| Escalation | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Ward Kimball |
| Story by | Ward Kimball |
| Starring | Paul Frees |
Release date |
|
Running time | 2 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,000 |
Escalation is a 1968 animated short film, directed by Disney animator Ward Kimball. [1] It is an anti-Vietnam War cartoon mocking U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The short was made independently from the Disney Studios and is notable for being the only animated cartoon made in this manner by one of Disney's core animators, the "Nine Old Men". Escalation originated from his anger of the "Battle Hymn" during the Vietnam War (a song he performed many times with Firehouse Five Plus Two) and a story from The Realist that suggested that Johnson was preoccupied with the size of his genitals. Kimball had a budget of 3,000 dollars and had to outsource the ink and painting to Celine Miles Ink & Paint, had a college choir sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", had to pay an outside camera man to shoot the frames, and finished the film with the help of a friend. [2]
He showed it at film festivals, college campuses during the U.S. presidential election year in 1968, and personally gave away copies of the film to whomever was interested. The first film festival it was screened at a Los Angeles art house called the Cinema Theatre, proving the film so popular that it was screened three times there. The film was a runner-up for the Academy Award, but was ultimately dropped due to its content. [3] [2]
In a 2000 interview shortly before his death, Kimball said that he thought that Escalation had not received the mainstream attention it deserved. In 2007, relatives of Kimball put the film online on YouTube. [3] [4]
The animation begins with a countdown from 10 and a drumbeat, skipping over the number 7 and with each numeral getting larger in size as the countdown progresses. A dove of peace flies upside down and backwards, with X marks over its eyes as if it were dead. Then a giant statue of the head of Lyndon B. Johnson is slowly wheeled into view, while the melody of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" plays. One of the statue's ears is shaped as a dollar sign. Actor Paul Frees imitates Johnson's voice reading the lyrics, [2] later joined by a choir, with each instance of the word "truth" being bleeped out with a cuckoo sound. As the song goes on, Johnson's nose slowly starts to rise in phallic fashion. When fully erect, the nose begins to shake and then violently explodes as images of the Playboy Bunny, bare breasts, hot dogs, copious amounts of meat, Billy Graham, John Wayne, Doris Day, Coca-Cola, beer, Aunt Jemima, Lassie, Superman, Little Orphan Annie, S&H Green Stamps, cars, and cigarettes flash on the screen in rapid succession amidst images and sounds of explosions, followed by a similarly rapid succession of military decoration, ending on the Purple Heart (the medal for those wounded or killed in combat) as a single clock chime is heard. The cartoon fades out by having the statue crack into pieces. [3] [5]
The gradual enlargement of Johnson's nose brings up images of Pinocchio, whose nose grew longer whenever he lied. Kimball worked on the 1940 Disney adaptation of Pinocchio. [4]
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the 1960s and 1980s.
The Walt Disney Studios, located in Burbank, California, United States, serves as the corporate headquarters for The Walt Disney Company media conglomerate. The 51-acre studio lot also contains several sound stages, a backlot, and other filmmaking production facilities for Walt Disney Studios's motion picture production. The complex also houses the offices for the company's many divisions, with the exception of Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios, which remains on its namesake lot in nearby Century City as tenants of Fox Corporation.
Escalation is the process of increasing or rising, derived from the concept of an escalator. Specific uses of the term include:
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, and illustrated by Helen Durney for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book").
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, it is the studio's second animated feature film, as well as the third animated film overall produced by an American film studio, after Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Fleischer Studios' Gulliver's Travels (1939). With the voices of Cliff Edwards, Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Walter Catlett, Charles Judels, Evelyn Venable, and Frankie Darro, the film follows a wooden puppet, Pinocchio, who is created by an old woodcarver, Geppetto, and brought to life by a blue fairy. Wishing to become a real boy, Pinocchio must prove himself to be "brave, truthful, and unselfish." Along his journey, Pinocchio encounters several characters representing the temptations and consequences of wrongdoing, as a cricket named Jiminy, who takes the role of Pinocchio's conscience, attempts to guide him in matters of right and wrong.
