The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits
Disney Cartoons
Throughout the state of West Virginia, and within Kanawha County, and especially in the city of Sissonville people have enjoyed Disney animation with great enthusiasm.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Sissonville. It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Sissonville is known for cartoons such as Up, Brave and Day & Night.
As of 2013, the studio has produced 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with notable characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful and its most recent release in Sissonville being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, 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 Sissonville 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 animated films, 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. History was made when the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with synchronized sound.
The Mickey Mouse series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular animated film series in Sissonville 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 1st full-color cartoon was released. Flowers and Trees was a tremendous 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 big box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Sissonville residents.
The First Disney Animated Film Feature
In 1934, Disney began production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy. Snow White became the 1st cartoon in English and color.
Tremendous development and training 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 Sissonville - but we're not sure.
What Sissonville parent would have known Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge hit. It cost Walt Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Happy was the highest grossing production of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind two years later.
While working on 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 friends including 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, Honest John and Monstro. Pinocchio won ”Gold Statue” for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box . It was an experimental animated film produced 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 Sissonville viewers.
Dumbo hit the screens in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, The Ringmaster and Elephant Catty proved to be a financial income success. The feature only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Doc and Dopey and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Stromboli and Monstro and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Zeus.
In August 1942, Bambi was released in Sissonville and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Flower the Skunk and Mrs. Possum.
Also in the 1940s, Walt 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 re-releasing the previous features beginning with the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jack-in-the-Box. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney movies every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.
Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success. Sissonville 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 Sissonville also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy Darling, George Darling and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Sissonville could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Tramp and Boris.
