THE SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946) was Walt Disnet’s first film to feature live action. His distribution contract with RKO called for animated films only. Disney got around that by animating the Uncle Remus stories. This film is buried deep today thanks to the racial content. At the time Herman Hill in the black newspaper PITTSBURGH COURIER, wrote, The tuly sympathetic handling of the entire production fram a racial standpoint is calculated…to prove of estimable value in furthering interracial relations.” The problem today is that most of us can’t see the film. It was released outside America and Canada in VHS. I have one of those copies. Soon you will have the chance to see the film for yourself. While this film netted only $226,000 for the Disney Studio on first release by the time of the picture’s last release (1986) it had grossed over $60,000,000 worldwide.
Robert Fulford in a story titled WHAT PBS WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT WALT DISNEY which appeared Tuesday in THE NATIONAL POST wrote a piece in which every sentence expresses controlled rage ( http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/television/what-pbs-wont-tell-you-about-walt-disney ). I could feel the anger as I read it. There are some things in it I agree with. There are others I know are wrong.
Robert Fulford writes, “American Experience has become a kind of a ceremonial occasion, a time for tributes and little else. It’s somewhere between a funeral and a Nobel Prize citation. The Hollywood premiere of Snow White turned out to be the first large-scale Disney success. When the dwarfs cried, the audience cried. Wonder of wonders, someone reported that Clark Gable and Carol Lombard both shed tears. The grosses broke records. On PBS, Ron Suskind, a journalist calls Snow White “art” because Disney moved the audiences to tears. It might be more accurate to say he manipulated them. Even Richard Schickel shows up to pay grudging tribute.”
Well, Bob, all acting is emotional manipulation. We give Awards to those who manipulate our emotions best. It is what we expect when we go to the theater (be it live or magic shadows).
“He wasn’t interested in providing sensitive treatment to racial issues…Disney helped found an anti-communist group, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, essentially an alliance for preserving Hollywood from interference by the government. His ability to predict a movie’s effect on the public apparently didn’t extend to African Americans. He wasn’t interested in providing sensitive treatment to racial issues.
In 1946 he stumbled badly by adapting Joel Chandler Harris’s stories about life on a Georgia plantation in the Reconstruction era. The film, Song of the South, ingeniously combined animation with live action but got everything else wrong. At its centre, Uncle Remus, a stereotyped former slave, tells stories of animals, Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear, to children. Blindly confident, Disney opened the film in Atlanta. Critics considered Uncle Remus offensive and Disney’s version of Reconstruction both dumb and condescending. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People found Song of the South racist. Disney claimed communists were behind that fuss too, but the film never recovered.
Walt Disney was sensitive to racial issues.
SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946) is the only film in its vaults the Disney Corporation at this moment refuses to release on dvd and Blu-ray. There are other titles that have been bowdlerized for American and Canadian digital audiences (thankfully, they are available in unbowdlerized versions from Europe). SONG OF THE SOUTH was released on VHS in Europe and in Japan but not on dvd or Blu-ray. Thankfully, I was able to get a VHS of SONG OF THE SOUTH from England. Not only that I screened the film in 16mm as part of my program at Rochdale College. I have both seen the film many times I have, more importantly, seen it with audiences composed of regular folk of all shades of the human spectrum. No one in my experience (which is larger than that of most) found fault with the picture on racial issues nor will they today beyond the few who can always be counted upon to find fault.
For a long time there was a paucity of information on this film.
Jim Korkis, whom I have known since the 1970s when we both contributed to David Mruz’s excellent fanzine MINDrot/ANIMANIA, is a Disney Historian of the first rank. His book, WHO’S AFRAID OF THE SONG OF THE SOUTH?, fills that gap.
Jim Korkis fills the gap in the paucity of information on Walt Disney’s most controversial film SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946).
From Jim we learn that Disney was extremely sensitive to racial issues. So sensitive in fact that he deliberately sought out people he knew in advance were concerned enough about them that they could help him one of whom, Maurice Rapf, explained, “I said he shouldn’t make that movie anyway, because it’s going to be an ‘Uncle Tom’ movie. And I told Disney that and he said, ‘That’s exactly why I want you to work on it–because I know that you don’t think I should make the movie. You’re against ‘Uncle Tom-ism’ and you are a radical. That’s exactly the kind of point of view I want brought to this film.”
Unfortunately the Southern gentleman Disney had commissioned to create the screenplay for SONG OF THE SOUTH was not a gentleman. When Rapf found found out that man, Dalton Raymond, was passing himself off as Rapf in his sexual pursuit of a messenger girl he went to the film’s producer (not to Disney himself) and said, “I can’t work with this guy anymore. One of us has to go.” Rapf got fired from SONG OF THE SOUTH but continued at Disney on SO DEAR TO MY HEART and, much later, CINDERELLA. Rapf wrote that the script he had prepared for the film was terrible (there is self honesty for you).
Jim’s book goes into more detail on this. It’s well worth the read.
