Make Mine Music

Hello, Hello! my faithful Disney fans!  Thanks for joining me on this journey through Walt's masterpieces!  With that said, I must confess that these compilation/package movies are not quite at the level of Disney magic that I expect from the Disney name.  However, this week's movie still had some wonderful moments.

 

Film 8 on our Disney journey is Make Mine Music.  The film actually reminded me of Fantasia, particularly in its musicality.  The film premiered in 1946 and is 75 minutes long.  Make Mine Music is comprised of 9 animated shorts.  Much like Fantasia, some of the shorts I really enjoyed but others I could live without...

Once again the overly artistic and abstract shorts I found boring not engaging.  The Make Mine Music shorts do have singing and/or dialogue, and they run much shorter than Fantasia's lengthy numbers, so they are definitely easier to sit through.  My three favorite shorts were "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet," "Peter and the Wolf," and "All the Cats Join In."

 

 

The "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet" segment is sung by the Andrews Sisters (their voices are so wonderful!).  The short tells the story of a fedora and bluebonnet who meet and fall in love in a department store window but become separated when the bluebonnet is sold.  The music and magic of Disney definitely shone through in this short.  If you saw Monsters University in theaters, you most likely also got to see The Blue Umbrella- the short played before the film.  The Blue Umbrella definitely draws from the same plotlines as Johnny Fedora. (I love it when old school Disney meets new school Disney!)

The second short that I really enjoyed was "Peter and the Wolf."  The music was superb and the story used humor beautifully.  It was fun to watch the antics of Peter and his comrades in their hunt for the evil wolf.

If I had to pick just one short from Make Mine Music as my favorite, I would have to go with "All the Cats Join In."  A bit of a surprising pick for me as there's no plot... but there's dancing!  (Have I mentioned that I love dancing!?)  This short is very creatively done in that it is actually being drawn as it's playing out.  For example, at one point characters are jumping into a car, but they take off before all the wheels are drawn, thus a stop sign is drawn to stop the car so that the wheels can be finished.  I found this short clever, amusing, and just plain fun.  And to top everything off, the characters swing dance!  Great music, great humor, and dancing!  I'm in!

There are two other shorts that while they were not my favorites they still deserve honorable mentions.  "Casey at Bat" is a funny clip about a baseball player and everyone's belief that he is unstoppable.  "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met" is a comic tragedy about a whale who can sing like an opera star and the impresario who tries to find him while mistakenly believing that the whale has swallowed an opera star.  This short should have tugged at my interest more (given the subject matter: a singing whale), but I guess my suspension of disbelief only goes so far...  These two clips are still iconic Disney fare and worth checking out though.  Also, all of the singing in "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met" is done by Nelson Eddy (Amazing!).  His range and voice were out of this world!

This week I'll leave you with the opening lyrics to Make Mine Music because no matter what, at the end of the day, music is one of life's greatest pleasures.

When melody fills the night,

And even the stars go dancing,

To the music of the moonlight,

Make mine music,

And I'll dream of you,

 Make mine music,

And the dream comes true,

Music will play the shadows away,

 When everything seems to go wrong,

So make mine music,

And life will be a song,

Make mine music

Coming Up Next Week: Fun and Fancy Free