The Lost World

Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous work is the creation of detective Sherlock Holmes, and indeed the first screen adaptation came in 1900.
However, one of the most successful adaptations of  his novels was not a Sherlock Holmes film. The Lost World was a dinosaur story and nobody had figured out how to adapt such a fantastic tale until Willis H. O'Brien came along.

The man had developed a technique that enabled dinosaurs or other extinct beasts to take life in front of your eyes: stop motion animation. Basically, he would photograph puppets one frame at a time and would move them little by little so that the illusion of movement would be created when the film ran at normal speed. The same trick is used for cartoons, only this time, it was with three dimensional objects. And to the untrained eye of the spectators of the time, it might as well have been a real dinosaur up there on the screen.

Willis had experimented that technique since 1915 with short films like Dinosaurs and the Missing Link or R.F.D., 10,000 B.C. where he animated puppets of humans as well so they could interact with the animals, much in the way of The Flinstones. (Check out the latter: I saw several instances where you can accidentally see Willis' elbow for a split millisecond). By 1918, he fleshed out his films with live action segments that provided a more substantial story and characters that the audience could relate to. This gave birth to the short film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain.

Unfortunately, two thirds of the film are now lost and what you see here is an abridged version of a longer film.

With time, Willis progressed and he figured out that if he optically merged live action shots of people with his puppet shots, then the dinosaurs would seem even more realistic, as they would evolve in the real world. Recent research show that he first tried that with his partner Herbert Dawley in the film Along the Moonbeam Trail.

In 1923, a Buster Keaton comedy called Three Ages used stop motion animation in its prehistoric segment to create the illusion that the protagonist was using a giant dinosaur as transportation device. The way was paved for a prestige feature film to used this technique.

Facade of the Paris Cameo theater showing the film

The idea came to adapt Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, a perfect material for his specific trade. It took a whole year for him to animate the many dinosaur sequences (publicity for the film said "seven years in the making"). To create a surefire success, real live wild beasts were photographed, and movie stars were hired. The star of Three Ages, Wallace Beery, took the part of Professor Challenger, Bessie Love was Paula White, Lewis Stone became Sir John Roxton and teen heartthrob Loyd Hughes played adventurer Ed Malone. Even Arthur Conan Doyle makes an appearance in the prologue.

Although not a secret (some articles of the time make wild guesses), the fact that the animals were animated was, at the time, not explained in the film publicity which preferred to describe the film as if cretaceous species had somehow magically reappeared.

The Lost World was a massive hit throughout the world for several years. It even became the first in-flight film as this French article proves (an experiment that will not be repeated much, the journalist suggests, considering how flammable film is). The deed took place in London in late 1925 and, according to the imdb, was repeated in Germany on February 4, 1926.

However, as most silent films, it was only sporadically re-released and in various edits. For many years, only severely shortened copies of lesser quality circulated. This site gives a complete explanation of this.

Lobster films eventually restored the film to a more acceptable length and quality, but unfortunately, portions of it are still missing. The film is also coming out on Blu-ray in France in October as a bonus feature of its 1960 sequel.

French magazine ad

The plot of the film inspired countless others: the remote island, the romance amidst catastrophe, the giant beast turn loose in the big city, the iconic monument destroyed are all still used today. Willis O'Brien's next big finished project will be animating his most famous work: King Kong.

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Theda Bara, Queen of Caesars

Theda Bara's name still rings a bell for some people. She was the iconic vamp of the silent era. Also she portrayed iconic characters such as Juliet (from Romeo & Juliet), Camille, Carmen, Madame Du Barry, Salome, all of them still popular and, at each new incarnation, her name is often brought up as a pioneer, even though few have actually seen her films since most of them are lost and those that are preserved are not necessarily the best ones and are usually presented in a very poor shape.

As a matter of fact, she played her most famous role in one of the most sought-after lost film: Cleopatra. Not often is a lost film so well illustrated to this day: tons of production photographs can be found on the internet or in various books. Joseph Mankiewick's version starring Elizabeth Taylor is actually a remake of this film, even though it was already lost by then.

