major studios Part 1
Major studios
Walt Disney Productions
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Beginnings
Walt Disney had originally planned to become a newspaper cartoonist drawing political caricatures and comic strips.[17] However, nobody would hire him, so his older brother Roy, who was working as a banker at the time, got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters.[18] Here he met fellow cartoonist Ub Iwerks. The two quickly became friends, and in January 1920, when their time at the studio expired, they decided to open up their own advertising agency together called Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists.[19] The business, however, got off to a rough start and Disney temporarily left for the Kansas City Film and Ad Co. to raise money for the fleeting company and Iwerks soon followed as he was unable to run the business alone.[20]
While working there he made commercials for local theaters using crude cut-out animation. Disney became fascinated by the art and decided to become an animator.[21] He then borrowed a camera from work and rented a book from the local library called Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development by Edwin G. Lutz, decided that cel animation would produce better quality, and decided to open up his own animation studio.[22] Disney then teamed up with Fred Harman and made their first film, The Little Artist which was nothing more than an artist (Disney) taking a cigarette break at his work desk. Harman soon dropped out of the venture, but Disney was able to strike a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman and animated a cartoon by himself entitled Newman Laugh-O-Grams screened in roughly February 1921.[23][24] Disney then quit his job at the film and ad company and incorporated Laugh-O-Gram Films in May 1922, and hired former advertising colleagues as unpaid "students" of animation including Ub Iwerks and Fred Harman's brother, Hugh Harman.[25]
Throughout 1922, the Disney company produced a series of "modernized" adaptations of fairy tales including Little Red Riding Hood, The Four Musicians of Bremen, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, Goldielocks and the Three Bears, Puss in Boots, Cinderella and Tommy Tucker's Tooth, the latter being mostly a live-action film about dental hygiene. None of these films turned a profit.[26] The last film made by the Disney company was a short called Alice's Wonderland. Loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the short featured a live-action five-year-old girl named Alice (Virginia Davis) who had adventures in a fully animated world. The film was never fully completed, however, as the studio went bankrupt in the summer of 1923.[25][27]
Upon the closure of Laugh-O-Grams, Walt Disney worked as a freelance filmmaker before selling his camera for a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.[28] Upon arrival, he moved in with his Uncle Robert and his brother Roy, who was recovering at a nearby government hospital from tuberculosis he had suffered during World War I.[29] After failing to get a job as a director of live-action films he sent the unfinished Alice's Wonderland reel to short-subjects distributor Margaret J. Winkler of Winkler Pictures in New York. Winkler was distributing both the Felix the Cat and Out of the Inkwell cartoons at the time, but the Fleischer brothers were about to leave to set up their own distribution company, Red Seal Films, and Felix producer Pat Sullivan was constantly fighting with Winkler; therefore, Winkler agreed to distribute Disney's Alice Comedies as a kind of insurance policy.[30]
Once Walt Disney received the notice on October 15, he convinced Roy to leave the hospital and help him set up his business.[31] The next day, on October 16, 1923, Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio opened its doors at a small rented office two blocks away from his uncle's house with Roy managing business and Walt handling creative affairs.[30] He persuaded Virginia Davis's parents to bring her to Los Angeles to star in the films. The first official Alice short, Alice's Day at Sea, was released on January 1, 1924, delayed by eleven days.[30] Ub Iwerks was re-hired in February 1925 and the quality of animation on the Alice series improved; this prompted Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Carman Maxwell to follow Disney west in June 1925.[32][33] Around that time, Davis was replaced with Maggie Gay and the cartoons started to focus less on the live-action scenes and more the fully animated scenes, particularly those featuring Alice's pet sidekick Julius, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Felix the Cat.[34] In February 1926, Disney built a larger studio at 2719 Hyperion Avenue and changed the name of the company to Walt Disney Cartoons.[35][36]
In November 1923, Winkler married Charles Mintz and handed over the business to him when she became pregnant a few months later.[37][38] Mintz was often described as a cold, stern and ruthless chain-smoking tyrant; one employee remembered him as "a grim-faced man, with a pair of cold eyes glittering behind the pince nez" who "never talked to the staff. He looked us over like an admiral surveying a row of stanchions."[39] While Winkler had offered gentle critiques and encouragement, Mintz communicated to Disney in a harsh and cruel tone.[38][40] In 1927, Mintz ordered Disney to stop producing Alice Comedies due to the costs of combining live-action and animation.
