The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of Oregon, and within Multnomah County, and especially in the city of Wood Village people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, California, 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 Wood Village.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Wood Village is known for animated movies such as Cars, WALL-E and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with classic  characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey and its most recent release in Wood Village being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, Olaf 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 Wood Village 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 Cartoons in the 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney included a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first cartoon with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Wood Village and the United States.  A second Disney series of sound cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, released 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 huge success so all the Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. The 1933 Three Little Pigs with character of The Big Bad Wolf and Fifer 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 Wood Village residents.

The First Walt Disney Animated Film Feature

In 1934, Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and Technicolor.

Considerable 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 Wood Village - but we're not sure.

What Wood Village parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big success. It cost Disney  a total of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful was the highest grossing film of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the designers  continued work on the Mickey 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 Walt Disney Productions

In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Honest John and Monstro. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Zeus .  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 Wood Village viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Casey Junior and The Clown proved to be a monetary success. The feature only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy  and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Jack-in-the-Box.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Wood Village and we met new friends including Pheasant, Faline and Great Prince of the Forest.

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 reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen Snow White and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey Mouse with Chernabog, Yen Sid and The Magic Brooms. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Walt Disney movies every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a box office success.  Wood Village fans , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Caterpillar and The Dormouse.  Parents in Wood Village also took their boys and girls to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Captain Hook and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Wood Village could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Tramp and Tony.