Geoff Carter — Scene Selection: Mouse roars in Disney set

Friday, Dec. 6, 2002 | 8:46 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

Few Hollywood studios have documented their history as faithfully or as well in recent years as Disney. Granted, the studio has to answer to a higher standard than Warner Bros. or Metro-Goldwyn Mayer: Unlike Jack Warner, Walt Disney was a public figure and almost universally beloved, and unlike MGM, Disney owns its entire film catalog -- all the way back to the first Mickey Mouse cartoon in 1928.

That cartoon, "Steamboat Willie" -- coincidentally the first cartoon ever to have synchronized sound -- appears, fully restored, on the two-disc DVD set "Mickey Mouse in Black and White," part of the "Walt Disney Treasures" series (Disney DVD, $32.99 per set).

Each set is hosted by film historian and Disney aficionado Leonard Maltin, and is a must-have for anyone who loves animation, Uncle Walt or popular culture.

Four of the seven "Treasures" collections -- "Mickey Mouse in Living Color," "Disneyland USA," "Silly Symphonies" and "The Complete Davy Crockett" -- were released last year. This year they're joined by the black-and-white Mickey Mouse set, "The Complete Goofy" and "Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studios."

Each collection is as good as its name -- bona fide slices of history, with sound and picture restored to a quality that should please any archivist.

But the collections are much more than that. Drawn from a number of sources -- the "Disneyland/Wonderful World of Color" television show, studio promotional films and the like -- the "Treasures" series puts each of its volumes firmly in context, thanks largely to Maltin.

He explains the backstory of World War II-era cartoons, attacks claims that Disney was an anti-Semite, and freely admits whenever Walt's creative temperament drove animators away.

I doubt Warners would allow Maltin to dig into Jack Warner on a studio-subsidized documentary. (Warner's own son said his old man "wasn't nice to know"). Disney should be commended for allowing Maltin to do his job without hindrance.

Besides, Disney probably knows that the audience watching "Treasures" already knows the details of Walt Disney's life backward and forward. It wants the minutiae, and "Treasures" doesn't skimp.

The sets offer interviews with members of Disney's original "Nine Old Men" (the nine animators who worked on most of his feature films), vintage photos and even an Australian radio interview Disney's own archivists scarcely knew existed.

And Walt Disney himself unknowingly contributes one of the most wonderful features of the collections. When the "Disneyland" television program went on the air in 1954, Walt insisted that it be filmed in color, even though it would be broadcast in black-and-white. Today, 48 years later, they can finally be shown as they were filmed.

It's a nice, unexpected touch, and indicative of how strongly the Disney studio values its past.

I've said little of the real meat of these discs, but it really needs no buildup. The "How-To" cartoons, starring Goofy, are among the funniest animated shorts you'll ever see. The behind-the-scenes footage of the Disney Studio, shot mostly between 1940 and 1960, is fascinating.

And Mickey Mouse, in color or black-and-white, is living history. These sets fill you with that history, almost to overflowing, and it feels great.