art, or the the illusion that there
is a quantifiable sta value and a meme itself. While
we're on this, uh, a meme technically is just an
(10:05):
element of a culture or system of behavior. Memes started
as an idea, you know, and now we call what
we call memes are kind of a genre of of
the the larger concept of the meme. And one thing
that really stands out to me for what you're describing
their knowal is that Dhalio would say, had this mission
not just to redefine what visual art is, but to
(10:27):
blur the lines between art forms that were usually considered
distinct and separate. Right. So he he would say, you know,
he would love jazz. He loved improvisational jazz, and to
him that was a kind of painting, and I think
that's a beautiful way to look at it. Yeah, I agree,
And I don't want it to sound like I'm saying
that Dolly was doing this overtly conceptual stuff, because if
(10:50):
you look at Dollies work, it is very pleasant and
intriguing to look at, and it gives you all kinds
of ideas and it's not a banana tape to a wall.
It is very masterfully in agunitive landscapes and like you know,
the melting clocks and these kind of worlds that he created,
which is kind of what made him have a lot
in common esthetically with Walt Disney, cause weal Disney was
all about creating that stuff too, And you never really
(11:11):
peg Disney necessarily as being someone who would be a
fan of surrealism. But as his career progressed, and I
think he started getting a bad rap for pushing, um,
you know, commercial work over artistry. I think he started to,
you know, get a chip on his shoulder about that,
and that is what led Um. You know, we're skipping
some stuff here, but you all know what happened with
Walt Disney. He became the most influential, important person probably
(11:35):
the history of cinema. Honestly, I mean that's arguable, but
at least in terms of like really pushing animation to
this massive mainstream explosion. Um. He had hits with things
like you know, snow White, adapting fairy tales into these lush,
beautiful animated films that made lots of money and got
people just hooked on animation. Um, but it got to
(11:56):
a point where he wanted to do something a little
more innovative and interesting and Fantasia where he started incorporating
much more kind of surreal imagery without dialogue, just SYNCD
up to music. That was when he really started to
be like, Okay, I want to push the envelope of
creativity here. And that kind of coincides with a round
the time that he met Salvador Dali. There's some backgrounds
(12:24):
that I want to provide here before we get to
their meeting. So we know that they had initial uh skepticism.
Let's say that I'll be diplomatic and call it skepticism,
but we know they also proved themselves and they started
acquiring mainstream notice and acclaim uh dollies. Early work was
(12:46):
praised widely, as was Disney's Silly symphonies. These were the
short form animations that function as experiments or proofs of
concept for some of those technical uh innovation they were making.
And as these guys continued their careers, they had a
(13:07):
brief mentioned where they first they first became aware of
one another, if not physically meeting, and that was at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York the Moment.
In nineteen thirty six, Dolly had a couple of different
pieces on display in an exhibition called Fantastic Art, Data
and Surrealism. And in that same exhibition there were two
(13:31):
cells animation cells from a short film by Disney called
Three Little Wolves. Fast forward next year seven, Salvador Dolly
visits Hollywood for the first time and he says, you
know what I want to He's always trying to find
new formats and new mediums. He says, you know what
I want to make an animated film. I think this
(13:53):
can really bring the metaphysical to this concrete, observable, experiential play.
And he writes to Andre Breton Casey ke checked me
on that. Yeah, it's aunt great surrealist writer. Highly recommend
his novel Naja Casey on the Case. Thank you, sir,
(14:14):
Dolly and His In his letter to Breton, says that
Surrealism's influence has become so enormous that even creators of
animated cartoons are proud to call themselves surrealists. And I
have come to Hollywood and I am in contact with
what he called the three great American surrealist Ready for
this list, this might be surprising the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille,
(14:39):
and Walt Disney. For a lot of people would be
strange to hear Disney lumped in with those. It's true, Um,
but we have to remember to how new this kind
of animation was. And another another couple of influential folks
that would have been lumped into that would have been
um Tex Avery for example, and Max Fleischer, who were
I don't know if you've ever seen any of these
(15:00):
Um from the Inkwell cartoons. They're black and white. There's
one it's like an early example of rotoscoping, where they
take the dance moves of Cab Callaway and like map
them essentially. I don't know, this is a rudimentary way
of describing to the movements of this really weird ghost
who does this kind of like Cab Calloway type dance.
Betty Boop is in it, and that's all like in
the early thirties, if I'm not mistaken. So that's yeah,
(15:23):
twenties even exactly. Um. So, just to get the chronology down,
Disney made a huge splash with Snow White, which came
out in nineteen thirty seven. And there's some folks that
actually conjecture that Disney and Dolly may have even met
as early as nineteen thirty seven. Um. But it was
then he followed up by Pinocchio in nineteen forty, and
then that Fantasia which was in production concurrently with with
(15:47):
with Pinocchio. Um, and that came out in as well. Yes.
