Younger readers may not know this, but there used to be a thing called the “Disney Vault.” It was basically a way to create artificial scarcity to hike up demand. Disney would have its collection of films, and they would “take them out of the vault” for a limited time, which means that the film would be available to purchase on VHS and later DVD and Blu-ray before going “back in the vault” and you couldn’t buy them again until they were inevitably re-released at a point down the road.
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For a little background onMake Mine Music, you first have to pull back a bit to understand what Disney was doing in the 1940s. Despite the success of the groundbreakingSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney had started to run into trouble. Its follow-ups—Pinocchio,Fantasia, andBambi—all underperformed at the box office due partially to their cost, but also because the advent of World War II had cut off the European market that Disney was going to depend on for returns. OnlyDumbo, which had been made relatively cheaply, was a hit in the animation studio’s early years.
Walt Disney was able to slightly reverse his fortunes by partnering with the State Department during World War II, which wanted to use his animation studio for goodwill projects. The government provided federal loan guarantees, and in exchange Disney started producing movies to win over Latin American countries. Basically, Disney got in the propaganda business to keep his studio afloat, but propaganda isn’t so bad when you’re trying to stop the Nazis from making inroads in Latin America. The first of these films was the package musicalSaludos Amigosfollowed a couple years later byThe Three Caballeros.
A “package musical” is pretty much what it sounds like. Rather than following a single plot, a package musical was a series of vignettes that provided a series of comic shorts and musical numbers. Some would feature a famous Disney face like Donald Duck while other created new characters. These package musicals would continue until the end of the decade withMake Mine Music,Fun and Fancy Free(1947),Melody Time(1948), and to a lesser extent withThe Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad(1949), which is really just two shorts paired together.
The reason for these package musicals even after the war (keeping in mind that their production began during World War II given the length of time required for animation) is that they were cheaper to produce and Disney was still in a tough financial position, especially with post-war Europe trying to recover so the market Disney hoped to seize on wasn’t yet fully operational. Package musicals allowed Disney to keep making animated features while building back to the more expensive feature-length narratives. These movies, likeMake Mine MusicandMelody Timealso allowed Disney to make movies in the mold ofFantasiabut relying on popular music rather than classical pieces.
So given the presence of other package musicals on Disney+, why leave outMake Mine Music? One may assume that it has egregiously offensive content likeSong of the South, which Disney has vigorously tried to scrub from its history. However, if we use a film likeDumboas a barometer—a film that’s on Disney+ but preceded by a disclaimer acknowledging the film’s offensive content—we have to ask ifMake Mine Musicismoreoffensive thanDumbo. It’s hard to make that argument, especially if you go off the DVD release, which excised the first segment, “The Martins and the Coys,” because of its depiction of gun use. That leaves nine segments that don’t even brush against any kind of racial stereotypes that caused Disney to add disclaimers to films likeDumbo,Lady and the Tramp, andPeter Pan.
I reached out to Disney about the absence ofMake Mine Music, but never heard anything back. Whatever reason they have for leaving outMake Mine Music—again, the only animated feature out of 59 that includes all the other package musicals—it’s a decision they should reconsider because it is easily the best package musical they made. Having watched it (andfound “The Martins and the Coys” on YouTube), it’s the most visually ambitious of the musicals, every number is good, and it concludes with the surprisingly tragic “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.” If Disney wanted to showcase the best film of its era, they would put forwardMake Mine MusicoverMelody TimeandFun and Fancy Free.
What’s also surprising is thatMake Mine Musicas well as its fellow package musicals, could easily be a template for strong Disney+ features going forward. While I’m not sure how audiences would go for a non-narrative feature in theaters in the 2020s (we’ve been conditioned to accept feature-length plots as a prerequisite for a movie), there’s still plenty of room to let animators experiment with popular music. Imagine a short animated to K-Pop or a blend of 2D and 3D animation for hip-hop. The package musicals were a way for Walt Disney to get out of financial straits, but their cheaper production didn’t automatically lead to a flimsy product.
It’s weird to say that people should “seek out”Make Mine Musicwhen, as far as I can tell, there’s no reason not to include it on Disney+ in the first place. But until that time comes, Disney+ will continue to lack one of the better pieces of Disney Animation’s filmography.
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