The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Photoplay Magazine, 1938)The attached article is essentially a behind the scenes look at the making of Walt Disney's 1938 triumph "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs":
"He employed 569 people who worked all day and frequently all night to finish it."
The film took three and half years to make and cost $1,500,000.00.
"He concocted 1500 different paints to give it unmatched color."
"He spent $70,000.00 developing a brand new camera to give it depth."
"He threw away four times the drawings he made and the film he shot."
"He made over 2,000,000 separate drawings..."
Although Disney's wife, Lilian, was said to have remarked, "No one's ever gonna pay a dime to see a dwarf picture", the movie generated more box office receipts than any other film in 1938.
Mickey Mouse: Movie Star (Photoplay, 1930)Although Euro Disney would not be opening until 1990, this article by Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer implied that it would have done quite well had they opened sixty years earlier:
"You know everyone in Hollywood?" they asked. I blushed modestly and admitted that I did.
"Don't you want to know about the stars? I went on."Shall I tell you about Garbo?"
"'A smile passed across their faces.'
'Garbo? Yes, we like her. But the star we 'd love to know everything about is - Mickey Mouse!'"
*Watch Micky Mouse's Premier Performance in Steamboat Willie*
Growth and Expansion at the Walt Disney Company (Film Daily, 1939)Herein is a 1939 article from a defunct Hollywood trade magazine marking the construction of a 20 acre facility for the Disney studio in Burbank, California:
"By 1930, the Walt Disney studio had grown in fantastic fashion. Instead of the 25 employees of 1929, there were now 40 people...By the end of the year there were 66 employees...In 1931 the total number of personnel had jumped to 106...When 'The Three Little Pigs' came along in 1933, the studio had grown 1,600 square feet of floor space in 1929, to 20,000 square feet. A hundred and fifty people were now turning out the Disney productions... In 1937, all the employees were still jostling each other... From around 600 employees in the summer of 1937, the organization had grown to almost 900 by the winter of 1938." In the new studio's animation building, there will be room for around 900 artists alone. And the animation building is but one of 21 buildings."
Today, Disney employs some 133,000 souls and seems not to suffer any difficulties finding enough room. It has been said that Walt Disney always wanted his crew to remember that "it all began with a mouse."
More Peer Adoration for Walt Disney (Stage Magazine, 1938)The attached article was first seen during a time when a "Palm Award", granted by the editors of "Stage Magazine", was a reliable form of social currency and would actually serve the highly favored recipients in such a grand manner as to allow them brief respites at dining tables found at swank watering holes as New York's Twenty-One Club and El Morocco.
Today, a "Palm Award", plus four dollars, will get you a medium-sized cappuccino at Starbucks. Walt Disney was awarded a "Palm" in 1938 for his achievement in producing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
Mickey Mouse: Goodwill Ambassador (Stage Magazine, 1935)Seven years after his film debut in "Steamboat Willie", Mickey Mouse continued to pack the theaters of the world. Prior to the release of Disney's animated film,"William Tell", STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Katherine Best was rightfully in awe over the world-wide popularity the rodent was enjoying and at the time this essay appeared in print, he had already been seen in over sixty cartoons:
"He is, to date, the most intelligible and potential of international peace-makers. He's been more or less that for some time. He and his less articulate imitators have brought Japanese and Chinese, Abyssian and Italian, Norse and Nazi together on what is, perhaps, their only common ground: laughter."
*Watch this 1928 Cartoon Starring Mickey Mouse*
Donald Duck is Born (Stage Magazine, 1935)The introduction of Donald Duck in Silly Symphony Number Thirteen had'em rolling in the isles, to be sure - and if you don't think so, here's proof from STAGE MAGAZINE's Helen G. Thompson:
"If you didn't see him in "The Orphan's Benefit", you missed the performance of the generation. Like Bergner's show, it ran for Donald the whole gamut of his emotions. Voted the toughest duck of the season, Long Island included, and now crashing Europe, a breathless American public awaits his acclaim. Will his fare be raspberries or c chuckleberries? Donald says whatever the decision, he'll fight."
*Watch a Clip From This Documentary About Walt Disney's Silly Symphony Series*
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