The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of New Hampshire, and within Hillsborough County, and especially in the city of Hudson people have enjoyed Disney animation with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Hudson. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Hudson is known for cartoons such as Toy Story, Ratatouilli and Luxo Jr..
As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films with the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey and its most recent release in Hudson being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Olaf and Grand Pabbie the Troll King.
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 Hudson 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 cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in movie screens during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney included a sound track. History was made when the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st animated film with synchronized sound.
The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular animated film series in Hudson and the United States. A second Disney series of sound animated films, 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 animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a major 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 big box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Hudson residents.
The First Disney Cartoon Feature
In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy. Snow White became the 1st 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 recent college graduate artists. Some may have even come from Hudson - but we're not sure.
What Hudson 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 film of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind a few years later.
During the production of Snow White, the designers continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting characters 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, Stromboli and Gideon. Pinocchio won ”Gold Statue” 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 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 Hudson viewers.
Dumbo hit the screens in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, The Ringmaster and Mr. Stork proved to be a financial income success. The movie only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and Monstro and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Zeus.
In August 1942, Bambi was released in Hudson and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Flower the Skunk and Mrs. Possum.
Also in the 1940s, 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 re-releasing the previous features beginning with the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Donald, Daisy Duck and Spring Sprite. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney movies every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. Hudson movie-goers , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Cheshire Cat and The King of Hearts. Parents in Hudson also took their boys and girls to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, Captain Hook and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Hudson could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Jock and Tony.
