We Aren't Making a Musical.

Excerpt from Walt's People Vol 11
https://www.amazon.com/Walts-People-Talking-Disney-Artists/dp/146536840X/ref=pd_ybh_a_13?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SY40CBEW0CEH54HMB32T

Producer Joe Hale: "When I took over the picture, I wanted to add some songs
because I felt it was kind of heavy and dark.

I went to Ron and talk to him about it,
but Ron said "no that decision has already been made.
we aren't making a musical."

Anyway when I finished the picture I went to Ron and I said are you happy with the picture?
he said "I couldn't be happier."

Lenghty excerpt from An Interview with Susan Sheridain (voice actress for Princess Eilonwy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_rEdDda-C8&t=684s

Movie Reviewer Jambareeqi: "You're most well known voice acting role for playing Princess Eilonwy in uh Black Cauldron
what was it like working for a major animation company like Disney?"

Susan Sheridan: "It was fantastic. It was an absolute joy, because
I was employed over a period of three years and i had to keep coming back
to record and then they put the animation to the voice If thats the way round they do it.

And those three years I went every spring uhh I think twice a year
and you can imagine it was absolute heaven working in the Walt Disney studios was an absolute joy
and the people were fabulous to work for.

However

The film itself costs millions and millions of dollars as well the most expensive cartoon they every made
uhh was not a major success the expected it to be. which I think is very sad

and one of the reasons is I think is it's a very dark film
and it didn't have enough light, a lot of shade, not enough light
and I kept saying when we're doing it "Look, couldn't we have a song?" I 'm a singer.
Nigel Hawthorne could sing, and he played a character who is a bard Fflewddur Fflam the bard.

We should've had songs or two. and they didn't take taken uhh and they didn't do it
and that was a great shame though it would been then more moments of lightness.
and John Hurt who played the Horned King you know fantastic but, terribly scary.

my uhh neighbors I went to the premiere with various children my neighbor's children
and sheee(laughing) the mother said "My god kids, we'll never sleep at night.".
(laughing)It was

It is a scary film. I mean now it's kind of become sot of a cult thing
and you know I think children are much more used to scariness and darkness.

But then in the well what was in the 80's it was it was very dark.
and I I I've I've regretted that they didn't make it umm more fun."

While the film is not a musical, the film had one song: Fflewddur's Song sung by the bard Fflewdddur Fflam.  It's in the film but not in it's entirety.


Fflewddur's Song
https://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Lost-Chords-Russell-Schroeder/dp/0615206336/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=78340254633777&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=disney%27s+lost+chords&qid=1558055587&s=gateway&sr=8-1

"From Shore To Shore
Great Deeds of Courage Never Sung Before

and If I find them
I'll Strum and Rhyme Them
and Earn Myself a Great Name

The World Would Applaude Me
His Praise Will Reward Me
And I Flewddur Fflam will find fame"

excerpt from The Look Back Machine's Musical Homecoming: Disney's The Great Mouse Detective
http://lookbackmachine.libsyn.com/musical-homecoming-the-great-mouse-detective

Melissa Manchester:  The Great Mouse Detective was interesting because Disney stopped using songs in their animated features. just ridiculous.

But since they have success with it anyway, that was their policy for minutes, and the great mouse detective was trying to reintroduce the concept of songs in animated features.

Interesting Stuff From 1982

https://archive.org/details/AmericanFilm198207/page/n53
Old July/August 1982 article "Disney Looks For A Happy Ending To Its Grim Fairy Tale" by Bart Mills

My how times changed since that time.

an interesting Chicago Tribine Article

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-08-03-8502210564-story.html
Chicago Tribune article from August 3, 1984 (Katzenberg arrived at Disney in October of that same year)

"The walls of the Animation Building at Walt Disney Studios are lined with reminders of the past. Original artwork from ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'' ''Pinocchio'' and various other vintage cartoon features are encased along the long corridors. Even the slightly musty smell, like that of an old school building, takes one back to the time when Walt Disney walked the halls as the head of this fantasy factory.
'
'It is different now than when Walt was around,'' said producer Joe Hale about the five arduous years it took to produce ''The Black Cauldron.'' ''But this is the first time we`ve been given the resources to make an animated movie that we hope will remind people of the richness of those early Disney films.''