Robert Fulford: “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People found Song of the South racist. Disney claimed communists were behind that fuss too, but the film never recovered.”
Disney had hired African American lawyer, writer, director, composer and actor Clarence Muse as a consultant on THE SONG OF THE SOUTH. Jim Korkis writes, “Muse quit Disney early in 1944 after his ideas to portray the African-American characters as more dignified and prosperous were rejected by Southern writer Dalton Reymond and before Maurice Rapf was brought in. Muse then wrote letters to the editors of black publications that Disney was going to depict Negroes in an inferior capacity and that the film was ‘detrimental to the cultural advancement of the Negro people.’ So the pump was already primed for disaster.
“Screenwriter Maurice Rapf remembered that Walt: …had a theory that the reason why the film was picketed and particularly attacked by the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP was because the head of the local chapter was actor Clarence Muse. He knew that…Muse wanted to play Remus. He was a standard serious black actor….Others said that couldn’t be true because Muse was a technical adviser on the film, though I think if that’s true he didn’t do a very good job advising.”
Again from Korkis, “Herman Hill’s review in the black newspaper PITTSBURGH COURIER: ‘The truly sympathetic handling of the entire production from a racial standpoint is calculated…to prove of estimable good in the furthering of interracial relations.’ Hill dismissed the negative statements made by Ebony and Clarence Muse, and found their comments to be ‘unadulterated hogwash symptomatic of the unfortunate racial neurosis that seems to be gripping so many of our humorless brethren these days.'”
Robert Fulford: “But the film never recovered.”
Writes Korkis, “SONG OF THE SOUTH was innovative not only for its blending of live action and animation (such as the seamless moment where Remus lights Brer Frog’s pipe), but for its depiction of black and white children playing together as equals, and a story where the African-American characters are wise and caring, while the white characters are often cruel, insensitive or dysfunctional.”
SONG OF THE SOUTH cost about $2,125,000.00 to make. It’s first release only netted the Disney Studio an initial profit of $226,000.00. By the time of the film’s last release, 1986, SONG OF THE SOUTH had grossed $60,000,000.00 worldwide.
SONG OF THE SOUTH recovered and how!
PBS chose for its sources the two worst writers on Disney, Richard Schickel and Neal Gabbler both of whom are lazy writers and even more lazy thinkers.
They passed on the two best, Leonard Maltin ( http://leonardmaltin.net/ )and Michael Barrier ( http://www.michaelbarrier.com/ ) both of whom are renowned for doing their homework.
Leonard Maltin, in his review of Richard Schickel’s THE DISNEY VERSION in FILM FAN MONTHLY No. 87, 1968, wrote, “Mr. Schickel’s ignorance of film history is incredible and his disdain for it even more so...We take note of this book with great sadness. It’s sad because it will remain on library bookshelves for people to read in years to come. Perhaps some will be taken in by Schickel’s propaganda. They will accept what he says as truth, and his errors as facts. The encouraging point is that Disney’s films will last forever as a perpetual contradiction to Schickel.”
I can’t recommend highly enough Jim Korkis’ WHO’S AFRAID OF THE SONG OF THE SOUTH?
Finally, I have decided to mount a program on SEX & RACE IN AMERICAN ANIMATED CARTOONS.
Jim has given me the okay to incorporate his book’s title so the program is called WHO’S AFRAID OF THE SONG OF THE SOUTH? SEX, RACE AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICAN ANIMATED CARTOONS.
Look for it soon at The Cineforum in Toronto, Canada. I will show you films most can only read about as well as the unbowdlerized versions that we can’t get on this side of the pond. ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH.–Reg Hartt, 9/3/2015.
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/television/what-pbs-wont-tell-you-about-walt-disney
http://www.amazon.com/Afraid-South-Forbidden-Disney-Stories/dp/0984341552
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/books/whos-afraid-of-song-of-the-south-by-jim-korkis-73980.html
http://www.yesterland.com/whosafraid.html
http://www.amazon.ca/Animation-Anecdotes-History-Classic-American/dp/1941500137
http://www.amazon.ca/Walt-Disney-Triumph-American-Imagination/dp/0679757473
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Disney-Version-Times-Commerce/dp/1566631580
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Animated-Man-Life-Disney/dp/0520256190
This is the best book to read on Walt Disney period.
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/books.htm
http://themeparkpress.com/
In his review of Richard Schickel’s THE DISNEY VERSION in FILM FAN MONTHLY Leonard Maltin, wrote, “Mr. Schickel’s ignorance of film history is incredible and his disdain for it even more so…We take note of this book with great sadness. It’s sad because it will remain on library bookshelves for people to read in years to come. Perhaps some will be taken in by Schickel’s propaganda. They will accept what he says as truth, and his errors as facts. The encouraging point is that Disney’s films will last forever as a perpetual contradiction to Schickel.”
Two storyboards for SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946)
While the accent was on live action in first release in re-issue the animation increasingly is highlighted.
Lobby Cards from the 1946 issue of SONG OF THE SOUTH. The accent on promotion was on the live action.