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121-514: The company was responsible for distributing the Screen Gems television output, with the exception of pre-1967 Hanna-Barbera produced programs, as well as many of the post-1947 Bob Hope theatrical output. On January 30, 1984, Colex Enterprises was formed after Columbia and LBS agreed to distribute the TV show Family , which LBS distributed under license from Columbia Pictures Television. Family

242-402: A SG-affiliated production company to produce his own projects with that company. The most notable of these productions was Police Story , an NBC police crime drama. In 1973, Allan Blye and Chris Bearde via Blye-Bearde Productions signed an independent production agreement with Screen Gems to develop their own projects. Also that year, Harry Ackerman, who was vice president of production left

363-528: A full-length compilation feature, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh , which was released in 1977. Walt Disney died in December 1966, ten months before the studio's next film The Jungle Book , was completed and released. The film was a success, finishing 1967 as the fourth highest-grossing film of the year. Following Walt Disney's death, Wolfgang Reitherman continued as both producer and director of

484-642: A groundbreaking live-action/animation hybrid directed by Robert Zemeckis , which featured licensed animated characters from other studios (such as Warner Bros., MGM, and Universal). Disney set up a new animation studio under Williams' supervision in London to create the cartoon characters for Roger Rabbit , with many of the artists from the California studio traveling to England to work on the film. A significant critical and commercial success, Roger Rabbit won three Academy Awards for technical achievements. and

605-526: A half-hour dramatic anthology concept to the Ford Motor Company which became Ford Theatre , which was one of the first times a major Hollywood movie studio had produced content for television. They also produced seven episodes of the first season of Cavalcade of America . The name "Screen Gems," at the time, was used to hide the fact that the film studio was entering television production and distribution. Many film studios saw television as

726-624: A level of success comparable to Walt Disney Productions , Warner Bros. Cartoons , and the MGM Cartoon Studio . The studio's purpose was assumed by an outside producer, United Productions of America (UPA), whose cartoons, including Gerald McBoing-Boing and the Mr. Magoo series, were major critical and commercial successes. Following UPA, a deal with Hanna-Barbera was made in 1957, which lasted until 1967. In 1999, Columbia TriStar International Television produced Totally Tooned In -

847-451: A lower advance payment for each Oswald short. Disney refused and, as Universal owned the rights to Oswald rather than Disney, Mintz set up his own animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons. Most of Disney's staff was hired away by Mintz to move over once Disney's Oswald contract expired in mid-1928. Working in secret while the rest of the staff finished the remaining Oswalds on contract, Disney and his head animator Ub Iwerks led

968-542: A lukewarm response at the box office and was a sharp critical disappointment in its initial release. Peter Pan , released in 1953, on the other hand, was a commercial success and the sixth highest-grossing film of the year . In 1955, Lady and the Tramp was released to higher box office success than any other Disney animated feature since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , earning an estimated $ 6.5 million in rentals at

1089-406: A modern pop soundtrack. Oliver & Company opened in the theaters on the same day as another Bluth/Amblin/Universal animated film, The Land Before Time ; however, Oliver & Company outgrossed The Land Before Time in the U.S. and went on to become the most successful animated feature in the U.S. to that date, though the latter's worldwide box office gross was higher than the former. At

1210-497: A new character. The result was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit , the first animated character for Universal Pictures . In February 1928, when the character proved more successful than expected, Disney sought to meet with Mintz over the budget, wanting to spend more on the cartoons. Mintz refused, and hired away all of Walt Disney Studios 's animators except Iwerks, Les Clark, and Johnny Cannon, who all refused to leave Disney. He moved

1331-613: A new distribution contract with Columbia Pictures . Powers, in return, signed away Ub Iwerks, who began producing cartoons at his own studio, although he would return to Disney in 1940. Columbia distributed Disney's shorts for two years before the Disney studio entered a new distribution deal with United Artists in 1932. The same year, Disney signed a two-year exclusive deal with Technicolor to utilize its new 3-strip color film process , which allowed for fuller-color reproduction where previous color film processors could not. The result

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1452-735: A non-exclusive agreement with the studio for joint distribution of its TV productions. Even though none of Greenway's shows went to SG, Greenway immediately struck out a deal with rival television producer 20th Century-Fox Television in 1964. In 1963, Screen Gens entered music publishing with the purchase of Don Kirshner 's Aldon Music with Kirshner named head of the Columbia-Screen-Gems music division. Four years later, he departed Screen Gems after coming into conflict with The Monkees over their desire to play on their records. Lester Sill replaced Kirshner , and remained head of music publishing until 1985. Screen Gems-Columbia Music

1573-664: A package of Universal Pictures horror films (later shifted to MCA TV ), which was enormously successful in reviving that genre. From 1958 to 1974, under President John H. Mitchell and Vice President of Production Harry Ackerman , Screen Gems delivered TV shows and sitcoms: Dennis the Menace , The Donna Reed Show , Hazel , Here Come the Brides , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Gidget , Bewitched , I Dream of Jeannie , The Flying Nun , The Monkees , The Girl with Something Extra and The Partridge Family . It

1694-595: A regular basis, with many of the shorts divisions' personnel either leaving the company or being reassigned to work on Disney television programs such as The Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland . While the Silly Symphonies shorts had dominated the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) during the 1930s, its reign over the most awards had been ended by MGM 's Tom and Jerry cartoons, Warner Bros' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies , and

