Click the following to read: The Life and Art of Dick Kelsey - PART I, PART II, PART III, PART IV, PART V, and PART VI
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| September 12, 1948 newspaper clipping. |
By Melody Time’s release in late May of 1948, Dick Kelsey’s artistic ventures of that year were just beginning. The premiere of Disney’s live-action-and-animated feature So Dear to My Heart was less than a year away, and the Blair, Hench, and Kelsey team were busy developing its cartoon treatment.
“Walt was always way ahead of us, searching for new procedures, new forms of entertainment,” shared animators Johnston and Thomas. “...One theme that kept haunting him was the story of Hiawatha.”81
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| Cover of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1890 edition of The Song of Hiawatha. |
One could assume that Disney’s interest in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1855) began when he was a child growing up in the Midwest. It is possible that Walt's initial exposure to Longfellow's epic poem was found in a reprinted 1890 illustrated edition by Frederic Remington. If this was the case, Remington's romantic paintings no doubt stuck with Walt throughout his career. Like many of the classical stories he admired. In 1937, Disney released a Silly Symphony entitled, Little Hiawatha--an animated short very loosely based on Longfellow’s original work. This cartoon, however, did little to extinguish his interest in the story, and as the years went on, Hiawatha managed to pop up time and time again.
In a letter from 1944, Disney background artist Holling C. Holling makes reference to preliminary ideas he had for a Hiawatha project. Holling’s ideas, however, dabbled a little too much into the story elements of Snow White, with the inclusion of dwarflike Indian characters with representative personalities.82 In comparison to what Kelsey would eventually plan for the animated feature in late 1948, Holling’s ideas seem juvenile and recycled, and more appropriate for a Silly Symphony plot. Conversely, Dick Kelsey’s attack on the project was seriously driven by creative and stylized conceptual art, not only true to Longfellow’s original story, but backed by an enormous amount of research.
By September of 1948, Disney decided to move forward with preliminary work on an animated version of Hiawatha, and Dick Kelsey was assigned to head up a team of artists. 83 In a Portland, Maine newspaper article, dated September 12, 1948, columnist Howard C. Heyn wrote, “Dick Kelsey, one of Disney’s chief staff artists, will spend six weeks (starting Sept. 25) touring the Great Lakes Region, sketching and documenting the settings of Longfellow’s famous narrative poem.” 84 Heyne continued, “Kelsey’s will be no easy task in this modern era, since he insists he will try ‘to recapture both the spirit and the look of Hiawatha’s land.’”
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| Dick and Pauline Kelsey at a New Year's dinner, 1949. |
Right back to the original Thanksgiving Day, and beyond it, will be Walt Disney’s forthcoming drama cartoon “Hiawatha.” It will take a number of years in the making. The other day Dick (Richmond) and Pauline Kelsey were telling me all about it in El Presidio. They were just back from a research jaunt to Eastern museums. Dick is one of Disney’s leading staff artists....not only did he sketch costumes....gather customs, but he took pictures of the Eastern and Michigan trees in their autumn coloring....and gathered authentic music....Hiawatha, pronounced High-a-watha, was “E-ah-wat-a” to the Indians. The Kelseys went to Boston to visit Houghton Mifflin, publishers of Dick’s delightful “Gismo....” The Kelseys drove back and forth across continent, missed the rain and loved the trip....they saw the Indian Country in Minnesota and the Chippewas. 85
The conceptual art that Kelsey personally created for Hiawatha was not only brilliantly depicted, but richly woven with a fantastical mystique. One can only imagine the hundreds of preliminary drawings Kelsey produced for the ill-fated feature, but the examples made available to the public reveal a story grand in scope and brilliant in stylization.
Mostly created with a charcoal and pastel medium, one can see what Ron Dias was referring to when he aptly observed Kelsey using his brush like a pencil. Each drawing somehow manages to tell a story, but in an almost poetic way through Kelsey’s use of natural elements and depictions of Native American lore.
In one sketch of Hiawatha’s father, Mudjekeewis, the dark shadows of his inset eyes that seem to stare into one’s soul evoke a feeling of power and oneness with nature. The textured hairs of Kelsey’s brush are evident in the way Mudjekeewis’s hair blows with the wind, almost becoming one with the sky. Another drawing of a similar theme depicts Hiawatha standing at the summit of a hill, surrounded by the coldness and harshness of winter. The bitter wind that blows at his back seems to follow his gaze’s path as it descends to the outer edge of a tree-lined forest rich with the colors of autumn. His drawing – much like the one of Hiawatha’s father – has a haunting quality, as if the natural elements from beyond are one with the father and son.
