Dalí, whose previous film experience included two short films with the Spanish master Luis Buñuel, approached Disney at a dinner party at the house of Warner Brothers head Jack Warner. Dalí, then working on Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, believed he and Disney could create what he called “the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before.”
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Disney agreed, and assigned director John Hench to help Dalí turn the Mexican ballad “Destino,” by Armando Dominguez, into a kind of prototypical music video. (Hench, now 95, continues to come to work every day at the Disney lot, and consulted on the new Destino.)
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Dalí spent his time at the Disney studio painting, drawing and discussing with Hench the challenges of adding motion to what he described as his “hand-colored photographs.” The project continued for eight months, and was abandoned in 1947 when the Disney studio ran into financial problems. Dalí died in 1989.
Thanks to some of today’s Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I’m really looking forward to seeing this.