1815-594: A result, in funding its acquisitions, 18% of Screen Gems' shares was spun off from Columbia and it became a publicly-traded company on the NYSE until 1968. Screen Gems also provided technical assistance and partial control of a private television station in Venezuela , Canal 11 Televisión , which existed from 1966 to 1968. In 1963, William Dozier, who was one of the top Screen Gems employees, and senior vice president of production left to start out Greenway Productions, with

1936-634: A revived TriStar Television on February 21, 1994 to form Columbia TriStar Television . The name "Screen Gems" was also utilized for a syndicated hour-long program for classic television called Screen Gems Network that first aired in 1999 and ran until 2002. The television division is presently known as (and as a name-only unit of) Sony Pictures Television . Television programs produced and/or syndicated by Screen Gems: Note: (*)= Currently owned by Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. Note: (*) = Currently owned by Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery On December 8, 1998, Screen Gems

2057-569: A separate "story department" with storyboard artists dedicated to story development. With well-developed characters and an interesting story, the 1933 Technicolor Silly Symphony cartoon Three Little Pigs became a major box office and pop culture success, with its theme song " Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? " becoming a popular chart hit. In 1934, Walt Disney gathered several key staff members and announced his plans to make his first animated feature film. Despite derision from most of

2178-500: A series of silent Alice Comedies short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world. The Alice Comedies were distributed by Margaret J. Winkler 's Winkler Pictures , which later also distributed a second Disney short subject series, the all-animated Oswald the Lucky Rabbit , through Universal Pictures starting in 1927. Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in

2299-487: A small handful of loyal staffers in producing cartoons starring a new character named Mickey Mouse . The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho , were previewed in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey cartoon, however, Disney produced a soundtrack, collaborating with musician Carl Stalling and businessman Pat Powers , who provided Disney with his bootlegged "Cinephone" sound-on-film process. Subsequently,

2420-407: A subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation . The Screen Gems brand has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation, initially as a cartoon studio, then a television studio, and later on as a film studio. The label currently serves as a film production that specializes in genre films, mainly horror. Screen Gems

2541-498: A syndicated TV package showcasing Columbia's classic cartoon library. With the aid of animation historian Jerry Beck , Columbia restored and remastered the majority of the color Screen Gems cartoons (as well as all the UPA cartoons) from their original 35mm elements. The show aired in several international markets before making its American television debut on Antenna TV on January 8, 2011. They would later be aired on Toon In With Me on

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2662-563: A threat to their business, thus it was expected that they would shun the medium. However, Columbia was one of a few studios who branched out to television under a pseudonym to conceal the true ownership of the television arm. That is until 1955, when Columbia decided to use the woman from its logo under the Screen Gems banner, officially billing itself as a part of "the Hollywood studios of Columbia Pictures", as spoken in announcements at

2783-605: Is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). When producer Pat Sullivan came to Harry Warner to sign a contract with him on his and Otto Messmer 's series Felix the Cat , he declined and instead told his soon-to-be former secretary Margaret J. Winkler that she should form her own company and take control of the distribution of the series. Winkler formed M.J. Winkler Productions and soon also took control of Max and Dave Fleischer 's series Out of

2904-489: Is among Disney's most notable assets, with the stars of its animated shorts— Mickey Mouse , Minnie Mouse , Donald Duck , Daisy Duck , Goofy , and Pluto —becoming recognizable figures in popular culture and mascots for the Walt Disney Company as a whole. Three of the studio's films— Frozen (2013), Zootopia (2016), and Frozen II (2019)—are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time , with

3025-405: Is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company . The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney after the closure of Laugh-O-Gram Studio , it is the longest-running animation studio in

3146-583: The Disneyland theme park, production of the animated films was left primarily in the hands of the "Nine Old Men" trust of head animators and directors. This led to several delays in approvals during the production of Sleeping Beauty , which was finally released in 1959. At $ 6 million, it was Disney's most expensive film to date, produced in a heavily stylised art style devised by artist Eyvind Earle and presented in large-format Super Technirama 70 with six-track stereophonic sound. However, despite being

3267-735: The Donald Duck cartoons eclipsed the Mickey Mouse series in popularity. Silly Symphonies , which garnered seven Academy Awards , ceased in 1939, until the shorts returned to theatres with some re-issues and re-releases. The success of Snow White allowed Disney to build a new, larger studio on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, where The Walt Disney Company remains headquartered to this day. Walt Disney Productions had its initial public offering on April 2, 1940, with Walt Disney as president and Roy Disney as CEO. The studio launched into

3388-546: The Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, then, in October 1923, formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood , which came to be known as

3509-541: The MeTV Network in November 2021. Despite these restoration efforts, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has no current plans to release these shorts on DVD or Blu-ray. Since CPE Holdings, Inc. became dormant on May 9, 2024, Sony Pictures Releasing now owns the theatrical distribution on behalf of Columbia Pictures , while Sony Pictures Television owns the television distribution on behalf of CPT Holdings, Inc. to

3630-682: The Nine Network . In the late 1950s, Screen Gems also entered into ownership and operation of television stations. Stations owned by Screen Gems over the years included KCPX (Salt Lake City; now KTVX , owned by Nexstar Media Group ), WVUE-DT (New Orleans; now owned by Gray Television ), WAPA-TV (San Juan; now owned by the Hemisphere Media Group), WNJU (Linden, NJ; now Telemundo / NBCUniversal O&O), and several radio stations as well, including 50,000-watt clear channel WWVA (Wheeling, WV; now owned by iHeartMedia ). As

