Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Best Of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures
So it’s come to this.
Way back at the beginning of this project, we examined the mini-boom of package films released by Walt Disney during World War II. With overseas markets cut off and the studio itself occupied by the military, Disney was obliged to cobble together features from short animated segments and live-action footage produced on the cheap. Movies like The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos and Make Mine Music helped keep the studio afloat during some very lean times. Disney hadn’t released a package film in years, so it’s safe to assume the studio was once again struggling when they decided to repurpose their long-running True-Life Adventures series into something resembling an “all-new” feature.
This wasn’t the first time Disney released a clip show to theatres. In 1937, the studio packaged together five Silly Symphony shorts and released it under the title Academy Award Review Of Walt Disney Cartoons. This was sort of a trial balloon to see whether or not audiences would tolerate more than a few minutes of animation at a time prior to the release of their first original feature, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. That release was laying the groundwork for what was to come. The Best Of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures is a look back at a type of movie the studio had largely abandoned by 1975.
It makes sense why the studio would mine the True-Life Adventures for a release like this. Nature movies could still pull in big numbers with families. The trouble was that the biggest of them were no longer being produced by Disney. Independents like The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams and The Adventures Of The Wilderness Family became word-of-mouth hits in part by cribbing from the Disney playbook. You can’t blame the studio for wanting to remind audiences who got there first.
There was another reason to revisit the True-Life Adventures. As Winston Hibler’s folksy narration informs us, there was a new buzz word floating around that hadn’t really been on anyone’s radar when the films were first produced: ecology. What we consider the modern environmental movement began in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day event was held. In 1971, the United States Forest Service introduced Woodsy Owl, the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” mascot designed by former Disney merchandiser Harold Bell. The public perception of nature and the environment was slowly changing. It was a good time to remind folks (or, perhaps, create the impression) that Walt would have been on the frontlines in the new push for a greener planet.
The film begins with a salute to the studio’s late founder, remembering Walt as a genius, visionary and a true animal lover. There’s a little roll call of the many animated animals who have populated Walt’s films, from Donald and Mickey to Dumbo and Bambi. There’s footage of Walt horsing around with animals, mostly from the Disneyland TV series. And finally, there’s an introduction to the True-Life Adventures themselves, trumpeting their many Oscar wins and celebrating them as groundbreaking achievements in the history of cinema.
Disney is always happy to indulge in a little self-hagiography, so it’s hardly surprising that the movie spends a good ten minutes on Saint Walt of Assisi and then continues to bring his name up at every opportunity. But the tribute feels more than a little forced, especially considering it comes about nine years after his death. I don’t think anyone was seriously questioning Walt’s legacy in 1975. This isn’t so much a heartfelt tribute to their founder and former leader as it is a justification for why audiences should care about some twenty-plus-year-old animal footage. Walt would have wanted them to.
There’s another aspect of the True-Life Adventures that, on its surface, would appear to make them a natural candidate for a film like this. None of the original movies told a complete narrative story in the first place. They’re vignettes, linked together by a general theme and Winston Hibler’s friendly narrator. It would seem that new narration should be able to reassemble these disparate sequences into something new.
That’s a good theory but in practice, it turns out those guiding themes were very important to the success of the True-Life Adventures. Without a specific thread to tie everything together, the compilation lacks a certain stickiness. The footage is the same but it doesn’t land in the same way. It doesn’t take long for the movie to get a little boring. By the end, you may have a hard time remembering what you saw in the beginning.
It's also easy to take issue with what director James Algar, Hibler and the rest of the team consider “the best”. I’m not going to go into detail about every sequence here since this column has already extensively covered the True-Life Adventures. Suffice to say I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing the square-dancing scorpions of The Living Desert again but here they are. And Disney might have been able to avoid being the subject of the 1982 exposé Cruel Camera if they hadn’t decided here to double down on the lemming bullshit from White Wilderness.
Even the least of the original True-Life Adventures captures some extraordinary moments. But sequences like these represent the worst impulses of the series, not the best. Instead of honoring Disney’s legacy as a pioneer in nature filmmaking, it tarnishes it by making both the films and the studio look antiquated and hopelessly corny.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if I should include The Best Of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures in this column. After all, how much is there to say about buffalo and birds and even the cutest of cute widdle bear cubs? But two things convinced me to check it out. One, I felt like skipping over it would be cheating. But second, I hoped the movie would focus more on the True-Life Adventure shorts that haven’t been featured in this column.
Unfortunately, the short films are mostly glossed over. Oscar-winners like Seal Island, Bear Country, In Beaver Valley, Nature’s Half Acre and Water Birds do get shout-outs and we see a few clips from them. But the vast majority of the film is given over to familiar extended sequences from such features as The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie and The African Lion. Personally, I would have preferred a feature focusing only on the short films.
It's likely that The Best Of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures played better in 1975 than it does today. It had been 15 years since the last True-Life Adventure, Jungle Cat, had hit theatres. Since then, they’d never really gone away. They’d simply migrated to television, where they’d occasionally pop up on The Wonderful World Of Disney, and the classroom, where condensed and re-edited versions were packaged as the series Nature’s Living Album. But an entire generation of kids had never seen one on the big screen. Truthfully, I’m not sure how many saw this one. There isn’t much box office information available for this title, which is never the sign of a blockbuster.
Sadly, this film will mark the final appearance in this column of several longtime Disney veterans. Director James Algar had been with Disney since Snow White, working in animation, live-action and even designing attractions for the theme parks. He retired in 1977 and passed away on February 26, 1998, at the age of 85. Winston Hibler had worn many hats since Disney hired him back in 1942. He’d been a writer, producer, narrator and songwriter on a long list of films. At the time of his death on August 8, 1976, he was working on the project that would become The Black Hole. Producer Ben Sharpsteen had been with the studio the longest, joining the team in 1929. He’d been an animator on a slew of Mickey Mouse cartoons, several of which would be repurposed for the 1980 short Mickey Mouse Disco. Sharpsteen died on December 20, 1980. All three would posthumously be inducted as Disney Legends.
The Best Of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures opened on October 8, 1975. Audiences and critics barely seemed to notice. Today, the movie is even more superfluous given the ready availability of most of the original films. It’s not available on Disney+ and has never been released on DVD, Blu-ray or even VHS in the United States, although completists like me can check it out digitally. Frankly, it’s not worth the bother. It’s a minor and not particularly interesting footnote to the True-Life Adventures.
VERDICT: Disney Minus. Stick with the originals.
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