NARRATOR: Walt Disney was one of the 20th century's
most forward thinking and technologically innovative filmmakers.
Yet many of his greatest movies and theme park attractions
had their origins in some of the oldest stories ever told.
Fairy tales.
JENNIFER LEE: Fairy tales were always a way
to explore the complexity of life,
and I think that's part of why they create
such powerful cinematic stories as well,
because you are transported and immersed in a world
where you can feel emotions, you can cry, you can laugh,
but you're safely in a seat in a movie theater going through it.
These are things that Marc was working on
for a new idea for another show at Disneyland.
This was going to be a ride
that Marc had designed for the hot summer days,
and they would be kept very cold.
So you would walk in from the hot, terrible weather outside
and you would have this wonderful cool weather to keep you cool.
I'm all for that.
- LEE: It was about time for it. - Was probably going to be
the most popular attraction, especially in the summer months.
CHRIS BUCK: Marc Davis started as an animator.
I've always been a huge fan of Marc's.
I looked up to him and his draftsmanship
and the actual animation
and his character designs, just gorgeous.
He was one of the Nine Old Men
and then eventually, he started designing attractions
for Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
And one of those attractions was the Enchanted Snow Palace.
LEE: It was amazing to us to see the artwork, though,
'cause there were a lot of things that we said,
"Wait a minute, this is like what we were doing."
- We were channeling Marc... - We were channeling Marc.
-...and we didn't even know it. - Yeah.
BUCK: We ended up with a braid for our Snow Queen character.
- Just like that. - To one side.
Just off to one side, just like that.
BUCK: And also, Elsa's cape that we ended up with has this very...
Has this... Not quite exactly the same pattern, but almost.
LEE: I love the colors, they're so... All the white and the blue.
- DAVIS: Nice and subtle. - Yeah.
- And cold. - Cold.
NARRATOR: After the success of Snow White in the late 1930s,
Walt Disney went back to the creative well of fairy tales
looking for stories for his future productions.
DAVIS: Marc went to Scandinavia
because Walt wanted him to look into some books and things there,
and he came back with a lot of information for Walt.
Marc thought the Hans Christian Andersen stories
were very interesting, and short stories
that they could do short films on, too.
BUCK: I think that Walt was attracted to the Hans Christian Andersen stories
because he's the same kind of storyteller.
Walt would tell very rich, very deep, sometimes dark, stories,
but also had the whimsy and the humor,
and it would take you to another world.
It was in 1939 that Walt had given The Snow Queen a production number.
1092.
LEE: There was talks about doing a biography of Hans Christian Andersen,
working with MGM to do the live action and Disney would do the animation,
but we don't know what happened to that.
So there's this huge mystery
wondering what drew him to The Snow Queen
-and what he was hoping to do. - Yeah.
Well, how about the one we've always wanted to do
and never got around to?
NARRATOR: It's likely that The Snow Queen was intended to be
one of the animated sequences
in the Hans Christian Andersen biography.
But despite Walt Disney's interest,
no evidence of creative work on the project
has yet been found in the Disney Archives.
The only Hans Christian Andersen story
to go into production at the time
was the Silly Symphonies, The Ugly Duckling.
There was some early development of Hans Christian Andersen's story
The Little Mermaid, with art by Kay Nielsen,
but that too was eventually shelved.
It would be another 40 years
before The Little Mermaid reached the screen,
and 70 years before the Walt Disney Animation Studios
would bring Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen to life
in the movie Frozen.
LEE: Hans Christian Andersen's story The Snow Queen is very poetic,
it's very symbolic, it's episodic,
and I think that's what was the greatest challenge
of trying to crack this story.
"Love Will thaw."
Love. Of course.
BUCK: We took the original theme from the original Snow Queen,
and that was "Love conquers negativity."
And for us the negativity for today is fear.
So we took basic things, combined characters,
and tried to somewhat simplify the story.
And then we added a lot of humor to it also.
This is one of my favorites.
He was so marvelous with bears.
- BUCK: Yeah. - LEE: They're fantastic.
DAVIS: It's like you could reach out and touch them.
And I love the way he's used his brush all through here.
- It's like you feel frost. - Yeah.
I don't know how he did it.
Maybe it was like wet-on-wet,
or something that has got that really organic shape for the snowflakes.
He would get the... Paint the color that he wanted it,
and sometimes he would sprinkle a little bit of salt into it,
-and it would go fshhht! - Right.
LEE: I wish we had thought to put salt in the computer.
BUCK: In the computer... LEE: That would have helped.
We would have been done two years earlier.
- I know. That's all we needed to do. - That's great.
We have, in our ice palace, these grand foyer steps rising up,
and Elsa's poised right at the top.
But building that environment
was probably the hardest thing we did in the film, technically.
Whoa.
LEE: There's this beautiful painting
with the aurora borealis sweeping the sky,
and the stars twinkling.
And it felt right out of Frozen to us,
but we were in awe of what he did with paint,
and we were trying to do with CG, computers.
Which is almost impossible,
because a computer does everything perfectly.
And what Marc had done had a very organic feel to it
'cause it was handmade.
They need to make this... Finally make this attraction, yeah.
Maybe they will.
BUCK: Meeting Alice was such a treat.
She's so talented herself,
being a costume designer for Small World
and lots of other films that Walt had done.
DAVIS: When I went to work doing the costumes for Small World,
I said to Walt, "What is my budget on this?"
And when he got slightly disturbed and that one eyebrow would go up,
and you knew you were in a bit of trouble.
So, he said,
"Remember this, when you're working here,
"you give everybody more than they expect.
"You give them the best you can.
"If you do that, they'll always come back.
"If you cheat them, you'll never see them again."
LEE: What I loved about Walt Disney's approach was, it was about the work,
and about pushing your imagination farther than you ever thought you could.
BUCK". Everything he did had quality.
It was never about cutting corners.
He would always strive to do things that were excellent,
and things that were going to last forever and ever.
LEE: That was how he worked,
and that, I feel like, is how we work today.
And there's no greater creative experience than that!