The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of Montana, and within Yellowstone County, and especially in the city of Huntley people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Walt Disney Feature Animation, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Huntley.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Huntley is known for animated movies such as Toy Story 3, Brave and Lifted.

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with classic  characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful and its most recent release in Huntley being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, Olaf and The King and Queen of Arendelle.

The studio's catalog of cartoons 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 Huntley 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 cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney included a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first cartoon with matched sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular animated film series in Huntley 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 animated film 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 tremendous box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Huntley residents.

The First Disney Animated Film Feature

In 1934, Disney started development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Happy.  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 Huntley - but we're not sure.

What Huntley parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful was the highest grossing movie of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind two years later.

During the production of Snow White, the artists  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends among them 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, Stromboli and Monstro. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus .  It was an experimental animated film produced to accompanying an orchestral arrangement.  Fantasia also brought about the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of Huntley viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Dumbo, Jim Crow and The Clown proved to be a monetary success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli 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 Huntley and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Friend Owl and Mrs. Possum.

Also in the 1940s, Walt Disney  released 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 re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Chernabog, Daisy Duck and The Magic Brooms. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Huntley movie-goers , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Caterpillar and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.  Parents in Huntley also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Peter Pan, Mary Darling and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Huntley could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Lady, Tramp and Jim Dear.