Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490686
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 19 In preparation for sound work on Aladdin, Mark Mangini and I spent a day on the Disney lot auditioning classic sound effects from their library. Having already raided many treasures from it for Beauty and the Beast, I had a pretty good idea how the collection was organized. The sounds were mostly cataloged in chronological sequence based on the movies they were originally in. Knowing the studio's films pretty well, I made an educated guess where to jump in. We were interested in reviewing sounds from the animated features in the early '50s… Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and on. We each grabbed a handful of tapes and went at it. I was working on one side of the room with headphones, and Mark was on the opposite side using external John Pospisil speakers at his station. Since the logs accompanying this copy of the library were incomplete, we weren't quite sure where in the Disney animated feature timeline we'd be visiting first. I'd like to think Mark had an idea that I could fill in some of the informational gaps—knowing that I was not only an obsessive fan of all things Disney, but that I had also specifically studied the work of Disney sound effects genius Jimmy Macdonald for many years. And if he didn't know that—he certainly got a better idea after he played the first few sounds of the tape he had chosen. Right away I recognized a sound he played, a bulb horn honk—much like the kind Harpo Marx used to have. This one was a very distinctive B-flat 'HONK!' and I knew it immediately. "Oh, that's from Alice in Wonderland," I blurted out. "That was 1951, so you might want to…" "Wait, slow down," Mark said. "How do you know? There's no log…" "Trust me. It's Tweedle Dum from Alice." He looked skeptical. I sighed, and said, "Okay, go ahead a cue or two. The next one will be Tweedle Dee, and it'll be the same kind of bulb horn—but exactly one octave higher." He did. Sure enough, "HONK!" B-flat, an octave up. After giving me a suspicious narrow gaze with an ever-so-slight smile, he said the words he (and Richard Anderson) would repeat endlessly to me during my 20-year tenure with them: "You're fired." I can never hear Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum in Disney's Alice in Wonderland without remembering that moment with him in a cutting room at Disney. I still use those particular bulb horn honks for my phone's alert tone. One day I will never forget was about two or three weeks before the final dub of the film. I was working on a weekend, which we tended to do during the mad rush to the finish of any big film. It was a Saturday, and John P was furiously working on the sound effects for the big showdown between Aladdin, Jafar, and the Genie. I was there in case he needed anything pulled from the library … and to get caught up on a few things of my own.