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Norman Ferguson (1944)

The Three Caballeros is a 1944 live-action animated musical produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It was the 7th Walt Disney animated feature film, and it marks the 10th anniversary of Donald Duck and plots an adventure through parts of Latin America. It is notable for being one of the first feature-length films to incorporate traditional animation with live-action actors.

The film is a series of self-contained segments, strung together by Donald Duck opening birthday gifts from his Latin American friends. Several Latin American stars appear, including singers Aurora 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. The film stars Donald Duck, who in the course of the film is joined by old friend JosĂ© 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.

This film was directed by animation great Norman Ferguson, who was a central contributor to the studio’s artistic development in the 1930s into the 40s. He created Pluto, Peg-Leg Pete, the Big Bad Wolf, and was the primary animator for the witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Sequence directors for the film included Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, and Harold Young.

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Salvador DalĂ­ & Walt Disney (1945/2003)

Destino is an animated short film released in 2003 by Walt Disney. Destino is unique in that its production originally began in 1945, 58 years before its eventual completion. The project was originally a collaboration between Walt Disney and Spanish surrealist painter Salvador DalĂ­, and features music written by Mexican songwriter Armando DomĂ­nguez and performed by Mexican singer Dora Luz. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2003.

The short was intended to be one of the segments for the proposed but never completed third Fantasia film.

Destino was storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador DalĂ­ for eight months in late 1945 and 1946. However, production ceased not long after. Walt Disney Studios was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 17 seconds in the hopes of rekindling Disney’s interest in the project, but the production was no longer deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.

In 1999, Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney, while working on Fantasia 2000, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. Bette Midler’s host sequence for The Steadfast Tin Soldier also makes mention of Destino. Disney Studios France, the company’s small Parisian production department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French animator Dominique MonfrĂ©y in his first directorial role. A team of approximately 25 animators deciphered DalĂ­ and Hench’s cryptic storyboards (with a little help from the journals of DalĂ­’s wife, Gala DalĂ­ and guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destino‘s production. The end result is mostly traditional animation, including Hench’s original footage, but it also contains some computer animation.