Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” Opens at the Box Office

Summary

History Daily: Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” Opens at the Box Office
Release Date: January 29, 2025
Host: Lindsay Graham (American Scandal, American History Tellers)

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Introduction and Disneyland’s Early Days

[00:20]
On July 13, 1955, just days before Disneyland officially opened its gates in Anaheim, California, a select group of VIPs attended a special preview event. Hosted by none other than Walt Disney himself, the atmosphere was tense yet hopeful. Lindsay Graham sets the scene:

“Walt chain smokes nervously. This theme park has been years in the making and costs millions of dollars. It's a huge gamble for Walt and his company, and now the moment of truth is near.” [00:20]

As Hollywood stars like Terry Grant and Spencer Tracy arrived, Disney showcased the magic of Disneyland, hoping to impress both celebrities and the real guests he had envisioned for the park. The delight on the children’s faces aboard the Disneyland Railroad lifted Walt’s spirits, reaffirming his dedication despite the immense pressure.

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The State of Walt Disney Studios in the 1950s

[04:10]
Fast forward to early 1950 at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Lindsay Graham delves into the tumultuous period faced by the studio:

“The 1940s started with a string of critical hits, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, but the box office returns didn't match the acclaim.” [04:10]

Post-World War II, Disney struggled with financial losses due to underperforming anthology films like Fun and Fancy Free and Melody Time. The company was teetering on the brink of shutting down its animation division, relying heavily on the success of Cinderella to stave off financial ruin.

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The Ambitious Project: Sleeping Beauty

[04:10]
Walt Disney, determined to secure the studio's future, greenlights Sleeping Beauty as the next animated feature. He appoints veteran animator Wilfred Jackson as director, setting an initial release date of Christmas 1955.

“Walt wants Sleeping Beauty to push the envelope, to astonish audiences with the quality of its animation.” [04:10]

To achieve this vision, Walt hires artist Ivan Earle, whose lifelike paintings set a new standard for animation. However, the animators balk at the demanding level of detail required, fearing it will be too time-consuming and costly.

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Production Challenges and Setbacks

[10:52]
By 1957, seven years into production, Sleeping Beauty remains incomplete. An early cut of the film reveals significant shortcomings:

“After half a decade of work and millions of dollars, Sleeping Beauty is still far from ready.” [10:52]

Walt's dissatisfaction stems from the film’s lack of narrative substance despite its stunning visual style. The departure of director Wilfred Jackson due to a heart attack leaves the project in disarray, with escalating costs nearing $6 million and deadlines slipping.

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Industry Competition and UPA’s Rise

[10:52]
During this period, the animation industry faces fierce competition. United Productions of America (UPA), founded by former Disney employees, embraces an abstract and modern art-influenced style that gains critical acclaim. Their success starkly contrasts with Disney’s struggles.

“UPA began scooping up the big awards typically captured by Disney.” [10:52]

Walt's attempt to outshine UPA with Sleeping Beauty’s realistic animation only exacerbates production delays and financial strain, culminating in the postponement of the film’s release multiple times.

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The Catastrophic Release and Immediate Fallout

[17:37]
Finally, on January 29, 1959, after a decade of labor and mounting expenses, Sleeping Beauty premieres. The initial reception is disastrous:

“Words like monotonous, cold, and even rotten leap out from the page at Walt.” [17:37]

Box office numbers for the opening day are dismal, leading to the film’s eventual failure to recoup its production costs. The Walt Disney Company records its first financial loss in over a decade, forcing Walt to reassess his strategy.

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Aftermath: Shifting Focus and Company Impact

[17:37]
In the wake of Sleeping Beauty’s failure, Walt Disney redirects the company’s focus from animation to live-action films. Only two animated features are released in the subsequent five years, both nearly complete before Sleeping Beauty’s troubled release. Projects are canceled, and the animation division faces extinction rumors.

“Walt needs a new hit, and he believes bringing another fairy tale princess to life will do the trick.” [04:10]

Despite initial setbacks, Sleeping Beauty eventually garners a reevaluated appreciation for its animation quality and creativity. Re-releases and home video sales help the film finally recoup its budget, paving the way for a resurgence in Disney’s animation endeavors.

