A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
Each of THE THREE LITTLE PIGS builds a home from materials that suits his personality. The two lazy porkers choose straw or sticks; the Practical Pig uses sturdy bricks & mortar. His brothers think he's wasted his time - until the Big Bad Wolf shows up...
This is one of the all-time great cartoon classics. Lots of attention was lavished on it, and the characterizations & visuals were just right for this version of the old children's tale (notice the sly humor in the details: the picture of `Father'; the piano made of brick; the corkscrewing tails). But the film and its instantly popular tune `Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?' caught the public's fancy as an inspiration to laugh in the face of the Great Depression, America's own Wolf at the door. This must have come as a surprise to Walt, as he intended the song to underscore the silly pigs' foolishness, not their foolhardy defiance. Be that as it may, the cartoon was a huge commercial success, perhaps the most famous animated short of all time. It easily won the 1933 Academy Award and produced a litter of three sequels, the first of which was THE BIG BAD WOLF (1934).
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.
Each of THE THREE LITTLE PIGS builds a home from materials that suits his personality. The two lazy porkers choose straw or sticks; the Practical Pig uses sturdy bricks & mortar. His brothers think he's wasted his time - until the Big Bad Wolf shows up...
This is one of the all-time great cartoon classics. Lots of attention was lavished on it, and the characterizations & visuals were just right for this version of the old children's tale (notice the sly humor in the details: the picture of `Father'; the piano made of brick; the corkscrewing tails). But the film and its instantly popular tune `Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?' caught the public's fancy as an inspiration to laugh in the face of the Great Depression, America's own Wolf at the door. This must have come as a surprise to Walt, as he intended the song to underscore the silly pigs' foolishness, not their foolhardy defiance. Be that as it may, the cartoon was a huge commercial success, perhaps the most famous animated short of all time. It easily won the 1933 Academy Award and produced a litter of three sequels, the first of which was THE BIG BAD WOLF (1934).
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.