In considering the darker aspects of Disney movies with my fellow Morlocks this week, I’ve been mulling over my own shifting emotions about these undeniably compelling movies.

One of the joys, and occasionally jarring aspects of relishing Walt Disney movies is that your perception of them can change–sometimes drastically–when seeing these films over a lifetime. As I mentioned in an earlier blog on Swiss Family Robinson (1960), mischievously endearing characters such as child actor Kevin Corcoran in that movie were the kind that I keenly identified with when I first saw the film. Now, however, well, let’s just say I’d probably swim away from that island if I were stuck there, sharks or no sharks.  As the youngest member of the shipwrecked family, Kevin‘s pleas in that film to keep every living thing as a pet, his wheedling complaints whenever his elders tried to keep him from harm, and his misplaced sense of injustice touched me once, giving voice to all the grudges I probably nursed as the youngest of four, though now, that piercing whine of his could probably crack crystal.

There are some characters in almost every Disney movie that I once wholeheartedly enjoyed whose rants, capers, and irksome pleas for attention now make me lunge for the fast forward button. For want of a better term, I’ve decided to term this evolving movie-going experience as “the Corcoran syndrome”. By the same token, there are often other, once stodgy figures in Disney movies, whose mild, wet blanket tendencies or ambivalence once dismayed me, but who now seem to be among the saner, or at least, realistic and perceptive characters in these films. Even Walt himself and his corny, avuncular manner bored me as a kid during his seemingly endless self-congratulatory introductions for The Wonderful World of Disney, which once seemed in the way of the story that was coming up. Today, despite all his salesmanship and blather, he seems to be a much more interesting, even complex cultural figure.

I suppose this shifting feeling of allegiance to certain characters is part of what makes these films “family entertainment”, since the creators were wise enough to weave story elements together to appeal to viewers at every stage of life, accommodating that shifting perspective of each of us. Still, I now blush to admit that I once thought that Kirk Douglas‘ character of Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the personification of good, rollicking fun, especially when he launched into singing “A Whale of a Tale” at the top of his lungs while careening around on the deck of the ship. My amused sister, who wandered through the room as I perused this movie recently, commented drily that “the Nedster” might just want to switch to decaf. The director of this Disney movie, Richard Fleischer, who went on to work with Douglas again in one of my all time favorite movies (on several levels), the un-Disney flick The Vikings (1958), remarked that working with the actor, who never seemed quite comfortable at his work unless he was upstaging his fellow actors, gave “too much” to his role, and was sometimes “very, very difficult.” I’ll bet. Dr. Freud didn’t live long enough to see this live action Disney feature, but nevertheless he probably would have recognized that, like our pal Ned, the Id is that overpowering impulse born in us “that wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the reality of the situation.” That’s Ned all over. He doesn’t walk but bounces, never smiles but leers maniacally, and, as a child-like figure, never really bothers to listen to any other character. While his bluff hardiness is seemingly unrestrained in this movie, I suspect that Kirk Douglas may have felt that his bombastic performance was needed to counterbalance the more introspective qualities of his co-stars, and, I suppose, give little kids like me a good time watching an ostensible adult act out shamelessly. In the process, as a star, Douglas also damned well gave everyone their money’s worth, even though I sure wouldn’t want to be trapped in a claustrophobic submarine with the guy.  To be fair, in reality Douglas himself has changed a great deal, maturing into a mellower man who asks forgiveness of all those he may have offended with his heedless brashness back in the day. I also suspect that it may be impossible to avoid a smile at his antics if you see this movie today in the company of someone under 12. Perhaps you should see for yourself on Sunday, Dec. 7th, 2008 at 4 PM ET, when TCM audiences can set sail on this undersea adventure again with the broadcast of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) as part of December’s TCM Presents: The Family Classics film festival.

Undertaking a live action film–and one that required innovative use of every cinematic technique, including CinemaScope, (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was to be the second feature after The Robe to incorporate it), technicolor, matte painting, large scale models, miniature use, and the blending of live action with animation–not to mention working with actors and cameras on and underwater, would have given pause to most producers and studio heads. Disney had previously produced a few live action films with smaller ambitions and budgets using frozen British profits in the UK, including Treasure Island (1950), The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953), and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953), but these entertaining diversions were small potatoes compared with the Verne project, which Disney had first considered in animated form almost a decade before. Verne‘s story begins with a research scientist and his assistant offering to investigate sailors’ recent reports of a “shipkiller” monster with an eye “like a lighthouse” and “breath like a furnace” cruising the Pacific, bringing ruin to those on the sea in war ships. Soon, the team of investigators are shipwrecked in just such a fashion, surviving alone with a cheerful  harpooner from the ship until they are discovered by the brilliant captain of “the sea monster”, The Nautilus, a submarine reflecting his creative and destructive imagination.

