Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom is an American animatedshort film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Ward Kimball and Charles A. Nichols. A sequel to the first Adventures in Music cartoon, the 3-D short Melody (released earlier in 1953), Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom is a stylized presentation of the evolution of the four orchestra sections over the ages with: the brass ("toot"), the woodwind ("whistle"), the strings ("plunk"), and the percussion ("boom").
The short was originally released to theaters on November 10, 1953, and was the first release by Buena Vista Distribution, a distribution company established by Walt Disney.[3] When Disney's regular distributor RKO Radio Pictures resisted Disney's idea of releasing a feature-length True-Life Adventures nature documentary film, Disney formed his own distribution company to handle future Disney releases.[4]
Plot
Professor Owl, who rushes to the schoolhouse full of his fine feathered students as a drum roll, is played on a snare.
A brief musical section introduces "the subject for today": the study of musical instruments. Professor Owl explains to the class (and the viewer) that all music originates from four core sounds: toot (brass), whistle (woodwind), plunk (strings) and boom (percussion).
Toot
The film jumps to a group of four cavemen, each of whom have discovered the nuclear form of one of the above sounds. A portly Caveman Toot discovered that blowing through an old cow's horn produces a pleasing "toot". The short advances to ancient Egypt in 2000 BC, where Caveman Toot discovers that metal horns produce even better sounds. He celebrates by breaking into a two-note jazz solo as Egyptian characters painted on the walls boogie down.
Professor Owl explains that making a trumpet longer made its tone lower. The scene switches to a Roman trumpeter who crashes into a column and bends his horn into a grotesque shape, but soon discovers that despite this change in form, the trumpet does not sound any different: it is possible to change the horn's shape without changing the pitch. However, as Professor Owl explains, this horn can only produce certain notes; in order to get all of the notes required for even a simple tune, they would need four horns of different lengths. If there is a horn with valves, then there are four horns in one, and this fact is celebrated with another solo.
Whistle
Caveman Whistle is trying to impress his "cave girl" by blowing through a tube of grass; he further discovers that adding holes to the tube allows him to modify the "whistle" in interesting ways—the more holes Whistle adds the longer the grass tube gets and he invents the first flute. The cave girl is impressed, but then a rival caveman appears, bonks the cave girl on the head with his club, and drags her off by the hair—which makes Caveman Whistle angry.
Professor Owl explains that this system of holes is the basis for every woodwind instrument, including the clarinet played by Johann Sebastian Bach and the saxophone played by a jazz musician.
Plunk
Caveman Plunk has discovered that plucking on the string of his bow produces a pleasant "plunk" sound. An off-screen choir explains–as the animation shows–how to create a simple harp from "taller" Caveman Plunk's bow by adding a jar to make a resonator, adding some extra strings, changing the jar to a box of wood, sliding it down and adding tuning pegs, and rearranging it all. Plunk invents the first harp.
Professor Owl mentions that the musician can either pluck the harp, which is played by a taller Caveman Plunk, or play it with a bow, which is played by a shorter Caveman Plunk. The short briefly visits several periods in history, where there are several stringed instruments being played in similar fashion, and finishes with a string quartet, and all of them ending with the strings being broken.
Boom
Caveman Boom hits his stomach to produce a "boom", and hits other things with his hand and his club to make other sounds. Professor Owl explains how a variety of percussion instruments emerged from this basic theory, ranging from rattles to complex drum kits and even the bass drums of marching bands.
Conclusion
The chorus recaps that all music, from the trombone to the calliope to the banjo to Latin percussion to "music oriental" to an orchestra in a concert hall, emerge from the four core sounds with Caveman Toot in the brass section, Caveman Whistle in the woodwind section, Caveman Plunk in the string section and Caveman Boom in the percussion section, all wearing top hats.
Cast
Bill Thompson as Professor Owl / Bertie Birdbrain (uncredited)
Like many of Disney's early CinemaScope films, a "flat" version shot in 4:3 ratio was made for theaters that were not equipped for CinemaScope. This required rearranging the artwork for some shots to accommodate the smaller screen.
Comparing CinemaScope and flat versions
Both CinemaScope and flat versions of Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom consider major changes for either television runs or theaters that were not equipped for CinemaScope:
The most notable change comes at the transition from the end of the "Boom" section to the parade that starts the finale. In the CinemaScope version, the background and characters fade out, leaving the bass drum in the last scene alone; the bass drum then jumps from the side of the screen to the center, and the parade fades in. In the flat version, the camera zooms in on the bass drum, dissolving into the parade and zooms back out.
Shots of multiple repeated characters (like the bird chorus at the end, for instance) were cut in half, using two repetitions instead of four.
Some of the characters like the kitchen bird band members near the beginning and the string quartet members get closer together in the flat version. They were separate far enough in the CinemaScope version.
In the flat version, Bach with his clarinet has a book of sheet music with "BACH" written on it instead of the busts around him in the CinemaScope version.
In the flat version, Plunk morphs into the Egyptian playing the harp instead of fading out to him in the CinemaScope version.
In the CinemaScope version, the grand piano also in the plunk segment stretches but in the flat version, it stays a certain size.
