Happy Anniversary Sleeping Beauty!

Nearing it's Golden Anniversary next year, Sleeping Beauty marks its 49th Anniversary today. Sleeping Beauty was released to theatres on January 29, 1959. The sixteenth animated feature, it was the last animated feature produced by Walt Disney to be based upon a fairy tale (after his death, the studio returned to the genre with 1989's The Little Mermaid).

Art direction for this movie was inspired by medieval painting and architecture. For the first time on a Disney animated feature, one man was in charge of the color styling, background design, and the overall look of the film. Eyvind Earle's modernistic approach to design and painting resulted provided this film a bold, unique art style, even though Earle's colleagues did not care for his production methods and art style while the film was in production. This was the last Disney feature to have cels inked by hand. From One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) on, the cleaned-up pencil drawings were Xeroxed onto the cels. However, some of the scenes in this movie did use the Xerox process. In active production from 1951 until the end of 1958, setting a record (for which it is tied with another 70mm Disney film, The Black Cauldron (1985)) for being the Disney animated film with the longest production schedule.

Trivia:

• The elaborate background paintings usually took seven to ten days to paint. By contrast, a typical animation background takes one workday to complete.
• Second only to Dumbo (who didn't speak at all), this Disney title character has very few lines of actual dialogue throughout the entire film. In fact, Briar Rose/Aurora says nothing at all in the film's second half. After she wakes up, Princess Aurora doesn't have any lines whatsoever.
• Disney Studios has no record as to who provided the voice for the queen, Briar Rose's mother.
• When the fairies discuss how to help the king and queen, notice Merryweather magically creates cookies, they are the shape of Mickey Mouse.
• Walt Disney had suggested that all three fairies should look alike, but veteran animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston contrasted this idea saying that having them be like that wouldn't be exciting. Also, the idea originally included seven fairies instead of three.

Featured in this blog entry is Prince Phillip & Briar Rose ("Chance Encounter")sculpted by Margi Wray, a 2006 Open Edition release. Other WDCC releases from this film can be seen in the Sleeping Beauty Image Gallery section of the website.