Sample of what will be seen here at the Museum as part of International Orange.

SFArtsEd, in collaboration with Artsource Consulting and working with professional artists-in-residence in public school classrooms, has invited students to creatively explore and re-imagine the national landmark living in their own backyards. The Walt Disney Family Museum is honored to be one of the 75 galleries celebrating the legendary span across the Golden Gate Strait.  

This marks the beginning of a commitment to actively engage our surrounding community, and to support efforts by organizations that foster creativity, innovation, and exploration. The Museum’s Dumbo story sketch, displayed here, symbolizes our new partnership with SFArtsED, and proves that with the right mixture of inspiration and imagination, any bridge can be transformed into a work of art.

The Walt Disney Family Museum is looking for volunteers to help share the history of animation, film, and the life and legacy of Walt Disney with guests from around the world.  Volunteers work directly with visitors sharing the inspirational and interactive experience of 10 galleries that narrate the life and work of Walt Disney.  We are currently seeking volunteers to help grow our Gallery Attendant and Special Event Assistant rosters. 

Gallery Attendants assist in monitoring our gallery space.  They serve a critical role as a consistent communication conduit between our guests, gallery staff and facility staff to provide the high level experience expected by our guests.  Serving one day a week from 11am to 4:30pm, Gallery Attendants receive special incentives for their continued commitment and participation. 

Special Events Assistants serve during our after-hours and member events, supporting museum staff in a variety of roles including gallery staffing, event check-in and others.  Special Events Assistants enjoy a conveniently flexible volunteer schedule with evening and weekend events as their primary focus. 

Complete our Volunteer Interest Form available here  to schedule your interview for Spring. 

Having formed RKO-Walt Disney British Productions Lts., and succeeded in filming a most creditable live-action feature, Walt Disney decided to continue making films in England, with Perce Pearce as his producer.  They decided to continue in the action-adventure genre, and chose as their next project Robin Hood.  

This time out, in addition to using an all-British crew, Disney hired a Bristish director as well, a young man who had made an impressive start at Rank studios with such films as Trio and Quartet, Ken Annakin.  At the time he joined the production, some preparatory work had already been done by Disney and Pearce with their cameraman, Guy Green and art director, Carmen Dillon.  As on Treasure Island, three separate shooting units were established, one doing action work on exterior location, two doing interiors at Denham Studios.  

Disney spent part of the summer in England, working closely with Annakin.  The director recalls: 

“I remember talking about the original Errol Flynn Robin Hood, and I Looked at it, just to get an idea what had been done before, because I never like to do anything twice.  Walt didn’t seem very worried about seeing the original, and in fact, I doubt if he ever did.  His approach is always that the film is a Disney picture, and therefore, because of his attitudes and his approach, the picture is bound to be different from anything else made on that subject before.”

That was exactly what happened; of course the Disney film adheres to the Robin Hood legend, yet it is a work unto itself.  One is hard pressed to make comparisons between the Disney Robin Hood and earlier versions, not because one is better than another, but simply because each one is different.

The film opens on a storybook, which dissolves into a city scene, where a strollingg minstrel sings a  ballad of Robin Hood.  He reappears throughout the film, as a narrative device, and adds a unique flavor to the period piece.

The story is as everyone remembers it.  King Richard leaves his domain to go on a crusade, appointing his brother Prince John to reign during his absence.  The Prince, in turn, appoints a new sheriff of Nottingham to carry out the new laws he has in mind.  Before long, the happy kingdom becomes a dictatorship, where the people are driven mercilessly and taxed beyond endurance.

At a public archery tournament young Robin Hood and his father show up the Sheriff’s bowmen; the angered Sheriff has Robin’s father killed.  To avenge this death Robin takes to the woods with others who have been wronged by the new rulers, and forms his band of Merrie Men.  They are soon joined by John Little, redubbed Little John, and jovial Friar Tuck.  

Robin and his Men soon become public heroes, much to the consternation of the Prince and Sheriff, who are unable to capture these “bandits”.  The “bandits” then prove their loyalty to the King when it is discovered that the good Richard is being held hostage in Austria for a ransom of 100,000 marks.

