The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of New York, and within Nassau County, and especially in the city of Old Brookville people have enjoyed Disney animation with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates animated short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Old Brookville.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Old Brookville is known for cartoons such as Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo and Lifted.

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 Old Brookville being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Kristoff and The Duke of Weselton.

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 Old Brookville 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 cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st animated film with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular animated film series in Old Brookville 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 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 Practical Pig became a major box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Old Brookville residents.

The First Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney began development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and Technicolor.

A lot of development and training went into the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The studio expanded with the addition of animators and artists from other fields.  Some may have even come from Old Brookville - but we're not sure.

What Old Brookville parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge hit. It cost Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful was the highest grossing production of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind a few years later.

During the production of Snow White, the artists  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey 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, Lampwick and Gideon. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Daisy Duck and Zeus .  It was an experimental cartoon 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 Old Brookville viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Crow Chorus proved to be a monetary success. The feature only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and Gideon  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Mickey Mouse, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spring Sprite.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Old Brookville and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Flower the Skunk 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 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.

Disney also began re-releasing the previous features beginning with the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney movies every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a movie success.  Old Brookville fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Caterpillar and The King of Hearts.  Parents in Old Brookville also took their boys and girls to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, Mr. Smee and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Old Brookville could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Tramp and Jim Dear.