Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits - Lobby Cards

Posters and promotional materials for the 1940 The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits are extremely difficult to come by. A set of eight lobby cards was produced, each measuring approximately 11" x 14" (28 x 36 cm). They included:

• 1 title card (not yet found)
• 3 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (missing one)
• 1 Ferdinand the Bull
• 1 The Practical Pig
• 1 The Ugly Duckling
• 1 Donald's Lucky Day.

Image via austinbooks.

Another example of the log-crossing card with the "HIT NO. 1" arrow much more visible.

Image via emovieposters.com

Special thanks to Edgar Winkler for the heads up on four remaining lobbies.

See other Archive entries on The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits:

• pressbbook
• herald
• handbill
• one-sheet movie poster
• newspaper & magazine ads
• Larry Sobel Movie Quiz

Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits - Larry Sobel Movie Quiz

Larry Sobel was a newspaper artist who created the drawings for a regular syndicated feature called Movie Shorts Quiz. Among his many entries was this one from 1940. It spotlighted The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits, a compilation release of five Disney films including Snow White.

The Answers:

1. L-R: Ferdinand the Bull, The Ugly Duckling, Sneezy, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Snow White, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Donald Duck, The Three Little Pigs.
2. Wendell L. Willkie.
3. Television with coverage of the Democratic Convention and the renomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Here's another example of Sobel's work which includes Donald, Mickey, Pluto, and Horace Horsecollar. It's the original cartoon panel art in india ink and stippling on heavyweight paper. The feature appeared in newspapers on July 5, 1940.

Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits - Newspaper & Magazine Ads

A 1940 newspaper ad from the New York Times for The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits which included four shorts and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Theatre: Loew's Criterion.

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The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits continued to play at select cinemas throughout the rest of 1940 and even into March 1941. This Box Office magazine promotion encouraged theatre owners to book their screenings.

"Ready! Now! For Summer Bookings!"

1941 Handbill for "Festival of Hits"

In the summer of 1940, The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits opened in select movie houses (see earlier post). It was the first time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was re-released to theatres. The screenings would also include four Disney shorts, hence the "festival" atmosphere.

This handbill was for The Cinema in the city of Collinsville (not sure which state). It was probably a smaller second-run theatre. The flyer refers to the event as "The Disney Festival Show" which they scheduled to play continuously on March 21-22, 1941. It was right around this time that Disney would bring this first re-release of Snow White to a close.

Note: Gone With the Wind (which originally premiered in 1939) was set to screen a week later.

Image via interface-rick.

Handbill measures 15"x 4.75".

1940 'Festival of Hits' Herald

A flyer from Warner's Playhouse in Dover, New Jersey announces the arrival of The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits on August 18-21, 1940. The highlight of the screening was the return of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Centerfold.

Back page.

1940 Walt Disney Festival of Hits Pressbook

PRESSBOOK FRONT COVER

In an effort to raise much needed funds for the studio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was brought back to theatres in the summer of 1940 after having been "retired" just one year earlier. The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits was a compilation release of five Disney films. The four shorts included Ferdinand, The Bull, The Practical Pig (a Three Little Pigs sequel), The Ugly Duckling, and Donald's Lucky Day.

Festival of Hits pressbooks are difficult to come by, as are the posters and lobby cards. This re-release was very popular with audiences and did quite well, but it only played to a limited number of theaters, making the promotional materials all the more rare.

The book contained a total of eight pages including covers. Dimensions 12" x 18". Content included newspaper copy for stories about all the films, but it focused mainly on Snow White as would be expected...

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Print-ready newspaper ad layouts.

More newspaper copy...

On the back cover, an array of poster sizes that could be ordered by theatre owners. A set of eight lobby cards was also available. Four of the cards were for Snow White and one each for the others titles. Note that while the posters are shown here in yellow, in actuality, they were printed full color.

Image scans courtesy of the Michael Filippello Collection.

See these in other Archive entries:

• herald
• handbill
• lobby cards
• one-sheet movie poster
• newspaper & magazine ads
• Larry Sobel Movie Quiz

The Great Walt Disney Festival of Hits continued to play at select cinemas throughout the rest of 1940 and even into March 1941.