So Disney is known for employing European artists because he
likes their esthetic. He also is a very acious collector
of art books, of books of fairy tales, and he's
been doing that since at least nineteen thirty five, and
he keeps the library of These two have inspire his artists,
(16:11):
and years later he has read The Secret Life of
Salvador Dolly, which is Dolly's autobiography. Disney not only sends
his copy to Dolly asking for his autograph, but he
also says, hey, you know what, we should hang out,
we should be a crew, we should collaborate, come to
the Walt Disney studios. So they're conflicting reports, the um
(16:35):
different narratives. You'll hear. You know you mentioned there was
a rumored meeting before nineteen five. In early nineteen five,
we do have a confirmed meeting at a party in Hollywood. Now,
regardless of when they physically met, whichever narrative ends up
being true, they already were so aware of each other
(16:55):
and they had mutually agreed on their camaraderie and their
common cause. This friendship is supported by hard evidence by
primary sources. They sent each other fan mail, which I
think is so sweet and so cool. You can see
these letters where they're just they're like, you're the greatest. No,
you're awesome. I love what you're doing. And those kind
(17:18):
of friendships are amazing. It's super interesting. I would have
thought that Dolly might have turned his nose up a
little bit, being some such a out there kind of
thinker and uh and and visionary, that he might have
been like, oh, Disney and all this commercial stuff and
the Seven Dwarves and all of this, like you know,
big Hollywood money stuff. He might that might have not
(17:39):
been for him. But it's cool that he recognized the
innovation and brilliance behind what Disney was doing, even though
it was obviously very commercially successful. Um not that Salvador
Deli wasn't also a pretty wealthy man at this point
just because of his influence on the art world as well.
It was definitely a superstar in his own right. And
here is where we enter into a bit of speculation,
(18:01):
because these guys on board no reservations, and we have
to wonder how their collaboration would have proceeded were it
not for World War Two, because as as World War
Two is at its fever pitch, uh, they you know,
it's stymies their abilities to collaborate or their opportunities to
(18:25):
do so. And then in nineteen Walt Disney, like Nassalvador Dolly,
asked him to design an animated short straight from the
mind of Dolly, to be part of this film that
would be kind of like Fantasia. And and it's tough
to you know, I think it's tough for us, uh
(18:45):
in the modern day to really understand how amazing and
just out there Fantasia was in nineteen because we all
grew up with this extended flight of fancy. I love
I love the whole thing too, and it still holds
up brilliantly and is is pretty terrifying in some sections.
There's the whole night on Bald Mountain with the crazy
(19:07):
demon coming out of the volcano thing. I mean, it's
really some some pretty dark stuff. And then of course
it goes into like you know, parts with fairies and woodland,
uh kind of spirits and all of that. And then
there's you know, the whole hippo hippos and all of
this uh kind of stitched together by the soundtrack and um,
not to get too of course, but it's always fascinating
(19:28):
me how he was able to figure out how to
sink these hundreds and hundreds of of you know, hand
drawn animations with the soundtrack because you have to hit
these beats, these marks absolutely perfectly to to make that work,
and it just sinks up just like, absolutely flawlessly. Um,
(19:49):
And so you're you're right, then it absolutely was a
work of surrealism in its own right, and he wanted
to keep doing stuff like that. Yeah, and shout out,
I I don't want to is to get lost. Shout
out to my favorite character and Fantasia Scharona Bog the
demon from Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria. That
(20:10):
is still one of my favorite sequences of animation. So
Dolly agrees. Of course, his best bud mutual admirer of
his wants to work with him. Dreams do come true,
it seems. So Dolly goes through the extensive Disney Music
library and he says, okay, let me find you know,
Fantasia rules. Let me find a song, uh that will
(20:32):
inspire this visual element, and then he chooses a ballad
by Ray Gilbert and Armando Domingo is called Destino because
the title, the Spanish word for destiny, really really speaks
to him. I wonder, can we play just a brief
clip of that to let everybody get a get a
handle on what we're talking about a quick so for
(21:15):
a let's see. I don't want to spoil this for people,
but you can. You can hear the song Totino. It's
easy to find, and you can also you can see
the storyboards the Dolly worked on. But don't do that
just just yet. Let's get to the rest of the
story because World War Two is still going on. But
(21:35):
Disney is still working right, yeah, as his dolly, as
a essentially a full time employee of the Walt Disney Company,
at least for a time where he's showing up to
the studio every morning and around eight am and working
NonStop on the storyboards you mentioned until around five or
six o'clock at night. Disney says, Okay, I'm having a
(22:00):
tough time making these feature length films, but I need
to keep the studio afloat, so I'm gonna make package films.
