Somebody brought this up in a private forum and after some brief digging it turns out they weren’t kidding: according to the 1942 continuity draft, the dreadfully trimmed down RKO cut of Fantasia contains interstitial audio that isn’t even available on the longer general release prints. The first half of the Nutcracker commentary was kept (the drafts on Hans Perk’s animation blog confirm that there were more lines after the fade out present in the 2000 roadshow reconstruction), only one missing line from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice intro, a very decent portion of the Rite of Spring commentary (even the off-screen crash that interrupts Deems’ first attempt at introducing the segment was kept) and the full “Meet the Soundtrack” intro. See below…
My question now is does anybody have this version of the movie? Or at least aware of any collectors that may have it? It runs for a measly 80 minutes, and it apparently did show up once on eBay in 8mm and then never again. 35mm would be close to impossible to track down as those prints were likely nitrate and have long since deteriorated, but 8mm/16mm safety stock reprints of this thing, even if they’re faded beyond salvage, have to exist somewhere-- the main objective here is saving the sound. The missing interstitial audio isn’t substantial, but it’s still more of the original audio than we currently have access to for preservation projects, and I think it’d be really cool to restore it.
Holding out for a hero here.