The Queen is to deliver the ransom money, but the Prince has his men dress as Robin Hood’s cohorts and steal the money, to turn the Queen against Robin.  Robin manages to foil his plot, but he then learns that the Prince has locked Maid Marian in his castle to keep her rom exposing this scheme.  Robin returns to the castle for a fight to the death with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and rescues Maid Marian.  Soon afterwards Robin’s forest hideout is visited by a mysterious stranger, who reveals himself to be King Richard! He expresses his thoughts to Robin and the Men, and then dubs the bandit leader the Earl of Locksley, and orders Maid Marian to marry the newly created nobleman for a resoundingly happy ending. 

The Story of Robin Hood is an eminently satisfying film.  It takes all the familiar elements of the story—the confrontation between Robin and Little John on a wooden bridge over a stream, the archery tournament, the climatic duel—and plays them out with such gusto that one forgets ever having seen them before.  There are delightful variations as well.  Robin and his men communicate with each other by shooting whistling arrows throughout the forest—different arrows producing different pitches, and thus signifying different things.  

Robin’s relationship with Main Marian is newly expanded.  They are shown at the beginning of the film as youthful sweethearts; then they are separated in the charge of the Queen, and Robin as the bandit/hero who tries to rekindle their romance.  

A particularly delightful scene invented for this scenario has Robin and his Men sneaking into town during a public meeting to raise funds for the King’s ransom.  The Sheriff has made a magnanimous gift, claiming that he has donated every cent he has.  Meanwhile the Merrie Men discover a strongbox in the Sheriff’s quarters filled to the brim with gold coins and precious trinkets.  They open the box, bring it into the town square, and dump its contents into the public kitty.  As the Sheriff turns pale, Robin, disguised in the crowd, shots, “Three cheers for the Sheriff!”

The performances are uniformly fine, with an impressive roster of talented players; James Robertson Justice as Little John and Peter Finch as the wicked Sheriff stand out.  Richard Todd, in the first of his three assignments for Disney, first ingratiating as Robin Hood, and plays his scenes with Joan Rice quite nicely for an attractive and believable romance.

This is an extremely good-looking film as well.  The locations are beautiful, with lush green countryside; the sets are truly formidable and realistic.

The seemingly effortless pacing and knowing use of camera angles and cutting is doubly impressive when one considers certain background facts.  For instance, Annakin has vivid memories of the difficulties in shooting Technicolor at that time.  

It was the very elaborate three-strap system, with a very immobile camera.  When you wanted to reload the camera in its very heavy blimp, you had to have it lifted on chains, and it took the first-class Technicolor crew a minimum of eleven minutes to reload the camera.  After every single shot the camera had to be opened and the gate had to be examined; the prism as the great thing because this was the light splitter which gave the registrations on the three-strips.  

For this reason, if you were making a big picture like Robin Hood, you has to be very certain that you were not wasting setups or wasting shots, because it was a big industrial process every time to set up your camera.

Annakin’s prescreening of the Errol Flynn Robin Hood  was probably responsible for the decision to find a new approach to the inevitable climactic battle between Robin and the Sheriff.  In the earlier version there is the justly famous duel between Flynn and Basil Rathbone on the castle step.  In this film the duel takes the two adversaries all around the castle, climaxing in a chillingly exciting encounter with the drawbridge.  As Robin tries to escape, the Sheriff stars to pull the bridge upright.  Robin climbs to the top, hoping to squeeze out before it closes shut. The Sheriff, trying to stop him, gets caught and is crushed by the closing platform, a grisly but satisfying end for the most nefarious of villains.

The use of storyboards was new to Annakin, “but it appealed to my logical brain very, very much,” and prompted ingenious scenes such as the first meeting between Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham after King Richard has left, played on the balcony of the castle against a brilliant but ominous orange sky at sundown.

At the time of its release The Story of Robin Hood  was greeted with muted enthusiasm  One British critic opined: “The most that can be said for it is that it is unmemorable, “ whereas the New York Times’ A.H. Weiler found it “an expert rendition of an ancient legend that is as pretty as its Technicolor hues, and as lively as a sturdy Western.”

