The Styrous® Viewfinder: Carl W. Stalling & Walt Disney

November 16, 2021

Carl W. Stalling & Walt Disney

Carl W. Stalling
date & photographer unknown

Carl W. Stalling was born a hundred and thirty years ago on November 10, 1891, in Lexington, Missouri. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts (links below) produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.

Stalling met Walt Disney in the early twenties; In 1928, Disney was on a journey from California to New York City to record the sound and make the preview of Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short. During the journey he stopped at Kansas City to hire Stalling to compose film scores for two other animated shorts. Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Disney, including Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho in 1928 (but not Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short). Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho were originally silent films and were the first two Mickey Mouse animated short films in production. Disney hired Stalling as his studio's first music director.

Animation historian Allan Neuwirth credits Stalling for basically inventing the process of creating a film score for cartoons. According to Strauss, the "wildly talented" Stalling was suitable as a film score composer for animated films. Stalling even voiced Mickey Mouse in The Karnival Kid in 1929.

Stalling encouraged Disney to create a new series of animated short films, in which the animation and its action would be created to match the music. This was still unusual at the time, since film music was played or composed to match the action of a film. Stalling's discussions with Disney on whether the animation or the musical score should come first led to Disney creating the Silly Symphonies series (links below) of animated short films. Stalling is credited with both the composition and the musical arrangement of The Skeleton Dance (1929), the first of the Silly Symphonies.

A great example of Stallings work is in The Haunted House (links below) in which Disney provided the voice of Mickey and Ub Iwerks was the primary animator.

The Haunted House

Carl Stalling & Ub Iwerks

These cartoons allowed Stalling to create a score that Disney handed to his animators. The Silly Symphonies was an innovative animated film series, in which pre-recorded film scores were making use of well-known classical works and the animation sequences were choreographed to match the music. Stalling helped Disney streamline and update the sound process used in creating early animated sound films, following the long and laborious synchronization process used in Steamboat Willie. The close synchronization of music and on-screen movement pioneered by the Disney short films became known as Mickey Mousing.

Stalling left Disney after two years, at the same time as animator Ub Iwerks. Stalling had completed the scoring of about 20 animated films for Disney. Stalling served as the music director of Iwerks' studio until the studio shut down in 1936. In 1936, when Leon Schlesinger, under contract to produce animated shorts for Warner Bros., hired Iwerks, Stalling went with him to become a full-time cartoon music composer. As music director Stalling became an integral member of the team producing two very successful animated series. The two animated series which Schlesinger produced for Warner Bros. were the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, both introduced in the early 1930s.

Stalling served as music director for Warner Bros. for 22 years and is credited for the film score of over 600 animated films. He remained with them until he retired in 1958.

Carl W. Stalling died in the Los Angeles area on November 29, 1972, nineteen days after his 81st birthday.

In 1995 Warner Bros. Records released a two volume compilation of music from the Warner Bros. cartoons from 1939 to 1957; more on that in a future article.