Walt Disney - There's Always A Solution (1949)

When Walt Disney originally came to Hollywood, he wanted to be a live action film director. When he found that no jobs were available to him, he returned to animation. For over two decades Walt produced wildly popular animated short subject cartoons culminating in the first feature length animated feature, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Walt had planned to do several further animated features to follow the success of Snow White but Pinocchio, Fantasia, & Bambi all lost money upon their original theatrical releases. World War II paused Walt's plans to make more animated features and he was only able to keep his studio open through government contract work.

After the war, Walt tried to rebuild his studio to what it had been in the 1930's but it was never the same. Several of his planned feature length productions such as Mickey & the Beanstalk, Bongo, and the Wind in the Willows were truncated into featurettes and released as what were called "package features. Walt's planned animated feature, Uncle Remus, became re-imagined as his first live action film, the Academy Award winning masterpiece Song of the South. Walt's follow up to Song of the South was another live action production he connected very deeply with because it tied into his youth as a boy growing up on a farm in Marceline, Missouri. That film was titled So Dear to My Heart and it was.

Based on the 1943 novel Midnight & Jeremiah by Sterling North, it was Walt who retitled his film So Dear To My Heart because it was. Walt also restructured the story to center on prayer. North revised and retitled the novel to coincide with the film's 1948 release so that it more closely followed the content of the film. Forgotten today, So Dear to My Heart was highly acclaimed and always treated as a major film in the studio's library. It was also a personal favorite of Walt's only involving A-list talent.

Walt personally selected director Harold Schuster to helm the film because he'd directed My Friend Flicka in 1943 - - a favorite film of Walt's wife and daughters. Oscar-nominated actress Beulah Bondi was cast as Granny Kincaid. She's best known today as Ma Bailey in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. To prepare for this role, she learned how to work a loom, spin a wheel, plow a field, and care for sheep.

America's favorite balladeer, Burl Ives, portrayed Uncle Hiram in one of his first ever film roles. He won an Oscar in 1959 for his role of Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country. He won a Golden Globe for the same role. The folksong "Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly" featured in So Dear To My Heart was nominated for an Oscar and became the first hit for Ives. It lost the Oscar to "Baby It's Cold Outside" from the Warner Bros film Neptune's Daughter. Ives was known for gathering and preserving America's folksongs being nominated for 4 Grammies, winning one for his efforts. He's best known today as Sam the Snowman narrator of Rankin/Bass' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He would later work with Walt again in 1963's Summer Magic.

Child actor Bobby Driscoll was also awarded an Outstanding Juvenile Actor Oscar for his performance in both this film and Song of the South. He would go on to star in Walt Disney's Treasure Island and Peter Pan. His co-star, Luana Patten, also appeared with Driscoll in Song of the South and Melody Time. She also starred in Walt Disney's Fun & Fancy Free and would return to star in Johnny Tremain in 1957.

Oscar nominated actor Harry Carey was cast as the Judge of the Pike County Fair. Carey had starred in over 90 films, this being the final one. He passed away before its release.

Walt's distributor, RKO, dictated that he must include animation sequences in So Dear To My Heart because the public expected animation when they saw a Walt Disney film. Walt conceded reasoning that as young Jeremiah would work on his scrapbook the animated sequences would be out of his imagination. These sequences contain a great deal of American culture as they illustrate Biblical history, American history, and world history. For Walt's next film, Treasure Island, he would reject including animation at all.

Walt showcased So Dear To My Heart multiple times on his TV show. He had always intended to recreate the farm seen in the film as a land within Disneyland from the earliest planning phase of the theme park, but it was never built. However, the Disneyland Railroad Station is built from the same plans used to build the railroad station seen in the film. A replica of the barn was also constructed in Walt's own backyard because it had been based on his memories of his family's own barn on their Marceline farm. It became Walt's sanctuary where he built models and operated his 1:8 scale backyard railroad.

So Dear To My Heart was a film that kept Walt's studio afloat until he started making true animated features again with Cinderella immediately following its release. It was the fruition of Walt's "stick-to-it-tivity to one day make live action films.

Like all of Walt's films, So Dear To My Heart. featured a major marketing and merchandising campaign. Some of the most historical artifacts to come out of this campaign were the numerous articles about the film where Walt candidly discussed his Christian faith and belief in God. The most important of these articles is in this 1949 issue of Guideposts published over six months after the film's release. Walt handwrote an essay where he shared that the theme of So Dear To My Heart is the power of prayer in our everyday lives.

The article also featured artwork of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck taking their families to church created by Disney Legend Hank Porter. Porter created thousands of comic strips and illustrations of the Walt Disney characters during his time at the studio. Today he's most primarily known for the military art he created of the characters during World War II. Porter died of cancer in 1951. This is the rarest of Walt's faith essays to track down a hard copy of. Some suggest it's because of Walt's words along with Porter's artwork that's caused it to be suppressed. Walt would later expand on some of the paragraphs he originally wrote for this Guideposts essay in later essays and interviews proving his strong moral compass never wavered.

To understand who Walt Disney was, one must see So Dear To My Heart. For some reason it's perhaps the most ignored film in the Disney canon barely getting mentioned in most Disney histories which is even more odd when this film was so important to Walt and influential on Disneyland. It was released to VHS and DVD and everyone should see it.

The songs used during this video also come from Walt Disney's So Dear To My Heart.

By presenting Walt's written essay as a video we hope that it makes Walt's views more accessible to a wider variety of people.

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Posted for historical purposes. Walt Disney's voice is recreated with AI. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.