Disney’s largely forgotten wartime shorts, ranked

polygon.com:

The 1940s were a strange period in the history of Disney animation. The decade kicked off with three all-time classics — 1940’s Fantasia, 1941’s Dumbo, and 1942’s Bambi — but the balance of the ’40s was devoted to so-called “package films,” six anthology features that bridged the gap before the classics picked up again with 1950’s Cinderella.

Why haven’t those package films been remembered in the same breath as the animated Disney films that bookend them? The answer is mired in the history of Disney’s financial affairs, and World War II’s impact on the animation industry. Due to the financial underperformance of Pinocchio,Fantasia,and Bambi,and the limitations World War II put on the potential worldwide box office,Disney’s financiers at Bank of America would only continue supporting the studio’s animated projects if Walt Disney stuck to the less costly work of producing shorts.

So Disney shelved Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and other projects for a while, and from 1943 to 1949, the studio produced 31 shorts, bundled into six features. These shorts range in length from a few minutes to half an hour long, and in subject matter from a Mickey Mouse adventure to social propaganda to abstract interpretations of jazz music. Most galling from a 21st-century perspective, many of them traffic in racial and cultural stereotypes that were probably the ultimate factor explaining why these odd collections have largely been memory-holed.

So how to approach the package films? Perhaps it’s best to treat them as Bank of America preferred: Not as features at all, but as 31 short films of wildly varying effectiveness. Here’s a full ranking of these shorts, to help you sift through the problematic muck on your way to the treasures within.