3751-428: The attack on Pearl Harbor , the studio housed over 500 U.S. Army soldiers who were responsible for protecting nearby aircraft factories from enemy bombers. In addition, several Disney animators were drafted to fight in the war and the studio was contracted on producing wartime content for every branch of the U.S. military , particularly military training, and civilian propaganda films. From 1942 to 1943, 95 percent of

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3872-581: The third highest-grossing film of the year and the most successful and best reviewed Disney animated film since The Jungle Book . The film was reissued in 1983, accompanied by a new Disney featurette, Mickey's Christmas Carol . The production of The Rescuers signaled the beginning of a changing of the guard process in the personnel at the Disney animation studio, as veterans such as Milt Kahl and Les Clark retired; they were gradually replaced by new talents such as Don Bluth , Ron Clements , John Musker and Glen Keane . The new animators, selected from

3993-592: The 1941 short The Fox and the Grapes . Based on the Aesop's Fable of the same name, the short would inadvetably spawn Columbia's most successful characters with The Fox and the Crow , a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow. Tashlin's stay at Screen Gems would be short-lived, as he would later leave the studio, following an argument with Columbia higher-ups. When interviewed by Michael Barrier, Tashlin said that

4114-534: The 1950s. Following its success, production on the in-limbo features Alice in Wonderland , Peter Pan , and Lady and the Tramp was resumed. In addition, an ambitious new project, an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale " Sleeping Beauty " set to Tchaikovsky 's classic score, was begun but took much of the rest of the decade to complete. Alice in Wonderland , released in 1951, met with

4235-529: The 1959 layoffs and competition for Walt Disney's attention from the company's expanded live-action film, TV and theme park departments, production continued on feature animation productions at a reduced level. In 1961, the studio released One Hundred and One Dalmatians , an animated feature that popularized the use of xerography during the process of inking and painting traditional animation cels . Using xerography, animation drawings could be photochemically transferred rather than traced from paper drawings to

4356-573: The 1970s to the present. The Sword in the Stone was released in 1963 and was the sixth highest-grossing film of the year in North America with estimated rentals of $ 4.75 million. A featurette adaptation of one of A. A. Milne 's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree , was released in 1966, to be followed by several other Pooh featurettes over the years and

4477-497: The CPT name. Columbia also ran Colex Enterprises , a joint venture with LBS Communications to distribute most of the Screen Gems library, which ended in 1987. In 1985, the name was brought back by Columbia Pictures Television to distribute classic television series from its vaults to first-run syndication. On December 18, 1987, Coca-Cola spun off its entertainment holdings and sold it to Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. for $ 3.1 billion. It

4598-558: The Disney studio. A bitter union strike began in May 1941 , which was resolved without the angered Walt Disney's involvement in July and August of that year. As Walt Disney Productions was being set up as a union shop, Walt Disney and several studio employees were sent by the U.S. government on a Good Neighbor policy trip to Central and South America. The Disney strike and its aftermath led to an exodus of several animation professionals from

4719-525: The Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and, in January 1926, the studio moved there and took on the name Walt Disney Studio . Meanwhile, after the first year's worth of Oswalds , Walt Disney attempted to renew his contract with Winkler Pictures, but Charles Mintz , who had taken over Margaret Winkler's business after marrying her, wanted to force Disney to accept

4840-598: The Inkwell . By 1923 she and Sullivan were arguing, and that same year the Fleischer Brothers formed their own distribution company named Red Seal. Winkler saw an unreleased short called Alice's Wonderland , a cartoon produced and directed by Walt Disney , and became impressed with the short. The two agreed to make a series about the cartoon. In 1924, Charles Mintz married Winkler, and the latter's career began to decline. Mintz quickly assumed Winkler's role in

4961-534: The North American box office in 1955. Lady and the Tramp is significant as Disney's first widescreen animated feature, produced in the CinemaScope process, and was the first Disney animated feature to be released by Disney's own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution . By the mid-1950s, with Walt Disney's attention primarily set on new endeavours such as live-action films, television and

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5082-644: The Ocean ". In 1939, a short while before his death, after becoming indebted to Columbia, Mintz relinquished ownership of his studio and the Screen Gems name to Columbia to settle longstanding financial problems. Mintz was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Short Subject. His first nomination was in 1935 for Holiday Land , and he was nominated again in 1938 for The Little Match Girl . For an entire decade, Charles Mintz produced Krazy Kat , Scrappy , and Color Rhapsody animated film shorts through Columbia Pictures. Mintz's production manager became

5203-606: The Pauper , The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was Disney's first animated feature sequel and the studio's first film to be fully colored and composited via computer using the CAPS/ink-and-paint system. However, the film did not duplicate the success of The Little Mermaid . The next Disney animated feature, Beauty and the Beast , had begun production in London but was moved back to Burbank after Disney decided to shutter

5324-410: The animation program at CalArts and trained by Eric Larson, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Woolie Reitherman, got their first chance to prove themselves as a group with the animated sequences in Disney's live-action/animated hybrid feature Pete's Dragon (1977), the animation for which was directed by Bluth. In September 1979, dissatisfied with what they felt was a stagnation in the development of

5445-434: The animation studio became Walt Disney Feature Animation ( WDFA ) in order to differentiate it from the company's other divisions. Its current name was adopted in 2006 after Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney. For many people, Disney Animation is synonymous with animation, for "in no other medium has a single company's practices been able to dominate aesthetic norms" to such an overwhelming extent. The studio

