True-Life Adventures | |
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![]() Introductory title card (1952) | |
Starring | Winston Hibler (narrator) |
Cinematography | Alfred Milotte (1–3) Norman R. Palmer (2–12) Herb Crisler (3) Lois Crisler (3) |
Edited by | Anthony Gérard (1–11) Norman R. Palmer (2–14) Lloyd L. Richardson (6–9) Jack Astwood (12) |
Music by | Oliver Wallace (1–14) Paul J. Smith (2–12) |
Production company | |
Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures (1948–1953) Buena Vista Film Distribution Co, Inc. (1953–1960) |
Release date |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
True-Life Adventures is a series of short and full-length nature documentary films released by Walt Disney Productions between the years 1948 and 1960. [1] The first seven films released were thirty-minute shorts, with the subsequent seven films being full features. The series won eight Academy Awards for the studio, including five for Best Two Reel Live Action Short and three for Best Documentary Feature.
The films were among the earliest production experience for Roy E. Disney. This film series was the launching pad for Disney's then-new distributor, the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc.. Television episodes from Disney's anthology TV series focus on the films, and it inspired both a daily panel comic strip distributed from 1955 to 1973 and one-shot comic-book adaptations of several films as part of Dell Comics' Four Color series.
Some of the features were re-edited into educational shorts between 1968 and 1975. The latter year saw the release of The Best of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures , a compilation film derived from the series.
# | film name | type | date | educational film |
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1 | Seal Island | Two-reel short | December 21, 1948 | |
2 | In Beaver Valley (a.k.a. Beaver Valley) | July 19, 1950 | ||
3 | Nature's Half Acre | July 28, 1951 | ||
4 | The Olympic Elk | February 13, 1952 | ||
5 | Water Birds | June 26, 1952 | ||
6 | Bear Country | February 5, 1953 | ||
7 | Prowlers of the Everglades | July 23, 1953 | ||
8 | The Living Desert | Feature | November 10, 1953 | The following educational films were excerpted from The Living Desert: [2]
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9 | The Vanishing Prairie | August 17, 1954 | The following educational films were excerpted from The Vanishing Prairie: [3]
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10 | The African Lion | September 14, 1955 | The following educational films were excerpted from The African Lion: [3]
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11 | Secrets of Life | November 6, 1956 | The following educational films were excerpted from Secrets of Life: [3]
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12 | Perri | August 28, 1957 | ||
13 | White Wilderness | August 12, 1958 | The following educational films were excerpted from White Wilderness: [3]
| |
14 | Jungle Cat | August 10, 1960 | The following educational films were excerpted from Jungle Cat: [2]
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The films were among the earliest production experience for Roy E. Disney. This series was the launching pad for Disney's then-new distributor, the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc.. Interstitial animated segments are included, and some filmed sequences are set to music. Ub Iwerks blew up the 16 mm film to 35 mm for theatrical projection and provided some special effects. [4]
The series won eight Academy Awards for the studio including five Best Two Reel Live Action Short awards for Seal Island , In Beaver Valley , Nature's Half Acre , Water Birds , and Bear Country , and three Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature awards for The Living Desert , The Vanishing Prairie and White Wilderness .
Television episodes from Disney's anthology TV series focus on the films, and it inspired a daily panel comic strip that was distributed from 1955 to 1973 and drawn by George Wheeler. [5] Several of the films were adapted in comic book format as one-shots in Dell Comics' Four Color series.
The following shorts were edited out of the other shorts/films/episodes for educational purposes. Either a fragment was exported out of a longer film or two or more sequences were edited together from more than two or more different films to form a "new" film. Thus they are not included on the Legacy DVDs.
Films made up of stock footage from two or more Disney nature films and thus not listed with respective original film above: [2] [3]
On October 8, 1975, Disney theatrically released The Best of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures, a full-length motion picture documentary derived from 13 of the acclaimed True-Life Adventures series written and directed by James Algar, executive produced by Ron Miller and narrated by Winston Hibler.
All of the True-Life Adventures have been released on 4 double-DVD sets as part of the Walt Disney Legacy Collection, which launched December 5, 2006.
Disc one
Disc two
Bonus features
Disc one
Disc two
Bonus features
Disc one
Disc two
Bonus features
Disc one
Disc two
Bonus features
Many of the shorts are hosted on Disney's streaming platform Disney+, [6] although as of January 6, 2022, Seal Island had not yet been added to the service in the United States. [7]
In 2007, Disney established a new nature film label called Disneynature, which produces feature films similar to the True-Life Adventures series. [8] After Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox's entertainment unit on March 20, 2019, Disneynature is a sister studio of National Geographic Films, which was owned by 21CF.
Various natural scientists have studied the contents of these films and found that various sequences in them were staged and fabricated, such as the lemmings' mass suicide in White Wilderness . [9]
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The Living Desert is a 1953 American nature documentary film that shows the everyday lives of the animals of the desert of the Southwestern United States. The film was written by James Algar, Winston Hibler, Jack Moffitt (uncredited) and Ted Sears. It was directed by Algar, with Hibler as the narrator and was filmed in Tucson, Arizona. The film won the 1953 Oscar for Best Documentary.
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A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of trained and captive animals. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema medium. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series.
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Wings of Life is a 2011 French-American nature documentary film directed by Louis Schwartzberg and released by Disneynature. It was released theatrically in France on 16 March 2011, with narration by Mélanie Laurent, and in home media markets across the US on 16 April 2013, with narration by Meryl Streep.
The Best of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures is a 1975 American compilation documentary film produced by Walt Disney Productions, directed by James Algar and released by Buena Vista Distribution on October 8, 1975. The film is composed of highlights from the Academy Award winning True-Life Adventures series of 13 feature length and short subject nature documentary films produced between 1948 and 1960.
The Olympic Elk is a 1952 American short documentary film directed by James Algar and produced by Walt Disney as part of the True-Life Adventures series of nature documentaries.