The Danube, the final film in the People and Places film series of travelogues consisting of 17 films made between 1953 and 1960, is a beautiful cinematic study of the people who live along the banks of the Danube, the second longest river in Europe. The documentary, which was shot in CinemaScope, concludes with a visit to the most famous of all cities along the Danube — Vienna. The film was directed by Ben Sharpsteen, who had joined the Company in 1929 and was considered one of Walt’s right-hand men. Sharpsteen was sequence director on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, supervising co-director on Pinocchio and supervising director on Dumbo, among many other important assignments. Later, he worked Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and several of the True-Life Adventures. He received an Oscar® for Best Documentary Short Subject for producing The Ama Girls (1958), the People and Places documentary released two years before The Danube. Sharpsteen retired in 1962 and was named a Disney Legend posthumously in 1998.