5566-480: The animators created or formalized many of the techniques and processes that became the key tenets and principles of traditional animation. Silly Symphonies such as The Goddess of Spring (1934) and The Old Mill (1937) served as experimentation grounds for new techniques such as the animation of realistic human figures, special effects animation and the use of the multiplane camera , an invention that split animation artwork layers into several planes, allowing

5687-512: The art of animation at Disney, Bluth and several of the other new guard animators quit to start their own studio, Don Bluth Productions , which became Disney's chief competitor in the animation field during the 1980s. Delayed half a year by the defection of the Bluth group, The Fox and the Hound was released in 1981 after four years in production. The film was considered a financial success by

5808-607: The board to fire Miller. Roy E. Disney brought in Michael Eisner as Disney's new CEO and Frank Wells as president. Eisner in turn named Jeffrey Katzenberg chairman of the film division, The Walt Disney Studios. Near completion when the Eisner regime took over Disney, The Black Cauldron (1985) came to represent what would later be referred to as the "rock bottom" point for Disney animation. The studio's most expensive feature to that point at $ 44 million, The Black Cauldron

5929-495: The box office and became the highest-grossing first-issue animated film to that point. Katzenberg, Schneider, and Roy Disney set about changing the culture of the studio, increasing staffing and production so that a new animated feature would be released every year instead of every two to four. The first of the releases on the accelerated production schedule was Oliver & Company (1988), which featured an all-star cast including Billy Joel and Bette Midler and an emphasis on

6050-714: The box office, and had laid off a large portion of their hand-drawn animators. However, the studio stated in 2019 and 2023 that they are open to proposals from filmmakers for future hand-drawn feature projects. In addition, in April 2022, Eric Goldberg , one of the studio's hand-drawn animators who has been working with the studio since 1992, confirmed plans within the Disney studio to once again return to hand-drawn animation. Kansas City, Missouri , natives Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Los Angeles in 1923 and got their start producing

6171-498: The camera to appear to move dimensionally through an animated scene. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $ 1.4 million to complete (including $ 100,000 on story development alone) and was an unprecedented success when released in February 1938 by RKO Radio Pictures , which had assumed distribution of Disney product from United Artists in 1937. It was briefly the highest-grossing film of all time before

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6292-446: The cartoons made during this period were described as being "misguided" or "imitation Warner Bros." Hubley also said to have disliked his work at the studio, and that Columbia "hated" the cartoons they were making. Historians note that the decline in quality could have been caused by several key factors; Tashlin's departure from the studio, the inability to obtain confident animators, writers or directors and Columbia's mismanagement behind

6413-532: The character animation on these productions and all subsequent features until the late 1970s was supervised by a brain-trust of animators Walt Disney dubbed the " Nine Old Men ", many of whom also served as directors and later producers on the Disney features: Frank Thomas , Ollie Johnston , Woolie Reitherman , Les Clark, Ward Kimball , Eric Larson , John Lounsbery , Milt Kahl , and Marc Davis . Other head animators at Disney during this period included Norm Ferguson, Bill Tytla and Fred Moore . The development of

6534-410: The clear acetate sheets (" cels ") used in final animation production. The resulting art style – a scratchier line which revealed the construction lines in the animators' drawings – typified Disney films into the 1980s. The film was a success, being the tenth highest-grossing film of 1961 with rentals of $ 6.4 million. The Disney animation training program started at the studio in 1932 before

6655-476: The company's film and television production divisions, creating the Walt Disney Pictures banner under which future films from the feature animation department would be released. After a series of corporate takeover attempts in 1984, Roy E. Disney , son of Roy O. and nephew of Walt, resigned from the company's board of directors and launched a campaign called "SaveDisney", successfully convincing

6776-545: The company, later rebranding it Winkler Pictures. In 1925 Winkler's renewal contract for the Felix shorts was written, yet Winkler declined to renew due to her dispute with Sullivan. The following year the Alice Comedies stopped being distributed by Winkler. After Mintz become involved with the progress it was clear that Disney was unhappy with the production costs on cartoons, and he asked Disney and Ub Iwerks to develop

6897-448: The day-to-day operations in 1985. On February 6, 1986, Disney executives moved the animation division from the Disney studio lot in Burbank to a variety of warehouses, hangars and trailers located about two miles east (3.2 kilometers) at 1420 Flower Street in nearby Glendale, California . About a year later, the growing computer graphics (CG) group would move there too. The animation division's first feature animation at its new location

7018-632: The development of Snow White eventually led to Walt Disney helping found the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) . This university formed via the merger of Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. It included a Disney-developed animation program of study among its degree offerings. CalArts became the alma mater of many of the animators who would work at Disney and other animation studios from

7139-973: The end of some Screen Gems series. By 1952, the studio had produced a series of about 100 film-record coordinated releases for television under the brand "TV Disk Jockey Toons" in which the films "synchronize perfectly with the records". In 1954, the studio started producing Father Knows Best on CBS and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin on ABC, which became their biggest successes at the time. On July 1, 1956, studio veteran Irving Briskin stepped down as stage manager of Columbia Pictures and formed his own production company Briskin Productions, Inc. to release series through Screen Gems and supervise all of its productions. On December 10, 1956, Screen Gems expanded into television syndication by acquiring Hygo Television Films (a.k.a. Serials Inc.) and its affiliated company United Television Films, Inc. Hygo Television Films

7260-460: The establishment of Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (now " Sony Pictures "), and most of the library was later transferred into the reorganized Columbia Pictures Television Distribution . Currently, the name is part of Sony Pictures Television . although LBS continued its partnership with Columbia Pictures Television until 1991. Screen Gems Screen Gems is an American film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment ,

