The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires
Disney Animation
Throughout the state of New Jersey, and within Gloucester County, and especially in the city of Glassboro people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, 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 Glassboro. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Glassboro is known for animated movies such as Cars 2, WALL-E and A Bug's Life.
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 Grumpy and Bashful and its most recent release in Glassboro being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Olaf 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 Glassboro 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 Cartoons in the 20s
The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney produced a sound track. Subsequently the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first cartoon with matched sound.
The Mickey Mouse series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular animated film series in Glassboro 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 tremendous box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Glassboro residents.
The 1st Disney Cartoon Feature
In 1934, Walt Disney began production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful. Snow White became the 1st cartoon in English and Technicolor.
A lot of training and development 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 Glassboro - but we're not sure.
What Glassboro parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Bashful 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 animators continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting characters including Mickey's dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.
New Walt Disney Productions
In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Pinocchio, Lampwick and Monstro. 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 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 Glassboro viewers.
Dumbo debuted in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Mr. Stork proved to be a financial income success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and The Magic Brooms.
In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Glassboro and we met new friends including Thumper, Friend Owl and Mrs. Rabbit.
Also in the 1940s, Walt 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 Goofy 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 Snow White and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey with Donald, Daisy Duck and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney features every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. Glassboro movie-goers , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Cheshire Cat and The King of Hearts. Parents in Glassboro also took their boys and girls to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy Darling, Mr. Smee and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Glassboro could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Tramp and Boris.
