Make Mine Pop Music: Walt Disney Films and American Popular Music, 1940–1955

Abstract

Throughout the golden age of the Walt Disney studio—and afterward, to the end of Walt’s life—the company was in a constant state of flux, never standing still for very long. Like Walt himself, the studio was forever seeking new goals, new opportunities, fresh modes of expression. Its films reflected this restless turn of mind: between the 1930s and the 1950s, the world of the Disney animated film was an enormously varied universe, encompassing a range of stories, ideas, and pictorial exploration. The musical component of the films was likewise varied, keeping pace with the visuals with a wide array of melodic styles and influences—from “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo” to “When You Wish upon a Star,” from “Turkey in the Straw” to Beethoven. Within this vast and varied landscape, we can break down some broad general subcategories. For the first twelve or fifteen years of Disney’s phenomenal success story—from the introduction of Mickey Mouse through the making of the classic early features—the musical element of the studio’s films was, by and large, original and self-contained. It wasn’t that Walt Disney was opposed to interpolating an occasional standard or contemporary hit song in his cartoons, but the Disney studio was still a small, hand-to-mouth operation. Walt and Roy quickly discovered that it was far more cost-effective to score a cartoon with original music than to pay royalties to a music publisher for an existing number. As time passed and the studio recruited new and brilliant musical talent, in particular Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline, Disney films began to