And uh, these package films are things like The Adventures
of Ikabad and Mr Toad, which is one of the
the last ones of that iteration, but there were five
(22:21):
others for a grand total of six after they go
back to features, and they famously create Cinderella. But Disney,
this is interesting. He saw that Fantasia could be a
viable thing to bring to the public, and he wanted
to Uh. He wanted to try to focus on those
(22:42):
package films. So it wasn't just a financial concern, it
was an artistic an aesthetic concern. Ultimately, he wanted to
take the public perception of animation and change it from
something silly, something steamboat. Willie asked to something that would
be considered high art. And we see this with different
(23:05):
formats of art throughout the ages, Like there was a
time when novels were considered you know, low and not
not particularly respected. What do you think podcasts are gonna
fall on this continuum? How history regard our our medium
ben like radio? Maybe? I I don't know. I've been
keeping an eye on blogs. I want to see what
(23:26):
happens to blogs because you remember before we got into
this business, or even well, um, right around the time, uh,
we we were seeing peak blog and inundation. Everybody was
a blogger, right if you were at my blog. And
now you know, many many people are podcasting, which I
think is great. I don't know. I don't know. I
don't have the crystal blog for that. It could not
(23:48):
worth it. I was absolutely worth it. I got I
gotta chuckle out of this old shriveled grinch. Heart. So
you have a you have a big heart goal. Uh
so what do you have the heart of a lion?
And a lifetime band from the Atlanta Zoot. Then the
funny ones are not written by me, but we can
understand that. You know, he's this guy Disney. He has
(24:10):
an artist he's a visionary, and he's saying, hey, the
money is great, and I need the money, but also
to feed my soul and to garner the respect that
I feel this deserves. We need to start thinking of
animation as an art form, not just something entertaining for children.
But he's still he's still having a tough time. And
(24:31):
we talked about too how a lot of his employees
were drafted into the military during this time point. Yeah, yeah,
and not to mention that another way that they made
money was I don't know exactly how the money changed hands,
but imagine they would have had to get some government
funding for those propaganda films. There's a really interesting period
in Disney history where they were making like there's the
in the Fuers Face where it's like if the furor says,
(24:54):
v is zamasta raise sigile right in the furorspace, and
I believe that's starring Donald Duck was the star of
a lot of those, uh, And they're really fascinating. And
by the way, if if anyone and you you in
Casey as well, find yourselves in San Francisco, I highly
recommend visiting the Disney Family Museum. It's not connected to
like the Walt Disney Company. It's strictly from the Disney
(25:16):
Family Trust, so it's very much a lot of the
things that Disney Company would kind of tend to disown
or not want to like talk about, like these propaganda
posters and films. So you can see a lot of
the original posters for these, uh there, in addition to
a lot of like potentially problematic merchandise that might have
come out that kind of stuff exactly. And also you
(25:37):
have like scale models of his theme parks and a
lot of the animatronic imagineering kind of innovations. And they
actually have their that optical printer that we talked about. Um,
it's either a recreation or it it might well be the
actual thing um there in the museum. So I highly
recommend checking that out and you can get a I
don't remember seeing any of the Dolly stuff there, but
(25:57):
I wouldn't be surprised if it was and I just
missed it. And we do want to warn anybody who
hasn't seen the World War two era propaganda films from Disney.
They do contain blatant and offensive racist stereotypes, particularly against
German and Japanese people, and just just gird yourself before
(26:20):
you see that. Well, folks, you may be asking yourself,
why is Casey talking all of a sudden, Well, it's
because we have reached the end of part one of
this two parter on Salvador Dali and Walt Disney and
a little Peek behind the Curtain. We recorded this episode,
we really enjoyed it and decided to make it a
two parter because it was kind of long, and then
(26:41):
we forgot to record the intro outro that would be
necessary for all those pieces to fit together. So you find,
folks out there in podcast land get to hear me
kind of stumbled my way through an outro for a change. So,
first and foremost thanks to all the Ridiculous Historians for
tuning in from week to week as we do this
Goofy program. We're we're a little mystified, but you know,
(27:03):
happy that you've seem to enjoy it. You can join
the conversation over on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. All
three of us post there at least once in a while.
You can write us an email. We are ridiculous at
my heart radio dot com. We always like to see
what folks have to say. Sometimes we'll read things on
the air, probably not as much as we should. Uh.
(27:26):
You can find Ben A. Nol individually on social media
BNS on Twitter at Ben Bowling hs W. He's also
on Instagram at ben Bowling. Nol is on Instagram exclusively.
He does not do Twitter at least not beyond being
a lurker. And Noel's Instagram handle is at how Now
Noel Brown. Thank you as always to our super producer,
(27:49):
Casey Pagram. Whoa, that's me. That's awkward. Yeah, thank you
to been a knowl I have to this is this
is fun. I get to say this on the air,
so um, you know, we've been doing the show for
or I think a couple of years at this point.