Time has been kind to the film, as so many inferior films in this genre have followed it; today it seems better than ever.  As for comparisons with other versions, it holds it own quite well.  Douglas Fairbank’s 1922 Robin Hood  is an excellent film, but the enormity of the settings and the scope of the production tend to dwarf the characters somewhat.  The 1938 Warner Brothers epic, filmed in color, is strongly personality-oriented, with the brilliant playing of Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, and a first-rate cast dominating action.

Disney’s  The Story of Robin Hood strikes a happy medium, leaning heavily on strong characterizations, but placing them against a colorful and sumptuous tableau that gives the film a fine period flavor.  It’s far superior to Disney’s own animated feature of 1973, which placed a great emphasis on comedy, but the prominence—and success—of that film seems to have obliterated the memory of this earlier endeavor.  That’s an unfortunate fate for such an entertaining picture.

In the fourth edition of his successful book The Disney Films, author Leonard maltin updates his classic tribute to the genius of the man who brought Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, Davy Crockett, Cruella DeVil and Mary Poppins to movie and television screens all over the world. After examining Walt Disneys career from his early days as an entrepreneurial commercial artist up to his triumphant years as the head of an entertainment kingdom, The Disney Films presents a fascinating overview of every Disney film, both animated and live-action. Included are plot summaries, production credits, and insightful critical commentaries, as well as interviews with notable Disney staff members.

On Saturday May 19 at 3:00PM, director (The Iron Giant, Mission: Impossible/Ghost Protocol) and two-time Oscar®-winner (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) Brad Bird will discuss how Walt adapted well-known and even previously-filmed stories and created what are widely regarded as “definitive” versions. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men; Treasure Island to Swiss Family Robinson, Bird will explore the appeal of these tales to Walt-and how his individual and personal viewpoint made them enduring classics. 

Lobby card, © DisneyWalt Disney’s second live-action feature produced in England, The Story of Robin Hood, differed from the first, Treasure Island, in some important ways. Not the least of these was the story. Legends involving the mythical character of Robin Hood had circulated for hundreds of years, and by the time Walt tackled his film, many of those legends had already found their way to the screen in numerous film adaptations. In particular, Walt’s picture would be following in the footsteps of two recognized film classics: the silent version starring Douglas Fairbanks, and the sound version starring Errol Flynn.

The Douglas Fairbanks version of Robin Hood, released in 1922, still stands today as the most spectacular and lavishly produced film version of the story. Fairbanks was at the peak of his powers in 1922, having already established himself as the preeminent star of swashbuckling action adventures. As a founding partner in United Artists, he was also the producer of his own films, and spared no expense to mount his productions on an extravagant epic scale. The Fairbanks Robin Hood featured a castle which was one of the largest standing sets ever constructed for a Hollywood film (the banquet hall alone, it has been observed, was larger than the concourse of New York’s Pennsylvania Station). Along with this magnificence there was a full complement of pageantry, tournaments, swordplay and other action scenes, meticulously researched and accurate to the period of 12th-century England. At the center of it all was the ebullient personality of Fairbanks himself, engaging in his patented acrobatics and clearly having the time of his life as the hero of a boy’s adventure story.

Curiously, this version retained few of the popular Robin Hood legends. Here Fairbanks appeared as the Earl of Huntingdon, accompanying King Richard on the Crusades until he learned of the wrongs being perpetrated at home by Prince John—whereupon he returned to England and assumed the guise of Robin Hood.

Original soundtrack from the motion picture, © Disney.If there was one actor of the sound era who could approach Fairbanks’ stature as a swashbuckling action star, it was Errol Flynn. As the star of the 1938 Warner Bros. remake, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Flynn brought his own brand of athleticism and rakish charm to the role, breezing through Robin’s adventures with carefree abandon. If the Warners picture could not compete with the Fairbanks version in terms of sheer spectacle, it compensated with other production values: rich three-strip Technicolor, a rousing musical score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and expertly staged action sequences that kept the plot moving at a lively pace throughout. Best of all, this version retained some of the traditional incidents of Robin Hood’s legend that had been omitted from the earlier film: Robin’s initial encounter with a quarterstaff-wielding Little John (played in both the 1922 and 1938 versions by Alan Hale); his equally colorful meeting with Friar Tuck; an archery tournament, conflated from the many such tournaments in the various stories, which Robin attends in disguise. The end result was another classic entry in the Robin Hood canon, a film very different from the Fairbanks production, but one that was exhilarating and satisfying in its own way.

