Carl Stalling was born to Ernest and Sophia C. Stalling. His parents were from Germany; his father arrived in the United States in 1883. The family settled in Lexington, Missouri where his father was a carpenter. He started playing piano at six. By the age of 12, he was the principal piano accompanist in his hometown’s silent movie house. For a short period, he was also the theatre organist at the St. Louis Theatre, which eventually became Powell Symphony Hall. By his early 20s, he was conducting his own orchestra and improvising on the organ at the Isis Movie Theatre in Kansas City. His actual job at the time was to play “organ accompaniment” for silent films.  During that time, he met and befriended a young Walt Disney, who was producing animated comedy shorts in Kansas City. According to music critic Neil Strauss, the chance meeting between Stalling and Disney in the early 1920s was of great importance to the development of music for animation. Stalling was at his job at the Isis Movie Theatre, demonstrating his ability to combine well-known music by other creators with his own, improvised compositions. Disney stepped into the movie theater and was reportedly impressed with his style. He approached Stalling to introduce himself, and their acquaintance was mutually beneficial. Stalling was able to arrange the screening of a few Disney animated shorts at the Isis, and Disney ensured that Stalling would play the accompaniment for his films.

Disney eventually left Kansas City and moved to California in order to open a new studio. Stalling and Disney kept in touch through correspondence, and considered each other friends. In 1928, Disney was on a journey from California to New York City in order to record the sound and make the preview of Steamboat Willie, Disney’s first released sound short. During the journey he stopped at Kansas City to hire Stalling to compose film scores for two other animated shorts. Carl Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney, including Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho in 1928 (but not Steamboat Willie, Disney’s first released sound short). Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho were originally silent films and were the first two Mickey Mouse animated short films in production.  When finishing composing the film scores, Stalling went to New York City to record them for Disney. Walt was apparently pleased with the results, and offered to hire Stalling as his studio’s first music director. In order to get the job, Stalling had to move to California, where the studio was located. According to Martha Sigall, Stalling accepted because the job offer was a great opportunity for him. He probably realized that his career as an organist for a silent movie theatre was coming to an end, because the silent film era was also at its end. Sound films were the new trend. Carl Stalling soon followed Disney in moving to Hollywood, in order to work for his friend. Animation historian Allan Neuwirth credits Stalling for basically inventing the process of creating a film score for cartoons. According to Neil Strauss, the “wildly talented” Stalling was suitable as a film score composer for animated films.  Stalling even spoke Mickey Mouse’s first words in The Karnival Kid in 1929.

Carl Stalling encouraged Disney to create a new series of animated short films, in which the animation and its action would be created to match the music. This was still unusual at the time, since film music was played or composed to match the action of a film.  Stalling’s discussions with Disney on whether the animation or the musical score should come first led to Disney creating the Silly Symphonies series of animated short films. Stalling is credited with both the composition and the musical arrangement of The Skeleton Dance (1929), the first of the Silly Symphonies. These cartoons allowed Stalling to create a score that Disney handed to his animators. While there, Stalling pioneered the use of “bar sheets”, which allowed musical rhythms to be sketched out simultaneously with storyboards for the animation. The Silly Symphonies was an innovative animated film series, in which pre-recorded film scores were making use of well-known classical works and the animation sequences were choreographed to match the music. Stalling helped Disney streamline and update the sound process used in creating early animated sound films, following the long and laborious synchronization process used in Steamboat Willie. The close synchronization of music and on-screen movement pioneered by the Disney short films became known as Mickey Mousing.  While working at the Disney studio, Stalling invented a tick system which helped synchronize music to visuals. This system was a forerunner to the click track, a method which would become a standard process used in both live-action and animated films. An early example of a click track was used in the production of The Skeleton Dance (1929). The method used in this film involved a reel of unexposed film with holes punched out to make clicks and pops when run on the sound head. According to Neil Strauss, this version of the click track is credited to sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald.

Carl Stalling left Disney after two years, at the same time as animator Ub Iwerks.He had reportedly completed the scoring of about 20 animated films for Disney. Finding few outlets in New York, Stalling rejoined Iwerks at his studio in California, while freelancing for Disney and others. Stalling served as the music director of Iwerks’ studio until the studio shut down in 1936.  In 1936, when Leon Schlesinger—under contract to produce animated shorts for Warner Bros.—hired Iwerks, Stalling went with him to become a full-time cartoon music composer. According to Martha Sigall, Stalling was hired by the Leon Schlesinger studio in July, 1936. She recalled the month because she was hired by the studio as an apprentice painter that same month. Carl Stalling already had a reputation as a very talented musician and composer. He had gained this reputation and considerable experience as the music director at the studios of both Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Schlesinger was aware of these facts when offering to hire him. Stalling had been recommended to Schlesinger by storyman Ben Hardaway. Hardaway had met Stalling while they both worked at the Iwerks studio and, when Schlesinger started searching for a new music director for his studio, Hardaway suggested hiring his old colleague who was available.  According to Sigall, the hiring of Stalling turned out to be a smart move for Schlesinger. The new music director (Stalling) became an integral member of the team producing two very successful animated series.

The two animated series which Schlesinger produced for Warner Bros. were the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, both introduced in the early 1930s. Prior to 1936, most of the animated films of these two series included film scores by either Frank Marsales, Bernard B. Brown, or Norman Spencer. From 1936 onwards, Stalling was the film score composer for almost every theatrical animated short released by Warner Bros. Cartoons until his retirement. Stalling served as the music director for this studio for 22 years and is credited for the film score of over 600 animated films.  Like his predecessors as music director for the studio, Stalling had full access to the expansive Warner Bros. catalog and musicians. He could also use the fifty-piece orchestra of the company, headed at the time by Leo F. Forbstein. The executives at Warner Bros. in fact insisted that Stalling should use as much music and songs from their feature films as possible. Their dual goal was to help promote the animated shorts by associating them with already popular music, and to help promote the songs themselves by giving them additional publicity. They hoped that such promotion would increase the sales of the songs. Carl Stalling remained with Warner Bros. until he retired in 1958. His last cartoon was To Itch His Own, directed by Chuck Jones. After Stalling retired in 1958, he was succeeded by Milt Franklyn, who had assisted Stalling as an arranger since the late 1930s. Stalling and Franklyn had shared credits for musical direction during the last years of Stalling’s tenure. There was not much of a transition phase when Franklyn took over the position, as their styles were, for the most part, similar (although Franklyn would experiment with more popular styles of music as rock and roll rose to prominence and the animation styles themselves evolved into more modernist approaches). Franklyn died suddenly in 1962 and was replaced by William Lava for the remainder of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies’ theatrical runs. Lava’s work borrowed from styles such as world music and used a much smaller, more stripped down (and less expensive) orchestra that gave his orchestrations a much different feel to those Stalling and his protégé Franklyn had composed. Carl Stalling died on November 29, 1972, near Los Angeles.