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, traveled to theaters. Although the featurette was directed by James Algar, the footage came from the work of Disney Legends Alfred and Elma Milotte, who had been sent by Walt Disney to film anything of interest in Alaska. They had vividly captured scenes depicting the everyday home life of families in a typical Eskimo village and unforgettable footage of seals. Walt selected their seal footage for Seal Island, the 1949 True-Life Adventures film, and the footage detailing the everyday life of Eskimos was later edited together to become this first People and Places featurette. Both films won Academy Awards® — Seal Island for Best Documentary and The Alaskan Eskimo for Best Documentary Short Subject.
