Author: Andrew Carrieri

Based on David Appel’s 1951 novel Comanche: Story of America’s Most Heroic Horse and loosely on the events surrounding the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, Disney’s Tonka was theatrically released on Christmas Day 1958. The live action drama is ninety-seven minutes in length. Plot Summary In 1876 Montana Territory, a teenage Sioux named White…

Based on the first four installments of P. L. Travers’s eventual eight-part Mary Poppins book series, Disney’s Mary Poppins was theatrically released on August 27, 1964. The live action-animation hybrid musical adventure, deemed by many the magnum opus of Walt Disney’s filmmaking career, is 139 minutes in length. A live action drama depicting the true…

Based generally on the events towards the end of World War II that resulted in “Operation Cowboy,” where American troops rescued horses being horded by the Germans in Czechoslovakia from advancing Soviet troops, (1) and specifically on Alois Podhajsky’s autobiographical novel The Dancing White Horses of Vienna, Disney’s Miracle of the White Stallions was theatrically…

Based on Ernest Thompson Seton’s 1898 short story “Lobo the King of Currumpaw,” which was inspired by Seton’s wolf-hunting experiences in the American Southwest, Disney’s The Legend of Lobo was theatrically released on November 7, 1962. The live action nature adventure is sixty-seven minutes in length. Plot Summary In the late-nineteenth-century American Southwest, the native…

Based on Jim Kjelgaard’s 1945 novel of the same name, Disney’s Big Red was theatrically released on June 6, 1962. The live action nature drama is eighty-nine minutes in length. Big Red is essentially a poor man’s version of Old Yeller (1957), emotional ties between a young boy and a dog being the main plotline…

Based loosely on Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta of the same name, Disney’s Babes in Toyland was theatrically released on December 14, 1961. The live action musical drama is 106 minutes in length. Plot Summary In the early autumn in Mother Goose Village, Mary Contrary (Annette Funicello) prepares to marry Tom Piper (Tommy Sands). Craving the…

Based on the true story of the Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869, where ten men under the leadership of university professor and Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell undertook an arduous three-month journey through the yet-unexplored terrain and waterways of the American Southwest, including the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, Disney’s Ten Who Dared…

Based on Eleanor Atkinson’s 1912 novel of the same name, which was itself based on the real story of a nineteenth-century Skye Terrier who dutifully guarded his late owner’s Edinburgh grave for fourteen years, Disney’s Greyfriars Bobby was theatrically released on July 17, 1961. The live action drama is ninety-one minutes in length. Plot Summary…

Based on James Oliver Curwood’s 1919 novel Nomads of the North, Disney’s Nikki, Wild Dog of the North was theatrically released on July 12, 1961. The live action nature adventure is seventy-four minutes in length. Plot Summary In the Canadian northwest of 1899, a kindly fur trader named Andre Dupas (Jean Coutu) travels with his…

Based on Felix Salten’s 1938 novel Perri: The Youth of a Squirrel, Disney’s Perri was theatrically released on August 28, 1957. The live action nature adventure is seventy-five minutes in length. Perri was the second of six Disney films based on a Salten novel, following Bambi (1942) and preceding The Shaggy Dog (1959, 2006), The…

Based in part on Kenneth Grahame’s 1898 short story of the same name, Disney’s The Reluctant Dragon was theatrically released on June 20, 1941. The live action-animation hybrid, which uses a tour of Disney’s newly-opened studio complex in Burbank, California as a thread between disparate animated segments, is seventy-four minutes in length. Plot Summary The…

Based on Sheila Burnford’s 1961 novel of the same name, Disney’s The Incredible Journey was theatrically released on November 20, 1963. The live action adventure drama is eighty minutes in length. A remake, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, was theatrically released on February 3, 1993. Plot Summary In contemporary Canada, a middle-aged bachelor named John…