"The Story of the Animated Drawing" is an episode of the Disneyland television program. Originally aired in 1955, it shows Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 explaining the history of animation throughout the ages, starting back in prehistoric days and working its way up to some primitive mechanical animation contraptions in the nineteenth century.

From there, it goes on to more advanced animation methods, as evidenced in J. Stuart Blackton

J. Stuart Blackton

James Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation...

's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is a silent cartoon by J. Stuart Blackton released in 1906. It features a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces coming to life. It is generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film. It features movements as where a dog jumps through...

and Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades...

's Gertie the Dinosaur

Gertie the Dinosaur

Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality...

. This is also evidenced in such famed cartoonists as J. R. Bray, Earl Hurd

Earl Hurd

Earl Hurd was a pioneering American animator and film director. He is noted for creating and producing the silent Bobby Bumps animated short subject series for early animation producer J.R. Bray's Bray Productions...

 and Pat Sullivan

Pat Sullivan

Patrick Sullivan may refer to:* Pat Sullivan , Australian film producer and animator* Pat Sullivan , American football coach and former player...

 (who is famous for his creation of Felix the Cat

Felix the Cat

Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history...

). Then it shows a demonstration of how music was synchronized into cartoons in the early days of the cinema.

Then it begins to focus more on Walt Disney's contributions to animation, in sound (Steamboat Willie

Steamboat Willie

Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...

), in music being the main element (the Silly Symphonies

Silly Symphonies

Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...

 series and Fantasia) and in animated feature films (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...

, and Pinocchio

Pinocchio (1940 film)

Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...

). The Nutcracker Suite

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...

segment from Fantasia is presented virtually complete.