It's been a real pleasure. It's been an adventure. It
hasn't been much of a roller coaster. It's just been
fun the whole time. I guess roller coasters are fun
(28:09):
the whole time too. But you know, usually when people
say a roller coaster, they mean like highs and lows,
but this has all been highs. So yeah, thank you
guys for being just uh you know, being you. Thank
you of course to Alex Williams, who composed are awesome
theme music that you're hearing at the beginning and ending
(28:30):
of pretty much every episode. I don't think we've ever
really messed around with that formula too much. Thanks to Gabe,
our research associate, always delivering on the great research that
kind of fills in a lot of the blanks in
these stories. Thank you to Christopher hasciotis here in spirit.
Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, also known as the Quister, purveyor
(28:51):
of the most cringe worthy segment and all of podcasting,
at least before me doing this outro, I will be
back at the top of the show on Thursday, and
I will I will still explain some of what's happening then,
just for the people that are for some reason only
listening to part two. But you folks who are listening
to a part one, you get it. You know what's
going on, and uh as Noel is fond of saying,
(29:14):
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:27):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. I for one, am excited
about this episode because it allows me to use a
pun that I wrote years ago, and I've never found
a good use for that pun. I will reveal in
the course of today's show. But first, I'm Ben really
gonna bate and switches like that? Ben. That is hurtful. No,
(00:49):
it's foreshadowing. It's big switch if we don't get to
that's true. But you know, sometimes we forget. I'm gonna
I'm gonna bug you about him, like Ben, where's that pun?
That pun? Give me that pun? Buddy system, keep accountable?
Who are you know? Your buddy in this buddy system
of fools? And there, of course, as always, is our superproducer,
Casey Pegram. So today's episode touches on a lot of things.
(01:14):
That touches on art, it touches on surrealism, it touches
on the mouse capital M, touches on what's that my heart? Ah?
That's sweet man, And I think it's sincere too, right. Yeah, always,
I'm nothing if not perpetually sincere to a fault. So
Salvador Dolly. It should be well known to anyone, even
(01:36):
people who don't just save themselves for some reason or
another fans of art. Salvador Dolly is perhaps the most
famous surrealist in modern history. I mean you should know him,
if if not only just for his mustache. Yes, yeah,
and uh, while we're while we're on the subject of
facial hair. Very quickly thanks to our good friends over
(01:57):
on the Ridiculous Historians community page, who specifically requested that
we talked more often about our facial hair. I don't
know how I feel about that. I don't know either,
because you know, I thought our French mustache episode was
pretty good. You know, what else is there to say
about facial hair? About our facial hair in particular, I
guess we'd have to do some changes, do some updates,
(02:19):
or something that gonna happen. Well, I I don't know, man,
I if we have to. One of the interesting things
was the idea of having to disappear like we had
to disappear. We we probably end up change our facial hair.
But you can only use that move once. Yeah, then
you get into uh, you know, the thing is, don't
believe what you see in fiction. Fake facial hair never
(02:39):
works for a long term disguise. No, absolutely not. It
always looks just that looks like fake facial hair. You
mean the genuine article if you truly want to stage
some sort of grand escape. But we're not talking about
our facial hair today. We're talking about somebody else's facial hair.
Uh barely in passing right, right, Salvador Dolly, one of
(03:00):
the most famous artists of his day and one of
the most famous mustache rockers of all time, was approached
by another fan of the mustache uh fellow named Walt
Disney in nineteen and Walt Disney came to Dolly with
with a pitch, Right, he pitched him on something he did, indeed.
(03:24):
But before we get into the specifics of that pitch,
we should talk a little bit about Disney and Dollies
respective childhoods and kind of what led them to become
the geniuses that they ultimately did become. Yeah, they had
a lot of they had a lot of parallels. They
were actually born in a relatively uh similar time, right,
(03:47):
they were born three years almost three years apart, so
they were around the same age range, but they were
born in different parts of the world. They both were
coming up in this game called life in the ninth hundreds.
And when you think of Salvador Dali and you think
of Walt Disney, other than the fact that they're fans
(04:07):
of mustaches, uh, they may not seem to have very
much in common. But as you said, no, if we
look a little deeper into into their professional lives and
to their artistic inclinations, we see that they actually had
a lot in common. Thematically. Yeah, they both grew up
in very small towns. Um. They were sort of big
(04:29):
fish in little ponds. There wasn't a whole lot going
on um in terms of like the arts or any
kinds of culture in these towns. Uh. Disney was born
in Chicago, which would have been great, but he actually
grew up in uh Marshaling, Missouri, Marcelline, Missouri. And Salvador Dali,
on the other hand, spent his youth on a small
rocky coastal town of Costa Brava in Spain, um, which
(04:54):
was near another place where he spent some of his youth,
which was a fishing village called katta Quas Yep yep.
And Walt Disney is the elder though not by much.
