INSPIRATION AND JIMINY SINGS TITLESONG
With these difficulties of design and story finally resolved, full animation on Pinocchio resumed in September of 1938. The film’s marvelous visual intricacy is due in large part to the further inspirational graphic explorations of two veterans of classic European storybook illustration, both of whom had already contributed significantly to the look of Snow White: Swiss-born Albrecht Hurter (1883 – 1942) and Swedish-born Gustav Tenngren (1896 – 1970).
Hired by Disney in 1931 as an animator, Hurter’s wild imagination for “humorous exaggeration and the humanizing of inanimate objects” became quickly apparent. Walt shifted Hurter’s responsibility: he became the first “inspirational” sketch artist on the studio’s staff. As Kaufman observed,
“Often their works were so stylized that nothing in them could be literally transferred to the screen, but by inspiring the production artists with the sense of a particular mood or atmosphere, they exercised a great influence on the finished films.”[1]
Hurter loved to draw and now that’s all he did, sit at his desk all day long and draw. He is said to have made between 50 and 100 sketches a day!
…Each time a new subject was planned, Albert was consulted and given free reign to let his imagination wander, creating strange animals, plants, scenery or costumes that might serve as models for the forthcoming production.[2]
In his will Hurter stipulated that good friend and Disney storyman Ted Sears be allowed to compile a book displaying some 700 of these often very uncanny sketches. Disney produced this book, He Drew As He Pleased, A Sketchbook by Albert Hurter, and wrote a brief commemoration for it. When the studio progressed into feature animation…
The ingenious little clocks on the woodcarver’s shelves, the animals in Bambi, mythological creatures of Fantasia and countless other cartoon creations and personalities can trace their origin to Albert’s drawingboard.[3]
Specifically for example, for the 1934 Depression-era classic short The Three Little Pigs, Hurter designed all three pigs, their costumes and their three cottages including a portrait on the Practical Pig’s wall titled “Father” and depicting a string of sausages!
Hurter died in 1942, the year of Bambi’s release. Among his sketches are two anonymous “wicked” Siamese cats who did not make it into an animated feature until more than a decade later as the hilariously malicious Si and Am in Lady and the Tramp.
In 1936 Disney commandeered the artistry of Tenngren as well. After his departure from the studio staff, Tenngren illustrated several Little Golden Books, a brand catering especially to young children. For these he switched to a remarkably different, sparser style of drawing. At Boras, Sweden, the country of his birth, he is memorialized by a 30-foot bronze statue of Pinocchio.
The graphic inspiration of these two artists is apparent from the film’s very beginning. Even the calligraphy of the opening titles and credits is beautifully ornate in their “Old World” style, an appropriate visual accompaniment to the film’s title themesong, “When You Wish Upon a Star”.
Composed by Leigh Harline (1907-1969) with lyrics by Ned Washington (1901-1976), this song and in fact the film’s entire score, on which Harline was assisted by Paul Smith (1906-1985), both won for Disney his first competitive Academy Awards. It is sung by Cliff Edwards (1895-1971), who…
“… was known in Vaudeville as ‘Ukulele Ike’. He had reputedly the first million-selling record of all time in the 1920s called June Night. A hugely popular star on the stage, on radio and on records and then in movies… in one of the first ‘talkie’ musicals he introduced the song Singing in the Rain.”[4]
Veteran of the Ziegfeld Follies and responsible for the sale of millions of ukuleles, Edwards joined Pinocchio’s cast of voice actors who were well-known at the time of the film’s production. (He also provided the voice of Jim Crow in Dumbo.) Originally auditioned for the voice of the puppet, Edwards was rejected because Walt found his voice too mature.
The film’s themesong lyrics promise that mere wishing upon a star will bring you “anything your heart desires”, a dreamy though blatantly fanciful notion. My life experience has taught me quite the opposite: far from simply wishful thinking, it takes a whole lot of education, determination, hard work, skill, perseverance and suchlike virtues – sometimes with a little bit of luck thrown in! – to achieve one’s goals. “When You Wish Upon a Star” has since become the ubiquitous brand logosong of all Disney Corporation’s enterprises. How ironic! The company unabashedly purveys a pixie-dusted “magic” in all its promotional materials, but no amount of “wishing” could materialize that very compelling magic. Rather, it is a carefully-honed illusion brought about only by rigorous, studious, laborious and highly-talented enterprise on the part of a virtual army of dedicated inspired workers.
Nevertheless, these lyrics are the set-up for a fairytale and they do apply within that fairytale realm. And we start getting absorbed into that realm as soon as those credits dissolve to reveal Jiminy Cricket, spotlighted atop an immense volume titled Pinocchio and singing the last words of his song. Here the film kicks off with an apparent error: in this first longshot the spotlight casts no shadow on the wall behind the cricket but in the close-up immediately afterward an obvious shadow duplicates his movement in silhouette behind him.
Perched amidst other books, a candlestick, a pipe, eyeglasses, an inkwell with quill and other paraphernalia, the little tuxedoed bug speaks directly to his audience of moviegoers. In reference to wishing upon a star he challenges, “I’ll bet a lot of you folks don’t believe that.” He confesses that previously he didn’t believe it either and invites us to witness the events that changed his mind. I wonder how many innocent minds are actually changed after viewing this film? While Geppetto may get his heart’s desire for “a real boy” by the simple act of wishing, far more significantly his little wooden head is required to prove he deserves his desire for human-ness by taking to heart some hard-learned experiential lessons. The film’s actual more salient message concerns the importance of embracing such enviable character traits as courage, honesty, charity and responsibility.
[1] Kaufman, J.B.: Pinocchio, The Making of the Disney Epic, The Walt Disney Family Foundation Press, San Francisco, CA, 2015, p. 105.
[2] Sears, Ted: from his Introduction to He Drew As He Pleased, A Sketchbook by Albert Hurter, Simon and Schuster, 1948.
[3] Sears, Ted: op. cit.
[4] Kaufman, J.B.: from the audio commentary on the 2010 70th Anniversary Blu-ray release of Pinocchio.
