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4C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2015 PARTING SHOT A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers A deer peeks out from the grassy dunes of Long Beach, Wash., on June 2. JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian ODDITY Walt Disney’s surrealistic friend Disney, Dali shared fascination with the fantastic By MICHAEL LIEDTKE Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO — It turns out the man behind Mickey Mouse liked quirky cats. Besides his love of whole- some entertainment, Walt Disney also had an apprecia- tion for the eccentric that led to a short-lived partnership and decades-long friendship with surrealistic artist Salva- dor Dali. Although their styles and personalities were dramati- cally different, Disney and Dali shared a fascination with the fantastic. They brought their vivid imaginations to- gether shortly after World War II to work on an animat- ed feature called “Destino,” which wasn’t completed until long after their deaths. Even after they aban- doned “Destino,” the two artists remained in touch and even traveled to each other’s KRPHVVZDSSLQJ¿VKLQJVWR- ries and periodically discuss- ing plans to make a movie based on “Don Quixote.” That dream was never real- ized. Disney died in 1966. Dali, who was three years younger, died in 1989. The improbable bond between the mastermind of Disneyland and the Spanish painter of reality-bending images will be explored in an exhibit running from July 10 through Jan. 3 at the Walt AP Photo/Jeff Chiu This 1957 photo released by the Walt Disney Family Foun- dation shows surrealistic artist Salvador Dali, left, and Walt Disney at a beach in Spain. This photo shows a 1957 drawing of Don Quixote by Sal- vador Dali for Walt Disney inside a copy of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” in a collections room at the Disney museum in San Francisco. Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. It will then shift to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The exhibit will feature “Destino” storyboards, let- ters exchanged between the two men, photographs, voice recordings and rarely seen artwork, including a drawing of Don Quixote that Dali did for Disney in 1957 inside a book, Shakespeare’s “Mac- beth.” “This will show an angle of Walt that people don’t nor- mally think of — he wasn’t just all about family-friendly VWXII´ VD\V ¿OPPDNHU 7HG Nicolaou, the exhibit’s cura- tor. “He wasn’t dark, but he dealt in dreams and fantas- tical images. He was a man ready to experiment in any way possible.” Dali, a pioneer in Eu- ography, he sent his copy to Dali in 1944 seeking an au- tograph. He also suggested that Dali work on a piece of animation to be packaged LQWRD¿OPDORQJWKHOLQHVRI Disney’s 1940 musical, “Fan- tasia.” The partnership didn’t come to fruition until late 1945, shortly after Disney DQG 'DOL PHW IRU WKH ¿UVW time at a Hollywood dinner party hosted by movie studio mogul Jack Warner. By that time, Dali had already com- pleted some work on a dream sequence in an Alfred Hitch- cock movie, “Spellbound.” Given the a wide range of choices in Disney’s vast mu- sic library, Dali decided to set his animation to a Span- ish ballad called “Destino” because the title resonated with his interest in desti- Walt Disney Family Foundation via AP rope’s surrealistic movement, thought Disney might be a kindred spirit when he saw some of Disney’s early an- imation in the “Silly Sym- phony” series that ran from 1929 through 1939. Nicolaou said a “Silly Symphony” skit featuring dancing skeletons particularly appealed to Dali, whose paintings of melting clocks, apparitions, monsters and other creatures often bor- der on the hallucinogenic. :KHQKH¿UVWFDPHWR&DO- ifornia in 1937, Dali sought out another artist whom he considered to be a master in surrealism — the comedian Harpo Marx. He also saw surrealistic undertones in the ZRUNRI'LVQH\DQG¿OPPDN- er Cecil B. DeMille. Disney had become in- trigued with Dali, too. After reading the artist’s autobi- ny. Disney assigned one of his most trusted animators, John Hench, to assist Dali on “Destino.” While working with Hench to produce more than 200 storyboards and sketch- es for “Destino,” Dali strug- gled to come up with a plot that made sense to Disney. The two men’s differenc- es began to crystallize in a 1946 interview when they were asked about their vi- sions for “Destino.” Dali described it as “a magical exposition of life in the lab- yrinth of time” while Disney saw it as “a simple love story — boy meets girl.” Their differences widened when Dali began to insert sketches of baseball players into “Destino.” Exasperat- ed that about $70,000 had already had been spent on a project that didn’t seem to be progressing, Disney decided to scrap it. “It got a little too wild for Walt, so he quietly pulled the plug,” Nicolaou says. “I think Dali was embarrassed and hurt by it.” The professional split ap- parently didn’t damage Da- li’s friendship with Disney. During the 1950s, Dali visit- ed Disney’s home, where he rode Disney’s model train, “the Lilly Belle.” Later Dis- ney and his wife, traveled to see Dali and his wife, Gala, at their home in Port Lligat, Spain. “Destino” was finally fin- ished in 2003 after Walt’s nephew, Roy, hired French director Dominique Mon- fery to complete what Dali left behind with the help of computers. Hench, then in his 90s, also helped anima- tors figure out where Dali was initially headed with the story. The adaptation includes Dali-esque images of plants with eyeballs, ants morphing into beret-wearing men on bicycles and a ballerina re- moving her head to throw at a baseball player wielding a bat. “Destino” was nominat- ed for an Academy Award in 2004 for best animated short ¿OP$OWKRXJK LW GLGQ¶W ZLQ Nicolaou says the piece de- serves recognition for “in- crementally expanding our vision of who Walt Disney was.” • Online: “Destino:” http://tinyurl.com/of8legq; Walt Disney Family Museum: http://www.waltdisney.org/; The Dali Museum: http:// thedali.org/ GE T Y O U R CO PY TOD AY ! D iscoverO urCoa st.com