On this day in 1938, Disney released an 8-minute animated short titled Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.
Based on a popular poem for children written by Eugene Field in 1889, it is a fantasy bed-time story of three fishermen sailing and fishing in the stars. Sailing in a wooden shoe, the fishermen represent a sleepy child's blinking eyes and nodding head.
In Disney's version, the fishermen are three pajama-clad children (also in a wooden shoe) who are sailing on a river of dew and playing among the stars. It is one of the most appealing Disney cartoons of the 1930s - as the studio was making great improvements in production of animated shorts. One of the improvements was a device called the multiplane camera (which would be used extensively over the next several years). The camera gave fuller dimension to the studio's lush artwork.
Directed by Graham Heid (who would later work on Fantasia), Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
also features the music of Leigh Harline (who in a few years would win an Academy Award for his song "When You Wish Upon a Star").
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