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...
Pinocchio premiered February 7, 1940, at the Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center, New York City. HR reported: “One of the greatest ovations ever accorded a motion picture was given Walt Disney‘s Pinocchio… At least ten times during the running of...
All these sounds, special effects and the animation, itself, coalesce into a sequence of pulse-pounding excitement! Beginning rather comically as smoke furls out the floating leviathan’s spout hole, it quickly escalates into overwhelmingly desperate terror. Smoke billows out the whale’s...
The music turns murky and ominous as the camera trucks into the depths beyond the underwater trench in which Pinocchio is searching. Gradually becoming discernible through the deepsea gloom, the immense and fearsome whale Monstro lies sleeping on the ocean...
Cut to a rocky shoreline where a sopping Pinocchio drags himself out of the water and lifts the cricket out after him clinging to his new tail. With all due dispatch, the two make their way back to Geppetto’s house,...
Soon nightfall darkens the scene at Pleasure Island and shadows its gloomy ruin. Jiminy now wandering alone through the debris and still calling out Pinocchio’s name, the camera zooms past him toward the desolate landscape’s only lighted structure, a distant...
Now the Blue Fairy makes her second appearance. Pinocchio and Jiminy are commiserating inside the birdcage, the cricket failing dismally at cheering up the puppet and only making himself more miserable. Outside the window the rain has abated and suddenly...
Post show inside Stromboli’s wagon chowing down on “Italian” cuisine – i.e. sausage, wine, olives, cheese and garlic – the puppetmaster tallies his take, Pinocchio now sidelined, observing. Furious at finding a slug amongst the gold, the puppeteer has a...