Hale is hoping that the $25 million production of ''The Black Cauldron''--the most expensive animated film in history--will attract a large enough audience to justify the expense.

Based on ''The Chronicles of Prydain,'' a series of five books by Lloyd Alexander, the film tells the story of a young assistant pig keeper named Taran who must prevent the evil Horned King from taking over the world. His only method of destroying the king`s horrific kingdom is to eliminate the Black Cauldron. This ancient kettle has the power to resurrect all the dead warriors from all previous wars, allowing them to unleash their evil fury on the innocent kingdom. Taran must reach the cauldron and do away with it before the Horned King has it in his long, gnarled fingers.

Taran`s difficult assignment pales beside the real-life task Hale faced in bringing the story to life as an animated film. Although production began five years ago, preproduction work began in 1973 when Disney Studios bought the rights to Alexander`s books. When the financing was finally completed in late 1979, it marked a renewed commitment to the full, rich animation that had been Disney`s trademark.

That return to Disney`s roots in cartoon features was made necessary by the failure of such live-action Disney films such as ''Hot Lead and Cold Feet,'' ''Tron,'' ''The Devil and Max Devlin,'' ''Watcher in the Woods'' and
''Something Wicked This Way Comes.''

''The executives have been great,'' said Hale, referring to such people as Disney Productions` new president, Michael Eisner. ''They`ve left us alone during production and are supporting the film with a substantial advertising and marketing campaign.''

It has been a long journey for Hale. After five years, 2,519,200 drawings, 400 gallons of paint, 15,000 pencils, 300 erasers, 34 miles of film stock and more than a million hours of labor, ''The Black Cauldron'' has opened in theaters nationwide.

Hale, who started as a Disney animator on ''Sleeping Beauty'' in 1951 and subsequently worked on ''101 Dalmatians,'' ''Mary Poppins,'' ''Bedknobs and Broomsticks'' and ''The Fox and the Hound,'' said he believes that the key to a successful, long-term project is teamwork.
''It`s like casting a live-action movie,'' he said. ''If you cast the right people in the right roles, you`re on the right track.''

Unlike their live-action counterparts, animated characters must be created from the blank page. Once the physical characteristics are developed

--height, weight, coloring, gait--the filmmakers also must find the right voices.
''You have much greater control over the material in animation, but it`s a heck of a lot harder,'' Hale said.

When it came to selecting the voices, it was a team decision.
''We heard countless audition tapes before we even started the animation process,'' said Ted Berman, codirector, along with Richard Rich, of ''The Black Cauldron.'' ''You listen to voice after voice after voice until you get the one that`s right. It`s often boring, definitely time-consuming and, ultimately, absolutely necessary. If you don`t get the right voice, the character bombs . . . and if one character bombs, so does the movie.''

Hale picked up a small three-dimensional model of a pig from his desk.
''This is Hen Wen,'' he said, in the same respectful tone other producers might use when introducing an actress. ''She`s crucial to the film`s story.'' But at first, the Disney team hadn`t figured out how she should sound or how big she should be or even what color eyes she should have. They also were not sure whether she`d be able to speak English. In live action, questions like that are already answered.

''In animation,'' Hale said, ''we literally start from scratch.''
It took two years for Hale and his staff of more than 300 to decide about Hen Wen. They gave her blue eyes, a body in perfect scale with her companions and a voice that sounds like a pig. The animators had to translate the three- dimensional model of Hen Wen into a two-dimensional character.
''It all seems so simple when you see it on the screen,'' Hale said,
''and that`s the way we want it to be. But it`s not.''

The production team brings each single frame through an extraordinarily lengthy process: recording dialogue, drawing the layout, roughing out the animation, shooting the preliminaries on film, improving the drawings, shooting it again, transferring the drawings to clear acetate pictures called cels, mixing the paints, painting and shooting the cels and backgrounds, coloring, recording the sound effects and music and balancing the color. And these are just part of the process.

