Thursday 16 October 2008

More on Disney and Holgersson

Thanks to Simon Bülow I now have some copies from more issues of Filmjournalen that mentions the 1946 Disney - Nils Holgersson project. (See my previous post on the subject.)

First we have the announcement of the competiotion from '46:

Then we have the actual competition page from the following issue. By designing the lead character Nils Holgerssonj you could win 1000 crowns and an original drawing signed by Disney. As you can see there are some familar faces in this picture. Looks like they are studying some desert scenes?

The next picture is also from 1946. It's taken in London and according to the text he is supposed to do a picture set in England.

I wonder if there were similar competitions in other European countries at the same time? The studio might not have been interested in doing Nils Holgersson at all but launched competitions in several countries just to get some attention after the war? 
Has anyone seen any documents relating to Nils Holgersson at the Disney archives?
The author of Nils Holgersson (Selma Lagerlöf) was still alive in the 40's. I wonder what she thought about all this...

1 comment:

-= Steamboat Willie =- said...

Diong a picture set in England.. in 1946.. Well, I supposed that is the prelude to "Treasure Island" (1950).

Since Disney had som major funds locked in the U.K. at this time, because of financial restrictions, he had to set up a british studio to use these funds... and the first movie from that studio was Treasure Island. He could have had similar plans for animation.