SONGS FROM TIN PAN ALLEY
For Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney for the first time turned to Tin Pan Alley for such songwriters as Mack David, Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman, who ended up writing such Disney classics as “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and “The Unbirthday Song.” But just what is Tin Pan Alley? Tin Pan Alley was originally 28th Street in New York City’s Manhattan district, where many of the largest song publishers in the United States had their offices around the turn of the century. Each publisher employed an army of songwriters, who worked out of small offices furnished with nothing more than pianos and music stands. During the summer, the writers would open their windows in a futile effort to get some relief from the stifling New York heat (since air conditioners hadn’t come along yet). The resulting noise of the pianos echoing through the street gave one the impression of people banging on tin pans, hence, “Tin Pan Alley.” The heyday of Tin Pan Alley was actually before World War II, but writers continued to work and congregate in the area, including David, Livingston, Hoffman, Sammy Fain, Sammy Cahn and Bob Hilliard. The Tin Pan Alley of old enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Don Kirshner formed Aldon Music and located it in the Brill Building on Broadway, just around the corner from 28th Street. Such songwriters (and later performers) as Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond got their start there.
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The release of Cinderella in 1950 marked Walt Disney’s return to feature-length animation after an absence of almost a decade, and it also represented two milestones in the way he produced music for his animated films.
The first was his decision to use pop songwriters outside the Disney stable to pen the movie’s six tunes. He continued to depend on his staff for the musical direction and scores (in the case of Cinderella, it was his trusted hands Oliver Wallace and Paul J. Smith), but for the songs he reached across the country to New York’s renowned Tin Pan Alley, where he picked the songwriting team of Mack David, Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman.
Walt met the trio while he was on a trip to New York. While there, he kept hearing on the radio a catchy novelty song, “Chi-Baba Chi-Baba,” which the three had written and Perry Como had recorded. He was so taken with the song that he invited David, Livingston and Hoffman to audition for him.
“We played a medley of our songs for Walt, but you could see he liked ‘Chi-Baba,’” said Livingston. “I think then he had in mind something similar for the fairy godmother’s magic scene [in Cinderella]. But he didn’t want something ordinary like ‘Ali Kazam.’”
What he did get was “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” a song in the same vein as “Chi-Baba” that proved so popular and so successful it was nominated for an Academy Award (the film’s score was also nominated).
However, “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” wasn’t the first song David, Livingston and Hoffman wrote for Cinderella. That honor went to “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
“When we went to play it for Walt, he simply said, ‘That’ll work,’ and asked us to have a demo record made,” recalled Livingston. “We weren’t sure who to use for the vocal since we were new in Hollywood. Finally, Mack remembered that Ilene Woods, a singer we knew from the Hit Parade, was now living in Hollywood, so we used her. When Walt heard her voice he got excited. The next thing we knew, she was hired for the voice of Cinderella.”
The second milestone the film marked for Disney music was the establishment of the Studio’s own music publishing company. This allowed Walt to finally control the rights to his songs and have whoever he liked record them.
The result was a parade of hit singles from the movie recorded by the likes of Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters. In fact, at one point in 1950, three songs from Cinderella were on the Hit Parade. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” both sung by Perry Como, shared the top two spots, while the Andrews Sisters’ version of “The Work Song” was not far behind. The versions of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” heard in this collection are from the movie and feature vocals by Verna Felton as the Fairy Godmother and Ilene Woods as Cinderella, respectively.
In addition, the RCA album featuring songs from the film sold 750,000 copies in the first year, making it the number-one seller on Billboard magazine’s pop album chart, a rare feat for what was considered a children’s album.
For 1951’s Alice in Wonderland, Walt went back to Tin Pan Alley, primarily because he felt the film would have an abundance of novelty songs, something the Tin Pan Alley gang was quite adept at producing. This time he turned to the songwriting team of Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain, who contributed most of the tunes, including “I’m Late.”
“The original version [of ‘I’m Late’] was somewhat different, not as hurried,” recalled Fain. “We had played it for Walt and he liked it. But that night I kept thinking about it and finally wrote out a second version. The next day I got in to see Walt and played it for him, and he was delighted. There are few studios I know of where you could get in to see the top man and have him change his mind on a song.”
Perhaps the most famous and lasting song from Alice in Wonderland has been “The Unbirthday Song,” written by Mack David, Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman, the team responsible for the songs in Cinderella. The tune comes during the Mad Hatter’s tea party, which before the songwriting trio got hold of it, had proved to be one of the major sticking points in the film’s development.
“One day Walt asked us to give it some thought, even though we weren’t on the picture,” said Livingston. “Here was a 10- to 15-minute major scene that they still didn’t know quite how to handle. Finally, Mack David came up with the ‘un-birthday’ idea. Since there are 364 un-birthdays each year, it was a perfect reason for a mad tea party.”
