Now Showing: Disney's "Flowers and Trees"

On this day in 1932 Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees - remembered by history as both the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first winner of the Academy Award in the cartoon short category - made its debut on movie screens across the United States. This memorable addition to Disney's Silly Symphonies franchise was directed by Burt Gillett and released by United Artists.

The cartoon short had already been in production in black and white when Disney saw tests of three-strip Technicolor being conducted by Herbert Kalmus; not only was Flowers and Trees converted into colour but so were subsequent Silly Symphonies, although those cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse would remain black and white until 1935's The Band Concert.

Savvy businessman that he was, Disney held a monopoly on three-strip Technicolor until September 1935, forcing his chief competitiors Ub Iwerks* and Max Fleischer to use the inferior two-strip Cinecolor process.

*The rivalry between Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney is a long and storied one... Iwerks was one of the first Disney animators, but Disney's perfectionism led to his resignation; Iwerks went on to found his own company, which failed, and then found great success with Warner Bros. and Leon Schlesinger Productions before returning to Disney in the 1940s - where he perfected the process whereby animation and live-action could co-exist on the screen.
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Now Showing - "The Wise Little Hen" starring Donald Duck

On this day in 1934 Walt Disney's irascible Donald Duck (voiced by Clarence Nash) made his cartoon debut in a Silly Symphony entitled The Wise Little Hen, based on the fairytale The Little Red Hen; it costarred Florence Gill as the Hen herself and Pinto Colvig* as Donald's sidekick Peter Pig, whose debut this also was.

Animation duties were handled by Art Babbitt, Dick Huemer, Dick Lundy, and the legendary Ward Kimball, one of Disney's Nine Old Men. There remains some debate as to who the director was, though; it was either Bert Gillett or Wilfred Jackson.

*More famous as the voice of Goofy.
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Disney's Silly Symphony: "The Three Little Pigs"

On this day in 1933 Walt Disney (via United Artists) released this little cartoon - actually a cleverly disguised parable of defiance in the face of mass angst brought on by the Great Depression - as part of its Silly Symphonies series; Three Little Pigs also introduced the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, composed by Frank Churchill, which became something of an anthem for the times. The film was highly popular, running in some theaters for months, and went on to win an Academy Award in 1934 in the category Best Short Subject: Cartoons.

Notable for depicting the way the menaced pigs help each other during a time of financial crisis (especially as it relates to the challenges faced in regards to housing), it's this very tendency which the Pop Culture Institute fears has been bred out of people following thirty years' indoctrination by a neoconservative agenda. Still, the message is apt, even today, when a return to cooperation might be just the thing to help people out of the morass caused by competition.

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