With these two formidable precedents already enshrined in screen history, how would Walt approach his version of the Robin Hood tale? Years later, director Ken Annakin told Leonard Maltin that Walt didn’t seem particularly concerned about it: “His approach is always that the film is a Disney picture, and therefore, because of his attitudes and his approach, the picture is bound to be different from anything else made on that subject before.” True enough: The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men wisely doesn’t try to compete with the earlier films on their terms, but establishes terms of its own. Unlike the earlier star vehicles, centered on a single leading performer, the Disney film is motivated primarily by the plot. In place of the epic sweep of the Fairbanks version or the colorful high jinks of the Flynn version, the Disney film offers a more intimate, character-driven approach to the story, its scenes of adventure charged with urgency and danger.

Many of the familiar characters and incidents are back in The Story of Robin Hood, but there are delightful original touches too: the backstory of Robin and Marian in their youth, the “singing” arrows with which Robin and his men communicate, Friar Tuck’s droll dialogue with himself in the forest. And the film’s production in England offers an additional element of authenticity: here the Sherwood Forest scenes are actually filmed in Sherwood Forest. With so many qualities going for it, Walt’s Robin Hood is an original, satisfying, and thoroughly worthy addition to the library of screen adaptations of the story.

On Saturday May 19 at 3:00PM, director (The Iron Giant, Mission: Impossible/Ghost Protocol) and two-time Oscar®-winner (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) Brad Bird will discuss how Walt adapted well-known and even previously-filmed stories and created what are widely regarded as “definitive” versions. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men; Treasure Island to Swiss Family Robinson, Bird will explore the appeal of these tales to Walt-and how his individual and personal viewpoint made them enduring classics. 

WDFM: What is your title and what do YOU do here at the museum?  

I am very fortunate to be the Director of Collections for the Walt Disney Family Foundation, managing a great staff of museum professionals in the preservation, and presentation of a world-class collection of animation art, memorabilia, photographs, audio, video, and other artifacts sharing the inspiring life story of Walt Disney. Together we get to share our treasures with the world! Working closely with Diane (Daughter of Walt Disney), I review potential donations and contribute to the decision making process for new acquisitions.

WDFM: What is your fondest Disney memory OR what is your favorite gallery at the Walt Disney Museum and why? 

I remember “talking” with Walt Disney, sitting on cushions in front of the black and white television watching the Wonderful World of Color with my siblings convinced we could see color coming through the screen!  I am particularly fond of the television wall in Gallery 9 where I can relive some of the moments with my bothers and sisters (I am #7 out of 8) watching Walt Disney telling stories, alwaysintroducing us to new characters… I loved Chip & Dale, Zorro, and Davy Crockett.

Photo by Liz Hafalla, courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle

WDFM: How does your job communicate and interpret the legacy of Walt Disney? 

Most recently, I couriered a small portion of our collection to Japan to participate with an exhibition.  Our involvement and contribution to this exhibition with Disney Japan brought the man behind the brand to the people of Japan. During the opening dedication, hundreds of visitors came to tell me their stories and appreciation of Walt Disney. Visitors were intrigued to see the miniatures that he collected, a selection of his awards, and the furniture from the Disneyland apartment that he shared with Lillian and his family.  The exhibition introduced the person to part of his most admiring and appreciative audience. Over 98,000 guests visited this showcase within 2 weeks!

WDFM: Describe your workspace OR your favorite item on your desk:  

My office is a little cluttered, as I seem to have run out of file cabinets. I’ve been told by my one of my staff that it looks like that of The Absent Minded Professor. My favorite thing in my office is the photo of my late parents with Mickey Mouse. In their senior years, they went to Walt Disney World, posed with MM and forever smile out at me! The same image is included in the changing videos in Gallery 10. I get to say hello to Arthur and Beatrice everyday!

WDFM: Tell us a little known fact about you!  

Back in 1987 I acquired a little Norfolk terrier. By 2001, I was well into the dog fancy and showed them for fun. One fine dog I bred andraised, The Duke of Copperplate, won over 40 Best in Shows! Subsequently, he became the top Norfolk Terrier in the country… all from the love of a scruffy, little red terrier! Duke kind of looks like Greyfriars Bobby.