Alice in Wonderland featured 14 original songs, more than any other Disney animated feature. Hilliard and Fain wrote most of them. Seven other writers, including the David-Livingston-Hoffman team, also contributed songs.
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“Working at Disney was a very happy experience,” says Kathryn Beaumont-Levine, who provided the voices of Alice in Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Peter Pan. “It was really like being in Wonderland.” Walt Disney chose the then 14-year-old English actress for the role of Alice because she had a voice that was pleasing to both American and British audiences. He was also so impressed by her looks and acting abilities that he used her as the model for Lewis Carroll’s young heroine. “I remember that Walt had this scale train set up on the soundstage where we were working,” says Beaumont. “Guests would come to visit the Studio and he would interrupt our production to give them – and us – a ride on the train.” Today, Beaumont is an elementary school teacher. “Every once in awhile,” she says, “when one of my films is reissued, a student will recognize my voice and ask if it was really me.”
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Sammy Fain returned as the primary composer of songs for 1953’s Peter Pan, but this time he worked with lyricist Sammy Cahn. Together the two Sammys wrote five of the eight songs in the film, including “The Second Star to the Right” and “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!”
Interestingly enough, Sammy Fain won an Oscar for Best Song for 1953, but it wasn’t for anything he wrote for Peter Pan. He and lyricist Paul Francis Webster captured the award with “Secret Love” from the movie Calamity Jane. (A year later it was Sammy Cahn’s turn. He joined forces with composer Jule Styne to take the Oscar for “Three Coins in a Fountain” from the movie of the same name.)
When Walt Disney began work on 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, he chose singer Peggy Lee as the voice for Lady. But as the story developed and Lee became more involved in the process, she began to see possibilities for songs throughout the movie. Walt was so impressed by her ideas and suggestions that he replaced her as Lady with Barbara Luddy – and gave her the task of writing all the songs for the film.
Lee did just that, teaming with Sonny Burke to write five tunes for Lady and the Tramp, including “Bella Notte,” which serves as the background music for the romantic spaghetti-eating scene involving Lady and Tramp. Lee’s involvement wasn’t limited to songwriting alone, though. She also provided the voices for Peg, Darling, the Siamese cats, and sang “He’s a Tramp.”
Aside from Fantasia, perhaps the most “adult” score written for a Disney animated feature was George Bruns’ adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Ballet, which as the score for the film Sleeping Beauty (1959) was nominated for an Academy Award.
Bruns also co-wrote all of the songs for the film, except one – “Once Upon a Dream,” which was written by Sammy Fain and Jack Lawrence (with a giant nod to Tchaikovsky, upon whose music the song was based). Mary Costa as Briar Rose and Bill Shirley as Prince Phillip shared vocals for this most lovely of love songs.
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When George Bruns began working at the Disney Studio in 1955, one of his first assignments was to adapt Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Ballet to the animated feature Sleeping Beauty, which was the next major production. That prompted the following anecdote involving Bruns and Walt Disney, as described by a Studio insider: George wrote some music for a sequence and Walt was called in to review it. The sequence was run and Walt said: “Looks good… and the music sounds great.” Suddenly, someone realized that Walt hadn’t met Bruns, so he said, “Oh, by the way Walt, this is George Bruns. He’s doing the music for Sleeping Beauty.” George stood up to acknowledge the introduction – all 6’3” and 250 pounds of him! Walt looked at him in surprise and said, “I’m glad I didn’t say anything bad about the music.” Bruns’ score for Sleeping Beauty was nominated for an Academy Award and signaled the beginning of his long and illustrious career with Disney. Bruns also scored such features as 101 Dalmatians, The Absent-Minded Professor, Babes in Toyland, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood. His songs include “Sleeping Beauty” from the movie of the same name, “The Workshop Song” from Babes in Toyland and “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” from the Davy Crockett series.
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Although none of the songs from Sleeping Beauty was nominated for an Academy Award, the Best Song selections looked like a Who’s Who of composers who had at one time or another worked for Disney. The Oscar winner that year was “High Hopes,” co-written by Sammy Cahn, who had contributed his talents to Peter Pan. Also nominated for 1959 were Cinderella and “The Unbirthday Song” writers Jerry Livingston and Mack David (for “The Hanging Tree”), “When You Wish Upon a Star” lyricist Ned Washington (for “Strange Are the Ways of Love”) and Cahn again (for “The Best of Everything”).
“Cruella De Vil” is easily the most presumptuous song ever written for a Disney film. It’s unknown whether its writer, Mel Leven, made quite the fortune off of it that the movie’s Roger Radcliff did, but despite being a clever, catchy song, it didn’t exactly burn up the pop charts in real life as it did in the make-believe world of 1961’s 101 Dalmatians.
Still, it has enjoyed something of a cult following, as evidenced by a 1988 version by the rock group the Replacements that proved to be an underground favorite on college and alternative radio stations.