The story demanded that Disney choose to build extensive sound stages that had not existed previously, creating elaborate massive sets and dressing them to reflect the brilliant design concepts marrying 19th century forms and culture with science, and going to the Caribbean to film realistic moments on the voyage depicted in this movie.  Walt Disney had to marshal enormous creative and financial forces to make this a success, (the negative cost alone was $5 million). Combined with this coordination, the animator had begun to develop the concept of Disneyland into a reality while all this was going on under his direction, coping with labor, materials and natural and man-made obstacles to his creation of an ideal world.

Seeing this movie again recently after several years, it occurred to me that despite his visionary imagination, Jules Verne could not have known how inspiring his story and his most intriguing fictitious character, Captain Nemo, would be. Verne helped to launch another creative genius on a quest to bring this still intriguing story to the screen. After considerable research, Disney chose as director for the movie the son of one of his chief animator rivals in the early days, Max Fleischer, the creator of the brilliant “Out of the Inkwell” cartoons featuring Ko-ko the Clown, Betty Boop and the more memorable, mumbling Popeye animated films. 37 year old Richard Fleischer was best known up till then for his fine, modest film noirs, the estimable Armored Car Robbery (1950), The Narrow Margin (1952), and the recent comic drama about a French Canadian family, The Happy Time (1952). According to Fleischer, Walt explained that seeing one of his own contract players, young Bobby Driscoll, in the latter movie confirmed to him that “If anybody can make an actor out of that kid, he’s got to be a good director.” Fleischer, who had grown up hearing his father’ s opinions of Disney‘s use of techniques that Max had developed and raiding the Fleischer studio for talented personnel, explained that he would have to abide by his father’s decision before accepting such a position. Max gave his consent, complimenting his arch-rival on his good judgment in this matter.Working with his writers, headed by screenwriter Earl Fenton, they streamlined the encyclopedic story that Verne wrote, centering it on some key incidents in the novel, such as the underwater funeral and the attack of the giant squid, but especially on the mysterious, scientifically minded and brooding character of Captain Nemo, to be very well played by British actor James Mason.

The actor chosen to play Nemo had come to the United States at the end of World War II, after achieving top box office stardom in the U.K. as a smoothly menacing romantic in such silly but highly entertaining films as The Seventh Veil (1945), and The Wicked Lady (1945). His breakthrough performance as an IRA fugitive in director Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947), following the characters descent into a Belfast underworld brought his talent into sharp focus on the world stage, enabling him to move to what he’d hoped were greener pastures in America. Appearing in some intriguing failures, such as Minnelli’s Madame Bovary,  Max Ophüls’ Caught and The Reckless Moment, and receiving praise for his Rommel in The Desert Fox, his Brutus in Julius Caesar and an Oscar nomination for his work as the vulnerable fading actor in A Star is Born just before production on this movie began, Mason was not, nor would he be, an American star, but his career remains among the most interesting of the post-war period. His dark looks, intelligence and measured speech, filled with menace, sarcasm or disdain, and a hint of wistful regret are perfect casting for Nemo, a man who, having lost his family, declares himself apart from the rest of mankind. As he growls in explanation for his behavior, “I am not what is called a civilized man, Professor. I have done with society for reasons that seem good to me. Therefore, I do not obey its laws.”

Show me any adult over 30 who hasn’t envied the willful Captain Nemo his proud rejection of the world for a moment in his or her heart, and I’ll show you someone unaware of the world’s problems. To me, Mason‘s cultured, Nietzschean “superman” seems even more dangerous than he did when I first saw him imprison the heroes of the story in his elaborate undersea world, but he is also more understandable as well. Disney‘s screenwriter’s incorporation of nuclear power, (instead of Verne‘s electrical powered submarine energy source), his respect for the environment, and his anger at the wasteful destruction of life practiced by most of the powerful land forces, make him a much more appealing and vivid creation, albeit one whose egotism and underlying despair also doom him on his mission to punish the world for its cruelty.

Aside from Douglas and Mason, the cast included the cultured Paul Lukas as the Prof. Pierre Arronax, and his assistant Conseil, to be played by Peter Lorre, (who would provide a much needed sardonic comic sensibility). Btw, there were no substantial female parts in this movie, except for two barflies we see Kirk with briefly at the very beginning of the film, unless you count Esmeralda the Seal. Behind the camera, cinematographer Franz Planer undertook the responsibility of transferring the Victorian era story to film via CinemaScope and technicolor.  When Walt Disney undertook the task of bringing Jules Verne‘s encyclopedic 1872 novel, Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers, to the screen in 1954, he was still regarded in most circles as an imaginative and skilled animator, but certainly not a power player by Hollywood studio standards. Compared to the big studios, Disney ran a shoestring operation though that was about to change.  

