Hattie Noel, the Reference Model for Fantasia’s Hyacinth Hippo
Hattie Noel was born on February 2, 1893 in Logtown, Louisiana.
She entered show business at age thirteen, when she ran away from home to join a carnival.
She wanted to be a star.
Noel struggled for 22 years, finally getting her ‘big break’ when she toured the South in the vaudeville show, Midnight Steppers, starring Bessie Smith.
For the next ten years, Noel’s star continued to rise.
She worked on stage, in night clubs, on the radio and in a couple of films.
Some highlights from that part of her career include singing with the Count Basie band in 1936 and a spot on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in 1938.
Around 1939, Noel was hired by Walt Disney Productions to film some live-action reference for the animators working on the Dance of the Hours sequence in Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940).
She was asked to portray a hippopotamus ballerina – and even then, more the ‘hippopotamus’ than the ‘ballerina’.
According to the MUST-READ book, Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation, by Mindy Aloff:
Noel was not the live-action reference model for Hyacinth Hippo’s ballet dancing; Disney went to classical dancers for that – the prodigious young Marge Champion and, later, the de Basil ballerina Tatiana Riabouchinska.
Longtime Disney animator T. Hee remembered that Noel was initially “very self-conscious about how the footage would be used.
About whether or not it was being done in mockery.”
A rather large-figured person himself, T. Hee could sympathize – at least partly.
He told Noel that the footage “was just going to be an aid to the artists.”*
Then, according to Hippo in a Tutu, he “peeled down to his shorts and, in his words, ‘danced with all my bulk in front of the cameras to show her that it was all in a light spirit.’”
How did it all turn out?
To answer that, I’d love to share this BEAUTIFUL excerpt from Mindy Aloff’s Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation.
It’s an incredibly moving tribute to Noel’s lasting impact on the creation of Fantasia:
It’s worth remembering that, as a professional, Noel completed her assignment with honor.
She brought more to the character than what the scholar Elizabeth Bell has called “prosaic strokes of cartoon corporeality”: she brought her spirit – the femininity, humor and deep feelings that animated the flesh the animators’ analyzed.
These elements bespoke many experiences that the teenage Marge Chapman would have been too young to offer and the ballerina Tatiana Riabouchinska would have been too emotionally armored to reveal.
They gave themselves to the dancing of Hyacinth Hippo but not to her trademark vulnerability.
That came from Hattie Noel, and she lives forever as one of the muses for the hippo in a tutu.
After that brief bit of filming at Disney, Noel went back to work as an all-around entertainer.
Between 1934 - 1943, she made 18 films in Hollywood.
Although she was mostly given the relatively thankless part of ‘Maid’ (see also: Burn, Hollywood, Burn), she had a nice bit in the 1943 comedy, Honeymoon Lodge, playing herself and even getting her name on the poster!
In 1943, Noel shared a musical bill with Louis Armstrong. Between 1948 - 1949, she recorded for MGM on sessions supervised by Dootsie Williams and sang duets with Billy Mitchell.
In 1956, Noel recorded her first full-length record, Songs For Fun, a collection of sex-themed comedy songs that featured the single, Find Out What They Want and Give It to ‘Em (click here to listen).
That album, though considered ‘risque’ at the time, was but a hint at what was to come.
In 1962, Noel put out the ‘adult’ comedy record, The Bold, which garnered enough critical and audience acclaim to see her team up with the legendary comedian Redd Foxx for her next album, The Battle Of Sex.
From this record on, Noel herself was a COMIC LEGEND.
Noel’s next two comedy records would also be her last, but oh – what a way to go out!
Even listening to them today, The Whole of Hattie Noel and Life of the Party sound surprisingly feminist and taboo-shattering.
Remember, this was a 70-SOMETHING YEAR OLD BLACK WOMAN in the 1960s, telling HER STORY from HER PERSPECTIVE – UNCENSORED AND UNAPOLOGETICALLY.
And she was HILARIOUS!
Hattie Noel died on November 13, 1969 in Los Angeles, California, age 76.
She started out an unknown nobody and died a comedy star living in a mansion.
In short, she made her dream come true.
*It is important to note here that Hattie Noel’s dance footage was NEVER intended to be seen by anyone other than the animators.
None of Disney’s live-action reference footage was.
In fact, Walt Disney was initially embarrassed by the reference footage, instructing his Snow White publicists to avoid mentioning it to the press.
The fact that we now have access to these photos is NOT the fault of those folks whom Noel trusted to keep them under wraps.
t’s the fault of Disney and animation nerds like me (and you!) who can’t stop trying to find every last bit of info we can on our favorite films.