He was born on December five, nineteen o one. Dali
was born on May eleventh, nineteen o four, and, as
pointed out on Walt Disney dot Org of all places, uh,
(05:16):
the two men had some common parenting themes when they
were growing up. Their fathers were described as domineering, but
their mothers were deeply affectionate and warm. This is sadly
not an unfamiliar situation to a lot of people listening
to the podcast today. They always felt like dreamers. You know,
(05:39):
what's How's that old saying go in English? Walking around
with your head in the clouds? They were. They were
those sorts of people prone to flights of fancy, but
they were also very driven figures. So without making the
entire podcast about Walt Disney, it's important to know just
how driven he was and how driven Dolly was. Disney
was the cartoonist for his high school newspaper, which sounds
(06:01):
like a cool job, but while he was doing that,
he was also attending In addition to attending high school,
he was attending night classes at the Chicago Academy of
Fine Arts. Talk about an honor student. Yeah, it's almost
like by the time he finished high school. He was
firmly um educated, uh and ready to kind of jump
right into a career as a cartoonist and elevate that
(06:25):
to what would be essentially a very new art form
of the time, which was animation. Dali was also in
a slouch when he was a youth. He had his
first public art show at the Municipal Theater in Figueres, uh,
and that was when he was just fifteen. And then
he later a couple of years later, would enroll at
the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and that's
(06:46):
where he kind of started to develop his reputation as
not only an incredible artist and innovative thinker, but also
a very eccentric personality, which was a big part of
his brand. And because they were both unorthodox, because they
were pioneers doing new things, they faced a lot of
initial bumps in the road was be bumps, a lot
(07:08):
of obstacles. You know. Disney was a groundbreaking animator and
Dolly was a genius fine artist who was just notoriously weird.
He was a weird dude. Disney focused on stuff like
developing new technologies for audio visual equipment. Him along with
(07:30):
his partner of eye Works developed things like the optical printer,
which allowed you to insert, you know, animation, like compositing
things together. It was basically the earliest analog version of
after effects, where you could take different elements and put
them together, whether it be you know, things that were
filmed in the real world and combined with like sell
animation like you would see in bed nobs and brimsticks
(07:52):
for example. That was all the results of these crazy
inventions that he and of Eye Works came up with together.
Dolly was more of a creative kind of innovator, and
he was pushing form. He was pushing kind of the
idea of what art is. And it was part of
the surrealist movement, which was an offshoot of the datast movement,
(08:13):
which was like the idea of anti art, you know,
are like like Marcel Duchamp and his ar mutt, you know,
toilet bowl. That was literally just the idea of art
can be whatever I say it is. Uh. It makes
me think of this big thing that's making the rounds
right now, banana, the banana taped to the wall, which
is this idea that this idea is worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars. But the banana itself is ephemeral and replaceable,
(08:36):
and it's really funny it almost not to get too
off the subject, but it makes me think of like memes,
because really the idea is what is proliferating, and people
are reposting it and turning into different forms, and you know,
there's like a silver Kanye like with like as as
a piece of duct tape over the banana. It's just
become this like taken on a life of its own.
So you could say initially, oh, that's a really b
(08:59):
s idea, but then you start to see it really
like infiltrate the zeitgeist an interesting way. What do you
think about that, Casey, Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
I think it's part of almost a sort of meta
art idea. You could look at somebody like Damien Hurst
or maybe Jeff Cohns, who are sort of you know,
their their pieces self for millions of dollars, but they're
almost about a commentary on the art world and how
(09:21):
it's all just money and it's all just kind of
rich people sort of almost laundering their money or or
protecting their investments their assets by by buying art. But
it's sort of no longer about just that experience as
a human being of seeing a piece of art and
like having an emotional response to it. Agree with you
their case you because because there's there's a commentary about process, right,
(09:43):
and so many quote unquote avalante guarde artists have made
their fortunes and their careers by essentially proclaiming the emperor
has no clothes. The emperor in this case being the
value assigned to art, or the the illusion that there
is a quantifiable sta value and a meme itself. While
we're on this, uh, a meme technically is just an
(10:05):
element of a culture or system of behavior. Memes started
as an idea, you know, and now we call what
we call memes are kind of a genre of of
the the larger concept of the meme. And one thing
that really stands out to me for what you're describing
their knowal is that Dhalio would say, had this mission
not just to redefine what visual art is, but to
(10:27):
blur the lines between art forms that were usually considered
distinct and separate. Right. So he he would say, you know,
he would love jazz. He loved improvisational jazz, and to
him that was a kind of painting, and I think
that's a beautiful way to look at it. Yeah, I agree,
And I don't want it to sound like I'm saying
that Dolly was doing this overtly conceptual stuff, because if
(10:50):
you look at Dollies work, it is very pleasant and
intriguing to look at, and it gives you all kinds
of ideas and it's not a banana tape to a wall.
