Back in the thirties, Walt Disney proved a revolutionary idea. He showed-for the first time in the history of the graphic arts-that an animated cartoon could arouse much more than laughter, that it could project drama, romance, fantasy, and even trag- edy. He called this compilation of magic 99 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' and in the first year after its release it made nearly ten million dollars, at that time an unheard-of sum for most films, especially one without real people.
After "Snow White," Disney repeatedly tried to duplicate this triumph. In many ways his unique genius advanced. He combined living actors with drawn ones. He delved more deeply into music, notably in "Fantasia." His experiments were all interesting and usually entertaining, but not until this month has he created a distillation of imagination, beauty, and otherworldliness to equal -- even exceed -- "Snow White."
This is "Peter Pan," to which I am awarding the COSMOPOLITAN Citation for the best picture of the month. This is no thin, sentimental fairy tale. It's lusty, thrill-packed. Barrie's sentimentality, circa 1904, has been replaced by the pixie spirit of Disney's saucy sex-pot, Tinker Bell. In Barrie's imagination, she was a mere flirtatious light, but Disney makes her a rival for Marilyn Monroe to reckon with.
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