Happy Thanksgiving to one and all from the Institute. I wrote about Walt’s use of the magazine to help promote films, theme parks, and other projects a few years back, which you can read here. This publication, The Pictorial Review, was a favorite with the Disney publicity department, and as such it resulted in numerous pieces of beautiful Disney cover art being supplied to Review editors on a fairly regular basis (especially in the 1940s). This wonderful Song of the South promotional cover is but one example of many. It served to introduce the newest Disney characters to the American Public, where upon first glance it was learned that Brer Bear and Brer Fox had a little bit more than turkey on their minds. Within the magazine collection here at the Institute there are thousands of Disney covers, but very few that feature the animated characters from Song of the South; indeed the live-action characters turn up more often than the Brers…which makes this installment of “Covering Disney” a particular rarity. The Pictorial Review was a Sunday supplement that was included in quite a few big city newspapers; in this particular case the Baltimore American. This image hit American households on November 24, 1946, barely two weeks after the November 12th release date of the film in Atlanta, Georgia. As intriguing as the cover might be, it–along with the rest of the Song of the South publicity campaign–it was not enough to get people into the movie theaters, as the film’s revenues disappointed Walt.
Enjoy!
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