Mouse and Snails by Heinrich Kley. Photo courtesy Walt Disney Family Foundation.

Walt Disney was known to seek great inspiration from European fairy tales for his films; not only was he inspired by them, he made them his own. Walt also looked to European art as a source of inspiration, especially book illustration. Heinrich Kley was one of Walt’s favorite illustrators and he collected Kley’s work in depth. During a trip to Europe in 1935, it is well documented that Walt returned with some 350 illustrated books and artworks that he acquired with the intention of using as a source of inspiration for future projects. He responded to the beauty, drama, and powerful visual narrative and irony of Kley’s work. In a 1964 television interview Walt said, “Without the wonderful drawings of Heinrich Kley, I could not conduct my art school classes for my animators.”

Concept art from Fantasia. © Disney.Disney’s work Ben Ali-Gator holding Hyacinth Hippo, (c. 1940), which depicts an alligator holding a hippo ballerina above his head is similar in ironic nature to Kley’s The Steeplechaser, (c. 1920), where the slowest animal, the tortoise, is portrayed jumping over a fence with a frog riding on his back. According to film historian John Culhane, “The tradition of caricaturing human aspirations with animal analogies stretches from Grandville and Tenniel to T.S. Sullivant and Heinrich Kley.  It is a tradition that Disney artists had been consciously studying since the early thirties.”

In Kley’s work Kesselschmiede (Kettle Forge), (c. 1920), the kettle takes on a human face which was also a direct influence on the Disney drawing of Casey, Jr. where the train takes on a similar human face. Walt and Kley both had a love of machines.

Disney’s Chernabog Concept Drawing, (c. 1940), for Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain” scene where the devil Chernabog summons evil spirits and restless souls from their graves is deeply influenced by Kley’s work Jugend Titelblatt (Title Page of Youth), (c. 1920), where two demons lord over a mechanical factory, turning it into their own industrial playground.

Kley’s artworks for example, showcase animals dancing, mice playing fiddles to an audience of snails, and rabbits boxing, in response, Fantasia’s “Dance of the Hours” features dancing crocodiles, elephants, alligators, and the aforementioned hippo ballerinas. As Walt said in a memorandum to Ted Sears, first head of the story department in 1935, “Some of these little books that I brought back with me from Europe have very fascinating illustrations of little peoples, bees, and small insects, who live in mushrooms, pumpkins, etc. This quaint atmosphere fascinates me and I was thinking how we could build some little story that would incorporate all of these cute little characters…..Mickey and Minnie might take a ride on a magic carpet and arrive in a weird land or forest, meet little elves of the forest, or be captured by an old witch or giant or ogres.”

This special exhibition runs from May 11 through September 17 in the Theater Lobby and is free with paid Museum admission.

Cinderella premiered in 1950, thirteen years after the release of the studio’s ground-breaking smash hit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, Walt Disney’s desire to adapt the popular fairy tale came much earlier. In fact, Walt produced an animated version of Cinderella for his first animation studio, Laugh-O-grams, in Kansas City in 1922, a year before he moved to Hollywood. The black and white cartoon short set the classic story of Cinderella in the contemporary times of 1920s.

Then in the 1930s, the Disney studio returned to the story of Cinderella and began work on a new adaptation as a part of the Silly Symphonies series. The project was ultimately discarded for reasons that are not fully known, though it is clear that attentions were turned instead towards the demanding production on the studio’s first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Following the success of Snow White, a number of animated films and package features produced disappointing box office returns, and the studio desperately needed to regain its footing as a successful cartoon production house. Poor returns on war-related production and the closure of foreign markets during World War Two drained much of the studio’s resources, and cultural sensibilities within the United States began to change. The art and storytelling of animated films was forced to adapt with the changing times. Producing a costly, time-consuming animated feature seemed riskier than ever.

As of the late 1940s, a number of adaptations of classic stories had been in development for years, including a few that had been interrupted by the impact of World War II. These included Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Cinderella. Because Cinderella shared certain story elements with the studio’s earlier hit Snow White, it was chosen to be the first in a line-up of new animated features. In addition, the characters in Cinderella seemed more appealing than the comparatively colder characters found in the other two projects.