Cleopatra

Since the film (and most of her filmography) was released during WW1, her fame reached Europe a little late, probably one of the reason why her films were not as well preserved as later ones. Theda Bara is not often mentioned in French post war film magazines, for instance. The craving for more details in movie magazines will flourish a little later and magazines like Cinéa or Cinémagazine will only be published from 1921. And most of Theda Bara's films had been released in France by then.

However, for this particular film, I found out that its first European premiere happened in Paris on January 30, 1920 at the Mogador Palace. For the occasion, a 40 piece orchestra played an especially written score by Paul Letombe. It took me a while to realize it since the film was not called Cléopâtre as one could expect. In the magazine "Ciné pour tous" and in every newspaper commenting the event (Le Petit Parisien, Le Figaro, etc.), the film is clearly advertized as La Reine des Césars [Queen of Caesars]. I can only guess what other titles were used throughout Europe. There is still hope to find a copy under some unexpected title after all!

Anyway, the film seems to have been a big success there since by February 3, Le Matin displayed an ad saying that over 3,000 people could not get a seat so the management of the Mogador could not guaranty entrance to anyone without a reservation.
On April 2, the film move to the Demours theater and it took another month (May 3rd, 1920) to reach Algiers.
So far, only a fragment of the film has been recovered, and in very poor shape, too:

Another fragment was thought to be from this film for a time, but it happened to be from another Fox epic with a similar cast and crew called Queen of Sheba. As a matter of fact, this film was supposed to star Theda Bara before she left the studio and she was replaced by Betty Blythe who wore equally revealing costumes.

However, Theda Bara cannot be summed up with Cleopatra alone. She wasn't the first to portrait the Queen, nor was she the first to play all of her famous roles. But she often was the first to play them in luxurious American feature films. At the time, movie studios kept their actors voluntarily anonymous so that they wouldn't demand higher salaries as they grew more famous. The few who reached fame had gained their way progressively as they had been eventually recognized film after film.
Unlike them, Theda became an overnight sensation, the first manufactured star thanks to her association with William Fox, whose studio was nearly going bankrupt and needed a publicity stunt to change his luck.

As most film actors of the time, she started her career on the East coast, at Fort Lee. After a debut under her real name, Theodosia Goodman, as a fake nurse (actually a gangster's moll) in The Stain, she starred in A Fool There Was, and became The Vampire, a bad woman who lured married men to their doom. Amazingly, these films, directed by Frank Powell, are two of the six films (out of 40) that are still extant today (A Fool There Was is even available on DVD).

The term "vamp" was coined for her and she was typecast to cash in the extraordinary publicity around her persona. A whole legend was spread through newspapers and studio publicity about her origins (more specifically when Cleopatra was released, when her named was conveniently revealed to be an anagram for "Arab Death"). In 1917, the Goodman family legally changed their name to Bara.

Carmen

Back to 1915: she made a short film with Raoul Walsh called Siren of Hell and two features: the first was Carmen, an adaptation of Prosper Mérimé's novel. Cecil B. DeMille also released his version starring Geraldine Farrar on the same day.

In The Serpent, she played yet another vamp. With director Herbert Brenon, she did more films with such roles, and also adaptations of classics: The Two Orphans, Alexander Dumas' The Clemenceau Case and Kreutzer Sonata from Tolstoi. That same year, she also stars in an adaptation Emile Zola's Labor called Destruction, which will be released in France 5 years later as La ravageuse.

With The Galley Slave, she started a collaboration with the director that would work on most of her films: J. Gordon Edwards, grand father of director Blake Edwards.

In 1916, she did East Lynne (still extant) with director Bertram Bracken, and a steamy version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with Edwards (which had yet again to face a rival production from Metro). For him, she also became Esmeralda in a 1917 adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris called The Darling of Paris and Camille from Alexandre Dumas's novel La dame aux camélias.

French poster for Madame Du Barry

Then came Cleopatra, for which she was asked to move to California, where the new studios were operating, and Madame Du Barry, which were both released in France three years later. By then Pola Negri's later version had reached the French screen and another comparison in critics of the time was inevitable, like Carmen or Romeo And Juliet earlier.

