It was 92 years ago this week that a young animator from Illinois named Walter Elias Disney and his brother Roy arrived in Los Angeles and started what would eventually become Walt Disney Pictures. Over the next forty years, Walt Disney would reinvent pop culture in America several times over. First, they created a national icon in Mickey Mouse (and what we call today “licensed merchandising”), then Disney made the world’s first theme park — Disneyland.
But maybe his biggest and longest lasting contribution to pop culture was the invention of the feature length animated film, the first of which was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. After the massive success of Snow White, Walt Disney Pictures was off to the races, and they never looked back, creating an enormous legacy of classic animated films.
To commemorate 92 years of animation, Disney released a video today via Twitter featuring 92 years-worth of animated films in 92 seconds. Almost all of the major films from the Walt Disney animated catalog are here, including Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi, Fantasia, and more modern classics like The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and, of course, Frozen.
Of course, with some fifty-three films in the Walt Disney Animation catalog (and by the way, that’s not counting the movies from Pixar, Studio Ghibli, and Disney Toon Studios), someone’s favorite Disney movie wasn’t going to be included. Sorry all you Oliver and Company fans, but I didn’t see him anywhere in this video. The video, which you can watch below, is set to composer Thomas Bergersen’s epic piece of music “Starchild.â€
Oh, boy! 92 years of @DisneyAnimation in 92 seconds. https://t.co/8xyCWOOX6m
— Disney (@Disney) October 16, 2015
To commemorate 92 years of Walt Disney Animation, the official Disney Twitter account also posted a time-lapse video of Eric Goldberg, an animator at the studio whose credits include Hercules and The Princess and the Frog, sketching a collage of beloved animated Disney characters. Among those characters are Baymax from Big Hero 6, Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio, Frozen’s Olaf and Aladdin’s Genie. You can watch that video below:
10/16/15 marks the 92nd anniversary of @DisneyAnimation! Watch as Eric Goldberg helps us celebrate 92 years of magic https://t.co/H1esxjcVND — Disney Animation (@DisneyAnimation) October 16, 2015
Did Disney forget to add your favorite animated classic to the celebratory montage? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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IMAGE: Walt Disney Studios
