Because of how successful the event was the year before, the Newport Beach Film Festival held another session of Disney Animation Rarities, again hosted by producer Don Hahn and Walt Disney Animation Studios Creative Director Dave Bossert who provided commentary and background before each cartoon. In 2008, the event was a sellout, but this year there were plenty of seats to be had as the program started, which may have been a combination of Roy Disney not returning, no knowledge of what the shorts would be, and the power being out for hours before the program started and no way to confirm it would take place at all. However, the city workers came through and Disney Animation Rarities went on as scheduled.
Starting off, they went way back into the vaults to present “Hell’s Bells” from 1929, which hit theaters the day after the famed stock-market crash. Featuring the work of animator Ub Iwerks and music by Carl Stalling, who would go on to great fame at Warner Brothers, this “Silly Symphony” presents a day in the underworld, featuring much more dancing and music, such as “Funeral March of a Marionette,” taking place than many have proclaimed.
Three years later, Disney and his team created their first Technicolor cartoon, “Flowers and Trees,” which won the first Oscar for an animated short subject. A grizzled old tree trunk resents two young trees in love and makes the mistake of thinking he can use fire in his fiendish plot. The advancement in artistry over “Hell’s Bells” is quite remarkable.
Bossert read from a phone transcript in which Walt called the animators after a discussion with the Treasury Department, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, about creating a short that would encourage people to buy bonds and pay “taxes to bury the Axis.” This led to Donald Duck starring in “The New Spirit.”
A PSA targeted to South America (though presented in English) about mosquitoes carrying malaria was entitled “The Winged Scourge.” Featuring the Seven Dwarves, the scare tactics came off as comical, and suggestions about combating the insects that included pouring oil into ponds and spraying Paris Green insecticide may have been just as hazardous as the mosquitoes.
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