It is very masterfully in agunitive landscapes and like you know,
the melting clocks and these kind of worlds that he created,
which is kind of what made him have a lot
in common esthetically with Walt Disney, cause weal Disney was
all about creating that stuff too, And you never really
(11:11):
peg Disney necessarily as being someone who would be a
fan of surrealism. But as his career progressed, and I
think he started getting a bad rap for pushing, um,
you know, commercial work over artistry. I think he started to,
you know, get a chip on his shoulder about that,
and that is what led Um. You know, we're skipping
some stuff here, but you all know what happened with
Walt Disney. He became the most influential, important person probably
(11:35):
the history of cinema. Honestly, I mean that's arguable, but
at least in terms of like really pushing animation to
this massive mainstream explosion. Um. He had hits with things
like you know, snow White, adapting fairy tales into these lush,
beautiful animated films that made lots of money and got
people just hooked on animation. Um, but it got to
(11:56):
a point where he wanted to do something a little
more innovative and interesting and Fantasia where he started incorporating
much more kind of surreal imagery without dialogue, just SYNCD
up to music. That was when he really started to
be like, Okay, I want to push the envelope of
creativity here. And that kind of coincides with a round
the time that he met Salvador Dali. There's some backgrounds
(12:24):
that I want to provide here before we get to
their meeting. So we know that they had initial uh skepticism.
Let's say that I'll be diplomatic and call it skepticism,
but we know they also proved themselves and they started
acquiring mainstream notice and acclaim uh dollies. Early work was
(12:46):
praised widely, as was Disney's Silly symphonies. These were the
short form animations that function as experiments or proofs of
concept for some of those technical uh innovation they were making.
And as these guys continued their careers, they had a
(13:07):
brief mentioned where they first they first became aware of
one another, if not physically meeting, and that was at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York the Moment.
In nineteen thirty six, Dolly had a couple of different
pieces on display in an exhibition called Fantastic Art, Data
and Surrealism. And in that same exhibition there were two
(13:31):
cells animation cells from a short film by Disney called
Three Little Wolves. Fast forward next year seven, Salvador Dolly
visits Hollywood for the first time and he says, you
know what I want to He's always trying to find
new formats and new mediums. He says, you know what
I want to make an animated film. I think this
(13:53):
can really bring the metaphysical to this concrete, observable, experiential play.
And he writes to Andre Breton Casey ke checked me
on that. Yeah, it's aunt great surrealist writer. Highly recommend
his novel Naja Casey on the Case. Thank you, sir,
(14:14):
Dolly and His In his letter to Breton, says that
Surrealism's influence has become so enormous that even creators of
animated cartoons are proud to call themselves surrealists. And I
have come to Hollywood and I am in contact with
what he called the three great American surrealist Ready for
this list, this might be surprising the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille,
(14:39):
and Walt Disney. For a lot of people would be
strange to hear Disney lumped in with those. It's true, Um,
but we have to remember to how new this kind
of animation was. And another another couple of influential folks
that would have been lumped into that would have been
um Tex Avery for example, and Max Fleischer, who were
I don't know if you've ever seen any of these
(15:00):
Um from the Inkwell cartoons. They're black and white. There's
one it's like an early example of rotoscoping, where they
take the dance moves of Cab Callaway and like map
them essentially. I don't know, this is a rudimentary way
of describing to the movements of this really weird ghost
who does this kind of like Cab Calloway type dance.
Betty Boop is in it, and that's all like in
the early thirties, if I'm not mistaken. So that's yeah,
(15:23):
twenties even exactly. Um. So, just to get the chronology down,
Disney made a huge splash with Snow White, which came
out in nineteen thirty seven. And there's some folks that
actually conjecture that Disney and Dolly may have even met
as early as nineteen thirty seven. Um. But it was
then he followed up by Pinocchio in nineteen forty, and
then that Fantasia which was in production concurrently with with
(15:47):
with Pinocchio. Um, and that came out in as well. Yes.
So Disney is known for employing European artists because he
likes their esthetic. He also is a very acious collector
of art books, of books of fairy tales, and he's
been doing that since at least nineteen thirty five, and
he keeps the library of These two have inspire his artists,
(16:11):
and years later he has read The Secret Life of
Salvador Dolly, which is Dolly's autobiography. Disney not only sends
his copy to Dolly asking for his autograph, but he
also says, hey, you know what, we should hang out,
we should be a crew, we should collaborate, come to
the Walt Disney studios. So they're conflicting reports, the um
(16:35):
different narratives. You'll hear. You know you mentioned there was
a rumored meeting before nineteen five. In early nineteen five,
we do have a confirmed meeting at a party in Hollywood. Now,
regardless of when they physically met, whichever narrative ends up
being true, they already were so aware of each other
(16:55):
and they had mutually agreed on their camaraderie and their
common cause. This friendship is supported by hard evidence by
primary sources. They sent each other fan mail, which I
think is so sweet and so cool. You can see
these letters where they're just they're like, you're the greatest. No,
you're awesome. I love what you're doing. And those kind
(17:18):
of friendships are amazing. It's super interesting. I would have
thought that Dolly might have turned his nose up a
little bit, being some such a out there kind of
thinker and uh and and visionary, that he might have
been like, oh, Disney and all this commercial stuff and
the Seven Dwarves and all of this, like you know,
big Hollywood money stuff. He might that might have not
(17:39):
been for him. But it's cool that he recognized the
innovation and brilliance behind what Disney was doing, even though
it was obviously very commercially successful. Um not that Salvador
Deli wasn't also a pretty wealthy man at this point
just because of his influence on the art world as well.
