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Silly Symphonies

Sillly SymphoniesFlowers and Trees

Walt's distributor demanded "more mice" after Mickey Mouse burst upon the scene as an international celebrity. But Walt was never satisfied with simply repeating a successful formula. He wanted to experiment. And thus were born the Silly Symphonies, a series of cartoons each of which would feature different characters and would be based on musical themes. The series began with "The Skeleton Dance," released on August 22, 1929. Walt set up a Silly Symphony unit, freed from the limitations of traditional cartoon series. He thought the Silly Symphonies should stand on their own. But distributors feared that they wouldn't sell without a name character like Mickey Mouse. Walt compromised a bit by allowing his Silly Symphonies to bear Mickey's name on the title screen; but he didn't appear as a character. The experimentation possible in Silly Symphonies was invaluable to Walt. One, called "Flowers and Trees," for example, was originally produced in black-and-white. But then Walt decided he wanted to begin making color cartoons. So, over the objections of his money-conscious brother Roy, he had his staff re-do the entire piece in powerful Technicolor.

Singing with the SymphonyAnimators at work

In 1933, "Three Little Pigs" debuted. It won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon that year and helped Walt develop the use of characterization in cartoons. "At last we have achieved true personality in a whole picture," he said. "Three Little Pigs" was perfect for audiences who, beaten down by the ravages of the Depression, were uplifted by the theme song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Later, a Silly Symphony called "The Goddess of Spring" gave animators a chance to practice the tough challenges of animating the human form -- a task that remains difficult to this day. Several years later, while gearing up for "Snow White," Walt experimented with efforts to show depth in animation with the cartoon "The Old Mill." It was Walt's opportunity to try out his new technological toy, the multiplane camera, which allowed animators to layer backgrounds and characters in a new and exciting way. As years went on, Silly Symphonies became the studio's most prestigious product. In the early 1930s, Walt began to build them around fairy tales -- an idea that was to pave the way for the feature-length animated films to come. By the time the Silly Symphony series wound down in 1939, Walt had made some 75 of these cartoons.

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