The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of Mississippi, and within Calhoun County, and especially in the city of Pittsboro people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, California, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions, is an animation studio which creates animated short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Pittsboro. It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Pittsboro is known for cartoons such as Cars 2, WALL-E and Partly Cloudy.
As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with notable characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey and its most recent release in Pittsboro being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Elsa, Hans and The Duke of Weselton.
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 Pittsboro 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 Animation in the 20s
The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in movie screens during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney included a sound track. Subsequently the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with synchronized sound.
The Mickey series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Pittsboro and the U.S.. 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 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 Practical Pig became a huge box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Pittsboro residents.
The 1st Disney Cartoon Feature
In 1934, Disney started development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey. Snow White became the first cartoon in English and Technicolor.
Tremendous 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 Pittsboro - but we're not sure.
What Pittsboro 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 create but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey was the highest grossing production of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.
During the production of Snow White, the animators continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends among them Mickey's dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.
New Disney Productions
In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Lampwick and Monstro. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite . It was an experimental cartoon designed to accompanying an orchestral arrangement. Fantasia also caused the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of Pittsboro viewers.
Dumbo hit the screens in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, The Ringmaster and The Clown proved to be a monetary success. The film only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Monstro and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Chernabog, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite.
In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Pittsboro and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Flower the Skunk 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 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 seven drawfs including Grumpy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Donald, Daisy Duck and Zeus. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. Pittsboro fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Queen of Hearts and The Dormouse. Parents in Pittsboro also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Mr. Smee and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Pittsboro could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Tramp and Jim Dear.