Walter Crawford Kelly Jr., commonly known as Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. In 1941, at the age of 28, Kelly transferred to work at Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which eventually became his platform for political and philosophical commentary.
Ward Walrath Kimball was an American animator employed by Walt Disney Animation Studios. He was part of Walt Disney's main team of animators, known collectively as Disney's Nine Old Men. His films have been honored with two Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film.
Orphan's Benefit is an American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions in black-and-white. It was first released in 1934 and was later remade in Technicolor in 1941 under the corrected title Orphans' Benefit. The cartoon features Mickey Mouse and his friends putting on a vaudeville-style benefit show for a group of unruly orphans. It contains a number of firsts for Disney, including the first time in which Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck appear together, and was the 68th Mickey Mouse short film to be released, and the sixth of that year. It was also the cartoon which had the first story to be written that featured Donald Duck, though it was the second Donald Duck short to be produced and released, after The Wise Little Hen.
Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was an American motion picture animator. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last surviving at the time of his death from natural causes. He was recognized by The Walt Disney Company with its Disney Legend Award in 1989. His work was recognized with the National Medal of Arts in 2005.
Robert Fred Moore, was an American artist and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Often called "Freddie," he was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Despite limited formal art training, he rose to prominence at Disney very quickly in the early 1930s, due to his great natural talent and the tremendous appeal of his drawings. His drawings are still greatly admired by animators and animation fans.
Bernard "Berny" Wolf was an American animator and television producer.
Short Subject is a 1969 16 mm anti-war underground animated short film. The director was Whitney Lee Savage and the producer and head designer was Milton Glaser, who produced it independently with a total running time of one minute. The short was not endorsed by The Walt Disney Company.
Charles August "Nick" Nichols was an American animator and film director, who worked in animation for over 50 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Hanna-Barbera. At Disney, he worked on various short subjects and films from the 1940s into the 1950s, including the Academy Award-winning short Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953). Nichols co-directed Charlotte's Web (1973) while at Hanna-Barbera.
The Reluctant Dragon is a 1941 American live-action/animated anthology comedy film produced by Walt Disney, directed by Alfred Werker, and released by RKO Radio Pictures on June 27, 1941. Essentially a tour of the then-new Walt Disney Studios facility in Burbank, California, the film stars Algonquin Round Table member, film actor, writer and comedian Robert Benchley and many Disney staffers such as Ward Kimball, Fred Moore, Norman Ferguson, Clarence Nash, and Walt Disney, all as themselves.
It's Tough to Be a Bird is a 1969 American animated educational short film directed by Ward Kimball and produced by Walt Disney Productions. The short won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoons in 1970 and was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Animated Film in 1971. This was the last animated short film produced by Disney to win an Academy Award until Paperman (2012) and thus the final animated cartoon short released by Disney in the golden age of American animation.
William Charles Littlejohn was an American animator and union organizer. Littlejohn worked on animated shorts and features in the 1930s through to the 1990s. His notable works include the Tom and Jerry shorts, Peanuts television specials, the Oscar-winning short, The Hole (1962), and the Oscar-nominated A Doonesbury Special (1977). He was inducted into the Cartoon Hall of Fame and received the Winsor McCay Award and garnered lifetime achievement awards from the Annie Awards and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Director Michael Sporn has called Littlejohn "an animation 'God'."
Disney's Nine Old Men were a group of Walt Disney Productions' core animators, who worked at the studio from the 1920s to the 1980s. Some of the Nine Old Men also worked as directors, creating some of Disney's most popular animated movies from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Rescuers. The group was named by Walt Disney himself, and they worked in both short and feature films. Disney delegated more and more tasks to them in the animation department in the 1950s when their interests expanded, and diversified their scope. Eric Larson was the last to retire from Disney, after his role as animation consultant on The Great Mouse Detective in 1986. All nine members of the group were acknowledged as Disney Legends in 1989 and all would receive the Winsor McCay Award for their lifetime or career contributions to the art of animation.
American president Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) has been a subject of various works of media and popular culture.
Donald Ross "Don" Lusk was an American animator and director.
Events in 1914 in animation.
