Trivia / Classic Disney Shorts

• Creator Backlash:
  • Walt hated The Golden Touch, so much so that just the mere mention of the cartoon's very name was strictly forbidden. He reportedly took on the director's role in this short in order to show his directors how to do their job, and then felt humiliated at what he viewed as a below average result for his efforts.
  • Director Wilfred Jackson disliked the early Mickey Mouse short "The Castaway", and from its completion vowed to never again make another picture that didn't feel like a Disney cartoon, according to The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.
• Creator's Pest:
  • According to "Of Mice and Magic", some of the Donald Duck staff grew to dislike the character and how formula driven his shorts became over time. One of the directors, veteran Jack Hannah (no relation to Hanna-Barbera) even complained "I got so damned tired of that duck's voice. I just could not stand having to work with it all the time." It should be noted, however, that Don's most formulaic period came precisely when Hannah took over as the sole director of the series and apparently made his life goal to fill the duck's filmography with repetitive stories. Really, count how many cartoons that pit Donald against vermin -where he's Out of Focus and suffers from severe Flanderization- emerged on this time as opposed to the past. There were some nice exceptions here and there, especially at the beginning of Hannah's tenure, but for the most part the Duck owes much of his personality loss to these pictures.
  • According to Neal Gabler in his book "Walt Disney and the Triumph of the American Imagination", Walt "absolutely hated the Goofy cartoons, threatening constantly to terminate them before relenting, largely to provide work for his animators." It should be noted, however, that Gabler's book cites no source for such a claim, although it may have been Harry Tytle's book "One of Walt's Boys", in a chapter called "Shorts Go Out of Style", and even then, there is no evidence that Walt hated Goofy; his main concern was the difficulties they posed, given how unfriendly the theatrical and financial environment was becoming towards cartoon shorts as a whole.
• Directors:
  • Walt Disney: Directed a lot of his early shorts prior to Gillett and Jackson taking over the duties for him. His last short was "The Golden Touch".
  • Wilfred Jackson
  • Ub Iwerks: Directed some of the studios early shorts prior to his departure in 1930.
  • Burt Gillett: A prolific director for Walt's early 30's shorts, only to leave in 1934 for an ill-fated venture at Van Beuren Studios. He would briefly return in the late 30's. His most famous short was "The Three Little Pigs."
  • David Hand
  • Ben Sharpsteen
  • Hamilton "Ham" Luske
  • Pinto Colvig: His sole directorial effort was "Mickey's Amatuers".
  • Walt Pfeiffer: Same as above.
  • Erdman "Ed" Penner: Same as above.
  • Jack King
  • Graham Heid
  • Dick Huemer
  • Bill Roberts
  • Jack Cutting
  • Dick Rickard
  • George Stallings
  • Clyde "Gerry" Geronimi
  • Dick Lundy
  • Jack Kinney
  • Riley Thompson
  • Norm Ferguson: Normally an animator, Fergy's sole short subject directing credit was "Pluto's Playmate".
  • Charles Nichols
  • Jack Hannah
  • Bob Carlson
  • Milt Scfaffer
  • Bill Justice
  • Rudolf Ising: Sole effort was the outsourced short "Merbabies".
  • J.C. Melendez
  • Woolie Reitherman
  • Ward Kimball
  • Les Clark
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: There are still a handful of classic Disney shorts that didn't make their way into the Walt Disney Treasures lineup, including:
  • Two of Goofy's 60s shorts, Freewayphobia #1 and Goofy's Freeway Troubles ("How to Ride a Horse" and "El Gaucho Goofy" from the 40s aren't counted here, as they was technically part of other features, the former as part of The Reluctant Dragon (and can be found intact on Walt Disney Treasures: Behind the Scenes At Walt Disney Studios) and the latter as part of Saludos Amigos)
  • Chip 'n Dale's three solo shorts. (although they are available on VHS and some of them on DVD)
  • Poor little "Susie the Little Blue Coupe" didn't get into the Disney Rarities set (although it has somehow made its way onto public domain DVDs like Bazooka Joes cartoons, as well as included on DVD releases of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and The Love Bug as extras and as part of a series of DVDs called "It's a Small World of Fun").
  • They have only released a select few of the early Alice Comedies on the Disney Rarities and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit sets, but many others are available via VCI and Inkwell Images DVD collections.
  • The obscure Disney short about "Menustration" hasn't been officially released, but has fallen into the public domain.
  • Donald is missing three shorts from the 1960s ("Donald's Fire Survival Plan", "Steel and America" and "Family Planning")
  • The '60s oneshots "Scrooge McDuck and Money" and "It's Tough to Be a Bird" have not received a release.
  • Even besides that, the Treasures Collection has been out of print for years and is expensive to collect. You could stream the shorts, but not all of them have been released to Disney+.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Played annoyingly straight with the Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets. Disney has been doing this for decades. Remember the Limited Gold Editions series of videotapes from the 1980s? There were two sets of those.
• Missing Episode: Several Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts aside, none of the sound or color shorts are lost—even the majority of all of the Newman Laugh-O-Grams, Disney's oldest cartoons, still exist in one form or another. However, original prints of many of them containing their original title screens currently are lost and the Mickey Mouse shorts When the Cat's Away and The Jazz Fool currently lack their opening music.
• Post-Release Retitle: The 1949 short Toy Tinkers was renamed Christmas Capers when it was released for 16mm non-theatrical exhibition in 1961.
• Referenced by...: In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), when Tom helps a duck and her ducklings cross a street, he addresses them as "Donald, Daisy, Daffy..."
• Role Reprise: Paula Winslowe (original voice of Bambi's Mother) returned to voice the character during her and Bambi's cameo appearance in the 1955 Donald Duck cartoon "No Hunting".

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