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Legacy and Renaissance of Disney Animation

[17:37]
By the mid-1980s, under the leadership of Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, the animation department experiences a renaissance. Classics such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin revive Disney’s prominence in animation, restoring the studio’s reputation tarnished by Sleeping Beauty’s initial failure.

“The movie is then re-released in theaters and eventually on home video, finding new audiences and finally recouping its vast budget.” [17:37]

This period marks Disney's return to the forefront of animated filmmaking, ensuring that the legacy of Sleeping Beauty as a symbol of perseverance and artistic ambition endures.

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Conclusion

The story of Sleeping Beauty encapsulates a pivotal moment in Disney’s history, highlighting the challenges of creative ambition, industry competition, and financial risk. Walt Disney’s unwavering commitment to his vision, despite numerous obstacles, ultimately contributed to the enduring legacy and success of the Walt Disney Company.

“Every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.” [04:10]

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Upcoming on History Daily:
January 30, 1661 - The English Civil War Leader Oliver Cromwell

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This episode was hosted, edited, and executive produced by Lindsay Graham, with audio editing by Mohammed Shazid, sound design by Matthew Filler, and music by Lindsay Graham. Written and researched by Owen Paul Nichols. Executive producers include William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.

Transcript

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[Lindsey Graham]

July 13, 1955, outside the gates of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. It's a few days before the opening of the new theme park, but a special preview event is about to begin for a select group of VIPs. Waiting at the entrance for guests is Walt Disney himself, founder and CEO of the Walt Disney Company. Walt chain smokes nervously. This theme park has been years in the making and costs millions of dollars. It's a huge gamble for Walt and his company, and now the moment of truth is near. Cameras flash as Hollywood stars and their families arrive at the gates. The celebrities stop to pose for photos with Walt. He shakes hands with Terry Grant and then with Spencer Tracy. And when the guests have all assembled, Walt leads them inside. Laid out before them is a magical world designed to transport them away from the reality of the everyday and into a world of pure fantasy. The guests seem delighted by what they see. But as much as Walt is eager to show off Disneyland to these celebrities, he's more concerned with the reaction of his real guests, those he built the park for. So as the A listers leave to explore Disneyland on their own, Walt gathers a dozen of their children together. He ushers them all onto the Disneyland Railroad, a miniature locomotive that will carry guests around the park. And once the children are all on board, Walt jumps into the driver's seat. He toots the horn and the train pulls away. As the engine gains speed, Walt looks behind him at the children's faces. They point excitedly at the rides and stalls and gardens all laid out waiting for them. Walt smiles, the tension lifting from his shoulders. Suddenly it all seems worthwhile. For the past decade, Walt Disney has devoted his life to Disneyland. There's not an inch of this new theme park that hasn't had his special attention. But away from Disneyland, trouble is brewing. The animation studio that made Walt Disney his name is facing outside threats and internal division. With the massive investment he's made in Disneyland, Walt needs his latest movie project to be a success. But Sleeping Beauty is overdue and over budget. Years pass, costs rise, and the pressure mounts until the entire future of the Walt Disney studio will be at stake. When Sleeping Beauty finally opens in theaters on January 29, 1959.

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[Lindsey Graham]