''The Black Cauldron'' has received a PG rating, instead of the usual Disney G. Like ''Snow White,'' which changed ratings from G to PG during its re-release, ''Cauldron'' contains some terrifying moments.

But the change in rating doesn`t signify a simple alteration in a rating; it represents a different direction for Disney.

''We decided to go back to the essence of the great animated features of the past,'' Hale said. ''We want real heroes and, to have real heroes, you need real villains. We wanted the Horned King to be as formidable as the wicked stepmother in `Snow White,` and I hope we succeeded.''
Disney Studios has been so optimistic about the future of animated features that it already has another due out next summer called ''Basil of Baker Street,'' starring Mickey Mouse as a Holmesian detective in Victorian England.

''Who knows?'' Hale asked. ''Maybe I`ll be around here for another few decades.''

"Mickey Mouse as a Holmesian detective in Victorian England"?
might be a joke an anecadote, or maybe misinformation.

Posters

                                                           rare poster mockup concept.
also of  note: like the movie posters of the live action Disney movies of the late 70's and early to mid 1980's strangely had no mention of the Disney name.  maybe this mockup could be from 1984 or early 1985?

                                       The Black Cauldron 1985 Theatrical Movie Poster

International poster of the 1990 limited rerelease and retitle (Taran and the Magic Cauldron) 

Milt Kahl's lecture at CAL Arts

                                       Excerpt from Milt Kahl's lecture at Cal Arts 1976.
               here he talks about the then in pre production of Disney's The Black Cauldron.

The Making of The Small One (1978)

(Note this is one of those posts where I go off topic and go on a different topic that happened at Disney. and this film was being made while The Black Cauldron was in pre production in the late 1970's)

in late November and December there are interesting holiday traditions involving TV and movies.
people sit and with their families and watch their favorite Christmas shows.
(Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus is Comin' To Town, The Grinch, Charlie Brown, etc)

 Before TV, the tradition was a little different. people used to listen to the radio for their favorite Christmas themed episode of their favorite show or a radio Christmas special.

the story (religious in nature), Charles Tezwell's The Small One. produced for The Kate Smith Show

from Wikipedia (UGH):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Small_One_(album)
"The Small One," one of the most touching of all Christmas stories, was first produced in 1939 on the Kate Smith radio show by Robert Welch, who later became a Paramount producer.[1] It was featured in Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time broadcast of December 25, 1946"

 

Bing Crosby - The Small One - Dec 24, 1946

"and Decca Records soon arranged to make a new recording of it. This took place on March 20, 1947. The album was released on September 2, 1947[2] and in due course it was ordered by more than 1,500 private schools in the USA.[3]

"Crosby researcher Fred Reynolds outlined the story:

This Christmas story is narrated by Crosby when, in Old Mexico at the hour of siesta, he sees the boy Pablo berating a disreputable looking donkey. He explains that what is mistaken for stubbornness in the breed is, in fact, the pride that was brought by one that fulfilled their destiny. He relates how, many years ago, a boy was sent by his father to take an old donkey (the "Small One") to the tanner and obtain a piece of silver for its hide; of how the boy first tried to save the animal by selling it to a new owner at an auction where he was scoffed at and re-buffed; of how, entering the tanner's gate he is stopped by a stranger asking if he will sell the donkey to him as he has to undertake a long journey and his wife is not well; of how, when the new owner is stopped at the town gate by a soldier and asked his identity, replies that he is Joseph, his wife is Mary and that they are on their way to Bethlehem. There, in a stable, a King was born and the Small One was envied for becoming part of a great miracle.

