The Walt Disney Studio has, for over 75 years, dominated the world of animation. In that time the company has released over 50 animated films it has labelled 'Classics', and several others it does not consider to be classics.

Some relatively unknown films such as Fun and Fancy Free and Melody Time are Classics, while some of Disney's most popular films, such as Mary Poppins and The Nightmare Before Christmas, are not. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Winnie the Pooh are both official Classics, The Tigger Movie and Winnie the Pooh's Grandest Adventure of All aren't. Some films containing live action as well as animation, such as Saludos Amigos are, others such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are not. So, what makes a classic Disney film gain its Classic status?

What Makes a 'Classic'?

Disney is one of the world's very largest entertainment companies, with many different film-making departments. All the films considered to be Animated Classics were made by the main studio, Walt Disney Productions, now known as Walt Disney Animation Studios. Another studio, DisneyToon Studios, specialised between 1990 and 2007 in making sequels to classic Disney films. For instance, 64 years after the release of Bambi, Bambi II was made. These DisneyToon Studios sequels to Disney Classics are not considered classics.

Other studios owned by Disney that have released animated films include Touchstone Pictures, Skellington Productions and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Disney have also released films co-produced with other film studios, such as ImageMovers Digital. Since 2006 Pixar has been owned by Disney. Neither Pixar animated films, such as Toy Story or Cars, nor their spin offs, such as Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins or Planes, are considered Disney classics.

Disney Before Snow White

Walt Disney was born in 1901, his older brother Roy O Disney in 1892. Walt and a cartoonist called Ub Iwerks began making short cartoon comedies in Kansas in the early 1920s. In 1923 Walt moved to Hollywood where Roy lived. There they formed the Disney Brothers Studio, later renamed the Walt Disney Studio. In 1928 Mickey Mouse was created and the third short Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Willie, featured synchronised sound¹. Mickey Mouse became a major success. Experimental cartoon series 'Silly Symphonies' combined music and animation and in 1932 the first full-colour cartoon was produced, entitled Flowers and Trees.

Disney had been the first to introduce both sound and colour to animated films. Not content with these achievements, by the mid-1930s he had ambitions to make the world's first full-length cel-animated film².

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Other dwarfs considered included Scrappy, Cranky, Dirty, Awful, Blabby, Silly, Daffy, Flabby, Jaunty, Biggo Ego, Chesty, Jumpy, Baldy, Hickey the hiccoughing dwarf, Gabby, Shorty, Nifty, Wheezy, Sniffy, Burpy, Lazy, Puffy, Dizzy, Stuffy and Tubby. In early versions of the script the Prince played a larger role and was imprisoned by the Queen in the castle's dungeon.

The film not only was the first full-length cel-animated film, it was one of the first animations to make extensive use of a multiplane camera, creating the illusion of depth. The film was tremendously successful and was famously specially awarded an honorary Oscar accompanied by seven smaller Oscars.

After Snow White

Snow White was a phenomenal worldwide success, and with the profits Disney built a new purpose-built studio. He also began planning a whole series of feature films, spending much of 1938 buying the film rights to several books, including AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and JM Barrie's Peter Pan. Unable to decide which film to make next, Disney soon had multiple films underway at the same time, including Pinocchio, Bambi and the project initially called The Concert Feature that was later to become Fantasia. Yet Snow White would be followed by five flops³ which came close to ending Walt Disney Studios.

2. Pinocchio (1940)

In Collodi's novel, the cricket is stamped to death. He has a much larger role in the film, giving Pinocchio a way of telling right from wrong and making Pinocchio a more sympathetic character. 'Pleasure Island' was originally named 'Boobyland' in original drafts of the story⁴. The song 'When You Wish Upon A Star' quickly became Disney's anthem.

In Aladdin, the Genie briefly wears Pinocchio's face. The character of Pinocchio appears in the Shrek series.

