Hidden away in the vaults at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., unknown to some and forgotten by others, is a tiny spool of film that runs for 15 seconds on the screen. It is a fragment of what was intended to be a Surrealist movie called "Destino," a curious collaboration by Disney and the flamboyant Spanish painter Salvador Dali.
Why they never finished "Destino" remains a mystery; a fair guess is that the two great chefs could not agree on their own recipe. They had something cooking all right, but their tastes were different and so they finally gave up on the film. This seems a pity, for there is enough of the project left to show that "Destino" would have been a sensation.
Disney, who liked clarity, and Dali, who specialized in avoiding it, got together almost by chance. Lacking human stars at his studio, Disney had been thinking about ways to attract big-name artists. He happened to meet Dali at a house party one night, and they hit it off.
We have to keep breaking new trails," Disney explained when Dali arrived on the lot in 1946. Ordinarily, good story ideas don't come easily and have to be fought for. Dali is communicative. He bubbles with new ideas."
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