Song of the South is a 1946 American live-action/animated musical comedy-drama film directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, produced by Walt Disney, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based on the Uncle Remus stories as adapted by Joel Chandler Harris, and stars James Baskett in his final film role, and features the voices of Johnny Lee, Baskett, and Nick Stewart. The film takes place in the U.S. state of Georgia during the Reconstruction era, a period of American history after the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The story follows seven-year-old Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) who is visiting his grandmother's (Lucile Watson) plantation for an extended stay. Johnny befriends Uncle Remus (Baskett), an elderly worker on the plantation, and takes joy in hearing his tales about the adventures of Br'er Rabbit (Lee), Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear (Baskett and Stewart). Johnny learns from the stories how to cope with the challenges he is experiencing while living on the plantation.
Walt Disney had wanted to produce a film based on the Uncle Remus stories for some time. In 1939, he began negotiating with the Harris family for the film rights, and in 1944, filming for Song of the South began. The studio constructed a plantation set, for the outdoor scenes, in Phoenix, Arizona, while other scenes were filmed in Hollywood. The film is predominantly live action, but includes three animated segments, which were later released as stand-alone television features. Some scenes also feature a combination of live action with animation. Song of the South premiered in Atlanta in November 1946 and the remainder of its initial theater run was a financial success. The song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Original Song[5] and Baskett received an Academy Honorary Award for his performance as Uncle Remus.
Since its initial release the film has attracted controversy, with critics characterizing its portrayal of African Americans and plantation life as racist. As a result of the film's controversial legacy, Disney has not released Song of the South on any home video format in the United States, and the film has never been available on its streaming platform Disney+. Some of the musical and animated sequences have been released through other means, and the full film has seen home video distribution in other countries. The cartoon characters from the film continued to appear in a variety of books, comics, and other Disney media for many decades after the film's release. The theme park ride Splash Mountain, located at Tokyo Disneyland and formerly located at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, is based on the film's animated sequences.
The film is set on a plantation in Georgia, part of the Southern United States; specifically in a location some distance from Atlanta. Although sometimes misinterpreted as taking place before the American Civil War while slavery was still legal in the region, the film takes place during the Reconstruction era after slavery was abolished.[6][7] Harris' original Uncle Remus stories were all set after the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Born in 1848, Harris was a racial reconciliation activist writer and journalist of the Reconstruction era. The film makes several indirect references to the Reconstruction era: clothing is in the newer late-Victorian style; Uncle Remus is free to leave the plantation at will; Black field hands are sharecroppers, etc.[8]
Seven-year-old Johnny is excited about what he believes to be a vacation at his grandmother's Georgia plantation with his parents, Sally and John Sr. When they arrive at the plantation, he discovers that his parents will be living apart temporarily, and he will live at the plantation with his mother and grandmother while his father returns to Atlanta to continue his controversial editorship of that city's newspaper. Distraught at his father's departure, Johnny secretly leaves for Atlanta that night with a bindle.
As Johnny sneaks away from the plantation, he discovers Uncle Remus telling tales of a character named Br'er Rabbit to other sharecroppers on the plantation. By this time, word had gotten out that Johnny was missing, and some plantation residents are looking for him. Johnny evades being discovered, but Uncle Remus catches up with him, offers him food for his journey, and takes him back to his cabin, where he tells the boy the traditional African-American folktale, "Br'er Rabbit Earns a Dollar a Minute". In the story, Br'er Rabbit attempts to run away from home only to change his mind after an encounter with Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. Johnny takes the advice and lets Uncle Remus take him back to Sally.
Johnny makes friends with Toby, a young black boy who lives on the plantation, and Ginny Favers, a poor white girl. Ginny gives Johnny a puppy after her two older brothers, Joe and Jake, threaten to drown it. Sally refuses to let him take care of the puppy, so he takes it to Uncle Remus. Uncle Remus takes the dog in and delights Johnny and his friends with the fable of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, stressing that people should not get involved with something they have no business with in the first place. Johnny imitates Br'er Rabbit's use of reverse psychology from the tale and begs the Favers brothers not to tell their mother about the dog. The trick works and the boys get in trouble after telling their mother. In an act of revenge, they tell Sally about the dog. Sally becomes upset that Johnny and Uncle Remus kept the dog despite her order (which was unknown to Uncle Remus), and she instructs him not to tell any more stories to Johnny.
Johnny's birthday arrives and Johnny picks up Ginny to take her to his party. On the way there, Joe and Jake push Ginny into a mud puddle. With her dress ruined, Ginny is unable to go to the party and runs off crying. Johnny begins fighting with the boys, but their fight is broken up by Uncle Remus, who reprimands Joe and Jake and warns them to keep away from Johnny and Ginny. Johnny runs off to comfort Ginny. He explains that he does not want to go to the party either, especially since his father will not be there. Uncle Remus discovers both dejected children and cheers them up by telling the story of Br'er Rabbit and his "Laughing Place". When the three return to the plantation, Sally becomes angry at Johnny for missing his party, and tells Uncle Remus to stay away from him. Saddened by the misunderstanding of his good intentions, Uncle Remus packs his bags and begins to leave for Atlanta. Johnny rushes to intercept him, but is attacked by a bull and seriously injured after taking a shortcut through a pasture. While Johnny hovers between life and death, his father returns. Johnny calls for Uncle Remus, and his grandmother escorts him in. Uncle Remus begins telling a Br'er Rabbit tale, and the boy miraculously survives.
