Disney's Most Notorious Film (22 page)

By the 1950s, meanwhile, Disney began distributing audio versions of
Song of the South
through its own record label, Disneyland and later Buena Vista Records, beginning with
Uncle Remus
(1955). Disneyland Records came about after Disney had a fallout with Capitol over the wildly popular song “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” rightly realizing that it could pocket more money by producing the records themselves. Some of Disneyland’s early versions of
Song of the South
tunes, meanwhile, actually appeared in conjunction with Disney’s other popular television show,
The Mickey Mouse Club
. During the 1950s and 1960s, several noted celebrities, such as
Mickey Mouse Club
leader Jimmy Dodd, Cliff Edwards (the voice of
Pinocchio
’s Jiminy Cricket), and the teen idol Bobby Sox, each released 45rpm singles that covered
Song of the South
songs. Meanwhile, the musician Mike Curb and famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong produced singles that were released through the late ’60s and early ’70s through Buena Vista. During this time, Disneyland Records was also producing read-along records, such as
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
in 1974. By the late ’70s, Disney was also producing both audiocassette versions and Super 8mm film copies of the “Tar Baby” sequence from
Song of the South
, which, in addition to private homes, played in the same schools, churches, and other community centers which for years had distributed the Brer Rabbit books.

Between the time of the film’s second and third releases, Disney’s recirculation of
Song of the South
stories and characters through children’s literature was even more considerable. In 1946, Disney first commissioned Grosset and Dunlap to produce adaptations of Joel Chandler
Harris’s
Brer Rabbit stories that featured Disney’s animation. These included
The Wonderful Tar Baby
and
Brer Rabbit Rides the Fox
. From then on, between Western Printing in 1947 and Random House in 1973, Disney directly or indirectly supervised more than a dozen literary versions of
Song of the South
. Disney’s primary collaborator was Western Printing in Racine, Wisconsin; almost all the Brer Rabbit books, regardless of which publishing house commissioned them, were produced by Western’s printing factory, which had a virtual monopoly on the market.

Disney promotional material. During
Song of the South
’s 1972 rerelease, Disney encouraged theater owners to display Brer Rabbit–related Disneyland records in lobbies, and to play them over the speakers inside and outside the auditorium.

Disney also encouraged theater owners to display copies of Golden Books, and to coordinate cross-promotional reading campaigns with schools and the local library.

While less celebrated than the partnership with ABC, Disney’s relationship with Western was nearly as strong. A cornerstone of
Song of the South
’s cultural legacy, Golden Books began producing children’s material in 1942 based on fairy tales such as the Mother Goose stories. The publishing house Simon and Schuster owned the series; the books were printed by Western, which had already produced the
Mickey Mouse Magazine
for Disney a decade earlier. The Wisconsin-based printing company was also a substantial investor in Disneyland, purchasing a nearly 14 percent stake in the new park at a time when most were convinced it would fail.
⁵⁹
This investment was second to only ABC. Not surprisingly, Western was also committed to promoting Disneyland, producing a series of books related to the park and show, including highly successful publications that anticipated and built off the
Davy Crockett
phenomenon. An entire generation of baby boomers grew up obsessed with coonskin caps and singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.”
⁶⁰
Disney,
meanwhile, returned the favor by featuring a bookstore inside Disneyland that exclusively sold products from Western, Simon and Schuster, and another Western collaborator, Dell.
⁶¹

In the long run, this partnership would also be key to Disney’s cultural impact, and to
Song of the South
’s unexpected longevity. As early as two years after Golden Books began publishing, they were already collaborating with Disney to print books featuring its cartoon characters. In 1947, Golden began publishing
Song of the South
–licensed children’s books, beginning with
Walt Disney’s Uncle Remus Stories
(1947), a collection of twenty-three Harris stories drawn by Golden artists. This particular book was republished several times with different covers and different drawings until at least 1956. Another version of this book,
Uncle Remus Brer Rabbit Stories
, was reprinted in 1977. Meanwhile, Golden also produced a shorter, “Little Golden Book” version, simply titled
Walt Disney’s Uncle Remus
(1947), which was republished in 1956 and again as late as 1971. Importantly, too, many Golden Books by the 1950s were accompanied by records that featured both songs from the movie and “Uncle Remus” reading his stories aloud. Disney also produced similar read-along books through Random House in the 1970s. In 1951 and 1955, Golden included a 78rpm record with an adaptation of
Song of the South
’s “Laughing Place” sequence—a collection that was also released in the 1960s with the actor Art Carney doing Remus’s voice.