In the CinemaScope version, the Caveman Whistle gag considers only one scene including a zoom-in. In the flat version, it was edited into multiple scenes. Some of these changes include zoomed in shots of the impressions. The only major change in the Caveman Whistle gag is the screen panning to the right to reveal the rival caveman hitting the cave girl with his stick.
In the CinemaScope version, the shorter Caveman Plunk can be seen in the far top left during the creation of the harp. He doesn't appear until afterwards in the flat version.
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom was reissued in 1963 as a companion short to that year's theatrical re-release of Fantasia.
In 1962, Disney issued a re-recorded and expanded version of the short's music and voices on vinyl LP entitled A Child's Introduction to Melody and the Instruments of the Orchestra. Thurl Ravenscroft provided the voice of the owl on the album.
While the film was originally released into theaters as a part of a broader collection of shorts, it continues to be used today in music classrooms to provide an elementary understanding of how musical instruments work.
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom won the 1954 Oscar for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).[2] The British Film Institute's magazine Sight & Sound offered it a negative review. Writer Roy Edwards summarized: "Despite its incredible borrowings from UPA, the new Disney cartoon ... confirms, if confirmation were needed, his imaginative abdication as a cartoonist."[7]
The Tell-Tale Heart is a 1953 American animated psychological horror short film produced by UPA, directed by Ted Parmelee, and narrated by James Mason. The screenplay by Bill Scott and Fred Grable is based on the 1843 short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The British Board of Film Censors made this the first cartoon to receive an adults-only X certificate in the United Kingdom.
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.
CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter.
Fantasound was a sound reproduction system developed by engineers of Walt Disney studios and RCA for Walt Disney's animated film Fantasia, the first commercial film released in stereo.
William H. Thompson was an American radio personality and voice actor, whose career stretched from the 1930s until his death. He was a featured comedian playing multiple roles on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio series, and was the voice of Droopy in most of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio theatrical cartoons from 1943 to 1958.
Ben and Me is an American animated two-reel short subject produced by Walt Disney Productions and released theatrically on November 10, 1953. It was adapted from the book of the same name written by author/illustrator Robert Lawson and first published in 1939. Though both book and film deal with the relationship between a mouse and American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, the book, with illustrations by Lawson, focused more heavily on actual historical events and personages, and included incidents from Franklin's French career at Versailles.
Disney Sing-Along Songs is a series of videos on VHS, betamax, laserdisc, and DVD with musical moments from various Disney films, TV shows, and attractions. Lyrics for the songs are sometimes displayed on-screen with the Mickey Mouse icon as a "bouncing ball". Early releases open with a theme song introduction containing footage featuring Professor Owl and his class, seen originally in 1953 in two Disney shorts, Melody and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom. Professor Owl hosts some of the videos, while either Jiminy Cricket or Ludwig Von Drake host others. Later volumes, as well as the two Christmas videos, do not feature a host at all. Scenes with Jiminy Cricket and Ludwig Von Drake were taken from television programs, including the Walt Disney anthology television series and The Mickey Mouse Club, which featured the characters in the 1950s and 1960s.
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 fifth wave of Walt Disney Treasures was released on December 6, 2005. Starting with this wave the DVD cases are now single opening, but the same size as the previous.
Arthur Stevens was an animator, director and producer for Walt Disney Productions.
Richard Huemer was an American animator in the Golden Age of Animation.
Music Land is a Silly Symphony animated Disney short released in 1935.
Oliver George Wallace was an English composer and conductor. He was especially known for his film music compositions, which were written for many animation, documentary, and feature films from Walt Disney Studios.
Grand Canyonscope is a Donald Duck animated short released in 1954. It was Disney's second cartoon filmed in CinemaScope, and was produced to accompany Disney's first CinemaScope film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. One joke has J. Audubon Woodlore breaking the fourth wall stating to the tourists in the CinemaScope version, "Uh, spread out, folks, this is CinemaScope" or in the non-CinemaScope version, "Uh, spread out, folks, this is a big canyon." Additionally, this short marked as the first Donald Duck cartoon to be distributed by Disney's own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution, instead of RKO Radio Pictures.
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black and white by Walt Disney Studio and was released by Pat Powers, under the name of Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, although both characters appeared several months earlier in a test screening of Plane Crazy. Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but it was the first to be distributed, because Disney, having seen The Jazz Singer, had committed himself to produce one of the first fully synchronized sound cartoons.
Melody is an American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Ward Kimball and Charles A. Nichols. Originally released on May 28, 1953, this film was the first in a proposed series of animated cartoon shorts teaching the principles of music, called Adventures in Music. Only one other entry in the series was produced, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which was released later that same year, winning an Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) the following year.
Rugged Bear is a 1953 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The cartoon follows Humphrey the Bear as he takes refuge in Donald Duck's cabin during hunting season by disguising himself as a bearskin rug. The film was directed by Jack Hannah and features the voices of Clarence Nash as Donald, Jimmy MacDonald as Humphrey, and an uncredited narrator.
No Hunting is a 1955 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The cartoon features Donald Duck participating in an overly-dramatic hunting trip after being inspired by his pioneer ancestor. The film was directed by Jack Hannah and features original music by Oliver Wallace. It was produced in widescreen CinemaScope.
Gloria Wood was an American singer and voice actress. Her rare voice was in the four-octave range. She was able to imitate other voices.
Events in 1913 in animation.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