Later, a fully recovered Johnny sings with Ginny and Toby while Johnny's returned puppy runs alongside them. Nearby, Uncle Remus is shocked when Br'er Rabbit and several of the other characters from his stories appear in front of them and interact with the children. Uncle Remus rushes to join the group, and, together, they all walk into the sunset.
In the aftermath of World War II, Walt Disney Studios faced financial difficulties due to a lack of foreign markets for animated films during wartime. The studio produced few theatrical animated shorts then, focusing instead on military training films that broke even, but produced no profit. The studio only profited in 1945 and 1946 by reissuing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, and still had to lay off half of its employees in 1946. With additional financial difficulties due to a union strike in 1941, Disney sought to produce live-action films to generate additional revenue. While Disney's contract with RKO was for animated films, films that mixed live-action with animation fell under the contract, allowing the studio to lower production costs on Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Additionally, Disney owned the rights to several properties purchased after the success of Snow White, which could be made into family films.[9]
In 1938, Walt Disney became interested in the Joel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus storybook, claiming to remember hearing the stories as a child, and prepared two research reports to determine if it was possible to film the stories, dated April 8 and 11, 1938. He purchased the rights to the stories in 1939, paying Harris's family $10,000 (equivalent to $216,000 in 2023). By 1986, the film based on the stories, Song of the South, had earned $300 million.[9]
Beginning in 1939, Disney began developing Uncle Remus as an entirely animated feature. The stories were also considered as two-reel animated shorts. Stories considered for the production included "Br'er Rabbit Rides the Fox", in which Br'er Rabbit tricks Br'er Fox into riding him like a horse to a party, and "De Wuller-De-Wust", in which Br'er Rabbit pretends to be a ghost to scare Br'er Bear. In another treatment, Uncle Remus gathers the critters together for a prayer meeting and to encourage them to build a church that would bring peace between predators and prey. Also proposed was a storyline in which Br'er Rabbit's addiction to gambling would be at the root of the troubles that led to the film's adventures.[9]
Disney first began to negotiate with Harris's family for the rights in 1939, and by late summer of that year he already had one of his storyboard artists summarize the more promising tales and draw up four boards' worth of story sketches. In November 1940, Disney visited the Harris's home in Atlanta. He told Variety that he wanted to "get an authentic feeling of Uncle Remus country so we can do as faithful a job as possible to these stories."[10] Disney's brother Roy had misgivings about the project, doubting that it was "big enough in caliber and natural draft" to warrant a budget over $1 million and more than twenty-five minutes of animation. Disney planned to produce a series of Uncle Remus films if the first one was successful, each with the same live-action cast but different animated shorts. Ultimately, the studio decided that only a third of the film would be animated and the rest would be live-action.[9]
Disney was initially going to have the screenplay written by the studio animators, but later sought professional writers.[9] In June 1944, Disney hired Southern-born writer Dalton Reymond to write the screenplay, and he met frequently with King Vidor, whom he was trying to interest in directing the live-action sequences.[10]
Dalton Reymond delivered a 51-page outline on May 15, 1944.[11] The Hays Office reviewed Reymond's outline, and demanded that some terminology, such as characters referring to Remus as an "old darkie" be removed from Reymond's treatment.[12][13]
Disney hired African-American performer and writer Clarence Muse to be consulted on the screenplay, but Muse quit when Reymond ignored Muse's suggestions to portray African-American characters in a way that would be perceived as being dignified and more than Southern stereotypes.[11] Muse subsequently wrote letters to the editors of black publications to criticize the depiction of African-Americans in Reymond's script. Disney claimed that Muse attacked the film because Disney did not choose Muse to play the part of Uncle Remus, which Muse had lobbied for.[12]
In addition to concerns about his racial stereotyping, Reymond had never written a screenplay before (nor would he write another). Maurice Rapf, who had been writing live-action features at the time, was asked by Walt Disney Productions to work with Reymond and co-writer Callum Webb to turn the treatment into a shootable screenplay.[14] According to Neal Gabler, one of the reasons Disney had hired Rapf to work with Reymond was to temper what Disney feared would be Reymond's "white Southern slant".[15]
Reymond's treatment included the phrases "massa", in reference to white characters, and "darkey", in reference to plantation workers, prominently.[11] Rapf removed the offending phrase and added dialogue to make it clear that the film was set after slavery had ended; one character in Rapf's script states, in reference to the Black plantation workers, "We gotta pay these people. They're not slaves." Uncle Remus also states, after being told that he cannot read any more stories to Johnny, "I'm a free man; I don't have to take this."[11]
Rapf saw the animal stories as metaphors for slave resistance, and intended to portray Br'er Rabbit as a smaller, less powerful Black man, and in place of the oppressive whites would be Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear and the deleted character Br'er Coon.[11]
