Created by: Ricky Wilson
Last modified: 2004-04-06
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/film/disney.html
Background info: Well, almost everyone has at one point in their life or another seen several of Disney's fairy tale films, so actually giving background information on the plots would be rather redundant, instead, I'll present you with some background info on Walt Disney himself.
Born in 1901, Disney was raised on a farm in Missouri where his passion for art led him to pursue both photography and drawing (the two main skills used in animation) during his high school years. In 1920 Walt returned from a tour of duty with the Red Cross overseas and moved to Kansas City where he became a cartoonist for an ad agency. Around 1923 he pulled up stakes and moved to Hollywood, where he would be known initially as the first person to make an animated "talkie," or a film with sound. This set a standard for Disney to be known as an innovator in his field, and he later became the first person to create an animated film with Technicolor. In 1937 he unleashed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on an unsuspecting populace, forever changing the popular view of animation. Disney finished his Burbank studio in 1940 and his staff swelled to over 1,000 and his studio performed a vital role for the propaganda machine of WWII.
Disney's animated films were truly groundbreaking for their time; and this was not a case of an artist gaining critical notoriety only after his death, and contemporaries realized that Disney's films were something special. Snow White was the first ever feature length animated film, and as such has set a precedent that Disney's company is still maintaining to this day.
Things to watch for in Disney films: