Melody Time
| Melody Time | |
|---|---|
Original theatrical release poster
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| Directed by |
Jack Kinney Clyde Geronimi Hamilton Luske Wilfred Jackson |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Written by |
Winston Hibler Harry Reeves Ken Anderson Erdman Penner Homer Brightman Ted Sears Joe Rinaldi William Cottrell Jesse Marsh Art Scott Bob Moore John Walbridge |
| Starring |
Roy Rogers Trigger Dennis Day The Andrews Sisters Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians Freddy Martin Ethel Smith Frances Langford Buddy Clark Bob Nolan Sons of the Pioneers The Dinning Sisters Bobby Driscoll Luana Patten |
| Music by |
Eliot Daniel Paul J. Smith Ken Darby |
| Edited by |
Donald Halliday Thomas Scott |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. |
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Release date
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May 27, 1948 |
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Running time
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75 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.5 million |
| Box office | $1,850,000 (US rentals) |
Melody Time (working title All in Fun) is a 1948 film and the 10th theatrically released animated feature produced by Walt Disney. It was released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia (an ambitious film that proved to be a commercial disappointment upon its original theatrical release). Melody Time, while not meeting the artistic accomplishments of Fantasia, was mildly successful. It is the fifth Disney package film following Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free.
In late 1947, Disney announced he would be releasing a "regrouping of various cartoons at his studio under two titles, 'Melody Time' and 'Two Fabulous Characters'", to be released in August 1948 and 1949, respectively. Melody Time ended up being released a few months earlier than planned, in May.
Melody Time is considered to be the last anthology feature made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (the next film to be released was The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which featured two stories). These package features were "little-known short-film compilations that Disney produced and released as feature films during World War II". They were "financially (and artistically) lightweight productions meant to bring in profits [to allow the studio to] return to fairy tale single-narrative feature form", a endeavour which they successfully completed two years later with Cinderella. While the shorts "contrast in length, form, and style", a common thread throughout is that each "is accompanied by song[s] from musicians and vocalists of the '40s" - both popular and folk music. This sets it apart from the similarly structured Fantasia, whose segments were set to classical music instead. As opposed to Fun and Fancy Free, whose story was bound to the tales of Bongo and Jack and the Beanstalk, in this film "Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein".
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