Rapf was a minority, a Jew, and an outspoken left-winger, and he himself feared that the film would inevitably be Uncle-Tomish. "That's exactly why I want you to work on it," Walt told him, "because I know that you don't think I should make the movie. You're against Uncle Tomism, and you're a radical."[15]
Rapf initially hesitated, but when he found out that most of the film would be live-action and that he could make extensive changes, he accepted the offer. Rapf worked on Uncle Remus for about seven weeks. When he got into a personal dispute with Reymond, Rapf was taken off the project.[14] According to Rapf, Disney "ended every conference by saying 'Well, I think we've really licked it now.' Then he'd call you the next morning and say, 'I've got a new idea.' And he'd have one. Sometimes the ideas were good, sometimes they were terrible, but you could never really satisfy him."[10] Morton Grant was assigned to the project.[14] Disney sent out the script for comment both within the studio and outside the studio.[16]
On May 10, 1944, the title was changed from Uncle Remus to Song of the South.[11]
In February 1941, Disney talked with Paul Robeson about him playing Uncle Remus, and the two remained in talks about the project for several years, but ultimately he was not cast. It is speculated that Robeson's politics made him too controversial for the role. Other actors considered included Rex Ingram.[9] Clarence Muse lobbied for the role of Uncle Remus while consulting on the screenplay, but left the project due to Dalton Reymond's depiction of African-Americans in the original treatment.[12]
James Baskett was cast as Uncle Remus after responding to an ad for providing the voice of a talking butterfly. Baskett is quoted as saying; "I thought that, maybe, they'd try me out to furnish the voice for one of Uncle Remus's animals." Upon review of his voice, Disney wanted to meet Baskett personally, and had him tested for the role of Uncle Remus. In addition to the role of Uncle Remus, Baskett also received the voice roles of the butterfly and Br'er Fox.[17] Baskett also filled in as the voice of Br'er Rabbit for Johnny Lee in the "Laughing Place" sequence after Lee was called away to do a USO tour.[18] Disney told Baskett's sister Ruth that Baskett was "the best actor, I believe, to be discovered in years". After the film's release, Disney maintained contact with him. Disney also campaigned for Baskett to be given an Academy Award for his performance, saying that he had worked "almost wholly without direction" and had devised the characterization of Remus himself. Baskett won an honorary Oscar in 1948.[19] After Baskett's death, his widow wrote Disney and told him that he had been a "friend indeed and [we] certainly have been in need".[20]
Also cast in the production were child actors Bobby Driscoll, Luana Patten, and Glenn Leedy (his only credited screen appearance). Driscoll was the first actor to be under a personal contract with the Disney studio.[21] Patten had been a professional model since age three, and caught the attention of Disney when she appeared on the cover of Woman's Home Companion.[22] Leedy was discovered on the playground of the Booker T. Washington school in Phoenix, Arizona, by a talent scout from the Disney studio.[23] Ruth Warrick and Erik Rolf, cast as Johnny's mother and father, had actually been married during filming, but divorced in 1946.[24][25] Hattie McDaniel also appeared in the role of Aunt Tempe.
Production started under the title Uncle Remus.[26] The budget was originally $1.35 million.[27] The animated segments of the film were directed by Wilfred Jackson, while the live-action segments were directed by Harve Foster. Filming began in December 1944 in Phoenix, Arizona where the studio had constructed a plantation and cotton fields for outdoor scenes, and Disney left for the location to oversee what he called "atmospheric shots". Back in Hollywood, the live action scenes were filmed at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio.[28]
On the final day of shooting, Jackson discovered that the scene in which Uncle Remus sings the film's signature song, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", had not been properly blocked. According to Jackson, "We all sat there in a circle with the dollars running out, and nobody came up with anything. Then Walt suggested that they shoot Baskett in close-up, cover the lights with cardboard save for a sliver of blue sky behind his head, and then remove the cardboard from the lights when he began singing so that he would seem to be entering a bright new world of animation. Like Walt's idea for Bambi on ice, it made for one of the most memorable scenes in the film."[26]
There are three animated segments in the film (they total 25 minutes). The last few minutes of the film also combines animation with live-action. The three sequences were later shown as stand-alone cartoon features on television.
Nine songs are heard in the film, with four reprises. Nearly all of the vocal performances are by the largely African-American cast, and the renowned all-Black Hall Johnson Choir sing four pieces: two versions of a blues number ("Let the Rain Pour Down"), one chain-reaction-style folk song[29] ("That's What Uncle Remus Said") and one spiritual ("All I Want").
The songs are, in film order, as follows:
"Let the Rain Pour Down" is set to the melody of "Midnight Special", a traditional blues song popularized by Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter). The song title "Look at the Sun" appeared in some early press books, though it is not in the film.[31] Ken Emerson, author of the book Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster And The Rise Of American Popular Culture, believes that "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is influenced by the chorus of the pre-Civil War folk song "Zip Coon", which is today considered racist for its use of an African American stereotype.[32][33]