Pinocchio, on initial release, was a financial flop. The film attracted some criticism for being too scary for children, yet too simple for adults. The main reason for the film's failure was that the world was a different place than it had been in 1937; although America was not yet at war, Europe was. A large proportion of Disney's revenue came from Europe and the war effectively meant that Disney's audience was restricted to North America.

3. Fantasia (1940)

Fantasia, a concert about fairies, sorcerers, evolution, centaurs, demons and monks⁶, evolved out of an idea in 1938 for a Silly Symphony, to star Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney had long been fascinated with combining music and animation, which is why he had created the Silly Symphonies, and many Mickey Mouse animations were exclusively musical, including the first, Steamboat Willie, as well as others such as The Band Concert. Disney planned to make a Silly Symphony featuring Mickey Mouse, who Disney feared was becoming eclipsed by other characters such as Donald Duck. The idea evolved into a whole film based on a concert, which Disney planned to keep adding extra filmed segments to, remaking it every year. Planned additional sequences included Richard Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel, Brahm's First Symphony, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Respighi's The Pines of Rome, Holst's The Planets, Dvorak's New World Symphony, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries and Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. The Silly Symphonies series was retired in 1939 in order to make way for the Fantasia film series.

One of the key moments is when Mickey Mouse shakes hands with the real life conductor Leopold Stokowski following 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'. Yet Fantasia was a second expensive flop, aided by Disney's initial insistence that only cinemas equipped with the highly advanced 'Fantasound' surround-sound speaker system be allowed to show the film. Even severely editing the run time down failed to make it popular with audiences. It was not until 2000 that a sequel was made.

After Fantasia

Although Disney had steered through the 1930s Depression era unscathed, the 1940s were a very difficult time for the fledgling studio. Many key animators were lured away by rival studios, such as Leon Schlesinger Studios, who made Warner Brothers' popular Looney Tunes shorts. For all their early success, Walt Disney Studios had stretched themselves financially by making Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi, three expensive films at the same time, with many others in development. None of these made back their money on initial release, resulting in extreme financial problems.

Following a three-month strike by the members of Screen Cartoonists Guild in 1941, the animation workforce was halved and the Disney Brothers were forced to sell shares in their company in order to raise money. Many of the projects in development before the strike were put on hold or abandoned partway through until the late 1940s, when these part-made films were finished in a hurry, packaged together and rush-released.

4. Dumbo (1941)

Dumbo was made at the same time as Bambi. Bambi was the prestigious film made by the established, most talented animators while Dumbo was made as a cheap film by animators considered lesser talents. Yet like the underdog hero of the story, Dumbo soared to become the most successful Disney films of the 1940s, one of the few to make a profit. The 'Pink Elephants on Parade' sequence is one of the more memorable, largely animated by the team who had just finished Fantasia's dancing elephants sequence. The scene in which the clowns plan to demand a raise is a dig at the animators who went on strike.

Jumbo Junior would later appear in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where it is revealed that he works for peanuts.

Shortly after Dumbo was released, America entered the Second World War. The influence of that war, and Disney's own beliefs about war, can be glimpsed in the spoof newspaper headline glimpsed at the end of the film, in which Jumbo Junior had patriotically inspired a new type of aircraft, the Dumbomber.

5. Bambi (1942)

Another flop that lost over $200,000, work on making Bambi had begun in 1938 but was delayed by attempts to make all the animals as realistic as possible, to the extent of having two deer kept at the studio to enable the animators to study them in full detail. The film had originally intended to be just over ten minutes longer, but was rush-released into cinemas and cut short to save money. Other consequences of the rush to finish the film cheaply are that some sequences were not animated to as high a standard as had been originally intended, and Faline sometimes changes colour to grey.

A superior film that explores many of the same points is The Lion King. In a scene deleted from Who Framed Roger Rabbit it would have been revealed that Judge Doom killed Bambi's mother.

6. Saludos Amigos (1943)

With Europe still at war, Disney decided to make a series of short films for the South American market, Saludos Amigos, meaning 'Hello Friends', and The Three Caballeros. Later these were packaged together to make feature-length films bonded by a South American theme. This was encouraged by the US State Department's Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs to bolster US/South American relations during the Second World War.

