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Entertainment
Eamonn Lynskey visits a fascinating exhibition on Walt Disney and his celebrated cartoon characters at the Wallace Collection in London ‘Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts’ at London’s Wallace Collection runs until 16 October and is an exhibition not to be missed, especially not by those who as youngsters were fascinated by the adventures of Mickey Mouse, Goofy and all the other members of Disney’s assemblage of animated characters. And most especially not by those who queued with their parents in the 1950s to get into the Regal Cinema in O’Connell Street in Dublin to see the latest full-length animations from the Disney studios – Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). The exhibition traces the development of Disney’s work from his first short, amusing pieces in the 1930s such as Steamboat Willie (Mickey Mouse’s debut), until his first full-length animation Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. This production banished forever the notion that animations (or ‘cartoons’, as we called them when I was young) were just bits of entertainment to put on before the main feature started so that the audience (and latecomers) could buy ice cream and settle into their seats. My mother, an avid weekly visitor to our local cinema (the Rialto in Inchicore) with me and my sister in tow, was never late and for me the short cartoons were often the highlight of the visit rather than the features that followed. To my very young eyes, a full-length cartoon was an extraordinary and glorious event.
Steamboat Willie who later became Mickey Mouse
What’s on show at the Wallace is the trajectory of Disney’s emergence as one of the earliest and foremost creators of animated film and has a focus on his continual refinements and innovations in technique which paved the way for the sophisticated Disney Studio productions we see today. Due recognition is given to his early experiments but the exhibition revolves principally around two later works: Cinderella (1950) and the
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posthumous Beauty and the Beast (1991), both of which were logical developments from his ground-breaking Snow White. The section devoted to Cinderella reveals many of the tricks and sleights-of-hand used by Disney and his team of artists – and truly they were artists. The 24 drawings necessary for one second of the transformation of Cinderella’s ragged servant’s dress into an elegant ball-gown are mounted together on one wall of the exhibition. From frame to frame the