Mintz managed to gain a distribution deal with Universal Studios; however it was Mintz—not Disney—who signed the deal. Disney and lead animator Ub Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who debuted in Trolley Troubles short in 1927. The Oswald series was a success and became the first hit for the Walt Disney studio.[citation needed]
In the spring of 1928, Disney travelled to New York to ask Mintz for a budget increase. His request was harshly denied by Mintz, who pointed out that in the contract Mintz had signed with Universal, it was Universal—not Disney—that owned the rights to the character. Mintz revealed to Disney that he had hired most of his staff away from the studio (except for Ub Iwerks, Les Clark and Wilfred Jackson who refused to leave) and threatened that unless he took a 20 percent budget decrease, he would drop Disney and continue the Oswald series by himself. Disney refused, and Winkler Pictures dropped its distribution.[citation needed]
Mickey Mouse
While Walt Disney was finishing the remaining cartoons for Mintz, he and his staff secretly came up with a new cartoon character to replace Oswald: Mickey Mouse.
The inspiration for Mickey has never been clear. Disney said that he came up with the idea on the train ride back to Los Angeles shortly after the confrontation with Mintz, but other records say that he came up with the idea after he returned to the studio. Disney once said that he was inspired by a pet mouse he once had at the old Laugh-O-Grams studio, but more commonly said that he chose a mouse because a mouse had never been the central character of a cartoon series before.
In 1928, Plane Crazy became the first entry into the Mickey Mouse series; however, it was not released because of a poor reaction from test screenings and failed to gain a distributor. The second Mickey Mouse cartoon The Gallopin' Gaucho also failed to gain the attention of a distributor. Disney knew what was missing: sound. Sound film had been captivating audiences since 1927 with The Jazz Singer and Walt decided that the next cartoon Steamboat Willie would have sound. Steamboat Willie was not the first sound cartoon, Max and Dave Fleischer had produced Song Car-Tunes since 1926 after the release of the sound film Don Juan. However, they failed to keep the sound synchronized with the animation and the main focus of the cartoons were the bouncing ball sing-a-longs. The Song Car-Tunes were not a success and some staff members doubted whether a cartoon with sound would be successful. Disney arranged a special preview screening with the music and sound effects being played live behind stage through a microphone. The Steamboat Willie test screening was a success and managed to gain a distributor, Celebrity Pictures chief Pat Powers. However, the first attempt to synchronize the sound with the animation was a disaster. In order to finance the second recording, Disney sold his car. This time he used a click track to keep his musicians on the beat (he later learned that it was easier to record the dialogue, music and sound effects first and animate to the sound). Little more than a month before Steamboat Willie′s premiere, Paul Terry released his sound cartoon Dinner Time; however it was not a financial success and Disney described it as "a bunch of racket".
The Golden Age of Disney
| Golden Age of Disney Film era | |
|---|---|
| Years | 1937–1942 |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) | |
| Short film(s) | |
| Animated series | Silly Symphony |
| Audio | |
| Original music | "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" |
Beginnings (1920s–1930s)
Steamboat Willie was released on November 18, 1928, and was a massive success. Disney quickly gained huge dominance in the animation field using sound in his future cartoons by dubbing Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho and the nearly completed The Barn Dance. Mickey Mouse's popularity put the animated character into the ranks of the most popular screen personalities in the world. Disney's biggest competitor, Pat Sullivan with his Felix the Cat, was eclipsed by Mickey's popularity and the studio closed in 1932.