Another piece worth examining depicts Hiawatha entering his wigwam in the dead of winter, as Kelsey’s white paint applied with dry brush swirls about him. It is a drawing such as this where one can observe the artist’s skill with pastel and a brush. The textural variance between the sky above and the way in which the snow lies below is brilliant. If one looks closely, the bristles of Kelsey’s brush are recognizable in the snow mounds at the base of Hiawatha’s wigwam. Ron Dias attests to the fact that Kelsey even used toothbrushes to achieve specific types of rough and spattered textures on surfaces, and perhaps that’s the exact tool he used when studying the sandy texture of the snow as it lies on the rear of the shelter.
The element of wind alone seems to play a vital role in Kelsey’s portrayal of the story, and is powerfully personified in his drawing of Kabibonokka - the North Wind. The artist’s texture of swirling wind in bluish-white pastel and spattered white paint is again present as the North Wind streams across the sky, lightning bolt in hand. The contrast between the pastel of the background and the blue paint color of Kabibonokka is striking, and assists in bringing the subject of the drawing to the fore. Subtle touches like the spilling of snow from the spirit’s side pouch, to the stream of swirling wind emitted from the palm of his hand, are cleverly executed and add to the mystique.
Kelsey’s interpretation of ghost warriors as seen in the aurora borealis takes on a similar feel to the previous sketch. The shapes of the spirits seem to streak upwards towards the heavens, leaving a white jet stream of dry brush behind in their wake. Fire, as a natural element, glows with intensity against the dark blue of night in several of Kelsey’s drawings, and seems almost alive as its flames fan in the wind. Water becomes a spirit of its own in a particular sketch as its cool colors cascade down a warmly-lit hillside and spill off the edge of a cliff.
Analysis of each and every one of Kelsey’s Hiawatha sketches could fill a book. Though a major product never materialized from this artistic journey, it doesn’t mean Kelsey’s efforts went unnoticed. According to animation historian Charles Solomon, “On December 8, 1948, the studio held an in-house showing of the artwork for ‘Hiawatha’ and asked the employees to list their reactions on a questionnaire.” One employee wrote, “It would make a wonderful feature, but would it be accepted? By this I mean the heaviness of the subject. Would the people going to see what they feel or expect Disney to bring them accept it?”86
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| 1948 newspaper clipping. |
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| 1948 newspaper clipping. |
The blood, sweat, and tears Kelsey poured into each sketch was recognized and praised by his colleagues, but there was something equally unsettling about the project as a whole. Walt Disney himself seemed puzzled as to how the story would be presented to the public from the very beginning. “There’s something there – something that’s right for us,” Disney once said. “I don’t know what it is or how we’d do it. Don’t think of a film, don’t even think of a show – don’t limit your thinking to a regular theater.”87 As Solomon inferred, many of the artists most likely feared that the Hiawatha project was going to become another Fantasia. Kelsey himself noted:
Walt doesn’t want to make this a light thing...he wants it [to have] a terrific musical accompaniment – almost Christ-like, but not quite...Walt said it was originally his idea to get the storyboards up to show the material we are going to work with, then call in the composer – tell the story like we just told it – let the composer write a suite called “The Hiawatha Suite” – then go back and start working from the composer’s suite.88
Although story elements were periodically modified and meetings were held to consider the possibilities, the project seemed almost doomed from the beginning. Despite Kelsey’s brilliant studies, the cons weighed heavily against them. It wasn’t just a question of how to properly present the story to the audience, but how to animate it was another beast entirely. The story seemed too broad and larger than anyone could handle, and not to mention didn’t seem all that profitable during a time of much-needed revenue at the studio. Any hope of the story reaching fruition was abandoned in late 1949, and Kelsey’s art with it. Forty-five years later, the fruits of Kelsey’s labor would be uncovered by the creators of Pocahontas (1995), and serve as an inspiration to the film about the Native American princess.
References:
81 Johnston and Thomas, The Illusion of Life, 531.
82 Holling, Holling C., Holling C. Holling to Mother, June 6, 1944. Letter. From Didier Ghez e-mail.
83 Charles Solomon, The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation, (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 180.
84 Heyn, Howard C. "Famed Longfellow Narrative to be Subject of Cartoon." Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald, September 12, 1948.
85 Paulding, Litti. "An American Holiday and Some Grace Notes "In Puritan Land"." Santa Barbara News-Press, November 14, 1948.
86 Solomon, The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation, 181.
87 Ibid., 180.
88 Ibid., 182.
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