Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (review)

Daniel Goldmark's Tunes for 'Toons explores the use of music in the six-minute cartoons of the studio era. Although there are brief references to later works such as Fantasia 2000 and television series (South Park, Animaniacs), most examples come from the "golden age" of studio animation, between 1930 and 1960. Goldmark acknowledges that his book offers "a set of case studies rather than an all-encompassing history of cartoon music" (7). While the decision to make each chapter more or less self-contained prevents that book from being the definitive work on its subject, Goldmark's "case study" approach makes Tunes for 'Toons well suited for classroom use.

The first chapter, on Warner Bros.' legendary Carl Stalling, can serve as a model of Goldmark's method. The author explores the composer's musical development by charting his employment history. Before he left Kansas City and a job with Disney to work with Ub Iwerks in Los Angeles, landing the top spot at Warner Bros. in 1936, Stalling honed his talent for juxtaposing film action with popular tunes by working as a silent film accompanist. Goldmark integrates a wide variety of materials from interesting sources to establish the roots of Stalling's style in the silent period. Archival research is supplemented with discussions of rare catalogs such as Erno Rapée's Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists (1924) and Sam Fox Incidental Music for News Reels, Cartoons, Pictorial Reviews, Scenics, Travelogues, etc. (1931). Using cue sheets, Goldmark demonstrates Stalling's range of reference and his taste for musical gags that depended on the recognition of a song's title. While Chuck Jones criticizes Stalling's predictability ("If there was a lady dressed in red, he'd always play 'The Lady in Red'" [22]), Goldmark is less inclined to be critical, stressing instead the way Stalling's goals meshed with the studio's economic imperative to use music it already owned. Between 1933 and 1940, for instance, Warner Bros. had a "'song per cartoon' rule" that required each cartoon to plug a song from the studio's catalog (18). For Stalling, the chance to use newer material was "a welcome opportunity after his earlier experiences with Disney, where he typically had to use older songs to avoid stiff licensing fees" (19). Efficiency was prized over inspiration. Using bar sheets to ensure synchronization, Stalling could establish the timing and then "compose the score without seeing the finished film" (20). Goldmark also explains quite deftly the way Stalling's grab-bag approach fit the gag-based structure favored by Warner Bros. writers and directors. A consistent musical style was not required.

The second chapter focuses on MGM's Scott Bradley. Bradley's "formal training in composition," as well as his desire to "ele-vate his scores aesthetically," makes him the ideal foil to Stalling (8). Unlike his Warner Bros. counterpart, Bradley preferred composing original music for cartoons, most famously for the Tom and Jerry series. The absence of dialogue in these films (compared to the constant wisecracks of Warner Bros. cartoon characters) meant that Bradley's music could be seamless, establishing comic energy and tone while leading the audience through an ever-escalating series of slapstick and chase scenes.

Based on interviews of the day, Goldmark presents Bradley as a figure keenly sensitive to issues of artistic status and not averse to sniping at fellow composers: "It seemed to me that almost anybody could collect a lot of nursery jingles and fast moving tunes, throw them together along with slide whistles and various noise makers and call that a cartoon score, but that didn't satisfy me" (65). If on occasion Bradley did find it useful to cite a popular song, he would liven it up "with a modernist compositional technique" such as "the twelve-tone system" (70). Bradley comes across as defensive and condescending even when dropping names. For instance, he declared once that the modernists "'lost' me when such things as...'Allemandes for piano and silence,' e...