The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of Maryland, and within Carroll County, and especially in the city of New Windsor people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in New Windsor. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in New Windsor is known for animated movies such as Toy Story, Brave and Day & Night.
As of 2013, the studio has produced 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with classic characters such as The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy and its most recent release in New Windsor being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Hans and The Duke of Weselton.
The studio's catalog of animated features are among Disney's most notable assets and the stars of its animated shorts—Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto—have gone on to become recognizable figures in New Windsor popular culture.
Walt Disney Animation Studios continues to produce animated features using both hand-drawn and computer generated imagery techniques. Their 54th feature, Big Hero 6, is currently in production and set for release on November 7, 2014.
Older Cartoons in the 20s
The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney included a sound track. In the end the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st cartoon with matched sound.
The Mickey series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular cartoon series in New Windsor and the United States. A second Disney series of sound animated films, the Silly Symphonies, debuted in 1929 with The Skeleton Dance. Each Silly Symphony was a one-shot cartoon centered around music or a particular theme.
Silly Symphonies
In 1932 the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees, the 1st full-color cartoon was released. Flowers and Trees was a big success so all the Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. The 1933 Three Little Pigs with character of The Big Bad Wolf and Fifer Pig became a big box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for New Windsor residents.
The First Disney Animated Film Feature
In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey. Snow White became the 1st animated feature in English and color.
A lot of training and development went into the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The studio expanded with the addition of established animators and artists from other fields. Some may have even come from New Windsor - but we're not sure.
What New Windsor parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Walt Disney a total of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Bashful was the highest grossing production of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind two years later.
While working on Snow White, the animators continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting characters including Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.
New Walt Disney Productions
In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Lampwick and Gideon. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus . It was an experimental animated film created to accompanying an orchestral arrangement. Fantasia also brought about the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of New Windsor viewers.
Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, The Ringmaster and Elephant Catty proved to be a financial income success. The film only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Dopey and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Stromboli and Monstro and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Jack-in-the-Box.
In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in New Windsor and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Faline and Mrs. Rabbit.
Also in the 1940s, Disney released shorts which included Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The studio also produced two features, Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948), which were a combination of animated and live-action footage. Shorts production continued during this period as well, with Donald and Pluto cartoons being the main output accompanied by cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, Figaro and in the 1950s, Chip 'n Dale and Humphrey the Bear.
Walt Disney also began re-releasing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey with Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a box office success. New Windsor movie-goers , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Cheshire Cat and The King of Hearts. Parents in New Windsor also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, Mr. Smee and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in New Windsor could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Tramp and Tony.
