Once Upon A Time: History through the eyes of Disney
Jul 16, 2023 22:04:35 GMT
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So Dear To My Heart
Belle Époque - 1901 to 1910
Belle Époque - 1901 to 1910
On Thursday, December 5, 1901, Walt Disney was born at 1249 Tripp Avenue, Chicago IL, United States. This is a significant event in Disney history, as it here that we pass the invisible threshold from history to living memory. Walt may no longer be alive today, but the company in his name lives on, still carrying the torch he lit 100 years ago. As such, these last chapters will be broken up not by periods in world history, but by periods in Disney history.
This chapter, which covers the years 1901 to 1923, will be divided in two parts for length reasons. This first part will detail the years 1901 to 1910, the years of Disney's happy childhood. The second part, which will posted at the end of the month, will cover the years 1910 to 1923.
Our first stop in the 20th century is a mere three weeks after the birth of Walt Disney, on Wednesday, December 25, 1901. It's Christmas Day when Jim Dear gives Darling a Christmas present in the form of a puppy. This is the opening scene in Lady and the Tramp (1955), to which we'll return a number of times in the next two years. Lady and the Tramp is easily Disney's most sumptuous animated depiction of the early 20th century, depicted in glorious Technicolor. The dates used in this timeline are not given in the movie, but have been established using context clues. More on that later.
Our next story follows Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet, the ninth and penultimate segment of Make Mine Music (1946). The short presents an intersection of New York City society, the bulk of which is set in the spring and summer of 1902. I've arrived at this date by the dress in the department store at the beginning of the story, which features three ruffles at the bottom. These flounces are typical of the dresses of 1902 and 1903. That's pretty paltry evidence I'll admit, but it's more than you normally get with 1940s shorts.
One of the more memorable scenes in the segment is a bar fight in a local saloon, which is quickly put out by members of the New York Police Department. This says a lot about society in the early 1900s. Today, Hollywood history remembers the rowdy Wild West, which was followed by genteel mustachioed men in boater hats. In actual fact, Progressive activists spent an enormous amount of political capital crafting the civilized urban American over a period of decades. Drunkenness was one of the many behaviors that the Progressives set about correcting, eventually forcing through a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol altogether in 1919. Prohibition proved to be a mixed success, and the 17th Amendment became the only amendment ever to be repealed wholesale in 1933. Moral guardians successfully lobbied for censorship laws in many creative fields, such as the Hays Code in film (est. 1934) and the Comics Code Authority (est. 1954). In time, much of America's historical memory was sanitized and forgotten, and it would be many decades before Progressivism became a household name in American politics again.
In July 1902, Lady receives a collar. She's said to be about six months old now. We see her meet Jock and Trusty and the Tramp, who riles her up with stories of babies wrecking homes. When next we see Jim Dear, he's figuring out when the baby is due, settling on next April, nine months from then. The calendar he holds up gives us a clue as to when the movie is set. It's a non-leap year calendar starting on a Thursday, which matches with 1893, 1903, and 1914. Since Lady and the Tramp takes place in 1900s, that means the baby must be due in April 1903. It's worth noting that some online sources suggest 1909, while Walt himself suggested a setting of 1905-1906, as mentioned on the Blu-Ray audio commentary "Inside Walt's Meetings".
By December 1902, Lady and the Tramp's Jim Dear is busy fixing up the baby's room, including baseball clothes and a flag of Yale University. In January, Jim Dear has to get out during a snow storm at three o'clock at night to satisfy Darling's pregnancy cravings, some unlikely chop suey. In February 1903, Jim Dear and Darling are having a baby shower.
After a rough-and-tumble winter being blown about, Johnnie Fedora is reunited with his Alice Bluebonnet in the spring of 1903 in the conclusion of Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet.
In March 1903, racing horse Dan Patch stops to visit Fulton Corners, Indiana, which sets off the story of So Dear to My Heart (1948). Jeremiah Kincaid adopts a black lamb with the hope to show it off at the local county fair. Fulton Corner is likely named after American engineer Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat and the submarine. The movie is bookended by the arrival of a train in Fulton Corners. Walt became a fan of trains in mid-life, having briefly worked on one as a youth. After the movie's completion, the train depot was given to animator Ward Kimball for his private railroad.
In April 1903, Jim Dear and Darling's baby is born. It's a boy. In the Scamp comics, his name is given as Albert. Many of these comics, however, are set contemporary to their date of creation.