It was definitely a superstar in his own right. And
here is where we enter into a bit of speculation,
(18:01):
because these guys on board no reservations, and we have
to wonder how their collaboration would have proceeded were it
not for World War Two, because as as World War
Two is at its fever pitch, uh, they you know,
it's stymies their abilities to collaborate or their opportunities to
(18:25):
do so. And then in nineteen Walt Disney, like Nassalvador Dolly,
asked him to design an animated short straight from the
mind of Dolly, to be part of this film that
would be kind of like Fantasia. And and it's tough
to you know, I think it's tough for us, uh
(18:45):
in the modern day to really understand how amazing and
just out there Fantasia was in nineteen because we all
grew up with this extended flight of fancy. I love
I love the whole thing too, and it still holds
up brilliantly and is is pretty terrifying in some sections.
There's the whole night on Bald Mountain with the crazy
(19:07):
demon coming out of the volcano thing. I mean, it's
really some some pretty dark stuff. And then of course
it goes into like you know, parts with fairies and woodland,
uh kind of spirits and all of that. And then
there's you know, the whole hippo hippos and all of
this uh kind of stitched together by the soundtrack and um,
not to get too of course, but it's always fascinating
(19:28):
me how he was able to figure out how to
sink these hundreds and hundreds of of you know, hand
drawn animations with the soundtrack because you have to hit
these beats, these marks absolutely perfectly to to make that work,
and it just sinks up just like, absolutely flawlessly. Um,
(19:49):
And so you're you're right, then it absolutely was a
work of surrealism in its own right, and he wanted
to keep doing stuff like that. Yeah, and shout out,
I I don't want to is to get lost. Shout
out to my favorite character and Fantasia Scharona Bog the
demon from Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria. That
(20:10):
is still one of my favorite sequences of animation. So
Dolly agrees. Of course, his best bud mutual admirer of
his wants to work with him. Dreams do come true,
it seems. So Dolly goes through the extensive Disney Music
library and he says, okay, let me find you know,
Fantasia rules. Let me find a song, uh that will
(20:32):
inspire this visual element, and then he chooses a ballad
by Ray Gilbert and Armando Domingo is called Destino because
the title, the Spanish word for destiny, really really speaks
to him. I wonder, can we play just a brief
clip of that to let everybody get a get a
handle on what we're talking about a quick so for
(21:15):
a let's see. I don't want to spoil this for people,
but you can. You can hear the song Totino. It's
easy to find, and you can also you can see
the storyboards the Dolly worked on. But don't do that
just just yet. Let's get to the rest of the
story because World War Two is still going on. But
(21:35):
Disney is still working right, yeah, as his dolly, as
a essentially a full time employee of the Walt Disney Company,
at least for a time where he's showing up to
the studio every morning and around eight am and working
NonStop on the storyboards you mentioned until around five or
six o'clock at night. Disney says, Okay, I'm having a
(22:00):
tough time making these feature length films, but I need
to keep the studio afloat, so I'm gonna make package films.
And uh, these package films are things like The Adventures
of Ikabad and Mr Toad, which is one of the
the last ones of that iteration, but there were five
(22:21):
others for a grand total of six after they go
back to features, and they famously create Cinderella. But Disney,
this is interesting. He saw that Fantasia could be a
viable thing to bring to the public, and he wanted
to Uh. He wanted to try to focus on those
(22:42):
package films. So it wasn't just a financial concern, it
was an artistic an aesthetic concern. Ultimately, he wanted to
take the public perception of animation and change it from
something silly, something steamboat. Willie asked to something that would
be considered high art. And we see this with different
(23:05):
formats of art throughout the ages, Like there was a
time when novels were considered you know, low and not
not particularly respected. What do you think podcasts are gonna
fall on this continuum? How history regard our our medium
ben like radio? Maybe? I I don't know. I've been
keeping an eye on blogs. I want to see what
(23:26):
happens to blogs because you remember before we got into
this business, or even well, um, right around the time, uh,
we we were seeing peak blog and inundation. Everybody was
a blogger, right if you were at my blog. And
now you know, many many people are podcasting, which I
think is great. I don't know. I don't know. I
don't have the crystal blog for that. It could not
(23:48):
worth it. I was absolutely worth it. I got I
gotta chuckle out of this old shriveled grinch. Heart. So
you have a you have a big heart goal. Uh
so what do you have the heart of a lion?