Both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were made cheaply and created a modest profit.

7. The Three Caballeros (1944)

Meaning 'The Three Gentlemen', the second of the South American package films is made of a number of short animated films loosely threaded together combined with footage that Walt Disney had shot when on a goodwill tour of the continent. The Aracuan Bird and José Carioca would return in Melody Time.

While The Three Caballeros was in production, the financial state of the studio had become so serious that they resorted to re-releasing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the cinema in 1944. To the industry's surprise, this re-release was a tremendous success, boosting the studio's finances. It also led to the Disney policy of re-releasing their greatest films every 7-10 years for a new generation of children.

8. Make Mine Music (1946)

Originally titled Swing Street, the film cost a modest $395,000 to make. As the Silly Symphony short series did not make the studio any money any more, and rather than completely abandon the musical short, several were packaged together. This cheap and cheerful compilation made a respectable profit, grossing $2.2 million dollars, and so more films were packaged out of half-finished films and abandoned projects.

One of the film's highlights, 'Peter and the Wolf', had been composed after Prokofiev had visited the Disney Studio. Disney chose to return the favour by animating his masterpiece. The animation for 'Blue Bayou' was based on early plans for a proposed 'Clair de Lune' segment for Fantasia.

Curiously, the full film has not been re-released in America to date, with the first section, 'The Martins and the Coys', considered to be too violent for American children and edited out of all home video releases there. Despite this, the film has been released unedited globally. A short-film sequel was made to the 'Casey at the Bat' section, entitled 'Casey Strikes Again'.

9. Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Another package film that began in the early 1940s but was abandoned for five years following the strike. The film originated with plans to make a film of Bongo and a separate one of Mickey and the Beanstalk, however these stories were combined and the film rushed out for release. Original plans for Bongo included making it as a sequel to Dumbo, set in the same circus and featuring recurring characters such as the elephants. Bongo would have had a monkey best friend who would play a similar role to Timothy Mouse. The film features a pair of chipmunks who are similar to Chip 'n' Dale. The song which inspired the title was one written for, but left out of, Pinocchio.

Mickey and the Beanstalk dated from 1940, with plans to make a whole film starring Disney's most popular characters. Early drafts included scenes in which Mickey was conned into selling his cow for magic beans by Pinocchio's Foulfellow and Gideon, with later versions replacing them with Princess Minnie Mouse, who gives Mickey the beans to say thank you when she believes he has given her the cow for free. Walt Disney recorded some of Mickey's lines in early 1941, but not all of them by the time work on the film halted. When filming resumed in 1947, chain smoking had resulted in Walt no longer being able to do Mickey's voice so Jimmy MacDonald replaced him for the remaining lines.

10. Melody Time (1948)

The original idea was to make a package film themed around American frontier heroes, such as Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed and possibly even the Ichabod Crane segment later attached to The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad. Although this changed, the result is perhaps the most pleasing musical package film of the late 1940s. Despite this, although the film cost over $2 million to make, it only made $1.3 million, possibly as a result of a nation-wide polio epidemic affecting America, resulting in children avoiding public places such as cinemas.

11. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949)

Disney bought the rights to The Wind in the Willows in 1938 and began animating the film in 1941, but was forced to stop when America entered WWII. After the war, work resumed on finishing it. After the flops of the early 40s and Disney's policy of cheap package films it was no longer conceived as being a standalone feature-length film, but instead part of a package. The film was then intended to be combined with Mickey Mouse in Jack and the Beanstalk or an aborted Roald Dahl tale called Gremlins. Many proposed sequences were abandoned and never made, including Toad disguising himself as a washerwoman. This gives the finished film a rushed feel and the characters are never fully developed. A better animated adaption was made by Cosgrove Hall in 1983.

The Ichabod Crane half is even worse, with none of the characters even allowed their own voice, although the character of Brom Bones is a direct ancestor of Beauty and the Beast's Gaston.

