As early as 1934, Walt Disney started persuing the idea of a full-length animated feature film. He and his team of nine animators got together for a meeting in early 1935 and discussed ideas. They finally settled on two stories in particular: the story of Snow White, and a movie based on Felix Salton's novel A Life in the Forest--later to be known as "Bambi".

Production began immediately on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and in a remarkable amount of time, the film was completely finished within just under three years. Snow White became the highest-grossing film at the time, and by far the most successful project Disney had ever done. Upon seeing how successful "Snow White" was, he postponed development of "Bambi" and hurriedly started searching for other stories--specifically, fairy tales--to put on the big screen. By mid 1938, he chose "Pinocchio", which was, again, completed in under three years. "Pinocchio" was even more successful than "Snow White".

While "Pinocchio" was still in production, Disney began to think outside of his self-invented box, and developed in idea of a "concert feature animated film", as he called it. The end result was "Fantasia", a film composed of several animated segments with no dialogue or sound effects: just music.

Though it was not very successful at the time, "Fantasia" used many new inventions to not only the animation industry, but the film industry as well. The most-known of these is the use of surround sound, which is widely used today.

When Europe started World War II, Disney hurried to produce a film that would be released before the war spread to America. He was barely on time, as "Dumbo" made it to American theaters just three months before December 7, 1941. The film, based on a children's book of the same name, was widely successful, and was even on the shortlist of Academy Award nominees for Best Picture--losing the nomination itself by only three votes.

Disney halted all productions of full-length pictures until the war was decided--except for one. "Bambi" was a pet project of Disney's for eight years, and he was determined to have it finished. When it was released, people all over loved the film, and even today, people of all ages adore it. "Bambi" was the last in a short--but beloved--line of animated films...

The films released in Disney's Golden Age.