Three Little Pigs (film)
Three Little Pigs is a 1933 animated short film released by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett.[2] Based on the fable of the same name, the Silly Symphony won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The short cost $22,000 and grossed $250,000.[3]
Three Little Pigs
Technicolor
- May 25, 1933
8 min
United States
English
$22,000
$250,000
In 1994, it was voted #11 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.[4] In 2007, Three Little Pigs was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Three Little Pigs premiered at the Radio City Music Hall as a short subject to Radio City's release of the First National Pictures film Elmer, the Great on May 25, 1933, in New York City.
Plot[edit]
Fifer Pig, Fiddler Pig and Practical Pig are three brothers who build their own houses. All three of them play a different kind of musical instrument – Fifer the flute, Fiddler the violin and Practical is initially seen as working without rest. Fifer and Fiddler build their straw and stick houses with much ease and have fun all day. Practical, on the other hand, "has no chance to sing and dance 'cause work and play don't mix", focusing on building his strong brick house. Fifer and Fiddler poke fun at him, but Practical warns them when the Wolf comes, they won't be able to escape. Fifer and Fiddler ignore him and continue to play, singing the now famous song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
As they are singing, the Big Bad Wolf really comes by, at which point Fifer and Fiddler reveal that they are in fact very afraid of the wolf, so the two pigs each retreat to their respective houses. The Wolf first blows Fifer's house down (except for the roof) with little resistance and Fifer manages to escape and hides at Fiddler's house. The wolf pretends to give up and go home, but returns disguised as an innocent sheep. The pigs see through the disguise, whereupon the Wolf blows Fiddler's house down (except for the door). The two pigs manage to escape and hide at Practical's house, who willingly gives his brothers refuge; in Practical's house, it is revealed that his musical instrument is the piano. The Wolf arrives disguised as a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman to trick the pigs into letting him in, but fails. The Wolf then tries to blow down the strong brick house (losing his clothing in the process), but is unable, all while a confident Practical plays melodramatic piano music. Finally, he attempts to enter the house through the chimney, but smart Practical Pig takes off the lid of a boiling pot filled with water (to which he adds turpentine) under the chimney, and the Wolf falls right into it. Shrieking in pain, the Wolf runs away frantically, while the pigs sing Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? again. Practical then plays a trick by knocking on his piano, causing his brothers to think the Wolf has returned and hide under Practical's bed.
Song[edit]
The original song composed by Frank Churchill for the cartoon, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", was a best-selling single, mirroring the people's resolve against the "big bad wolf" of The Great Depression; the song actually became something of an anthem of the Great Depression.[18] When the Nazis began expanding the boundaries of Germany in the years preceding World War II, the song was used to represent the complacency of the Western world in allowing Fuehrer Adolf Hitler to make considerable acquisitions of territory without going to war, and was notably used in Disney animations for the Canadian war effort.[19]
The song was further used as the inspiration for the title of the 1963 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as the sequence has nothing to do with the 1966 film.
The song was parodied in September 1989 during the stunt of WFLZ in Tampa, Florida, competing against its nearby competitor WRBQ after WRBQ failed to fill a ransom to be the only Top 40/CHR radio station in the Tampa Bay area. WFLZ then started to mock and belittle its competitor, including a "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" parody entitled "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Q?"
Home media[edit]
In the United States, the short was first released on VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc in 1984 as part of its "Cartoon Classics" Home Video series. It came out on VHS again in the US as part of the Favorite Stories collection in 1995 and in the UK in the spring of 1996 as part of the Disney Storybook Favourites series, the latter with the Jewish peddler animation restored, albeit with the reworked dialogue. It was released on December 4, 2001, along with its sequels, as part of the Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies DVD,[20] with the PAL release again retaining the Jewish peddler animation along with the reworked dialogue.[2] The Disney+ release of the short however uses the altered animation in all regions.
It was later included in Walt Disney's Timeless Tales, Vol. 1, released August 16, 2005 (featuring the edited version in the US Silly Symphonies set), which also featured The Pied Piper (1933), The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934), The Tortoise and the Hare (1935) and The Prince and the Pauper (1990).
In those other countries to whom the original 1933 cartoon was first released with original soundtracks in both English and other foreign languages, the uncensored images — with original 1933 soundtracks in both English and other foreign languages — are still issued by Disney corporation in-home release videos.
Disney produced several sequels to Three Little Pigs, though none were nearly as successful as the original:
Comic adaptations[edit]
The Silly Symphony Sunday comic strip ran a seven-month-long continuation of Three Little Pigs called "The Further Adventures of the Three Little Pigs" from January 18 to August 23, 1936. This was followed by another storyline called "The Practical Pig" from May 1 to August 7, 1938.[26]
The anthology comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories introduced a new character, Lil Bad Wolf, the son of the Big Bad Wolf, in issue #52 (January 1945).[27] He was a constant vexation to his father, the Big Bad Wolf, because the little son was not actually bad. His favorite playmates, in fact, were the Three Pigs. New stories about Lil Bad Wolf appeared regularly in WDC&S for seven years, with the last one appearing in issue #259 (April 1962).[28]