Merchandising based on Disney cartoons rescued a number of companies from bankruptcy during the depths of the Depression, and Disney took advantage of this popularity to move forward with further innovations in animation. In 1929, he launched a new series entitled the Silly Symphonies which was based around music with no recurring characters. However, they did not become as popular as the Mickey Mouse cartoon series.
In 1930, after a falling-out with Powers, Disney switched distributors to Columbia Pictures. However, Ub Iwerks left Disney after an offer from Powers to be in charge of his own studio.[41]
In 1932, Mickey Mouse had become an international sensation, but the Silly Symphonies had not. Columbia Pictures had backed out of its distribution of the series and Disney was lured to move the Silly Symphonies to United Artists by a budget increase. Disney then worked with the Technicolor company to create the first full three-strip color cartoon, Flowers and Trees. Another great success, it became the first cartoon to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Shortly afterward, Disney negotiated an exclusive, but temporary, deal with Technicolor so only he could use the three-strip process in animated films—no other studio was permitted to use it.[42][43] However, he withheld making Mickey Mouse in color because he thought that Technicolor might boost the Silly Symphonies′ popularity.
By 1932, Disney had realized that the success of animated films depended upon telling emotionally gripping stories that would grab the audience and not let go.[44][45] This realization led to an important innovation around 1932–1933: a "story department", separate from the animators, with storyboard artists who would be dedicated to working on a "story development" phase of the production pipeline.[46] In turn, Disney's continued emphasis on story development and characterization resulted in another hit in 1933: Three Little Pigs, which is seen as the first cartoon in which multiple characters displayed unique, individual personalities and has been described as the most successful animated short of all time,[47] and also featured the hit song that became the anthem in fighting the Great Depression: "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".[48] In the Mickey Mouse series, he continued to add personality to his characters; this resulted in the creation of new characters such as Pluto with The Chain Gang in 1930, Goofy with Mickey's Revue in 1932, and Donald Duck in 1934 with The Wise Little Hen (under the Silly Symphony series). When Disney's contract with Technicolor expired, the Mickey Mouse series was moved into Technicolor starting with The Band Concert in 1935. In addition, Mickey was partially redesigned for Technicolor later that year.[49] In 1937, William Garity developed Disney's multiplane camera, which gave a sophisticated illusion of depth to his animated productions. He first used this on the Academy Award-winning Silly Symphony cartoon The Old Mill.[50] Much of Disney's work was heavily influenced by European stories and myths, and the work of illustrators such as Doré and Busch. Also in 1937, Disney changed distributors for the Silly Symphonies to RKO Radio Pictures, remaining with this distributor until the early 1950s, when they were re-issued and re-released by Disney's new distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
In 1937, Disney produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first American feature-length animated musical fantasy film. This was the culmination of four years of effort by Disney studios. Disney was convinced that short cartoons would not keep his studio profitable in the long run, so he took what was seen as an enormous gamble. The critics predicted that Snow White would result in financial ruin for the studio. They said that the colors would be too bright for the audience and they would get sick of the gags and leave.[51] However, the critics were proven wrong. Snow White was a worldwide box office success, and was universally acclaimed as a landmark in the development of animation as a serious art form.[52]
Pinocchio and Fantasia (1940)
