Broken Toys

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

Landing in a dump, a lively sailor doll finds the place has become the home for a collection of discarded BROKEN TOYS who have all given up hope of finding happiness again. Instilling new enthusiasm & dignity in them, the sailor doll helps get them repaired & cleaned-up. He even replaces the button eyes on a beautiful blind doll, finding romance in the bargain. But now, with Winter coming on, the sailor doll has big plans for the toys' future...

This very charming film was Disney's Christmas cartoon for 1935. Good animation & story are a real plus. A few Hollywood celebrities are caricatured amusingly: Ned Sparks, Zasu Pitts, W. C. Fields & Stepin Fetchit (in unedited versions).

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.