On this day, in 1937, RKO released the Walt Disney Studio's Silly Symphony "The Old Mill." This short is really more about mood and effects than plot, but the story centers around a group of animals getting ready for bed in an abandoned mill with a storm brewing. It's noted for being the first Disney production to use the multi-plane camera. I say Disney production because Ub Iwerks had used a different multi-plane camera on some other work he'd done. That camera was a horizontal contraption. The Disney camera was a 14 foot high vertical monster that was so expensive to build, the studio only ever had two of them. The results, though, are undeniably magnificent.
The multi-plane camera wasn't the only innovation happening in
The Old Mill. Disney animators were also perfecting things like raindrops, lightning, complex lighting techniques and rotating detailed three-dimensional objects. Everything they learned doing this short would make
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that much better. Everyone's hard work paid off.
The Old Mill would win the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon for 1937 and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
The Old Mill has become an iconic part of Disney history. One of the scenes depicted on Disneyland's Storybook Canal attraction was of its three windmills (until the ubiquitous Frozen bumped them to storage). A snack bar in Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris is shaped like the old mill and at one time had a ferris wheel type ride attached to the back of it (technically the buckets of the ride are still there, it's just that no one gets in them anymore).
Mill is so iconic, it's even been parodied on
The Simpsons.
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