After the success of Snow White, Disney went on to produce Pinocchio, which was released in 1940. However, costing twice as much to make as Snow White, Pinocchio was not a financial success, since World War II (which began in Europe in 1939) had cut off 40 percent of Disney's foreign release market. Although it was a moderate success in the United States, the domestic gross alone was not enough to make back its production budget. However, the film did receive very positive reviews and has made millions from subsequent re-releases. Later that year, Disney produced Fantasia. It originally started with the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Sorcerer's Apprentice in an attempt to recapture Mickey's popularity, which had sharply declined due to the popularity of Max Fleischer's Popeye and Disney's Donald Duck.[53][54] In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse was redesigned by Fred Moore. This redesign of Mickey is still in use today.[49] The short featured no dialogue, only music which was conducted by Leopold Stokowski. When the budget for the short grew very expensive, Stokowski suggested to Disney that it could be a feature film with other pieces of classical music matched to animation. Disney agreed and production started. Fantasia also became the first commercial film to be released in stereophonic sound. However, like Pinocchio, Fantasia was not a financial success. Fantasia was also the first Disney film not to be received well, receiving mixed reviews from the critics. It was looked down upon by music critics and audiences, who felt that Disney was striving for something beyond his reach by trying to introduce mainstream animation to abstract art, classical music, and "elite" subjects. However, the film would be re-evaluated in later years and considered an animated masterpiece.[55]
Dumbo and Bambi (1941–1942)
In 1941, in order to compensate for the relative poor box office of Pinocchio and Fantasia, Disney produced a low-budget feature film, Dumbo. Just a few days after rough animation was complete on Dumbo, the Disney animators' strike broke out. This was caused by the Screen Cartoonist's Guild (which had been formed in 1938), who severed many ties between Walt Disney and his staff, while encouraging many members of the Disney studio to leave and seek greener pastures. Later that year, Dumbo became a big success, the first for Disney since Snow White. The critically acclaimed film brought in much-needed revenue and kept the studio afloat. A few months after Dumbo was released in 1941, the United States entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This led to the mobilization of all movie studios (including their cartoon divisions) to produce propaganda material to bolster public confidence and encourage support for the war effort. The war (along with the strike) shook Disney's empire, as the US Army had seized Disney's studio as soon as the US entered World War II in December 1941.[56] As a result, Disney put the feature films Song of the South (1946), Mickey and the Beanstalk and Bongo (ultimately combined as the feature Fun and Fancy Free, 1947), The Wind in the Willows (ultimately released as part of the feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953), on hold until the war was over.
The only feature film that was allowed to continue production was Bambi, which was released in 1942. Bambi was groundbreaking in terms of animating animals realistically. However, due to the war, the film failed at the box office and received mixed reviews from the critics. This failure was to be short-lived as it grossed a considerable amount of money in the 1947 re-release.
Wartime Era of Disney
| Wartime Era of Disney Film era | |
|---|---|
| Years | 1943–1949 |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) | |
| Short film(s) | |
Disney was now fully committed to the war effort and contributed by producing propaganda shorts and a feature film entitled Victory Through Air Power. This feature did poorly at the box office and the studio lost around $500,000 as a result.[56] The required propaganda cartoon shorts were less popular than Disney's regular shorts, and by the time the Army ended its stay at Walt Disney Studios with the end of the war in 1945, Disney struggled to restart his studio, and had little cash on hand.[57] Further Disney feature films of the 1940s were modestly budgeted collections of animated short segments put together to make a feature film. These began with Saludos Amigos in 1942 and continued during the war with The Three Caballeros in 1944 and after the war with Make Mine Music in 1946, Fun and Fancy Free in 1947, Melody Time in 1948, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in 1949. The planned feature films Mickey and the Beanstalk, Bongo, and The Wind in the Willows were condensed into the package films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad since he feared that the low-budget animation would not become profitable.[58] The most ambitious Disney film of this period was the 1946 film Song of the South, a musical film blending live-action and animation which drew criticism in later years for accusations of racial stereotyping.