From Noiser and Airship I'm Lindsey Graham and this is History. Daily history is made every day on this podcast. Every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world. Today is January 29, 1959. Disney's Sleeping Beauty opens at the box office. It's early 1950 at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, five and a half years before the opening of Disneyland. In a conference room in the animation department, Walt Disney gets to his feet, stubs out a cigarette and calls for quiet from his senior animators. The room falls silent as Walt begins to speak. The reason he's gathered his troops is to announce Disney's next animated feature film. It's a story Walt has been eyeing for some time, the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Walt is bristling with excitement. He has high ambitions for the project, but the pressure is on. This is a movie which has to be a success. It's been a difficult decade at the Walt Disney Company. The 1940s started with a string of critical hits, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, but the box office returns didn't match the acclaim. World War II was underway, and the global network of theaters and distributors, which existed before the conflict, now lay in tatters. Even the most brilliantly crafted and entertaining of movies struggled to make their budgets back. But peacetime didn't improve Disney's prospects after the war. In the late 1940s, the company released a host of critical failures anthology movies like Fun and Fancy Free and Melody Time failed to find an audience at all. That left Disney millions of dollars in debt. Things were looking bleak for the company. And then there were rumors the animation studio might have to shut for good. Thankfully for Walt and his employees, their next project turned things around. Cinderella has received rave reviews from critics and is on its way to become the company's biggest box office hit since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves way back in 1937. Still, one success isn't enough to secure the studio's future. Walt needs a new hit, and he believes bringing another fairy tale princess to life will do the trick. So he sets his team to work for director. Walt chooses the veteran animator, Wilfred Jackson. Wilfred has worked at Disney for years and was the director on the successful Cinderella project. So Walt is confident that Wilfred and the rest of the team can succeed in bringing his vision for Sleeping Beauty to life. Walt sets a release date of Christmas 1955, and that means the studio has more than five years to complete the film. But it doesn't take long before things start to go awry. After the first draft of the story of Sleeping Beauty is delivered, Walt's dissatisfied with the script and demands a rewrite. But that's not all he's unhappy with. The visual style under development doesn't meet his standards either. Walt wants Sleeping Beauty to push the envelope, to astonish audiences with the quality of its animation. But the early test footage is a disappointment. So Walt decides to bring in someone new. He hires an artist named Ivan Earle, who creates a series of glorious, almost lifelike paintings to inspire the Sleeping Beauty team. When the animators see the artwork for the first time, they marvel at the intricacy of the enormous paintings. But they don't think it's possible to recreate that level of detail in animation. They protest to Walt that replicating Ivan's style will take too long and cost too much. But Walt refuses to listen. He issues clear instructions that this is the way forward. He tells his team that Sleeping Beauty must be their most ambitious feature to date. The most ambitious animated movie ever made, in fact, and Walt doesn't care how long it takes. Time, though, is not on the side of Sleeping Beauty's director, Wilford Jackson. Three years into the troubled production, Wilford suffers a heart attack, which forces him to leave the project. And with only two years to go until the planned release date of December 1955, the screenplay for Sleeping Beauty is still unfinished, and the animators are yet to master the intricate art design. Now the team must battle on without their original leader, Walt appoints a new director to replace Wilfred. But things will soon go from bad to worse. As the cost of Sleeping Beauty continues to spiral, a rival production company will come for Disney's crown, outperforming the once mighty kings of animation at the box office and making Disney movies look like a thing of the past. With his financial problems growing, Walt will be left with a decision to make not just about the future of his animated movies, but about the future of his entire company.

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[Lindsey Graham]

