Silly Symphony
Silly Symphony (also known as Silly Symphonies) is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music.[1] As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time (exceptions to this include Three Little Pigs, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Three Orphan Kittens, which all had sequels). The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck making his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[1]
Silly Symphony
The series also spawned a Silly Symphony newspaper comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate, as well as a Dell comic book series and several children's books.
The Silly Symphonies returned to theaters with its re-issues and re-releases, and eventually tied with Joseph Barbera and William Hanna's Tom and Jerry's record for most Oscar wins for a cartoon series in the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film category.
Reception[edit]
Disney's experiments were widely praised within the film industry, and the Silly Symphonies won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film seven times, maintaining a six-year-hold on the category after it was first introduced. This record was matched only by MGM's Tom and Jerry series during the 1940s and 1950s.
Legacy[edit]
The Symphonies changed the course of Disney Studio history when Walt's plans to direct his first feature cartoon became problematic after his warm-up to the task The Golden Touch was widely seen (even by Disney himself) as stiff and slowly paced. This motivated him to embrace his role as being the producer and providing creative oversight (especially of the story) for Snow White while tasking David Hand to handle the actual directing.[13]
Silly Symphonies brought along many imitators, including Warner Bros. cartoon series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, MGM's Happy Harmonies, and later, Universal's Swing Symphony.
Years later after the Silly Symphonies ended, Disney occasionally produced a handful of one-shot cartoons, playing the same style as the Silly Symphony series. Unlike the Silly Symphonies canon, most of these "Specials" have a narration, usually by Disney legend Sterling Holloway.
In the 1934 MGM film Hollywood Party, Mickey Mouse appears with Jimmy Durante, where they introduce The Hot Choc-late Soldiers.[14]
The 1999–2000 television series Mickey Mouse Works used the Silly Symphonies title for some of its new cartoons, but unlike the original cartoons, these did feature continuing characters.
As of 2021, three of the Silly Symphony shorts (Three Little Pigs, The Old Mill, and Flowers and Trees), have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[15][16][17]
Comic adaptations[edit]
A Sunday Silly Symphony comic strip ran in newspapers from January 10, 1932, to July 12, 1942.[18] The strip featured adaptations of some of the Silly Symphony cartoons, including Birds of a Feather, The Robber Kitten, Elmer Elephant, Farmyard Symphony and Little Hiawatha.[18] This strip began with a two-year sequence about Bucky Bug, a character based on the bugs in Bugs in Love.
There was also an occasional Silly Symphonies comic book, with nine issues published by Dell Comics from September 1952 to February 1959.[19] The first issue of this anthology comic featured adaptations of some Silly Symphony cartoons, including The Grasshopper and the Ants, Three Little Pigs, The Goddess of Spring and Mother Pluto, but it also included non-Symphony cartoons like Mickey Mouse's Brave Little Tailor.[20] By the third issue, there was almost no Symphony-related material in the book; the stories and activities were mostly based on other Disney shorts and feature films.