The Silver Age of Disney (1950–1971)
| Silver Age of Disney Film era | |
|---|---|
| Years | 1950–1971 |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) | |
| Short film(s) | |
Early 1950s
In 1950, Disney produced Cinderella. This was an enormous success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1950, and became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney's first single-narrative feature film to be entirely animated since Bambi, as the films since then had either been anthology films or involved some live-action.[59] Disney's company started to diversify, producing live-action feature films beginning with Treasure Island (1950) and nature documentaries, the first of which was Seal Island (1948). As a result, Disney was needed on several different units at one time and spent less time on animation. In 1951, he released Alice in Wonderland, a project he had been working on since the late 1930s, though it was shelved during the war. Alice in Wonderland was initially moderately successful and received mixed reviews from the critics. A few decades later, the film was hailed as one of Disney's greatest classics, making millions in subsequent theatrical and home video releases. In 1953, he released Peter Pan, which, like Alice in Wonderland, had been in production since the late 1930s/early 1940s and was shelved during the war. However, unlike Alice, Peter Pan was a big success both critically and financially on its first release.[citation needed]
When Disney's contract with RKO expired at the end of 1953, he was concerned about RKO's instability due to owner Howard Hughes' increasingly erratic control of the studio. Rather than renewing the RKO contract, Disney started distributing films through the newly created Buena Vista Distribution subsidiary. This allowed a higher budget for shorts and features than the last few years of cartoons made for RKO dictated, which made it possible to make some of the cartoons in the new CinemaScope format. However, the budget per short was nowhere near as high as it had been in the 1940s as Disney had been focusing more on live action, television, and feature animation and less on short animation. In 1953, shortly after the switch from RKO to Buena Vista, Disney released its final Mickey Mouse short, The Simple Things. From there, the studio produced fewer animated shorts by the year until the animated shorts division was eventually closed in 1956.[60] After that, any future short cartoon work was done through the feature animation division until 1969. The last Disney animated short of the golden age of American animation, the Oscar-winning It's Tough to Be a Bird!, was released in 1969.[citation needed]
Late 1950s – 1960s
In 1955, Disney created Lady and the Tramp, the first animated film in CinemaScope. Upon building Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney regained a huge amount of popularity among the public,[61] and turned his focus to producing his most ambitious movie: Sleeping Beauty. This was filmed in Super Technirama 70 mm film and in stereophonic sound like Fantasia. Sleeping Beauty also signaled a change in the style of drawing, with cartoony and angular characters, taking influence from UPA. Although it was the second-highest-grossing film of 1959 (just behind Ben-Hur), Sleeping Beauty went over budget, costing $6 million, and the film failed to make back its expenditure. The studio was in serious debt and had to cut the cost of animation. In 1960, this resulted in Disney switching to xerography, which replaced the traditional hand-inking. The first feature films that used Xerox cels were 101 Dalmatians (1961) and The Sword in the Stone (1963) which were box-office successes.[62] However, the Xerox resulted in films with a "sketchier" look and lacked the quality of the hand-inked films. According to Floyd Norman, who was working at Disney at the time, it felt like the end of an era.[63]
The Silver Age came to a defining close with the passing of Walt Disney on December 15, 1966. His death left the studio without its visionary leader, causing uncertainty about its future direction. Many of the projects he had personally overseen were completed posthumously, and the company began a gradual transition toward a new creative era, carrying forward his legacy while facing the challenge of maintaining the distinct artistic and storytelling standards he had set.