7381-505: The feature animation department created a caste system at the Disney studio: lesser animators (and feature animators in-between assignments) were assigned to work on the short subjects, while animators higher in status such as the Nine Old Men worked on the features. Concern over Walt Disney accepting credit for the artists' work as well as debates over compensation led to many of the newer and lower-ranked animators seeking to unionize

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7502-521: The feature animation studio and outsourcing future animation. Roy E. Disney intervened, offering to head the feature animation division and turn its fortunes around, while Eisner established the Walt Disney Pictures Television Animation Group to produce lower-cost animation for television. Named Chairman of feature animation by Eisner, Roy E. Disney appointed Peter Schneider president of animation to run

7623-503: The film industry, who dubbed the production "Disney's Folly", Disney proceeded undaunted into the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , which would become the first animated feature in English and Technicolor. Considerable training and development went into the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the studio greatly expanded, with established animators, artists from other fields and recent college graduates joining

7744-433: The film's final original box office take varying between $ 1.4 million and $ 1.9 million. However, Pinocchio was a critical success, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score , making it the first film of the studio to win not only either Oscar, but both at the same time. Fantasia , an experimental film produced to an accompanying orchestral arrangement conducted by Leopold Stokowski ,

7865-479: The first major film studio to move into television. Although Harry wasn't convinced by the suggestion, Columbia invested $ 50,000 acquiring Pioneer and reorganized it as Screen Gems. The studio started its new business in New York on April 15, 1949. By 1951, Screen Gems became a full-fledged television studio by producing and syndicating several popular shows (see below ) . Within a few months, Ralph Cohn had sold

7986-453: The kids, we lose everything". The studio began the 1970s with the release of The Aristocats , the last film project to be approved by Walt Disney. In 1971, Roy O. Disney, the studio co-founder, died and Walt Disney Productions was left in the hands of Donn Tatum and Card Walker , who alternated as chairman and CEO in overlapping terms until 1978. The next feature, Robin Hood (1973),

8107-523: The last major studio to enter television by name. Changes in corporate ownership of Columbia came in 1982, when Coca-Cola bought the company, although continuing to trade under the CPT name. In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola reorganized its television holdings to create Coca-Cola Television, merging CPT with the television unit of Embassy Communications as Columbia/Embassy Television, although both companies continued to use separate identities until January 4, 1988, when it and Tri-Star Television were reunited under

8228-412: The latter becoming the third-highest-grossing animated feature film of all time . It also had the highest-grossing worldwide opening of all time for an animated feature film up until the release of Nintendo and Illumination 's The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). By 2013, the studio had no hand-drawn animated features in development as a result of their computer animated films performing better at

8349-473: The main output accompanied by cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, Figaro and, in the 1950s, Chip 'n' Dale and Humphrey the Bear . In addition, Disney began reissuing the previous features, beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944, Pinocchio in 1945, and Fantasia in 1946. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s before being translated into

8470-401: The majority of the color Screen Gems cartoons (as well as all the UPA cartoons) library. All series were distributed by Columbia unless otherwise noted. Ralph Cohn, the son of Columbia co-founder Jack Cohn and nephew of Columbia head Harry Cohn , founded Pioneer Telefilms, a television commercial production company, in 1947. Ralph later wrote a 50-page memo arguing that Columbia should be

8591-431: The management "can't stay happy long when things are going well, so we ended up in another fracas and I left." He was replaced by Dave Fleischer , previously the co-founder and head director of Fleischer Studios . John Hubley described Fleischer as "one of the world's intellectual lightweights", as he had very little involvement in the making of cartoons. However he was also noted for his baffling editing practices. Dave

8712-406: The midst of the animators' strike, premiered in October 1941 and proved to be a financial success. The film cost $ 950,000 to produce, half the cost of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio , and two-fifths of the cost of Fantasia . Dumbo eventually grossed $ 1.6 million during its original release. Dumbo was the first Disney animated film to be completed at

8833-516: The most notable other production of Goldberg's tenure at Screen Gems being the 1971 television movie Brian's Song . He then formed a production company with producer Aaron Spelling . In 1971, Douglas S. Cramer , former executive VP in charge of production at Paramount Television , set up a SG-affiliated production firm, The Douglas S. Cramer Company, to produce projects for feature films and TV projects via Columbia Pictures. In 1972, David Gerber , who had left 20th Century Fox Television , set up

8954-442: The newly formed Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. for $ 24.5 million. In the following year, former ABC vice president of programming Leonard Goldberg joined Screen Gems, displacing Jackie Cooper as vice president of program development. Goldberg failed to receive the same level of success as Cooper. His shows all tanked after one season, with the exception of The Partridge Family , and he abruptly left after three years, with

9075-556: The original Animation Building of the Walt Disney Studios (Walt Disney Productions) in Burbank, California . In August 1942, Bambi was released and, as with Pinocchio and Fantasia , did not perform well at the box office. Out of its $ 1.7 million budget, it grossed $ 1.64 million. Production of full-length animated features was temporarily suspended after the release of Bambi . Given the financial failures of some of

9196-433: The production of new animated features, the first of which was Pinocchio , released in February 1940. Pinocchio was not initially a box office success. The box office returns from the film's initial release were below both Snow White 's unprecedented success and the studio's expectations. Of the film's $ 2.289 million cost – twice of Snow White  – Disney recouped $ 1 million by late 1940, with studio reports of

