Information
Full name: Frank Edwin Churchill
Birth: October 20, 1901 in Rumford, Maine
Death: May 14, 1942 in Castaic, California
Marriages:
Unknown first wife
Carolyn Kay Shaefer (June 10, 1933 – May 4, 1942)
Worked at the Disney studio between:
1930 – 1942
Job on Snow White:
Composer
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In his book Disney from A to Z: the official encyclopedia, archivist Dave Smith sums up Frank Churchill’s life in a few lines about his work on Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi. His life and contribution to these Walt Disney classics are infinitely more complex.
Frank Churchill was not a trained composer like his colleagues on Snow White, yet Wilfred Jackson remembered: “when he sat down at the piano and played the music that you were working out for the picture, the score that resulted never sounded any better than the way Frank played it on the piano. (…) He did what he did with such apparent ease, and he was so willing to adapt his music, to change it to what you needed. He seemed to be able to take notes out or add notes in and still make it work. If you’re having a little trouble fitting your action to the music, he had great facility in adjusting the music and still make it come out right.”
Born in Maine in 1901, Frank Churchill loved music, especially Franz Schubert. His family moved to California when he was 4 and by the time he was 15, he already earned money playing the piano in movie theaters. His parents forced him to study medicine, so he escaped in Tijuana, Mexico where he earned a living playing the piano in bars. He later joined an orchestra in Tucson, Arizona and moved to Hollywood in 1924.
He first worked as a pianist and soloist at KNX radio where he met future Disney sound man Bob Cook. As talking pictures went big, he was hired by RKO Pictures that he soon left for Walt Disney, who needed a new composer when Carl Stalling left when Disney launched his new Silly Symphonies series, based on music. His ability to create memorable tunes enabled him to compose the famous song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” in Three Little Pigs, and other hits.
Naturally, he was the main composer for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, notably composing all the famous songs.
Adriana Caselotti liked to tell the story of her audition where she surprised Frank because she could read music.
Frank later worked on Dumbo for which he won an Academy Award, and Bambi.
Such success suggests that he was a happy man, but his biography would not be complete without mentioning his lifelong struggle with alcoholism and depression.
Art Babbitt remembers: “Frank would come into the studio on Friday, for example, with a bag full of gin bottles and on Monday morning all the gin bottles would be gone, and five or six songs would come out. We went on a Grace Line cruise—a group from Disney: Les Clark, Dick Lundy, so on—and Frank was plastered all the time. Frank and Les and I shared a stateroom and Frank was so drunk there was absolutely no movement in his body at all. I called the doctor to see if the guy was dead or not. Frank was always trying to commit suicide. We spent seventeen days together on that ship and it was all I could do to keep him from jumping overboard. There was this constant battle.”
Paradoxically, Wilfred Jackson describes him as “a fun person to be with” and remembers one of his numerous pranks when he tried to light up a fart with inbetweener Earl Duvall and was surprised by Walt’s secretary Carolyn Schaefer, whom he eventually married.
Overworked, he had to take leave from the studio in 1937 and left other composers to finish the job on Snow White. His demons finally overcame him when he committed suicide in 1942 leaving this note to his wife: “Dear Carolyn – I am at the end of my rope. Please forgive me for this cruel act. It seems the only way to heal myself. Frank.”
He had divorced his first wife early and was never sure the daughter of the couple was actually his. They both contested his will. His legacy lives on and his Snow White music is regularly used again in new productions.
Frank was just a fun person to work with. He did what he did with such apparent ease.
Wilfred Jackson