The studio pulled out all the stops to ensure the success of the film. Walt himself sat in every story meeting and put forward a constant flow of suggestions for improvements. Live-action references were used extensively as a guide for the animators, and Tin Pan Alley composers were brought on to provide a moving score and plucky lyrics.

Fortunately, and to Walt’s great pleasure, Cinderella succeeded. Finally, the studio had an acclaimed, financially successful film that captured the hearts of motion picture audiences. The film also afforded the studio the chance to diversify into a number of different kinds of projects including television, nature documentaries,  a wide range of live-action and animated films, and Walt’s theme park Disneyland. 

© DisneyWhat made this film so exceptional? It looks astoundingly different from the black and white Laugh-O-gram version from 1922, and at the time ran the risk of following too closely in the footsteps of its predecessor Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. One major element that is responsible for the distinct look and feel of Cinderella was the original concept art produced for the film.

The Museum features many examples of concept art, a number of of which are some of my favorite pieces in the Museum. By definition, concept art is a form of illustration with the purpose of conveying the look and feel for an environment that does not yet exist. For instance, if a fantasy film is set in a faraway land, a concept artist might be tasked with creating illustrations to demonstrate the overall conceptual picture of how the place should feel for the audience. Mood is determined by color, shape, and texture, and is crucial in the process of fleshing out the artistic impact of an animated film.

In some cases, the concept artist is asked to create just the preliminary artwork after which production moves forward based on these illustrations. In other cases, the concept artist may be required to be part of a creative team until a project is completed. Concept artists generally demonstrate great skill in the fine arts and must usually work under tight deadlines.

The pieces we focused on during our Look Closer talks were created by the artist Mary Blair, whose work widely influenced Disney films throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and beyond. Blair is said to have been one of Walt’s favorite artists, emerging significantly after the Good Neighbor Tour to South and Central America in 1941. On the trip, Walt and a team of artists (including Mary Blair and her husband Lee), researched the art and culture of the countries they visited. Blair found her own unique artistic voice on the trip based on the color and vibrancy of the cultures she encountered. Blair was credited as the Art Supervisor on two films that directly stemmed from the influences of the trip, Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos.

For Cinderella, Blair is credited with Color and Styling. In her work for the film, she established a romantic, whimsical sensibility using a soft, dreamy color palette, and gentle, sweeping shapes. This ambiance was carried over into the final film by the hands of animators, layout artists, and background artists.

For more examples of Blair’s work, the museum offers interactive touch screen stations in Gallery 7 that guests can explore at their leisure. Many more examples of Blair artwork can be seen on each station, including pieces from Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland. One memorable piece from Cinderella shows the prince and Cinderella dancing in a starry nighttime fantasy world. Originally the film was to include a dream sequence in which the couple is transcended by romance and dances among the stars. The scene was ultimately cut out of the film because it was thought that it broke the realism of the film and took the fantasy element too far. A similar sequence had also been cut from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Then in 1959, a version of this concept would finally come to fruition in the finale of Sleeping Beauty, when Princess Aurora and Prince Philip dance blissfully in the sky among the clouds.

Other examples of concept art on display in the museum include the work of Gustaf Tenggren, Tyrus Wong, and Eyvind Earle.

Alyssa Carnahan

Museum Educator

Disney treatment of the Pinocchio story © Disney

 “It’s always a challenge bringing a great story classic to the screen,” Walt Disney once said, “giving visual form to characters and places that have only existed in the imagination. But it’s the kind of challenge we enjoy.”

Typically, however, the stories Walt brought to the screen did not exist only in the imagination, but were his own versions of stories that were established classics of literature—or even already-popular stage plays or movies. 

Certainly, fairy tales had been a staple of filmmakers since the beginning of the medium, and Walt’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been inspired by his attendance, as a young newsboy, at a 1916 screening of the Famous Players silent film version of the story. 

Pinocchio was adapted from an Italian children’s book that enjoyed a wide American popularity in a 1911 English-language edition (one wonders if a 10-year-old Walt read a copy of that Everyman’s Library printing); Bambi was an Austrian novel that was published in America in 1928. And so it was for most of Walt Disney’s output, with the notable exception of much of Fantasia (1940), Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1945).