In the first introduction, Basil Rathbone considers who the most famous characters in English Literature are, suggesting Robin Hood, King Arthur, Becky Sharp, Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist. All of these characters, with the exception of Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp, have since inspired a Walt Disney classic⁹.

The Ichabod Crane introduction mentions Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, Black Bart, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Walt Disney was fascinated with early American heroes, creating a Frontierland in his Disneyland, California theme park. Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill had made it into Melody Time, which may originally have intended to feature the other characters. Disney later made a television series¹⁰ on its Disneyland programme on ABC about Davy Crockett as a means of promoting the Frontierland area in Disneyland. It became a television sensation, and the song 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' was a huge hit.

The weasels would later inspire the Toon Patrol villains in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Ratty and Mole would later appear as the charity collectors in the short film Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983).

Non-Classic Disney Animated Films

In addition to the 11 Classic Disney animated films made during this time, four films not considered to be Classics were also made. These combined various degrees of live action and animation.

The Reluctant Dragon (1941)

A combination live-action and animated film considered from the start to be a cheaply-made film to make money for the ailing studio at the height of the strike. Most of the 'animators' who appear in this film are actually actors, as many of the real animators were on strike. It failed to find an audience, becoming another flop. Interestingly, it introduces the character of Casey Junior from Dumbo and Bambi from the film of the same name. It even shows concept drawings for films such as Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, films Disney was planning but was unable to afford to make at the time.

Victory Through Air Power (1943)

Two months after Dumbo was released, America joined the Second World War. The Disney studio was requisitioned for war work, production of the Mickey Mouse shorts stopped and instead the Disney Studio produced educational short training films for troops and propaganda such as Der Fuehrer's Face, the Oscar-winning short in which Donald Duck wakes up in Nazi Germany.

Disney, hating being dictated to, felt that if he had to make propaganda, he would choose which to make. He adapted for animation a controversial book by Major Alexander P de Seversky, inventor of the automated bombsight. This argued that in a modern war, the army and navy were irrelevant and only long-range bomber aircraft capable of carrying heavy payloads and dropping them with precision on the enemy's vital nerve-centres would affect the outcome of the war.

The film was effectively animated, with filmed introductions of Alexander P de Seversky himself. Like most Disney films of the 1940s, it was a financial failure.

Song of the South (1946)

Song of the South is the most controversial Disney film ever made. To a modern audience, many of the characters are painfully stereotyped. Although public perceptions, attitudes and tastes naturally change over time, making what was previously acceptable no longer allowable, the film on first release was borderline at best, and numerous accusations of racism make it unreleased on home video in America.

The film is an adaptation of the stories told by a former slave in the southern states of America. Since release the film has been considered to help portray a stereotype of benign slavery, demeaning the real plight of those in horrific situations and perpetrating patronising attitudes. Many characters are little more than clichés. When the film was being made, the Motion Picture Production Code Office, America's film censor, asked for it to be made clear that the film was set in the 1870s. Though the setting was changed to post-Civil War America so that Uncle Remus would not be a slave in the film, this was not obvious and the white family are smarter dressed than everyone else. Although the film was picketed in protest on original release, it still made $3.3 million.

James Baskett, who played Uncle Remus, won an honorary Oscar for his role. The film's soundtrack was well received, and the song 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' won an Oscar.

So Dear to My Heart (1949)

Jerry has a little lamb in this heart-warming tale of a family and lamb with a nursery rhyme for a plot. It is as cheesy and syrupy as the title suggests. The film was an attempt by Walt Disney to recreate his childhood as a farm boy in small town Marceline, the barn in the film was based on his father's barn. The animated sequences were added after filming had originally finished. Disney delayed releasing it as he felt that it needed something extra adding to it, spending a year on refilming. He added the animation at this time, including sequences in which David battles Goliath, Christopher Columbus battles a sea monster and Danny the lamb knocks down the Walls of Jericho.