In 1918, she co-wrote the story of The Son of Buddha. She also did Salome. That year, Theda even became the subject of a cartoon short starring Mutt and Jeff called Meeting Theda Bara!

The next year saw the release of 2 films by Charles Brabin, Kathleen Mavourneen and La Belle Russe. Her next film, The Lure of Ambition, was the last one she made for Fox before her contract expired. She was denied a raise and decided to leave the studio. After a trip to Europe, she tried to find work at another studio but was unsuccessful until 1925 when she made a comeback with The Unchastened Woman directed by James Young. This last feature film still exists today.

Her last theatrical film was a comedy short called Madame Mystery co-directed by Stan Laurel in which she shared the screen with Oliver Hardy.

After an attempt on the stage, she retired. She had married Charles Brabin in 1921 and the two stayed together until Theda's death in 1955.

In my research, I found other French titles for her films:
- Un cavalier passa (A horseman went by, I don't know which film that is) was shown from November 7, 1919 at the Aubert Palace.
- Le démon de la jalousie (Demon of Jealousy, a title that could fit too many of her movies), was released on January 1920 in Rouen and on May 23, 1920 in Algiers. (probably in Paris some time in 1919).
- La DuBarry (Madame Du Barry, of course) released in Paris on February 6, 1920, just one week after Cleopatra.
- La ravageuse (Ravenous, which is the French title of Destruction) came out on April 15, 1920.
- La bête à misère (The Misery Beast) came out in Paris on July 30, 1920 and on March 3, 1921 in Algiers.
- Poppéa (French title of When a Woman Sins) came out on September 24, 1920 in Algiers.
- Salomé was released on January 14, 1921 and re-released on March 7, 1924. I even found a trace of the film as late as 1928 (January 25) in Madagascar.
- Apparently, La Reine des Césars (Cleopatra) was reissued on January 21, 1921 in Algiers, a rare occurrence in those days.
- Avant l'heure X (Before Time X, a war movie, possibly When Men Desire) was shown in Arcachon, France on February 18, 1922.

It is very difficult to associate a film with its title considering the French titles are usually completely different from the originals (Cleopatra being a good example). Also, the release dates are no help here considering that most of her films were made during World War I or right after, and were therefore almost all released in France in 1920 within a very short time bracket. Finally, no indication concerning the story, other actors or crew members are usually mentioned in the papers, cinema programs being mostly relegated to a mere column in the theater section of newspapers at the time.

If you wish to know more about this fascinating personality, I suggest you visit this website, and see the documentary The Woman With The Hungry Eyes.

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How Pinocchio learned to speak French

February 1940. Pinocchio has just been released nationwide. That was the time to repeat an international success. I don't know if Disney had plans to repeat the process used two years before with Snow White: hiring French-speaking actors to make a French version in the studio, or hire local talents.

Then the war came. 
 On the film's Blu-ray edition, if you switch the to French track, the main and end title is sung by an unidentified singer, not from any verion released in France until then. Yet the quality of the recording and the singing itself indicates that this is not a new version. No information has transpired and no other extract either from what may be a version recorded especially for Quebec. Maybe J.B. Kaufman's upcoming book will shed some light on this.

Anyway, the planned June 14 Paris release was postponed until better days.

When the war ended, the only Disney film available was Snow White (I plan to write an article about this release), but the studio has made and released several features in the USA. For a French release, these films needed a French adaptation, but also a proper distributor.

Not until May 27, did RKO film SA really presented 7 features in Paris (among which Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion), thereby marking their return on the French scene. However, Pinocchio was the first French version recorded after the war and it enabled them to present the film a little earlier. 

 

RKO trade ad (detail)

According to press articles found by Sébastien Roffat, Georges van Parys, who had kept a copy of the film in English, started working on it with a moviola to decipher the music and write new sheet music for an adaptation. From October 1944, they started to record the voices, and by January 1945 according to an article of the time, the tracks had been sent to New York to be mixed to the music and effects track. Again, new visual elements with French writing would be filmed at the studio.

