On this day in 1953, hunting season on bears was open with the Donald Duck cartoon short Rugged Bear. That bumbling bruin, Humphrey, who first appeared in the 1950 short Hold That Pose, returned to the big screen. Terrified of being shot, he takes cover in Donald’s cabin where he prefers to grin and “bear” …
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Long ago, in a land before theme parks, a man named Walt Disney had an idea for a happy place called Disneyland. Disneyland would be a magical world, called something no one had ever heard of before—a “theme park.” There had been amusement parks, but never a park with themed lands filled with lush details. …
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Disney Legend Marvin Davis was an art director at 20th Century Fox when he was laid off and then brought over to work in 1953 on conceptualization and architectural design for Walt Disney’s upcoming park. Marvin designed the first layout plan for Disneyland and over the next month worked on more than 100 versions of …
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Hear ye! Hear ye! On this day in the year one thousand, nine hundred and fifty-three, it shall be held forever true that the film The Sword and the Rose was released in theaters across our fine country. When much of Disney’s earned funds in England were blocked off during the war, Walt decided he …
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“The subject for today is melody,” as Professor Owl stated at the beginning of 1953’s Adventures in Music: Melody. This cartoon short was intended to be the first in a series of educational shorts, yet only one additional follow-up was released… the Academy Award®-winning Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom. Melody is a film of “note” …
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In the cartoon short For Whom the Bulls Toil, which stampeded into theaters on this day in 1953, Goofy finds himself in Mexico where a nasty bull horns in on his vacation. When he naively attempts to move the bull out of his path and wipes his brow with a red handkerchief, the Mexican villagers …
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Animator/director Ron Clements was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on this day in 1953, and 10 years later, after viewing Pinocchio, began to show a strong interest in animation. As a teenager, he began making animated movies using a super-8 camera, and after graduating from high school, Clements headed to Southern California in search of …
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Disney’s first People and Places film. People and Places is a documentary film series about, as you might have guessed, people and places. These 17 travelogues, released from 1953 to 1960, primarily focused on little-known places or out-of-the-ordinary people, and it was on this day that the first People and Places film, The Alaskan Eskimo, …
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On this day in 1953, when the classic animated film Peter Pan flew into theaters, the marquee would also bear the name of the accompanying featurette, Bear Country. The Academy Award®-winning True-Life Adventure tells the story of American black bears. In a 1955 article by Bear Country photographers Alfred and Elma Milotte, the couple discussed …
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Peter Pan first flew onto screens on this day in 1953, with some faith, trust — and a little bit of pixie dust. The story of Peter Pan was first told in 1904 in J. M. Barrie’s play, Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, although the character of Peter Pan was first …
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