Oliver Wallace — Fighting Hitler With Help From Donald Duck
One day in 1942, Walt Disney approached a composer on his staff with a special rush assignment. He needed a song for a Donald Duck cartoon intended to poke fun at the German enemy. The composer, Oliver Wallace, had written scores for many cartoons as well as songs for the movie Dumbo. But this time he felt stumped. That evening while biking to a store, he later recalled: “The music came to me in one flash. It nearly knocked me off my bicycle. My mouth opened in surprise. There followed a second surprise. Words came out of that mouth.” The result was “The Fuehrer’s Face,” which Oscar Hammerstein, II, later praised as the “great psychological” song of the conflict, as in psychological warfare.
Before long, the zany bandleader Spike Jones recorded a version in which he used a “birdaphone” — a rubber novelty shop device — to punctuate each reference to “the Fuehrer’s Face” with a Bronx cheer. The next year, the cartoon was released. Unfortunately, the birdaphone was replaced with a trombone. But the overall effect was such that it was awarded the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
The film can be seen on youtube. But I prefer the superior quality of this clip, which is among the vast trove of interesting material available on the France-based website dailymotion. (more…)