The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of Minnesota, and within Pipestone County, and especially in the city of McIntosh people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in McIntosh. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in McIntosh is known for animated movies such as Cars, The Incredibles and Day & Night.
As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films with the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable characters such as The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy and its most recent release in McIntosh being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Kristoff and The King and Queen of Arendelle.
The studio's catalog of cartoons 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 McIntosh 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 1920s
The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney added a sound track. History was made when the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first cartoon with synchronized sound.
The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular animated film series in McIntosh and the United States. A second Disney series of sound cartoons, 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 animated film 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 Fiddler Pig became a tremendous box office and pop culture success and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for McIntosh residents.
The 1st Disney Animated Film Feature
In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful. Snow White became the first cartoon in English and color.
Tremendous development and training went into the creation 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 McIntosh - but we're not sure.
What McIntosh parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big success. It cost Walt Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy was the highest grossing film of all time before being de-throned by Gone with the Wind a few 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 Disney Productions
In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite . It was an experimental animated film designed 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 McIntosh viewers.
Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, The Ringmaster and Mr. Stork proved to be a monetary success. The film only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Mickey Mouse, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box.
In August 1942, Bambi was released in McIntosh and we met new friends including Thumper, Friend Owl and Mrs. Possum.
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 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 the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spring Sprite. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney films every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. McIntosh fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Cheshire Cat and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Parents in McIntosh also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, Mary Darling and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in McIntosh could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Jock and Jim Dear.