Of 1957 in a screen room at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, seven years after production began on Sleeping Beauty and two years after Walt Disney wanted the film to debut. The lights come on as an early cut of the movie finishes. Sitting in the front row, chain smoking as ever, is Walt Disney, the senior production team, all await his verdict from the seats behind him. They glance at one another nervously. Walt is silent for a long time, but finally he stubs out his latest cigarette and stands up. Everyone can tell by the look on his face that he's not pleased. After half a decade of work and millions of dollars, Sleeping Beauty is still far from ready. Walt bemoans the fact that his team seems to have worked harder on the style of animation than the substance of the story. He conveniently seems to forget that it was his instruction to focus on getting the project to look right first. But that's not the production team's only frustration with the feedback from their boss. Walt's critique of the film lacks his usual specificity. His notes are general and occasionally meandering. In recent years, Walt's been spending more and more time away from the studio, focusing on his wider business empire and the construction of Disneyland. Now it seems he's lost his once reliable understanding of stories. He just doesn't have the answers to the problems he sees with the film. After the screening, the mood within the halls at the studio is bleak. Walt and the animation division seem to be back where they were before the success of Cinderella. Once again, rumors swirl that Walt is going to shut down the animation department entirely. He wouldn't be the only one to make such a move. During the 1950s, it wasn't just Disney that struggled in Hollywood. The entire decade has seen a television boom. And the rise of home viewing has had a devastating impact on cinema audiences. With animated movies taking the biggest hit. It's far simpler to make cartoons for television than the big screen. And far cheaper for families to switch on the TV than head to the local movie theater. The market for feature length animated movies collapsed. This fall of big screen animation saw the inventor of Mighty Mouse retire and sell his studio to CBS in 1955. Then MGM closed its doors to feature animation in 1957. Even Warner Bros. Disney's biggest rivals in the decades prior, temporarily closed their animation unit. But one other company prevailed. While Walt and his team struggled with Sleeping Beauty, United Productions of America kept going strong as ever. Started by former employees of Disney in 1941, UPA was in many ways the opposite of of the Walt Disney Company. While Walt was obsessed with realism, UPA animators embraced a more abstract and experimental look. Influenced by modern art. This style was seen by many in the business as the future of animation. But Walt hated it. To his horror, however, UPA began scooping up the big awards typically captured by Disney. They even kicked off the 1950s by taking home the best animated short at the Oscars and went on to win many more throughout the decade. So the success of UPA lays heavily on Walt Disney. The richly detailed and realistic scenes of Sleeping Beauty were going to be his rebuttal. Walt hoped that he would show UPA and the world what animation was really capable of and cement Disney as the number one animation studio in town. But now that Walt has seen the early cut of Sleeping Beauty, he's worried. So to get the project back on track, he throws even more money at the production and demands even greater realism from his animators. But that only causes yet more delays. Production bogs down, with animators sometimes managing only one drawing a day, a pace which amounts to just a second of screen time a month. Walt has no choice but to postpone the release of the movie. The original date of December 1955 is already long since passed. Now Christmas 1957 gives way to Christmas 1958. That too, falls by the wayside. It's 1959 before the movie is complete, and having gone through multiple directors, close to $6 million spent and a decade's worth of work, Sleeping Beauty is finally ready. As prints of the movie are shipped off to theaters across the country, Walt will face a nervous wait. Never before has he invested so much time and money in one feature film. And its success or failure will decide the future of the Walt Disney Company for years to come.

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[Lindsey Graham]

January 29, 1959 at Walt Disney's office at the studios in Burbank, California, Walt sits behind his desk with the morning's newspapers laid out in front of him. The reviews are in for his latest picture, Sleeping Beauty, but they're not good. Words like monotonous, cold, and even rotten leap out from the page at Walt. He shakes his head. His only hope is that audiences like the movie better than the critics. But it's not long before the phone rings with more bad news. The head of Disney's distribution arm is on the line with the audience figures for Sleeping Beauty's opening day, and they don't look good either. In the weeks that follow, the numbers don't improve. Sleeping Beauty is a catastrophic failure. The movie's North American box office doesn't even cover the cost of production, and as a result, the Walt Disney Company posts its first financial loss in more than a decade. But the fallout from Sleeping Beauty's failure doesn't just affect the company's bottom line it changes Walt's whole approach to moviemaking. In the five years that follows, Walt Disney Studios releases only two animated features, and both were nearly finished before the release of Sleeping Beauty. Other projects in development are canceled, though, and Walt shifts his company's focus from animation to live action productions like Mary Poppins and the Parent Trap. Not long after this switch. Walt Disney dies in 1966, but his company continues to neglect big screen animation, and not a single Disney movie is fronted by a princess for the next two decades. Those years proved kind to the reputation of Sleeping Beauty, however. Critics began to revise their initial thoughts on the film, praising its animation and the care and creativity that went into making it. The movie is then re released in theaters and eventually on home video, finding new audiences and finally recouping its vast budget. And by the mid-1980s it seems the world is finally ready to fall in love with a Disney princess once again. Under the leadership of Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Disney animation department will undergo a renaissance. Feature films like the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin will all triumph at the box office, returning Disney to the forefront of animation, a place it hadn't been since the disastrous release of sleeping beauty on January 29, 1959. Next on History Daily January 30, 1661 the English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell.

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[Lindsey Graham]

Years after his death. From Noiser and Airship, this Is History Daily Hosted, edited and executive produced by ME, Lindsay Graham Audio editing by Mohammed Shazid sound design by Matthew Filler music by Lindsey Graham. This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nichols. Executive producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.