Walt’s first full live-action film was his 1950 adaptation of Treasure Island, which had been produced by MGM as a feature for stars Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper in 1934. (Disney veteran Joe Grant remembered that Walt had originally pondered Treasure Island as an animated feature in the late 1930s!)

“After the war we still had the frozen fund situation in Europe,” Walt recalled. “So, in order to get the funds out of England, they wanted me to go to England and do something…I had this story, Treasure Island, I wanted to do, and I suggested we go over and do Treasure Island—and that way we’d use our funds.”

The successful financial strategy and box-office popularity of Treasure Island led to the production of three similar films in England, the first being a retelling of the Robin Hood legend—which had already been a smash hit with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland for Warner Bros. in 1938 (the others were The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, both released in 1953).

© Disney

There has been frequent puzzlement as to why Walt would risk re-making such films—so recently-released, popular, and critically well-regarded. First, film in those days was a transient medium; there was no television, no home video—and the theatrical re-release of older films was only regularly practiced by Walt Disney Productions. For a large segment of the audience, these were simply familiar tales, and a majority of the potential audience had never seen any film version of the stories. 

Director Ken Annakin recalled that in creating the production entirely in England, Walt had a great desire for authenticity rather than the glossy Hollywood Technicolor® of the Warner version “In the planning of our picture they were very, very determined that ours should be very, very true,” Annakin said. “We went up to Sherwood Forest, we went up to Nottingham, and the script was written as accurately as it could be there, from all the records. And so I thought we were probably making a truer picture than had been made before.” 

Annakin also felt that Walt assembled a team he felt he could trust. “I remember him on that picture having set the overall key of what he wanted, and seen that it was going the way he wanted—he trusted Perce Pearce as the producer. He came to trust me as the director, and I must say, I have never had Walt ‘looking over my shoulder’ at anything.”

Original poster art for Walt Disney's "Robin Hood and his Merrie Men" © Disney

“He had a great, great trust in Carmen Dillon, who was responsible for the historical correctness of everything from costumes to sets to props.” Annakin recalled. “I’m not sure why he was so certain, but he was dead right for having chosen her…and his reliance was one hundred percent.”

Walt also relied heavily on an animation technique that had not yet become commonplace in live-action filmmaking: the storyboard. “I had never experienced sketch artists, and sketching a whole picture out,” Annakin said. “That picture was sketched out, and approved by him—but it was designed in England, and sketches were sent back to America.”

For all his influence and control, Walt was not an overbearing studio head in Annakin’s view. “Basically, he visited the set maybe half a dozen times, stayed probably two or three hours while we were shooting,” Annakin said. “I remember that he used to go off to a place very near Denham where we were shooting, he used to go off to Beaconsfield and spend hours with a guy who had the best model railway, I think in the world.”

The director, later visiting Disneyland, remembered Walt’s trips to Beaconsfield, and wondered if he wasn’t already deep into his ideas and dreams for his new park.

But in the end, Annakin never wavered from his understanding that the film he was making was, even with his own directorial expertise and perspective, and an insistence on a more authentic telling of the Robin Hood story, a Walt Disney production.

“I mean, he was making his picture,” Annakin said, “his version, and I think we came up—with Walt’s help and insistence on truth and realism—we probably were as near as makes any matter.”

On Saturday May 19 at 3:00PM, director (The Iron Giant, Mission: Impossible/Ghost Protocol) and two-time Oscar®-winner (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) Brad Bird will discuss how Walt adapted well-known and even previously-filmed stories and created what are widely regarded as “definitive” versions. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men; Treasure Island to Swiss Family Robinson, Bird will explore the appeal of these tales to Walt-and how his individual and personal viewpoint made them enduring classics. 

Test your Disney chops and see if you can guess which hat belongs to which character. After you've made your guesses, roll your mouse over each hat to reveal who owns each hat!

(The images might take a minute or so to load).

(Answers--from left to right, top to bottom: Jiminy Cricket, Captain Hook, Merryweather, Dopey, Merlin, and the Mad Hatter).

All images courtesy The Walt Disney Company, ©Disney. Photos from Mad Hatter's Tea Party all by Charlie Villyard, courtesy The Walt Disney Family Museum.