In June 1903, Jeremiah Kincaid and his lamb Danny get into more scrapes. Jerry and his friend Tildy find a wild honey tree, giving them the money to go to the Pike County Fair. Jerry goes missing for a night when Danny runs away; fortunately both are found safe and sound. The attitudes represented in the movie give a good picture of the values that were common in rural early 20th century America. Its depiction of ancient history might be awful, but So Dear to My Deart (1948) is arguably one of the most accurate representations of recent history covered in this series.
In the summer of 1903, Jim Dear and Darling decide to take a little holiday, and their Aunt Sarah comes by to watch over the baby. Here's where the bulk of Lady and the Tramp (1955) takes place. One of the interesting things about Lady and the Tramp is how many different ethnicities it portrays, both human and dog. While not all of them would be considered politically today, such as the Irish policeman and the Siamese cats, it's still an early example of diversity in Disney movies.
The Pike County Fair is held from Thursday, August 20, to Saturday, August 22, 1903, the event that serves as the final part of So Dear to My Heart.
Thursday, December 17, 1903 saw the first powered flight by the brother Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This episode is the opening of the History of Aviation segment in the otherwise live-action movie Victory Through Air Power (1943). Additionally, the scene depicts the press reporting of the events: Wright brothers to be home by Christmas.
One week later, on Christmas Day 1903, Jim Dear and Darling invite Jock and Trusty over. We see the Tramp with his new collar, as well his and Lady's puppies. This marks the final scene of Lady and the Tramp.
In the fall of 1904, a ten-year-old Alexander P. de Seversky is sent to military school, as told in Victory Through Air Power.
By Tuesday, September 20, 1904, the Wright brothers were able to turn the airplane in-flight, as seen in the History of Aviation segment of Victory Through Air Power. The technology was growing wings, so to speak.
Some stories remain harder to pin down. One of these is Pinocchio (1940). The fact that there are no human women anywhere in the movie, apart from a split-second background painting, means that there are no fashion clues. Although Carlo Collodi's book Pinocchio was published in 1883, the movie seems slightly more modern, say around 1895-1914. Even then, certain parts of the movie look more contemporary than others. The general aesthetic of Pleasure Island, and amusement parks like it, derives in no small part from the famous Luna Park on Coney Island, which opened its doors in 1903. This style also seems to have influenced artist and early animator Winsor McCay. The 'model home' on Pleasure Island is reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century Beaux-arts style, with its neoclassical ornamentation and its modern use of glass. The model home, which is intended to be destroyed, also features a copy of the Mona Lisa in the background. In fact, the Mona Lisa was not famous to the general public until its highly-publicized theft in 1911. However, this seems too late for Pinocchio in my opinion.
Similarly difficult is Peter and the Wolf, the seventh segment in Make Mine Music (1946). This animation seems to be in two minds: some elements are clearly modern, like Peter's pop gun (invented 1887) and the interior of his grandfather's house: note the kerosine lamp, and what appears to be a coffee mill. On the other hand, the hunters in the story seem to have escaped from the 17th century, with their boyar hats, scraggy beards, and awkward blunderbusses.
This chrono-confusion may the result of a reaction to the original work. Written by Sergei Profokiev in 1936, the protagonist of Peter and the Wolf was a contemporary Soviet Pioneer (the equivalent of a boy scout). As the Cold War was fast taking shape in 1946, the substitution of a less politicized setting than Stalinist Russia must've been obvious.
On Tuesday, October 17, 1905, the Madrigal triplets celebrate their fifth birthday and receive their gifts. We briefly see a young Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno in front of their rooms in Encanto (2021).
J.M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, first performed in 1904 and published as the novelization Peter and Wendy in 1911, was later adapted as Disney's Peter Pan (1953). The setting of the movie is vague enough to be either year, or another entirely. 1911 is slightly more credible in light of the sequel, Return to Never Land (2002), which is set a generation later during the London Blitz. However, since sequels don't count in this series, we must ignore this.
I've come to prefer an earlier date mainly on the basis of Mary Darling's evening dress, which still has some of that wider 1900s silhouette. No doubt the reason for this was that it was nicer to animate, and not much thought was likely given to the exactly fashions of the day. You could try to calculate the time of year from the position of the sun, the moon, and the hands of Big Ben, but those don't add up to anything intelligible. You can't have a full moon high up in the sky at twilight, you see. Light just doesn't travel that way.
Peter Pan is one of Disney's most socially conservative movies, so in that sense I suppose it reflects the time period. However, it completely fails to represent the British imaginary of the fairy world. Disney's Peter Pan is tepid and patronizing.
October 23, 1906. The Brazilian-French aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont makes the first officially observed flight in Europe, as recorded in the History of Aviation from Victory Through Air Power.
