1h 15min | Animation, Family, Music | 20 April 1946
Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi | 3 more credits
Stars: Nelson Eddy, Dinah Shore, Benny Goodman, Andrews Sisters
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038718/
Watched online; 2 bad choices to watch: both with wrong aspect ratio. One was blurrier and slower, the other was sped up (audio pitched slightly higher, shorter run time, but really, it was the other version that seemed too slow, but that might be Disney pacing, because each voice sounds like a chipmunk; maybe they just altered the pitch of the audio as will as altering the image) and occupied only 1/4 of the screen. Apparently if you modify a film enough, the owner no longer has copyright control over it.
Since I was attracted to this for Nelson Eddy, I also watched his segment (the finale: singing whale) on the other version. Glad I did, and that they put right on the title card that he did ALL the voices in that segment. The story was silly (whale has 3 uvulas(!) that sing simultaneously and independently in 3 ranges), but the singing was great. (Well, the women's parts: not so much.) Here's the audio only. The story was awful: they kill the whale thinking the opera singer was a human in his belly.
I did not like the "story" drawn for the BG quartet (After You've Gone; the orchestra had an earlier segment), because the instruments were animated (no people), and were attacking each other (in a nice syrupy Disney way). It was very nightmarish, but in pastels. This may be a perfect example of why I dislike Disney sensibilities so much.
So this reminds me of Fantasia ('40), except they used more swing music than classical (although the longest segments are both classical: the whale sings opera, and Peter and the Wolf is Prokofiev). It's just an anthology of several songs put to animation, some without plot/story.
This has a 6.4 IMDb rating with 2800+ votes. Of 44 Disney Animated Musical Features, 36 have better ratings. But this is Music, and there are 8 of these; this is the 2nd lowest.
Disney, dir. various; 5
