Disney's 100th anniversary is this year, and to celebrate, I'm going to tell the story of this legendary animation company over a yearlong period.
Disney's last movie with RKO was an adaptation of Peter Pan, which still amazes me 70 …
Disney's 100th anniversary is this year, and to celebrate, I'm going to tell the story of this legendary animation company over a yearlong period.
Disney's last movie with RKO was an adaptation of Peter Pan, which still amazes me 70 years after it's debut. As usual, Disney had to get the rights to Peter Pan, but he got them from an unusual place, the hospital in London where J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, donated the rights to his property to after his death, and Paramount Pictures, who had the live action rights to Peter Pan but didn't know nothing about making cartoons like Walt Disney did, gave Disney the rights to make an animated feature.
Mary Blair once again provides visual design, ace in the hole, Kathryn Beaumont, who played Alice in Alice in Wonderland, plays Wendy, Bill Thompson, who played the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, plays Mr. Smee, and the Nine Old Men are on their A game animating the feature, only it was their last feature where they were all directing animators all at once.
Peter Pan made $8.6 million worldwide on a budget of $4 million in its first run, just about a good amount to break even, because Disney was not only planning a live action adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, he was also planning a monument to himself, only instead of being a private playground for the rich, this monument was going to be open to the public. It was called Disneyland. He was also making a big move into television, one of the few Hollywood people to really embrace the disruptive medium of television, where he would tell people about Disneyland and promote his films. Yet despite this other attention, he kept his artists on because they brought him success, and the artists were also used to help out with Disneyland, and to keep their skills sharp, more animated films needed to be made. He also needed to break away from the now failing RKO Radio Pictures, under the leadership of one Howard Hughes, who was driving the studio into the gro..
