The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros is a 1944 American live-action and animated musical propaganda[3] anthology film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film premiered in Mexico City on December 21, 1944. It was released in the United States on February 3, 1945 and in the United Kingdom in March 1945. It marks the tenth anniversary of Donald Duck and plots an adventure through parts of Latin America, combining live-action and animation. This is the second of the six package films released by Walt Disney Productions in the 1940s, following Saludos Amigos (1942). It is also notable for being one of the first feature-length films to incorporate traditional animation with live-action actors.[4]
This article is about the original 1944 film. For the 2018 series, see Legend of the Three Caballeros. For the album, see Tres Caballeros.The Three Caballeros
Supervising Director:
Sequence Directors:- Clyde Geronimi
- Jack Kinney
- Bill Roberts
- Harold Young
- Homer Brightman
- Ernest Terrazas
- Ted Sears
- Bill Peet
- Ralph Wright
- Elmer Plummer
- Roy Williams
- William Cottrell
- Del Connell
- James Bodrero
Walt Disney
Norman Ferguson
- December 21, 1944 (Mexico City)
- February 3, 1945 (United States)[1]
71 minutes
United States
- English
- Spanish
- Portuguese
$3.355 million (worldwide rentals)[2]
The film is plotted as a series of self-contained segments, strung together by the device of Donald Duck opening birthday gifts from his Latin American friends. Several Latin American stars of the period appear, including singers Aurora Miranda (sister of Carmen Miranda) and Dora Luz, as well as singer and dancer Carmen Molina.
The film was produced as part of the studio's goodwill message for Latin America.[5] The film stars Donald Duck, who in the course of the film is joined by old friend José Carioca, the cigar-smoking parrot from Saludos Amigos, who represents Brazil, and later becomes friends with a pistol-packing rooster named Panchito Pistoles, who represents Mexico.
Background[edit]
The Good Neighbor policy was a campaign by the United States to improve its relations with Latin America. A special concern in the late 1930s was the mounting program of Nazi propaganda designed to increase Nazism in the Americas, which would weaken US control and divide the Americas. To counter the Nazis, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt founded in 1940–1941 the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs through which US propaganda efforts could be coordinated. Chief Coordinator Nelson Rockefeller asked Walt Disney to produce a few short films with themes friendly to Latin America, and Disney traveled to Brazil with a creative team to collect images and inspire ideas for such films.[3]
The first Disney product of this propaganda program was the animated film Saludos Amigos in 1942. This film introduced the character José Carioca—a Brazilian businessman taking the form of a parrot—who led Donald Duck around South America.[3][7][8] The next major film was The Three Caballeros which brought together Donald Duck, José Carioca, and a new character from Mexico: Panchito Pistoles, a gun-toting revolutionary rooster.[9] These Disney films were much more successful than previous propaganda efforts.[3]
The film's original score was composed by Edward H. Plumb, Paul J. Smith, and Charles Wolcott.