The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of Pennsylvania, and within Lycoming County, and especially in the city of Montoursville people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, California, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates animated feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Montoursville.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Montoursville is known for cartoons such as Cars, Finding Nemo and Partly Cloudy.

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with classic  characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy and its most recent release in Montoursville being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, 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 Montoursville 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 cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  Subsequently  the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st animated film with matched sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Montoursville 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 huge box office and pop culture success and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Montoursville residents.

The First Walt Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney began production 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 training and development went into the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The studio expanded with the addition of animators and recent college graduate artists.  Some may have even come from Montoursville - but we're not sure.

What Montoursville parent would have imagined 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 create but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey was the highest grossing film of all time before being de-throned by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the artists  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 Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.

New Walt Disney Productions

In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won an Academy Award 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 cartoon 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 Montoursville viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, Casey Junior and Crow Chorus proved to be a financial income success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Bashful and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Gideon  and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Montoursville and we met new friends including Thumper, Flower the Skunk and Mrs. Rabbit.

Also in the 1940s, 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 The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Donald, Yen Sid and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney features every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a box office success.  Montoursville movie-goers , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Caterpillar and Mathilda.  Parents in Montoursville also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, George Darling and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Montoursville could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Trusty and Boris.