Articles on Animation &Books &Disney 04 Jan 2008 09:11 am
Fantasia Program 1
- Back in the olden days, films were released very differently.
It wasn’t until the early 60′s that an important film opened at more than one theater in a town/city. (I can remember that United Artists package of ten films that first did this. It included To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. No, and A Hard Day’s Night. Even then we were talking about 60 theaters not 3000.)
In New York key films opened on Broadway, in Manhattan, and you had to buy reserved seat tickets in advance to see it. The film would play there for a month or two and then move onto more theaters locally around town.
I can remember the trip to see How The West Was Won, The Tales of The Brothers Grimm, Lawrence of Arabia, and others.
With this higher priced film presentation, you were given a small booklet or you could buy the deluxe souvenir booklet. In 1963, I found this deluxe booklet for the initial premiere of Fantasia. I bought it from a used-book dealer while I was still in college.
This past week, I watched Fantasia again and used the program to read some credits. That’s when I thought it might be interesting to feature the booklet on this site.
So, here it is. I’ve split it into two posts with #2 to follow.
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on 04 Jan 2008 at 12:40 pm 1.R.Dress said …
These are great! kinda makes it feel more of an event. Fantasia to me was animations greatest calling card to becoming a serious artist.
on 04 Jan 2008 at 5:29 pm 2.biblioadonis aka George said …
Thanks for sharing these. Great historical pieces. Too bad we don’t see a lot of things like this any longer.
on 05 Jan 2008 at 12:19 am 3.robcat2075 said …
Those are cool. Obviously Disney had very high hopes for Fantasia.
I’ve actually heard/seen a performance of Scriabin’s “Prometheus” mentioned above. With a “laser light show”! Interesting for its time, but it suggested to me that combining music and images for anything other than comic effect or irony is tricky business.
on 11 Jul 2011 at 9:06 pm 4.David M. Auslander said …
I Have One of the Fantasia programs. Does it have any value?