Musings on Wartime and Post-War Cartoons: Were the Package Films Doomed to Obscurity?

Fifty years ago Disney created wartime cartoons. This was for World War II, and according to this article when part of Disney studios was used as a military base. The Disney documentaries on making their films doesn’t mention that a union crisis occurred at the time, and that plus the war and a number of flops led to a few more ambitious projects being put on hold. We instead got package films– feature-length films that showed cartoon shorts.

Some were eventually made, like Peter Pan. Others, like The Gremlins, never saw the light of day. There wasn’t a budget for an ambitious project like Pinocchio or Bambi, and it shows. With that said, the package films that came out — Make Mine Music, Melody Time, Fun and Fancy Free, and Saludos Amigos — were pretty decent, all things considered. The Three Caballeros narrowly toes the line between package and feature film but does feature several shorts in the beginning as well as an ongoing story towards the end. We don’t mention Song of the South, for obvious reasons. Cinderella had to save the company.

I enjoy watching shorts from them. Melody Time and Saludos Amigos feature songs with Jose Carioca, the Brazilian parrot with the all-purpose umbrella, and Make Mine Music hosts one of the best children’s ballets, Peter and the Wolf, with a few Disney twists. We also get experimental takes on music, combining animation with original and classic melodies.

One interesting thing about these package films is that, despite their lower budgets, the animations are beautiful. Saludos Amigos features the animators painting backgrounds from the short “Aquarelo de Brazil, so that Jose Carioca can show off the sights to Donald Duck and share a drink with him. “Blame it on the Samba” from Melody Time features them in a trippy cocktail with the Aracuan Bird.

It’s interesting that we don’t have as much promotion for these package films, although “Mickey and the Beanstalk” from Fun and Fancy Free would be released as a standalone video and short respectively. It could be the politics from that time were troubling, or that Disney doesn’t want us to remember what World War II budgets were like.

Here is my question: what art will modern Disney create in crisis? What art will occur? It feels pretty hard to create now. So will we get more packaged shorts, or trips to Brazil? I hope so. We need them now, with some news that has come out. Some cartoon shorts showing the beauty of music and dance would be reassuring.

Jose Carioca, we could use you right now. It’d be good to see a reminder to sing and dance, even in the middle of chaos. We’ll keep an eye out for you, and your all-purpose umbrella.