According to Le film français, a corporate newspaper, this French version was  presented as La merveilleuse aventure de Pinocchio [The Wonderful Adventure of Pinocchio] (even though the title card reads just "Pinocchio" and the film is known as such today), May 22, 1940 at the two theaters where it would be projected for an exclusive run simultaneously: at the Empire, and at The Rex.  

Between July 19 and 25 and July 3 and 9, the film is announced in English for its fifth and eighth week.

Finally, it went in general release on October 2, 1946.

The French track was praised by Disney himself and by the press of the time : "The French version is pleasant and spoken by good voices." or "The dubbing is of an exceptional quality".

In this version, Jiminy is called "Criquet" whereas he will be called "Grillon" later and then "Cricket".

When the film was re-released in 1975, the soundtrack was re-recorded with new actors. Since then, the old version was not used and was therefore never released on home video.

Thanks to my friend Rémi (blog Dans l'ombre des studios), François Justamand (La Gazette du doublage), Gilles and Christian, we have gathered extracts of it as well as three other "lost" versions of Disney Features. That enabled them to identify the voice actors presented here:

Original French version (1946) :

Dubbing : RKO ²

Artistic direction : Daniel Gilbert ²

Musical direction : Georges Tzipine ? ³

Adaptation : Jean Cis & Louis Sauvat ⁴

Pinocchio : Renée Dandry ²

Jiminy Cricket : Camille Guérini ²

Geppetto : René Genin ²

Foulfellow : Jean Davy ²

Stromboli : Fernand Rauzena ³

The Blue Fairy : Simone Gerbier ³

Lampwick : Linette Lemercier ²

Talking statue at the fair : Zappy Max ²

Poupée russe : Lita Recio ³

Singer (Main Title) : Jean Lumière ²

? : Marcel Raine ²

? : Jean Daurand ²

List made by Olivier Kosinski (Grands Classiques Disney), François Justamand (La Gazette du Doublage), Greg Philip (A Lost Film)  & Rémi Carémel (Dans l’ombre des studios). This was checked by several specialists but errors may persist

Sources : ¹Chrisis2001 / Disney Central Plaza,

²F. Justamand / La gazette du doublage  (Thanks to Linette Lemercier & Zappy Max),

³Rémi / Dans l'ombre des studios (Thanks to Bastoune, Mark Lesser, Jean-Pierre Nord, Olivier Constantin, Anne Germain & Jean Cussac),

⁴VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray

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The Three Masks, the first French talking picture.

The Jazz singer was presented in Paris on January 24, 1929, more than one year after its huge success in the USA. It took another 10 months for a French-speaking film to hit the screens (RCA sound-on-film system), presented at the Marivaux theater on October 31, 1929 and released to the audience the next day (there was even a release in Quebec).

1929 The Three Masks

The choice of subject for the first talking picture in France may surprise some as it did me when I found out that the film was called The Three Masks. The film does not exactly enjoy the cult status that The Jazz Singer has in the USA (and indeed the world) where it was recently re-released on Blu-ray or Blackmail for Great Britain.

1921 The Three Masks

As a matter of fact, the film was shot in London, at the BIP studio, the only place in Europe where you could make a talky at the time. The studio had unwisely been built right next to a railway track. So a man was hired solely to warn the crew of incoming trains thanks to an electric device which activated a light inside the studio everytime he pushed a button.Other foreign productions were shot there, like Atlantic, the first talkie inspired by the sinking of the Titanic. But a French sound studio was soon built in Joinville by Pathé and the short film Chiqué was shot there later that year.

1921 Henry Krauss & Charlotte Barbier-Krauss

As for The Three Masks, the choice of subject becomes clearer when you realize that this film is, not only a stage adaptation (an easy solution adopted by many filmmakers during this difficult period), but more importantly a remake of a great 1921 success. That version was even re-released in 1924, a very rare instance during the silent era where most films were released only once, never to be seen again (one of the reasons why so many films are lost today).

