BLUE FAIRY APPEARS
Time for bed and this household’s denizens settle in for the night: Geppetto under a beautifully quilted coverlet, Figaro alongside in his own little bed with its hand-carved headboard depicting an angelic haloed kitten praying and Cleo in her fishbowl’s petite castle. Jiminy wriggles down between the pegs of a violin, lounging his feet up over the scroll and kicking off his dilapidated shoes to expose his bulbous toes.
Geppetto has neglected to open the window beside his bed and assigns his kitten to the task occasioning some humorous feline antics by Figaro’s animator Eric Larson (1905-1988). With joyful surprise, Geppetto catches sight of that brilliant star sparkling above the distant mountaintops. He identifies it as “The Wishing Star!” and immediately recites his heart’s desire: “I wish that my little Pinocchio might be a real boy.” Eavesdropping, Jiminy, still directly addressing us moviegoers, remarks, “A very lovely thought, but not at all practical.” Then everybody settles down to sleep.
Except there is so much snoring and assorted loud racket the cricket can’t doze off like the others. And as soon as he stops the brouhaha by shouting “QUIET!” – abruptly halting even the clock pendulums! – another diversion intervenes to prevent a good night’s sleep: the room begins to brighten and that star advances through the distant hills, then over the rooftops and finally right through the open window into the room, where in a dazzling display it transforms into the Blue Fairy.
Again Marjorie Belcher, who had modeled Snow White and was now temporarily married to animator Art Babbitt, was commandeered to pose as the Blue Fairy for rotoscoping. The character’s motherly voice was provided by Shakespearean actress Evelyn Venable (1913-1993), who posed for the torch-bearing damsel of the Columbia Pictures logo. The extreme difficulty of animating believable human personalities and movement was completely overcome by Jack Campbell (1896-1961). He had perfected this skill while assisting on Snow White’s animation, and his work on the Blue Fairy’s human representation is superbly refined and graceful. She wears a simple diaphanous full-length pale blue gown with low-cut bodice, cinched at the waist with a long tassel hanging down from the heart-shaped buckle, her arms draped in a filmy floor-length robe. She twinkles all over the place, discreetly but incessantly. Large wings protrude from the back of her shoulders, their sparkle achieved by laborious dry-brushing on the front of each animation cel. Composer Leigh Harline produced the ethereal music that accompanies her appearances using the Hammond Organ Company’s new invention the “Novachord”, precursor to the modern synthesizer, as well as celeste, bells and organ. Her magic wand is about twice the length of such devices in later Disney features, the Fairy Godmother’s in Cinderella, Tinkerbell’s in Peter Pan or the Three Good Fairies’ in Sleeping Beauty. She is a platinum blond and resembles Hollywood’s “Blond Bombshell” Jean Harlow (1911-1937), that era’s Marilyn Monroe.
…men working on the film… reportedly whistled on first seeing a color test of the Blue Fairy.[1]
To reward Geppetto’s goodness and with the merest tap of her wand and another burst of magical effulgence, the Blue Fairy brings the puppet Pinocchio to life. While Jiminy observes in clandestine amazement from a shelf above, she advises the erstwhile marionette that the rest of his father’s wish is up to him, that he is indeed alive but not yet a “real boy”. Her proviso is that he must learn to discern between right and wrong and that his “conscience” will advise him. Naïvely mistaking that word for a plural, the puppet asks, “What are consciens?”, which query is the final straw for the sanctimonious cricket. Using his umbrella Jiminy parachutes down onto the workbench, takes his stand upon a matchbox soapbox and begins to pontificate.
When Pinocchio asks Jiminy whether the bug himself is his conscience, the Blue Fairy intervenes and in a beautiful extreme close-up tête-a-tête she asks the cricket would he actually like to be the puppet’s conscience? Overwhelmed by her beauty, blushing, he can only summon up a terse enamored “Unh-huh!” Whereupon with another touch of her wand she knights him “Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong”, etc., and adorns him in the formal duds appropriate to his new official status. Brazenly the cricket lobbies for some sort of medal, and a gold one at that. Amused, the Blue Fairy responds with a provisional “We’ll see…” and backing away, once more she admonishes Pinocchio to “always let your conscience be your guide” and vanishes in a final display of dazzling pyrotechnics. These effects are the only on-screen results of German abstract animator Oskar Fischinger’s nine-month employment at the studio to direct the opening Toccata and Fugue section of Fantasia (more on that later).
The Blue Fairy’s abrupt departure leaves Jiminy absent-mindedly admiring his newly tuxedo’d image reflected in the side of a shiny pot. Remembering he has a job to do, he sets about teaching the live puppet the subtleties of right versus wrong and how to avoid temptation such as might lure him astray from the straight and narrow path to virtue. Dumbfounding the poor innocent with his convoluted explanation but assured by the puppet that he wants to do good, the cricket simplifies, telling him whenever he’s confused just give a little whistle and the bug will arrive right away with guidance. This advice comes in the form of another merry song “Give a Little Whistle” featuring Jiminy performing acrobatics all over the workbench. These include bouncing on a sawblade to produce a twanging accompaniment and – in one of the film’s most beautiful though too-brief images – walking the tightrope of a violin string, the instrument itself decorated with magnificently carved golden putti all around its outer sides. This sequence elaborates amusingly on one of Jiminy’s less admirable character traits: he is a flirt! He attempts to put the make on a provocatively-carved wooden female clock figurine, a cute little bell-ringer. In early abandoned storyboards, he actually shacks up with her inside the clock!
[1] From Disney Fandom website: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Fairy
