The Nine Disney Animated Masterpieces
Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty
“Our object is to reach the very people who have walked out on this Toccata and Fugue because they didn’t understand it. I am one of those people,” confessed Walt Disney, “but when I understand it, I like it.”[1] Originally,...
During September, 1938, Disney convened a series of meetings with Stokowski along with Fantasia’s onscreenhost Deems Taylor (1885–1966), supervising directors Joe Grant (1908–2005) and Dick Huemer (1898–1979) and other staff to audition many many 78rpm recordings of classical music in...
An absolutely singular accomplishment! Upon the film’s release Otis Ferguson of The New Republic described Fantasia as “…one of the strange and beautiful things that have happened in the world.”[1] Fantasia premiered November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theater (originally...
This period was the high point of Walt’s involvement with animation. He was healthy, eager, endlessly creative and completely consumed. This was far more than a job. He lived these pictures every minute of the day, thinking deeply into every...
Over the course of his career Walt avidly pursued technologies that would enable him to invite his audiences ever more immersively into his revised realities – whatever fantastic realms his imagination conjured. Disney’s drive for technical perfection, one of the...
So what exactly is it that qualifies any particular work of art as a “masterpiece”? The dictionary definition is simply “a supreme intellectual or artistic achievement.” Check! But I like art collector Dar Reedy’s broader take on this question: …a...
