Account of choosing Rite of Spring for Fantasia (35-6) cited in Nicholas Cook's Analyzing Multimedia (174).

A social and cultural history of Hollywood in the 1940s framed as its great height followed by decline and fall. Each chapter focuses on one year, reporting political and economic conditions as backdrop for behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Relevant to my concerns is the second chapter, “Ingatherings (1940),” which discusses the influx of European artists to LA which resulted from Hitler’s rise to power. The chapter’s most extensive music-related anecdotes concern Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, the making of Fantasia and Dimitri Tiomkin. The author is skeptical of the veracity of insiders’ reports, viewing Hollywood as a fantasy world, an imaginary city. This circumspection applies to the composers’ stories; however, while occasionally conflicting accounts of the same events are considered, the overall picture is presented as accurate. Movie produces had specific ideas about what kind of music they wanted in their films, and treated major composers and full-time studio composers alike as hired servants. At the same time, the concentration of classical musicians in Hollywood fostered encounters and collaborations among them, prompting (non-film) compositions and recordings which otherwise might not have been produced.

Good cultural contextualization of Stokowski's biography.  A short chapter called "Film Work" discusses Stokowski's participation in The Big Broadcast of 1937, One Hundred Men and a Girl, and Fantasia.  There are conflicting versions of the story of how Stokowski got involved with Disney; this one sides with the chance meeting in a restaurant story.  The chapter "The Philadelphia Orchestra" illuminates Stokowski's musical values, his commitment to bringing modern music as well as the classics to the people and to exposing (i.e. educating) young people to music.  I don't know whether to be amazed or suspicious of how perfectly the story of the 'Symphony of the Air' - the self-organization of NBC symphony members after the NBC Orchestra's disbandment - mirrors the movie One Hundred Men and a Girl.  Likely the specifics of the story are accurate and only the author's conclusion that the symphony ultimately failed because it couldn't "secure the only man who could have given it a glorious future" is specious.

Stokowski is in this film as himself.

Chapter 6, Disney 1938-1941, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Pinocchio and Fantasia. Barrier sees a shift in the Disney studio's focus during this period from character animation, evident in the earlier Snow White, to effects animation, epitomized by Fantasia in which Disney wished to avoid stories all together.