A NEW GENERATION RAISED ON DISNEY’S BRER RABBIT

These different paratexts accumulatively shifted audiences’ personal connection with, and eventually Disney’s own economic relationship to, the original Brer Rabbit stories. These books and records were all titled “Walt Disney’s” stories of Brer Rabbit. And by the 1970s, they were remembered as being Disney’s own stories instead of Joel Chandler Harris’s. As the
Washington Post
columnist Judith Martin noted in a Disney retrospective in 1973, “Disneyism has made a contribution to children’s literature—half a dozen characters and a bright way of looking at nature—that has eclipsed (or absorbed, by using classics as Disney material) just about everything done up to that point. Before Disney what you remembered about children’s literature was mostly literary, not visual.”
⁶²
Children growing up in the United States after the 1950s who remembered reading the Brer Rabbit stories were, knowingly
or
not, just as likely to be recalling Disney’s literary repurposing of the material as the originals. They remembered the Disney adaptations of the original stories, illustrated by Disney animators and often not even including Uncle Remus or his frame narrative. These were more visually and literately accessible for young readers—more picture book than novel. People who grew up reading the Disney version in the 1950s and 1960s were therefore primed to accept the theatrical rereleases of
Song of the South
in the 1970s and 1980s.

Fans often remember Disney’s literary version of
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
as fondly remembered as
Song of the South
itself.

Disney at first failed to create a successful film based on the Brer Rabbit stories. Yet the company soon after succeeded in creating a
generation
raised on its version of the tales. One person, writing an online review of
Walt Disney’s Brer Rabbit and His Friends
(1974) in 1999, insisted that
the
book was “an absolute favorite of my child and me,” adding, “We were so excited when
Song of the South
came out. We saw it 12 times.”
⁶³
That demand for
Song of the South
, in retrospect, was often less rooted in memories of actually watching the full-length film in theaters. As one person wrote on Amazon’s
Song of the South
page in 2001, “I too grew up singing Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah, but I learned it from a book and tape set, not the movie, as I suspect 85% of the people on this forum have. . . . The movie itself is not all fun and animation, so those of you out there reading up on Brer rabbit, brer bear and brer fox, you’re only getting 1/3 the story of
Song of the South
. The bulk of the movie is a dry back story in which small snippets of animated morays are inserted.”
⁶⁴
This commenter pointed out that one’s attachment to
Song of the South
was perhaps rooted more in childhood memories of ancillary texts. People were not familiar with the film itself but with the “Tar Baby” children stories, or the film clips on Super 8mm and
Disneyland
broadcasts, or Uncle Remus’s voice on records or audiocassettes. At the very least, these other texts were as important culturally as
Song of the South
, and more widespread in their circulation. In either case, they too helped build demand for the film.

On Internet forums today, many people recall the books and other versions of
Song of the South
alongside, and even in excess of, the movie itself. “I saw
Song of the South
as a little kid when it first came out in 1946,” wrote one commenter on Amazon. “I grew up on the songs, comic books, newspaper comics, Golden Books, etc., that featured Brer Rabbit and the other characters. And I got to see the film at least once more, in its 1980–81 release.”
⁶⁵
Though the person claims to remember seeing
Song of the South
in 1946, it is telling that he or she “grew up” on the plethora of the ancillary material. Another man claimed that his wife “has never seen this movie, but has read the story (from an old ‘Golden Books’) and saw some of the Brer Rabbit cartoons on ‘Wonderful World of Disney.’
”
⁶⁶
Reviewing the Disney’s
Sing Along Songs: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
VHS (released in 1986), one person wrote, “I, too, am a fan of
Song of the South
, both the Disney book and movie. I loved reading them aloud when I was a child and later as an adult.”
⁶⁷
Meanwhile, one commenter on a Disneyland Records fan blog wrote, “I had this one [
Walt Disney Presents the Story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
] as a kid! Such great memories.”
⁶⁸
Another wrote about the same read-along book and record on weRead, “[My] All Time Favorite would love to find a copy.”
⁶⁹
As seen in these online reviews, memories of the books and other materials define many people’s memories of
Song of the South
today.

Moreover,
fans of the movie and the books often relate the memories back to their own families. As
Song of the South
endured past initially harsh criticism, it eventually developed a strong role in generational nostalgia. “As a child this storybook was my absolute favorite,” wrote one fan on Amazon. “Memories of my grandmother reading these stories and sharing the lessons they taught are priceless.”
⁷⁰
Another echoed, “This is a book that I hope to pass down through generations of my family, just as my grandfather passed it on to me.”
⁷¹
The act of one family member reading the story to another is often a part of this memory: “I got this book sometime when I was very young, around 1977 I believe, and I can remember my mother reading it to me. On page 11 there is a picture of ‘de Tar-Baby’ that used to scare the stuffing out of me! I recently found this book in an old box in a closet and when I opened it up, the piece of paper that I used to keep over that picture was still there.”
⁷²
Many people hold onto memories and onto the book itself because they wish to share the experience with the next generation in their family. At the same time, we should remain mindful that such generational patterns were, and remain, central to Disney’s marketing strategy of building long-term brand loyalty with consumers. What was perhaps more incidental was how this generational pattern ultimately strengthened Disney’s confidence in rereleasing
Song of the South
.