Paramount Pictures
Fleischer Studios
Creation
One of Walt Disney's main competitors was Max Fleischer, the head of Fleischer Studios, which produced cartoons for Paramount Pictures. Fleischer Studios was a family-owned business, operated by Max Fleischer and his younger brother Dave, who supervised the production of the cartoons. The Fleischers scored successes with the Betty Boop cartoons and the Popeye the Sailor series. Popeye's popularity during the 1930s rivaled Mickey Mouse at times, and Popeye fan clubs sprang up across the country in imitation of Mickey's fan clubs; in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse.[64] However, during the early 1930s, stricter censorship rules enforced by the new Production Code in 1934 required animation producers to remove risqué humor. The Fleischers, in particular, had to tone down the content of their Betty Boop cartoons, which waned in popularity afterwards.[65] The Fleischers also produced a number of Color Classics cartoons during the 1930s which attempted to emulate Walt Disney's use of color, but the series was not a success.[66]
Feature-length films
In 1934, Max Fleischer became interested in producing an animated feature film shortly after Walt Disney's announcement of Snow White, but Paramount vetoed the idea. In 1936, Fleischer Studios produced the first of three two-reel Popeye Technicolor features: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor in 1936, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves in 1937, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp in 1939. In 1938, after Disney's success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount gave the Fleischers permission to produce an animated feature film and Fleischer studio relocated itself from New York to Miami, Florida in order to avoid organized unions, which became a threat to the studio after a five-month strike occurred among Fleischer Studio workers in late 1937.[67] Fleischer Studios also sought to rapidly expand the studio's staff by hiring numerous West Coast artists, including animators and writers from Disney, Warner, and MGM. Here the Fleischers produced Gulliver's Travels which was released in 1939. It was a small success and encouraged the Fleischers to produce more.[citation needed]
Superman and the fall of Fleischer
On May 24, 1941, the Fleischers gave Paramount full ownership of the studio as collateral to pay off their increasing debts left from the loans they had obtained from the studio, as well as to offset the lack of revenue from unsuccessful cartoons like Stone Age, Gabby, and Animated Antics.[68] However, they still maintained their positions as heads of their studio's production.[69] Under Paramount rule, the Fleischers brought Popeye into the Navy and contributed to the war effort, and gained more success by beginning a series of spectacular Superman cartoons (the first of which was nominated for an Oscar) that have become legendary in themselves. Despite the success Superman gave the studio, a major blow to the studio occurred when the married Dave started having an adulterous affair with a secretary. This led to many disputes between the Fleischer brothers until Max and Dave were no longer speaking to each other.[70]
The studio planned to release their next film, Mr. Bug Goes to Town, on Christmas day. But following initial press screening on December 4, the film was shelved for unknown reasons, though these screenings occurred just two days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor.[71] Mr. Bug saw a very limited release by Paramount in the UK, California, and New York the following year, causing it to fail at the box office.[71] Dave Fleischer, still maintaining his position as co-chief of his studio, had already left Fleischer Studios to work for Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems studio on November 22, 1941. Max also resigned in December and confirmed to Paramount president Barney Balaban in January the following year.[69][72] Max and Dave agreed to surrender all studio assets to Paramount, which severed the brothers' control from Fleischer Studios completely.[73]
Paramount renamed the studio to Famous Studios on May 22, 1942,[72] but did not fully incorporate the studio until three days later, when the company's contract with the Fleischer brothers ran its course.[74] The studio, in the meantime, continued to release a backlog of completed Fleischer cartoons until August of that year, with the Superman short Terror on the Midway (1942) being the last cartoon released under the Fleischer Studios brand.
Famous Studios
Turnaround efforts by Paramount
In the wake of the Fleischer brothers' departure, Paramount promoted three top employees, Isadore Sparber, Seymour Kneitel (Max Fleischer's son-in-law), and Dan Gordon as production supervisors, while Sam Buchwald was designated as executive producer. Paramount also discontinued the expensive Superman cartoons in 1943, instead adapting Marge's Little Lulu comic strip to theaters,[75] as well as downsizing the studio and moving it back to New York City earlier that year.
In concept, Famous Studios continued where Fleischer Studios ended off, with the studio continuing to produce Popeye cartoons, which shifted to color in 1943, as well as creating Noveltoons, an anthology short series similar to Fleischer's Color Classics. The Noveltoons shorts series introduced many of Famous' recurring characters such as Blackie the Lamb, Wolfie (Blackie's main rival), Casper the Friendly Ghost (created by Joe Oriolo and Seymour Reit from an unpublished children's book), Little Audrey (a character similar to and replacing Little Lulu), Herman and Katnip (a cat and mouse duel similar to Tom and Jerry), and Baby Huey. Famous also revived Screen Songs, another series inherited from Fleischer Studios. The series was renamed Kartunes in 1951 and continued for two more years before being discontinued. Buchwald died from a heart attack in 1951,[76] leaving Sparber and Kneitel as the sole producers. Dave Tendlar was promoted to director in 1953.
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