And a lifetime band from the Atlanta Zoot. Then the
funny ones are not written by me, but we can
understand that. You know, he's this guy Disney. He has
(24:10):
an artist he's a visionary, and he's saying, hey, the
money is great, and I need the money, but also
to feed my soul and to garner the respect that
I feel this deserves. We need to start thinking of
animation as an art form, not just something entertaining for children.
But he's still he's still having a tough time. And
(24:31):
we talked about too how a lot of his employees
were drafted into the military during this time point. Yeah, yeah,
and not to mention that another way that they made
money was I don't know exactly how the money changed hands,
but imagine they would have had to get some government
funding for those propaganda films. There's a really interesting period
in Disney history where they were making like there's the
in the Fuers Face where it's like if the furor says,
(24:54):
v is zamasta raise sigile right in the furorspace, and
I believe that's starring Donald Duck was the star of
a lot of those, uh, And they're really fascinating. And
by the way, if if anyone and you you in
Casey as well, find yourselves in San Francisco, I highly
recommend visiting the Disney Family Museum. It's not connected to
like the Walt Disney Company. It's strictly from the Disney
(25:16):
Family Trust, so it's very much a lot of the
things that Disney Company would kind of tend to disown
or not want to like talk about, like these propaganda
posters and films. So you can see a lot of
the original posters for these, uh there, in addition to
a lot of like potentially problematic merchandise that might have
come out that kind of stuff exactly. And also you
(25:37):
have like scale models of his theme parks and a
lot of the animatronic imagineering kind of innovations. And they
actually have their that optical printer that we talked about. Um,
it's either a recreation or it it might well be the
actual thing um there in the museum. So I highly
recommend checking that out and you can get a I
don't remember seeing any of the Dolly stuff there, but
(25:57):
I wouldn't be surprised if it was and I just
missed it. And we do want to warn anybody who
hasn't seen the World War two era propaganda films from Disney.
They do contain blatant and offensive racist stereotypes, particularly against
German and Japanese people, and just just gird yourself before
(26:20):
you see that. Well, folks, you may be asking yourself,
why is Casey talking all of a sudden, Well, it's
because we have reached the end of part one of
this two parter on Salvador Dali and Walt Disney and
a little Peek behind the Curtain. We recorded this episode,
we really enjoyed it and decided to make it a
two parter because it was kind of long, and then
(26:41):
we forgot to record the intro outro that would be
necessary for all those pieces to fit together. So you find,
folks out there in podcast land get to hear me
kind of stumbled my way through an outro for a change. So,
first and foremost thanks to all the Ridiculous Historians for
tuning in from week to week as we do this
Goofy program. We're we're a little mystified, but you know,
(27:03):
happy that you've seem to enjoy it. You can join
the conversation over on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. All
three of us post there at least once in a while.
You can write us an email. We are ridiculous at
my heart radio dot com. We always like to see
what folks have to say. Sometimes we'll read things on
the air, probably not as much as we should. Uh.
(27:26):
You can find Ben A. Nol individually on social media
BNS on Twitter at Ben Bowling hs W. He's also
on Instagram at ben Bowling. Nol is on Instagram exclusively.
He does not do Twitter at least not beyond being
a lurker. And Noel's Instagram handle is at how Now
Noel Brown. Thank you as always to our super producer,
(27:49):
Casey Pagram. Whoa, that's me. That's awkward. Yeah, thank you
to been a knowl I have to this is this
is fun. I get to say this on the air,
so um, you know, we've been doing the show for
or I think a couple of years at this point.
It's been a real pleasure. It's been an adventure. It
hasn't been much of a roller coaster. It's just been
fun the whole time. I guess roller coasters are fun
(28:09):
the whole time too. But you know, usually when people
say a roller coaster, they mean like highs and lows,
but this has all been highs. So yeah, thank you
guys for being just uh you know, being you. Thank
you of course to Alex Williams, who composed are awesome
theme music that you're hearing at the beginning and ending
(28:30):
of pretty much every episode. I don't think we've ever
really messed around with that formula too much. Thanks to Gabe,
our research associate, always delivering on the great research that
kind of fills in a lot of the blanks in
these stories. Thank you to Christopher hasciotis here in spirit.
Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, also known as the Quister, purveyor
(28:51):
of the most cringe worthy segment and all of podcasting,
at least before me doing this outro, I will be
back at the top of the show on Thursday, and
I will I will still explain some of what's happening then,
just for the people that are for some reason only
listening to part two. But you folks who are listening
to a part one, you get it. You know what's
going on, and uh as Noel is fond of saying,
(29:14):
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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