9317-533: The production of the Oswald cartoons to Winkler Pictures, along with Margaret Winkler's brother, George. After losing the Oswald contract to Walter Lantz , Mintz focused on the Krazy Kat series, which was the output of a Winkler-distributed property. M.J. Winkler Productions became known as Winkler Pictures after Mintz took over in 1926 and partnered with Columbia Pictures for distribution in 1929. In 1931, when

9438-554: The recent features and World War II cutting off much of the overseas cinema market, the studio's financiers at the Bank of America would only loan the studio working capital if it temporarily restricted itself to shorts production. Features then in production such as Peter Pan , Alice in Wonderland and Lady and the Tramp were therefore put on hold until after the war. Following the United States' entry into World War II after

9559-488: The same time in 1988, Disney started entering into Australia's long-standing animation industry by purchasing Hanna-Barbera 's Australian studio to start Disney Animation Australia . While Oliver & Company and the next feature The Little Mermaid were in production, Disney collaborated with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and master animator Richard Williams to produce Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,

9680-497: The scenes. Other staff members during this period included people such as Bob Wickersham, Paul Sommer, Alec Geiss, Sid Marcus, Howard Swift and Alex Lovy . Bob Clampett was also brought in as a gag writer before setting up his own animation studio for Republic Pictures . Screen Gems was, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Screen Gems shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after

9801-472: The second-longest holdouts ( Famous Studios and Leon Schlesinger Productions). During that same year, Columbia decided to shut its doors for good, while releasing a back catalog up until 1949. It later merged with the television version of Screen Gems (previously Pioneer Telefilms). In spite of the studio's internal affairs, Screen Gems' cartoons were still moderately successful, with it achieving additional Academy Awards nominations . However it never achieved

9922-414: The shorts division was shut down in 1956. After that, all future shorts were produced by the feature films division until 1969. The last Disney short of the golden age of animation was It's Tough to Be a Bird . Disney shorts would only be produced on a sporadic basis from this point on, with notable later shorts including Runaway Brain (1995, starring Mickey Mouse) and Paperman (2012). Despite

10043-607: The stop-motion The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), a live-action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (2010), and a stop-motion feature remake of Frankenweenie (2012). Bird was also fired after a few years working at the company for criticizing Disney's upper management as he felt that they were playing it safe and not taking risks on animation. He subsequently became an animation director at other studios, including Warner Bros. Animation and Pixar. Ron Miller , Walt Disney's son-in-law, became president of Walt Disney Productions in 1980 and CEO in 1983. That year, he expanded

10164-400: The studio and observe animators at work. That same year, the studio released The Little Mermaid , which became a keystone achievement in Disney's history as its largest critical and commercial success in decades. Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who'd been co-directors on The Great Mouse Detective , The Little Mermaid earned $ 84 million at the North American box office, a record for

10285-461: The studio head but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. Columbia then decided to hire Frank Tashlin , then a writer for Walt Disney Productions , as lead producer. There he would hire many displaced animators from the 1941 Disney animators' strike , as well as making the decision of firing the bulk of their initial staff (included Arthur Davis , Manny Gould , Lou Lilly , Ben Harrison and Winkler). Tashlin would also direct

10406-569: The studio moved from New York to California, it was renamed The Charles Mintz Studio. The Charles Mintz studio became known as Screen Gems in 1933. The name was originally used in 1933, when Columbia Pictures acquired a stake in Charles Mintz's animation studio. The name was derived from an early Columbia Pictures slogan, "Gems of the Screen"; itself a takeoff on the song " Columbia, the Gem of

10527-429: The studio to start his own production company to be affiliated with Paramount Television . On May 6, 1974, Screen Gems was renamed to Columbia Pictures Television as suggested by then-studio president David Gerber , who succeeded Art Frankel as his studio president. The final notable production from this incarnation of Screen Gems before the name change was the 1974 miniseries QB VII . Columbia was, technically,

10648-400: The studio to work on the film. The training classes, supervised by head animators such as Les Clark , Norm Ferguson and Art Babbit and taught by Donald W. Graham , an art teacher from the nearby Chouinard Art Institute , had begun at the studio in 1932 and were greatly expanded into orientation training and continuing education classes. In the course of teaching the classes, Graham and

10769-436: The studio was dedicated to producing short films until it entered feature production in 1934, resulting in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , one of the first full-length animated feature films and the first U.S.-based one. In 1986, during a large corporate restructuring, Walt Disney Productions, which had grown from a single animation studio into an international media conglomerate , was renamed The Walt Disney Company and

10890-412: The studio's animation output was for the military. During the war, Disney produced the live-action/animated military propaganda feature Victory Through Air Power (1943), and a series of Latin culture -themed shorts resulting from the 1941 Good Neighbor trip were compiled into two features, Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros set

11011-447: The studio's feature films. It was Reitherman who was responsible for a noticeable softening of Disney villains, and over the next two decades, nearly all Disney villains were more comical or pitiful than scary. Reitherman's main priority was ensuring that the studio would continue to turn a profit and towards that end, he stressed the importance of making family-friendly films. According to Andreas Deja , Reitherman said that "if we lose

11132-482: The studio's handling of home video releases. In 1948, Disney returned to the production of full-length features with Cinderella , a feature film based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault . At a cost of nearly $ 3 million, the future of the studio depended upon the success of this film. Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a box-office success, with the profits from the film's release allowing Disney to carry on producing animated features throughout

