The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of Wisconsin, and within Price County, and especially in the city of Dover people have enjoyed Disney animated movies 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 short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Dover. It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Dover is known for cartoons such as Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo 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 unforgettable characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey and its most recent release in Dover being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, Kristoff 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 Dover 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, was released in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney added a sound track. History was made when the third Mickey 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 Dover and the United States. A second Disney series of sound animated films, the Silly Symphonies, debuted 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 Fifer Pig became a huge box office and pop culture success and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Dover residents.
The 1st 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 Sleepy and Dopey. Snow White became the first cartoon 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 established animators and recent college graduate artists. Some may have even come from Dover - but we're not sure.
What Dover parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge success. It cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey was the highest grossing production of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind two 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 Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.
New Walt Disney Productions
In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Geppetto, Stromboli and Monstro. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck and The Magic Brooms . It was an experimental cartoon created to accompanying an orchestral arrangement. Fantasia also caused the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of Dover viewers.
Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, The Ringmaster and Mr. Stork 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 seven drawfs including Doc and Happy and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and Monstro and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Chernabog, Yen Sid and Jack-in-the-Box.
In August 1942, Bambi was released in Dover and we met new friends including Thumper, Faline 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 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 the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Jack-in-the-Box. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Walt Disney features every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a box office success. Dover fans , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Caterpillar and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Parents in Dover also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, George Darling and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Dover 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.
