Walt
Disney Meets Winnie The Pooh
By Dave Smith, Walt Disney Archives |
Dave
Smith has been the chief archivist for The Walt Disney
Company for 30 years, and has authored a number of books,
including "Disney A to Z" and "Disney:
The First 100 Years." |
Growing
up in England in the last years of the 19th century,
Alan Alexander Milne attended Trinity College Cambridge,
where he submitted light verse to the colleges literary
magazine. After returning from military service in 1919,
he had a son, an event that would eventually make both famous.
Milne abbreviated his name to A.A. Milne, and in the mid-1920s,
wrote a series of childrens books featuring his son,
Christopher Robin, and his toys. These books introduced
the character of Winnie the Pooh, along with the other denizens
of the Hundred Acre Wood Eeyore, Owl, Piglet, Tigger,
Rabbit, and Kanga and Roo. Illustrated by artist Ernest
Shepard, the books became extremely successful, especially
in England, but also in the United States.
In his
search for interesting stories for his animated films, Walt
Disney happened upon Winnie the Pooh, and in 1961, after
halfheartedly trying for more than two decades, was able
to acquire the exclusive film rights to the stories from
the Milne estate. Three years earlier, Milnes widow
had sold the rights to NBC, which was planning a television
series, but after an unsatisfactory pilot, the project was
shelved and the rights reverted to the Milne estate. This
gave Walt the opening he desired.
Little
transpired until 1964, when Walt told his staff that he
was planning an animated feature based on the Pooh stories.
But shortly afterward, he changed his mind. Realizing that
Americans were not sufficiently aware of Christopher Robin
and his animal friends, he
decided to begin with a 25-minute featurette that could
be released along with a Disney live-action film to familiarize
Americans with Pooh.
Thus,
the first Disney Winnie the Pooh film would be Winnie
The Pooh And The Honey Tree, released in 1966 on a bill
with The Ugly Dachshund, starring Dean Jones and
Suzanne Pleshette. Making the film even more palatable to
American audiences, the Disney animators introduced a new
character, Gopher, a species not familiar to the British.
The film was kindly reviewed in America, but perhaps not
quite so kindly in Britain, where one critic accused Walt
of "murdering" Pooh. But the success was sufficient
to inspire the Disney staff to immediately start production
on a second Pooh featurette, Winnie The Pooh And The
Blustery Day. It was released in 1968 with another Dean
Jones film, The Horse In The Gray Flannel Suit, and
received even greater acclaim, along with an Academy Award®
for Best Cartoon Short Subject.
Pooh
was now established at the Disney Studio and there was Pooh
merchandise, Pooh educational films, and eventually a Pooh
television series. When Walt Disney World opened in 1971,
Pooh merchandise even outsold Mickey Mouse merchandise.
After the release of the third Pooh theatrical featurette,
Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too, the Disney executives
finally felt they would be able to put out a feature release
that combined the three featurettes. This film, The Many
Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, with newly animated material
linking the featurettes, was released in 1977, and in honor
of its 25th anniversary this year, is being specially
released on DVD next month.
(See
The Many Adventures Of Winnie
The Pooh, this issue.)
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