(Leonard Maltin reads the clue.)  A chance meeting with Leopold Stokowski led Walt to hire him for a "Sorcerer's Apprentice" short; Stokowski prodded him into making a longer film, this 1940 epic
... People who insist on pigeonholing him as a purveyor of bland .... 
Fantasia wasn't Walt Disney's first foray into the realm of the avant-garde.