#761) The Living Desert (1953)

#761) The Living Desert (1953)

OR “Disney Arizona Adventure”

Directed by James Algar

Written by Algar, Winston Hibler, and Ted Sears

Class of 2000

Other notes

• In the late 1940s, Walt Disney Productions was still recovering financially from the effects of World War II, and Walt, still smarting from the 1941 animators strike, was looking into live-action films as a feasible alternative. Inspired by a documentary from filmmaking couple Alfred and Elma Milotte, Walt commissioned the Milottes to film the people and nature of Alaska, ultimately crafting a narrative from their footage of seals in the Pribilof Islands for the first in a proposed “True-Life Adventures” series. The result was 1948’s “Seal Island”, which proved to be a surprise hit and won Disney the Oscar for Short Subject (Two-Reel).
• The creative team behind the “True-Life Adventures” was a consistent group of Disney regulars. Both director/co-writer James Algar and producer Ben Sharpsteen started at Disney as animators and quickly rose the ranks to directing animated features before pivoting to the “True-Life Adventures”. Co-writer/narrator Winston Hibler joined the studio in the 1940s as a camera operator and dabbled in the occasional songwriting before finding his niche with the “True-Life” series. Because of Academy rules at the time, only Walt Disney (and eventually Ben Sharpsteen) took home any of the series’ eight Oscars, with James Algar occasionally accepting on behalf of the absent winner. For their contribution to the “True-Life Adventures” series, Algar, Sharpsteen, and Hibler would be inducted as Disney Legends in the 1990s.
• “The Living Desert” was the eighth overall film in the “True-Life Adventures” series, and its first feature. “Living Desert” is also noteworthy for being the first Disney film released through their in-house distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution. Prior to 1953, Disney had distribution deals with several of the larger Hollywood studios, but following some disagreements with RKO (its distribution partner since 1937), and finding themselves in a better financial situation, Disney ended their contract with RKO and started distributing their own films. Buena Vista gets its name from the street the Disney studios are located at in Burbank, California.
• “Living Desert” begins with an overview of the southwest landscape: shots of Mt. Whitney, Death Valley, and Monument Valley in possibly its only non-Western appearance on the NFR. We zoom in on California’s Salton Sea, and our first hint that this is more “edutainment” than a proper documentary, as the score matches the action of the bubbling mud pots. Disney in-house composer Paul J. Smith created the score, which appropriately enough has a decent amount of “Mickey Mousing” to it.
• As we zero in on the various animal life in the desert, we are introduced to our featured players, including the red-tailed hawk and the tarantula. The latter’s introduction is the first instance of the narration getting a little too cutesy: “At the residence of Mrs. Tarantula, it’s always open house. She’s forever cleaning her parlor for guests that might drop by for dinner. Uh, her dinner of course.”
• Another too-cute-for-its-own-good sequence centers around a battle between two male tortoises over a potential mate, with our hero using his skid to turn his rival on their shell. This victory incites the first true groaner in the narration: “Finally, it’s tortoise turned turtle.” Stop that!

• Speaking of the narrator, Winston Hibler is warm and knowledgeable, but he’s no David Attenborough. Overall, the film is informative to be sure, but the lessened entertainment value makes it all slightly dull. This is not necessarily the film’s fault; nature footage like this was a rarity in 1953, but now you can see it on streaming any time you want.
• Most of the film chronicles the survival habits of the various animals, plus several matchups: Peccary vs. Bobcat, Rattlesnake vs. Pocket Mouse, etc. This section also gives us the “Rattlesnake vs. Tarantula” sequence that the NFR deemed a highlight, and frankly I’m not seeing it. The fight is brief and unsatisfying, concluding with the narrator declaring “it’s a standoff, and nobody wins.” I’m beginning to think “The Living Desert” was at the bottom of the NFR’s Class of 2000 picks.
• As nightfall approaches the desert, we get what I assume are primarily in-studio shots. Most of the original Kentworthy footage was shot on a mockup desert set in a Tucson studio owned by animal expert Robert Crandall. This explains how Kentworthy achieved some shots that would be near-impossible with ‘50s camera technology (such as the shots inside the kangaroo rat holes). For the Disney sanctioned reshoots, a larger studio was used, with individual shots pre-planned so they could be edited into a narrative in post-production.
• Nighttime is also this movie’s insect section, with centipedes, millipedes, and all kinds of gross things. We also get a romantic tarantula courtship scene, and the film’s most manipulative sequence: a scorpion mating scene turned square dance. You can sense the footage being toggled back and forth to imply choreography as the narrator sings a mock hoedown. More like a do-si-don’t if you ask me.

• As the sun quickly rises via timelapse photography, the film takes another cutesy turn with several animals imbued with more character and personality. There’s Old Nosy Parker the roadrunner (its name easily being the film’s most obscure reference), Sweet William the spotted skunk, and Skinny the ground squirrel. I assume that Disney wanted to do a Skinny spin-off because they are definitely trying to make him a thing, giving him a standalone storyline as the little runt who saves the day. He’s even got his own theme music!
• After the disappointing tarantula vs. rattlesnake bout, the film climaxes with two much more entertaining matchups. First up, the tarantula takes on the Pepsis wasp, the original Kentworthy footage that started this whole thing. The segment has a cleaner set-up to what’s at stake, leading to a more engaging fight. This is followed by a very intense battle between the rattlesnake and the red-tailed hawk. 
• After all this fighting, the film wraps up neatly with rainfall in the desert, followed by flash floods which dissipate into the dirt, becoming the liquid mud from the beginning of the film. We conclude with some suggestive footage of flowers blooming and our narrator telling us we have witnessed a mere fragment of the desert’s “eternal story”. And by “eternal” I’m sure they mean until we humans fuck it up beyond repair, but that’s another story.

Legacy

• “The Living Desert” was released in November 1953 on a bill with two Disney shorts: the live action “Stormy, the Thoroughbred” and the animated “Ben and Me”. Despite some critical misgivings about the editing and narration, “The Living Desert” was a box office success. Footage from “The Living Desert” would appear on many an episode of Disney’s TV anthology series for years to come.