The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of Michigan, and within Cass County, and especially in the city of Cassopolis people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, California, formerly known as Walt Disney Feature Animation, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Cassopolis. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Cassopolis is known for animated movies such as Cars 2, Ratatouilli and Luxo Jr..
As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with notable characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey and its most recent release in Cassopolis being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Elsa, Kristoff and The King and Queen of Arendelle.
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 Cassopolis 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.
Vintage Disney Animation in the 20s
The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in movie screens during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey cartoon Disney added a sound track. History was made when the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with matched sound.
The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Cassopolis and the United States. A second Disney series of sound cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, premiered 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 first 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 major box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Cassopolis residents.
The 1st Disney Animated Film Feature
In 1934, Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Dopey. Snow White became the 1st animated feature in English and Technicolor.
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 recent college graduate artists. Some may have even come from Cassopolis - but we're not sure.
What Cassopolis parent would have known Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big success. It cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey was the highest grossing movie of all time before being de-throned by Gone with the Wind two years later.
While working on Snow White, the designers continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series. Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting characters among them Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.
New Walt Disney Productions
In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Lampwick and Gideon. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spring Sprite . It was an experimental cartoon produced 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 Cassopolis viewers.
Dumbo hit the screens in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Elephant Catty proved to be a financial income success. The feature only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and Monstro and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box.
In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Cassopolis and we met new friends including Pheasant, Faline and Mrs. Possum.
Also in the 1940s, Walt Disney premiered 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 Duck 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.
Disney also began reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey with Chernabog, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney movies every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. Cassopolis fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Cheshire Cat and The King of Hearts. Parents in Cassopolis also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy Darling, Mary Darling and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Cassopolis could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Lady, Tramp and Boris.