In the last decade or so, myriad tomes documenting the inner workings of the corporation under head “imagineer” Walt and financial wizard brother Roy indicate that the profit margins were razor thin for their ambitious projects, with the studio constantly walking a financial tightrope. None of the Disney organizations’ achievements could have been made if the driving force behind it, Walt, hadn’t been an optimist, but, as is revealed repeatedly in many of Disney‘s films, his fascination with the new and innovative sits–sometimes uneasily–side by side with a nostalgia and longing for the past, as well as an acknowledgment of the enticing fear of and attraction to the unknown. Like Verne did with his wildly successful 19th century novels for his millions of readers, Disney used a new medium to explore this dichotomy in himself and his viewers. Perceptive entrepreneur that he was, Walt saw that Verne‘s stories exploited the anxieties and curiosity  that readers and audience members continue to harbor about technology, especially since so much of it seems to be a mixed blessing but created one of the most entertaining of all Disney films on several levels–as both a dramatic and philosophical adventure of considerable beauty, still capable of sweeping you away into another world while making you think about the contradictory nature of progress.

Btw, while he had contemplated making an animated film of the novel for at least a decade before initiating this movie, hiring artist Harper Goff in 1951, who had also been a set designer at Warners for many years, (working on such classics as Captain Blood, Sergeant York and Casablanca), inspired Disney in new directions. Disney asked him to storyboard a documentary he was making on undersea life. Goff‘s vivid aquatic graphics inspired the studio head to explore the possibility of developing Verne’s story further as a fully filmed piece, not a blend of animation and live action as he’d previously considered.  The artist’s bucolic images of American life also encouraged Disney to take steps to make the concept of Disneyland a reality, creating a world that mirrored Walt‘s own idyllic vision, and, he hoped, one that he could control. The real world problems posed by financial, artistic and even continuing labor issues (some of which went back to an animator’s strike in 1941 that still stung), were becoming more difficult to manage along with the grueling pace of his work life. When director Fleischer arrived at the studio, he was surprised to find ” a general feeling of nervousness and insecurity about the place, which was attributed to the frequent mass firings that seemed to take place capriciously.” This feeling, that the director had not arrived in “the happiest place on earth” in Disney‘s world was later confirmed by the studio head, who explained that “every once in a while I just fire everybody, then I hire them back in a couple of weeks. That way they don’t get too complacent. It keeps them on their toes.” While at times he seemed to enjoy coordinating the activities of those he’d hired, cutting away “dead wood”, even when it meant canning animators who had been with him since the 1920s, or writing memos looking for personnel cuts among the pitilessly underpaid and overworked professional children in the Mickey Mouse Club, (sometimes to re-hire them later), Disney‘s vision seemed to grow a bit colder as well as more adventurous. I’ve yet to unearth any direct comparisons between Disney himself and the controlling figure of Captain Nemo by any of the host of authors dissecting the Disney magic in recent years, but, there seems to have been an element of the buccaneer as well as the scientific and artistic pioneer in the man.

Kirk Douglas told a story that illustrates Walt’s boldness and his grasp on the controls of the publicity machine that created his world as well. Shortly after completing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Kirk Douglas and his sons were invited to visit Disney’s Holmby Hills home, where they “spent one Saturday afternoon riding around [on Disney's train]. A Few weeks later I was surprised to see film of my two kids and me on Walt Disney’s television show…I was shocked at Disney’s audacity in exploiting my children. Two months later he broadcast the shots again. I was furious. I talked to my lawyer and he advised me to sue.” Weeks later, after cooling down a bit, and possibly realizing that the acrimonious publicity being generated by such a lawsuit might not be advantageous to Douglas burgeoning hopes to become a producer as well as a star in his “company town”, he dropped the suit. As the actor reflected, “There are some people in our profession–Bob Hope, Walt Disney–who can do no wrong. Most people think that Walt Disney did things for children out of the goodness of his heart, that he wasn’t making millions of dollars. Over [the attorney's] objections, I decided to drop the suit. You can’t sue God.”

• For a complete list of the movies in the lineup of TCM Presents: The Family Classics please click here .
• For a detailed look at the enormous artistic and technological work that went into 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, please click here .
  

Sources:
Barrier, J. Michael, The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney, University of California Press, 2007.
Douglas, Kirk, The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Eliot, Marc, Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, Carol Publishing, 1993.
Fleischer, Richard, Just Tell Me When to Cry A Memoir, Carroll & Graf, 1993.
Gabler, Neal, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Vintage Books, 2006.
Thomas, Bob, Walt Disney: An American Original, Simon & Schuster, 1994