11253-413: The studio's highest-grossing animated feature since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the film's large production costs and the box office underperformance of Disney's other 1959 output resulted in the studio posting its first annual loss in a decade for fiscal year 1960, leading to massive layoffs throughout the studio. By the end of the decade, the Disney short subjects were no longer being produced on

11374-700: The studio, and development continued on The Black Cauldron , a long-gestating adaptation of the Chronicles of Prydain series of novels by Lloyd Alexander produced in Super Technirama 70. The Black Cauldron was intended to expand the appeal of Disney animated films to older audiences and to showcase the talents of the new generation of Disney animators from CalArts. Besides Keane, Musker and Clements, this new group of artists included other promising animators such as Andreas Deja , Mike Gabriel , John Lasseter , Brad Bird and Tim Burton . Lasseter

11495-488: The studio, from top-level animators such as Art Babbitt and Bill Tytla to artists better known for their work outside the Disney studio such as Frank Tashlin , Maurice Noble , Walt Kelly , Bill Melendez , and John Hubley . Hubley, along with several other Disney strikers, went on to found the United Productions of America studio, Disney's key animation rival in the 1950s. Dumbo , in production during

11616-416: The studio. The film was built around a score from Broadway songwriters Alan Menken and Howard Ashman , who was also a co-producer and story consultant on the film. The Little Mermaid won two Academy Awards, for Best Original Song and Best Original Score . The Little Mermaid vigorously relaunched a profound new interest in the animation and musical film genres. The film was also the first to feature

11737-746: The template for several other 1940s Disney releases of "package films": low-budgeted films composed of animated short subjects with animated or live-action bridging material. These films were Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The studio also produced two features, Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948), which used more expansive live-action stories which still included animated sequences and sequences combining live-action and animated characters. Shorts production continued during this period as well, with Donald Duck , Goofy , and Pluto cartoons being

11858-782: The third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie , became Disney's first cartoon with synchronized sound and was a major success upon its November 1928 debut at the West 57th Theatre in New York City. The Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons, distributed by Powers through Celebrity Productions, quickly became the most popular cartoon series in the United States. A second Disney series of sound cartoons, Silly Symphonies , debuted in 1929 with The Skeleton Dance . In 1929, disputes over finances between Disney and Powers led to Disney's animation production company, reincorporated on December 16, 1929, as Walt Disney Productions , signing

11979-565: The unit similar to Dimension Films (part of Lantern Entertainment ), Hollywood Pictures with Searchlight Pictures (divisions of The Walt Disney Company ), and Rogue Pictures (when it was formally owned by Relativity Media and before that, Universal Pictures ). As of 2023, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) is Screen Gems' highest-grossing film with over $ 300 million dollars worldwide in box office earnings. Walt Disney Animation Studios Walt Disney Animation Studios ( WDAS ), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation ,

12100-625: The unprecedented success of Gone with the Wind two years later, grossing over $ 8 million on its initial release, the equivalent of $ 173,163,120 in 1999 dollars. During the production of Snow White , work had continued on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series of shorts. Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935, by which time the series had added several major supporting characters, among them Mickey's dog, Pluto , and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy . Donald, Goofy, and Pluto would all be appearing in series of their own by 1940, and

12221-438: The use of Disney's Computer Animation Production System (CAPS). Developed for Disney by Pixar, which had grown into a commercial computer animation and technology development company, CAPS/ink-and-paint would become significant in allowing future Disney films to more seamlessly integrate computer-generated imagery and achieve higher production values with digital ink and paint and compositing techniques. The Little Mermaid

12342-561: The works of United Productions of America (UPA), whose flat art style and stylized animation techniques were lauded as more modern alternatives to the older Disney style. During the 1950s, only one Disney short, the stylized Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom , won the Best Short Subject (Cartoons) Oscar. The Mickey Mouse , Pluto and Goofy shorts had all ceased regular production by 1953, with Donald Duck and Humphrey continuing and converting to widescreen CinemaScope before

12463-656: The world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California . Since its foundation, the studio has produced 63 feature films , from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Moana 2 (2024), and hundreds of short films . Founded as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio ( DBCS ) in 1923, renamed Walt Disney Studio ( WDS ) in 1926 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions ( WDP ) in 1929,

12584-536: The years. Despite its financial failure, Fantasia was the subject of two Academy Honorary Awards on February 26, 1942 – one for the development of the innovative Fantasound system used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack, and the other for Stokowski and his contributions to the film. Fantasia was the final Disney animated film to be completed at the Hyperion Studio of the Walt Disney Studios (Walt Disney Productions) in Los Angeles. Much of

12705-464: Was The Great Mouse Detective (1986), begun by John Musker and Ron Clements as Basil of Baker Street after both left production of The Black Cauldron . The film was enough of a critical and commercial success to instill executive confidence in the animation studio. Later the same year, however, Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg 's Amblin Entertainment released Don Bluth's An American Tail , which outgrossed The Great Mouse Detective at

12826-427: Was a critical and commercial failure. The film's $ 21 million box office gross led to a loss for the studio, putting the future of the animation division in jeopardy. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the significance of animation to Disney's bottom line was significantly reduced as the company expanded into further live-action production, television and theme parks. As new CEO, Michael Eisner strongly considered shuttering

12947-749: Was also the first distributor for Hanna-Barbera Productions, an animation studio founded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after leaving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , and was also the distributor of the Soupy Sales show. The company also entered a co-production deal with Canada 's CTV Television Network and produced several shows, many of which were filmed or taped in Toronto for distribution to Canadian stations ( Showdown , The Pierre Berton Show ). The company even expanded as far as Australia , opening Screen Gems Australia to produce shows for that country's networks, including The Graham Kennedy Show for