1929 Jean Toulout & Clotilde Person

As a matter of fact, in retrospect, the choice may seem bold, as the first film had a very limited number of intertitles and did not rely on dialog, unlike most subjects chosen for early talkies. One critic even wrote then that "the text is reduced to a bare minimum, almost nothing".



Here is a short clip of the 1929 film:

1921 The dead son under a mask

In Corsica, the rich Paolo della Corba loves the pretty Viola (Speranza in the silent version) in secret, because his father won't accept a poor daughter-in-law. Soon Viola gets pregnant and the couple decides to elope, but her three brothers vow to avenge her honor. During the carnival, wearing masks, they stab Paolo and bring him back in costume to his father who thinks the boy is just a drunk schoolteacher. When he removes the mask in the morning, the old man realizes his sorrow, and eventually cares for the baby.

1929 The dead son under a mask

The first version, although it did not enjoy the novelty of sound yet, was immensely successful. Critics called it admirable. It was directed by then-famous Henry Krauss who also starred in the film. One of the masks was played by Georges Wague, a celebrated mime. This version offered what the hastily shot sound film could not offer in a London studio: realism. The director went to Corsica and looked for a mansion that could be used for the father. According to Ciné Pour Tous magazine from April 8, 1921, Corsica was a poor region with very little industry or commerce and such mansions were actually very rare there. The owners of the ones he could find did not want to let the crew inside for fear of alerting the police on the origin of their wealth.

1921 "Let us in"

Henry Krauss (1921)

Jean Toulout (1929)

In spite of that, Krauss shot beautiful scenes in Corto, Corgese, Piana, Bastia etc. He ended up in the Castle of Feliceto near Muro, between Calvi and Belgodere, owned by a Mr. Salvetti who welcomed him and the crew. Krauss waited until late in filming to tell the story to Mr. Salvetti, for fear of upsetting the man on the dramatic depiction of a vendetta among Corsicans. The man told him that a similar story had happened only three years earlier in a nearby village.

1929 Renée Héribel (Viola) & François Rozet (Paolo)

When it was re-released in 1924, Cinémagazine (July 18, 1924) acknowledged the (very rare) event and wished that the film be always available. Unfortunately, as of today, their wish is not granted and neither the original nor the sound remake is available on DVD or any other format. Yet these films are still extant: the 1921 masterpiece was projected in Corsica as late as 2009.

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Betty Balfour

BFI has just announced the discovery of a British masterpiece called Love Life and Laughter by George Pearson. Maybe this will throw a little light on its forgotten star.

When BFI restored "the Hitchcock 9": Alfred Hitchcock's surviving silent films, I couldn't help but think that some of these films probably wouldn't have gotten this attention, had they not been directed by the master of suspense. Yet, at the time they were made, his involvement was definitely not the selling point of these films. The real stars were the ones you could see on-screen and no one outside the business knew who Mr. Hitchcock was.

The scenario of Champagne, which ended up being a light comedy, was developed from the pre-established title and could have been entirely different. Indeed, Hitchcock initially thought the story would be articulated the opposite way: a poor girl working in a champagne factory would sin her way to the top of the social ladder and then go back to her old job when she grew tired of it.

In the end, the film would tell the story of a rich heiress who would be taught a lesson by her rich daddy by cutting off her endless money supply. She learns the lesson, goes back to being rich and everyone is happy.

1925 portrait

Such a seemingly tepid story could not be expected to be rendered more appealing by a then relatively new director (although the pressbook for the film boasts that he already has "the reputation of being the premier British director"), so a star was hired to ensure box office returns. Her name was Betty Balfour, who had just been christened "Britain's favorite actress" and is remembered today (if at all) only for this film.

Yet in the early twenties, Betty Balfour had become immensely popular in Great Britain thanks to her recurring role as Squibs, which began in the eponymous film. Her fame even crossed the Channel in 1922 when these films hit the French screens.

She started to work on stage at the age 18, in October 1914, at the Ambassadors in London thanks to producer C. B. Cochran who met her through the help of her admirer Lady Fitzmaurice. There she played a one act play called From Louvain. The next year, she appears in the show More.