The Martins and the Coys was covered in an earlier chapter, but the final scenes seem to take place a bit more recently. Whereas the real-life feud had met its end by the 1890s, Gracie Martin and Henry Coy get married in an automobile with modern headlights; a 1907 model, more or less. Henry's middle parting is stereotypical of the 1900s, and is often used in parodies of the era.
Speaking of automobiles, for our next tale we must turn to the English countryside, to The Wind in the Willows, the first of two segments in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). It's an adaptation of the 1908 novel of the same name by Kenneth Grahame, and seems to take place around the same time. The season of Toad's infatuation with automobiles is not recorded in the movie, but in the book it's set in the summer. The car is meant to be a Ford Model A, which were produced between 1903 and 1904, and it's a pretty good facsimile of the real thing. Toad breaks out of jail on Christmas Day, and takes back Toad Hall. The story ends on New Year's Day, as his friends toast to the reformed Toad... until he flies by in an aeroplane. This is an early Voisin-Farman biplane, the pride and joy of the airmen of 1907. In 1908, the model underwent several changes, until it was replaced by the Farman III in 1909. Thus we can relatively sure that The Wind in the Willows takes place in 1907, with Toad's daring jail break on Christmas Day 1907, and the finale on New Year's Day 1908.
In 1908, the U.S. Army Signal Corps seeks out competitive bids for a military aircraft. Of the 41 submissions, only the Wright Cycle Company presented the Army with a suitable model, as seen in the History of Aviation from Victory Through Air Power. The first check was signed in January of that year, although the animation seems to think it was March, i.e. six months before September.
Pete's Dragon (1977) follows the story of a young boy named Pete and his dragon Elliot. The story is supposed to take place in New England (it was filmed in California), in the fictional town of Passamaquoddy. The Passamaquoddy are a real tribe straddling the New Brunswick-Maine border, so we can assume the movie takes place in Maine. As for historical reference, my notes tell me it has to take place after May, but I've lost the context for why that is. Still, it looks to be late in the school year (it was in fact filmed over the summer), so June seems about right. The schoolroom boasts a picture of President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), and between 1902 to 1908 it's the latter year that seems to fit the best. By then, women could show a little forearm in public, which solves at least one of the movie's many questionable costume decisions.
Not that there's a whole lot of historical verisimilitude to be found in this movie. My favorite 'bad history' moment is Nora's sweetheart Paul the sailor, whose 1970s hair and mustache are unmistakeable. The movie's message isn't very historical either: the song "There's Room For Everyone" reflects 1970s ideas of diversity, not those of the 1900s. In fact, U.S. race relations were at a nadir during the 1900s and 1910s. Progressives believed that patronizing paternalism and re-education would shape minorities into good white Christians, and that they had they had to be content with their station in life until then. That mentality wasn't just confined to whites, either: the influential educator Booker T. Washington, a popular representative of the African-American community at this time, was much of the same opinion.
From September 1908 to June 1909, the first test flights were held at the Fort Myer Army base, as told in the History of Aviation in Victory Through Air Power.
In the next aviation milestone, Louis Blériot becomes the first man to cross the Channel by airplane on July 25, 1909. Victory Through Air Power also shows see the report in the Daily Mail.
A Blériot XI, the same model as used for the Channel flight, came into the possession of Alexander P. de Seversky's father, who was one of the first Russian airmen to privately own an airplane.
Another one of Walt's favorites, Mary Poppins (1964), takes place in 1910, as Mr. Banks sings in his song "The Life I Lead": "King Edward's on the throne, it's the age of men." King Edward would in fact pass away on May 6 of that year, having spent most of his life as heir to the throne before a brief 9-year reign as British monarch. Mary Poppins' depiction of 1910 London is fairly broad, with stereotypes like the honest Cockney and the mean old banker. However, the setting is a change from the original Mary Poppins books written by P.L. Travers, which are set in the 1930s, after the original book was published in 1934.
Disney's Mary Poppins specifically takes place from Saturday, March 5, to Wednesday, March 9, 1910. We can retrieve these dates thanks to the impeccable time-keeping of Admiral Boom, one of the characters, who sets off his rooftop cannon at six o'clock precisely on Tuesday night, about ten minutes after sunset (during which "Step in Time" is performed), and just before Mr. Banks arrives home from work ("at 6.01, I march through my door"). This date lines up not only with the actual sun tables for 1910, but also with Mary Poppins' request to have every second Tuesday of the month off. It is by far the most satisfying, practically perfect timeline placement of them all.