Bing tells the charming story with conviction and he is well supported by the other actors and the background effects and music provided by Victor Young with a "Silent Night, Holy Night" conclusion. The "hoofbeats" effects (the same notes that the angels sang in their rejoicing) are adroitly interpolated.[4]"

https://archive.org/details/78_the-small-one_bing-crosby-charles-tazewell-victor-young-robert-welch_gbia0020200

"Crosby repeated The Small One on his Philco shows of December 24, 1947 and December 22, 1948.[5]"

in 1947. The Small One was published as a book.

from wikipedia (Again?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Small_One

"By the early 1970s, several of Disney's senior animators had died or retired, but the continuous success of their animated features convinced studio executives that the animation department was still lucrative but in desperate need for new talent.[1] Veteran animator Eric Larson was selected to head the training program, in which he selected and trained graduates from colleges and art schools across the United States.[2] Eventually, twenty-five new artists were hired from 1970 to 1977.[3]

The idea for The Small One originated from story trainee Pete Young who found the book among optioned properties at the studio library. He developed the initial storyboards at home, and pitched it to Ron Miller who claimed it to be a story with "heart". To help polish the storyboard, Miller brought on veteran Disney storyboard artist Vance Gerry to collaborate with Young.[4][3] Larson had assumed he would be directing the film and brought Burny Mattinson to help re-board the story, as well as veteran animator Cliff Nordberg to help assist on the animation.

According to Mattinson, the team left on Friday for the weekend, and returned on Monday to have their work tossed out because studio management had decided to give the project to Don Bluth to direct.[1] Then-animator Betsy Baytos claimed Larson, in reaction to the news, "just shook his head and knew that he wasn't being appreciated. He felt the old days were gone."

 In retrospect, Bluth stated, "Small One was something I directed to get the crew busy until Pete's Dragon...[Larson] might have [been involved] in the storyboard area. [But he] didn't get to direction. I think he elected to [teach]."[3] Given the allotted production budget, Bluth composed two songs himself with a third song composed by assistant director Richard Rich,[4] and recycled animation of Mowgli from The Jungle Book.[5]"


From Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Blog
dragonslairthemovie.com/working-on-disneys-the-small-one/

There were 127 artists, camera operators and administrators involved in the making of this film, many of whom were not credited.

In those days, as a new animator, you had to have created at least 100 feet of animation in a film (about 68 seconds) in order to receive a credit on the film. If your employed position was below the level of a character animator, a layout artist, background artist, effects animator or a department supervisor, you would not receive a credit on a film. How times have changed.

Eric Larson, a legendary member of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” was a master animator and the mentor to many of us animation trainees. He had nurtured the promising story artist, Pete Young’s idea to bring the Charles Tazewell book, The Small One, to life as an animated short film. Working with veteran storyman, Vance Gerry, and with Eric’s guidance, Pete was able to flesh out the storyboards for the 30 minute short.

 Eric ushered the project into production with the intention of producing the little film and having his long-time animation assistant, story artist and animator, Burny Mattinson to direct the animation. However, the studio’s animation producer/director, Woolie Reitherman had begun nurturing Don Bluth to be the next animation feature-film producer/director.

Unbeknownst to Eric, Woolie announced to the crew that Don Bluth would be the Producer/director for The Small One. This caused much concern to Don and to the young turks in the Disney animation training program.

The trainee’s mentor, whom they had expected to produce the film and would have continued to tutor them on the film as well, would not be the producer of the film. There was a bit of anger and an effort to quash this decision by approaching the-then company chairman, Ron Miller. They made a plea to have Mr. Miller approach Woolie to reverse the decision. That did not happen. Don became the new producer/director.

Don, on the other hand, was surprised by Woolie’s decision to cast him in this position so soon after his debut as the Director of animation for Pete’s Dragon (1977). And, worst of all, the announcement was made without notifying Eric. But that was Woolie’s plan, to see if Don could stand the heat and handle the adversity. Don was very aware that Eric was involved with Pete Young’s presentation and that he had been mentoring Pete on this project for months. The challenge would be difficult.

                         Mel Shaw's artwork of The Boy and his old donkey "Small One" from Howard Lowry's auction site.

                                                   old VHS of the film from the 1980's

DIsney News Magazine summer 1985

interesting stuff you can find on Internet Archive

this topic I'm bringing up is the Disney News Magazine

https://archive.org/details/DisneyNewsMagazine_Vol20.3_1985.Summer/page/26