When C. B. Cochran takes the direction of the Palladium, he also takes her along. Betty stars in All Women, a revue that she tours around the country. Upon her return in London, she plays at the Palace Theater in June 1917.

Betty in Nothing Else Matters

At the time, she was a victim of a German bomb and had to stay in bed for several months. But she went back to work in 1919, at the Alhambra, as Violet Manstone in the show Medorah. Her success in it triggered a two-year movie contract with Welsh Pearson and Company at the condition that she would disappear from the stage during that time. Her first screen role was that of a maid, Sally, in Nothing Else Matters, starring Moyna MacGill, Angela Lansbury's mother.

Then came Mary Find The Gold opposite Hugh E. Wright.
The role that propelled her to stardom was the title role of Squibs where she played a London flower girl. A character that seemed to gain the sympathy of the audience. So much so that Betty was dubbed "the English Mary Pickford" and, after a film called Mord Em'ly and another called Wee MacGregor's Sweetheart (shot in Scotland), she went back to the role in Squibs wins the Calcutta Sweep.

Wee MacGregor's Sweetheart with Donald Macardle

The Calcutta Sweep was a lottery. Each ticket cost one pound and the number of winners was determined by the number of horses in the Epsom Derby. Each winner was assigned a horse and the winning horse determined who among the ticket holders won the highest sum (several thousand pounds). For instance, a 1921 winner was a Londoner who won £69,000.

George Pearson, Hugh Wright, Betty Balfour & Fred Grove on the set.

Some of the exteriors for this film were even shot in Paris, on the Grands Boulevards and in Piccadilly Circus where Squibs learns that she won the lottery and kisses a surprised policeman in her excitement, a scene that was apparently shot among the unsuspecting crowd. Apparently Miss Balfour's boyfriend of the time played a policeman in the film.

Squibs has just won the lottery!

Before the Calcutta Sweet movie even finished shooting, the contract was renewed for two additional years. With it came two sequels called Squibs M.P., and Squibs' Honeymoon (for which she became respectively producer and screenwriter), all directed by George Pearson. Even though the next films are not direct Squibs sequels, Betty Balfour was typecast in similar roles in films like in Love, Life and Laughter. In this very recently recovered film, one of her old vaudeville act was used. She eventually ended her collaboration with George Pearson and tried to change her image.

Love, Life and Laughter

Her fame outside of Great Britain permitted her to export her talents in Europe, so she starred in several films in France (she was fluent in French) and in Germany.
The film Bright Eyes [Champagner], directed by Geza von Bolvary, was even sometimes confused with Alfred Hitchcock's film just because it shared the same star and a similar title. 

Prince Aage of Denmark visiting the set of Alfred Hitchcock's Champagne

It is ironic that her best remembered film today is Champagne, one of the films she made in an attempt to move away from her usual roles of poor but optimistic characters and the one film that is most often overlooked in the articles about her in the 1920s.

One of the films she made abroad was Monte Carlo by French director Louis Mercanton. According to Mon Ciné magazine, this was the first production to actually be filmed inside the casino. The same director also worked with her in Croquette and La petite bonne du palace. Another famous Frenchman, Marcel L'Herbier directed her in Le diable au coeur. In Paradise, she wins a prize and decides to travel to the Riviera (the actress broke a rib during her energetic dance scene with Alexandre D'Arcy).

Carlyle Blackwell, Jean-Louis Allibert & Betty Balfour in Monte Carlo

By 1927, she was making another international film called La fille du régiment from an Italian operetta with a German director and German actors, for a British company, opposite an Egyptian co-star. It was shot in Barcelona, London, Berlin, Paris...
In her interviews, she says she disliked talking pictures but had more faith in color.