13068-568: Was fired from Disney in 1983 for pushing the studio to explore computer animation production, but went on to become the creative head of Pixar , a pioneering computer animation studio that would begin a close association with Disney in the late 1980s. Similarly, Burton was fired in 1984 after producing a live-action short shelved by the studio, Frankenweenie , then went on to become a high-profile producer and director of live-action and stop-motion features for Disney and other studios. Some of Burton's high-profile projects for Disney would include

13189-402: Was founded in 1951 by Jerome Hyams, who also acquired United Television Films in 1955 that was founded by Archie Mayers. During that year, the studio began syndicating Columbia Pictures' theatrical film library to television, including the series of two-reel short subjects starring The Three Stooges in 1957. Earlier on August 2, 1957, they also acquired syndication rights to " Shock Theater ",

13310-619: Was key in renewing mainstream interest in American animation. Other than the film itself, the studio also produced three Roger Rabbit shorts during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A second satellite studio, Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida , opened in 1989 with 40 employees. Its offices were located within the Disney-MGM Studios theme park at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida , and visitors were allowed to tour

13431-580: Was later fired and succeeded by a revolving door of producers, including musician Paul Worth, Three Stooges producer Hugh McCollum and ex-Schlesinger assistants Ray Katz and Henry Binder. The studio would also create several more recurring characters around this time, including Tito and His Burrito, Flippy , Flop the Cat , Igor Puzzlewitz, Willoughby Wren , and an adaptation of Al Capp's comic series Li'l Abner , with varying levels of success. The studios output following Tashlin's departure was, in retrospect, considered to be vastly inferior as many of

13552-406: Was produced with a significantly reduced budget and animation repurposed from previous features. Both The Aristocats and Robin Hood were minor box office and critical successes. The Rescuers , released in 1977, was a success exceeding the achievements of the previous two Disney features. Receiving positive reviews, high commercial returns, and an Academy Award nomination, it ended up being

13673-507: Was recognized as the premier American animation studio for much of its existence and was "for many decades the undisputed world leader in animated features"; it developed many of the techniques, concepts and principles that became standard practices of traditional animation . The studio also pioneered the art of storyboarding , which is now a standard technique used in both animated and live-action filmmaking, as well as television shows and video games. The studio's catalog of animated features

13794-428: Was released in November 1940 by Disney itself in a series of limited-seating roadshow engagements. The film cost $ 2 million to produce and, although the film earned $ 1.4 million in its roadshow engagements, the high cost ($ 85,000 per theater) of installing Fantasound placed Fantasia at a greater loss than Pinocchio . RKO assumed distribution of Fantasia in 1941, later reissuing it in severely edited versions over

13915-460: Was renamed to Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., also creating Columbia/Tri-Star by merging Columbia and Tri-Star. Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names. In 1989, Sony Corporation of Japan purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment. On August 11, 1991, Columbia Pictures Entertainment was renamed as Sony Pictures Entertainment as a film production-distribution subsidiary and subsequently combined CPT with

14036-443: Was resurrected as a fourth speciality film-producing arm of Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. It was created after Triumph Films closed. Screen Gems produces and releases "films that fall between the wide-release films traditionally developed and distributed by Columbia Pictures and those released by Sony Pictures Classics ". Many of its releases are of the horror, thriller, action, drama, comedy and urban genres, making

14157-478: Was sold to EMI for $ 23.5 million in 1976. From 1964 to 1969, former child star Jackie Cooper was Vice President of Program Development. He was responsible for packaging series (such as Bewitched ) and other projects and selling them to the networks. For the 1965–1966 season, Screen Gems announced that they would sign three big creative programmers to develop new series, which was announced in June 1964. Among them

14278-571: Was the Silly Symphony cartoon Flowers and Trees , the first film commercially released in full Technicolor. Flowers and Trees was a major success and all Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. By the early 1930s, Walt Disney had realized that the success of animated films depended upon telling emotionally gripping stories that would grab the audience and not let go, and this realization led him to create

14399-487: Was the first of a series of blockbusters that would be released over the next decade by Walt Disney Feature Animation, a period later designated by the term Disney Renaissance . The Renaissance era also saw the studio return to making films with darker themes and scarier villains, similar to the films it had made when Walt Disney was still alive. Accompanied in theaters by the Mickey Mouse featurette The Prince and

14520-818: Was then added to Colex's roster when the company formed, and the first new show added to Colex's roster was the show Gidget . It was designed to handle syndication of barter series on an advertised-supported basis, mostly of obscure TV shows that never made it into syndication before. Colex was split into five branches in November 1985, which were Colex First-Run, which distributed new material, such as The New Gidget , The Hollywood Reporter and The New Monkees , Colex Premiere Movies, which distributed several movies and telemovies, The Colex Collection, which handled distribution of newer off-network product, The Colex 3-Pack, which consisted of mini-series and The Colex Classics, which would continue distribution of several shows. Colex closed its doors on January 1, 1988, ten days after

14641-606: Was writer Sidney Sheldon , director Hy Averback , and writer David Swift . In 1965, Columbia Pictures acquired a fifty per cent interest in the New York-based commercial production company EUE, which was incorporated into Screen Gems and renamed EUE/Screen Gems . The studios were sold in 1982 to longtime Columbia Pictures executive George Cooney shortly after Columbia Pictures was sold to The Coca-Cola Company . On December 23, 1968, Screen Gems merged with its parent company Columbia Pictures Corporation and became part of

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