Love, Life and Laughter

When the talkies came, however, she had to adapt. She starred in the first British musical, Raise the Roof, opposite Maurice Evans and in a second one called The Nipper. After which she vanished from the screen for 4 years.
When she returned, she played second fiddle to singing star Jessie Matthews in Evergreen, one of the few films she made that is available on DVD today. She then attempted to revive her fame as Squibs in a 1935 musical remake of the film. While not a complete failure, the film was not the success Betty hoped and, after one last film, she stopped filming. She made one last attempt in films ten years later in a film opposite another Hitchcock regular Gordon Harker: 29 Acacia Avenue.
After a return on the stage, she eventually retired and, were it not for Hitchcock's unpretentious comedy, she would be forgotten today. But maybe this newly rediscovered film will change that a little.

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Snow White's dance in the clouds

One dream that Walt Disney took over twenty years to materialize was a dance sequence in the clouds between one of his Princesses and her Prince. Since the very first feature film, a lyrical scene was planned right after Snow White had sung Some Day My Prince Will Come, and she was daydreaming that she and Prince Charming were floating in some kind of swan-boat pulled by star-shaped angels. Then they would dance among the clouds during an instrumental reprise of the song. Snow White would wear a different dress in that scene, one that would inspire the ones used for some dolls.


The scene never went beyond the stage of storyboard. Disney felt it had to be dropped for several reasons. First of all, it stopped the pacing of the story dead: no new plot element was introduced in the sequence and it could only be a visual treat. But the major problem was that he feared that they may not manage to reach that level of perfection on a relatively reasonable (and already exploding) budget because the Prince's animation was too difficult to handle for most animators.

Gone was the scene. The next opportunity was of course Cinderella. One could argue that Cinderella does dance with her Prince this time, and that the evocative backgrounds of the sequence could evoke a cloudy sky at some point, also a song called "Dancing on a cloud" was recorded by Ilene Woods but not kept in the final cut. But, as short as it is, the final scene of Sleeping Beauty is clearly the  finalized sequence closest to the original intent.

But in my book, Aurora is no Snow White and the few seconds of waltz in Sleeping Beauty cannot compare to the lengthy unproduced dance sequence of Snow White and her magic stars. There are two other ways of seeing what a dance between the two characters would have looked like.

You can watch the bonus section of your Blu-ray edition of the film where the beautiful storyboards have been filmed in sequence or... you can buy the DVD of the Marx brothers' movie A Night at the Opera.

At this point, you probably think I'm pulling your leg. Although I consider it a great film, my interest here lies in the bonus section again. In it, there is an MGM short with quality picture and deplorable audio called Sunday Night at the Trocadero. This 1937 film is basically a party hosted by former silent star Reginald Denny who was the subject of my article last month. He introduces famous and not so famous performers who only get a few seconds of screen time. Among the ones that are not credited, or even properly introduced by Denny are two dancers in the style of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers duo.

They actually have the most screen time of anyone else in the film. Their dance is energetic and they look like they're having fun dancing together. The names of these unknown would be revealed in an unrelated 1938 Life magazine article. The man was Louis Hightower and his partner was Marjorie Belcher, performing under the name Margie Bell.

The names may not be familiar to you but these two happen to be the live action models that Disney animators used for the characters of Snow White and the Prince! Some color home movie footage of Marge Belcher's sessions survives and is available on the Snow White Blu-ray. In it, you can see the animators giving instructions to the dancer while she was being filmed. If her movements seem familiar, that's because the still frames of the film were traced on paper (a technique called rotoscoping) and animators would adapt these movements to the design of the characters. Specifically, for instance, Snow White has a much bigger head than a regular human. Marge even had to wear a helmet so that the size of her head would match the intended drawing but the idea was soon dropped because it was so uncomfortable.

Although the use of the technique was somewhat minimized in the Life article (where the two dancers were supposedly only an inspiration), their role in the making of the film is immense. Marge Belcher, the daughter of dance instructor Ernest Belcher, went on to model for the blue fairy for Pinocchio and married animator Art Babbitt. She later achieved worldwide fame when she remarried Gower Champion and they both became stars of a dancing duo in films. However, Louis Hightower, who had been suggested by Marge herself for the role since he was her dancing partner then, had no such luck: he was killed in World War II before he could make a name for himself.


Here is a short excerpt of their dance together that you can enjoy in its entirety by buying the DVD:

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