Spider-Man has a new boss and it’s Mickey Mouse!

In a move that has both the film and comics genre geek press buzzing, the Walt Disney Company announced today that they will be acquiring Marvel Enterprises, which includes Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, for a staggering $4 billion. The deal brings to Disney Marvel’s 5,000+ characters including Captain America, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four into their corporate hierarchy. It was news that caught everyone by surprise and immediately discussion on the deal filled the electronic ether. Not to mention the inevitable jokes that immediately began to fly. (“Coming soon- Xavier’s Academy Musical!”, “Matt Murdock is The Shaggy D.A. He’s his own seeing-eye dog!”)

(And FBOL Comic Book Movie editor William Gatevackes rightly points out that the two biggest comics publishers are now owned by the two major animation houses in film history.)

Of course, amidst all the surprise, a number of questions lurk. Will the family-oriented Disney allow some of the more adult-targeted comics to continue? Probably. What of the Disney properties that are currently licensed out to other comics publishers, such as Boom Studio’s Muppet and PIXAR-related titles? No word yet. What about Marvel’s licensing deal that allows Spider-Man and the Hulk to roam Disney theme-park rival Universal Studios Orlando? That will stay in place for the foreseeable future.

But what changes are we going to see on the movie side of things? Probably not much in the short and even medium term.

The most pressing question that seems to have been generated by today’s announcement is what will become of Marvel’s deal with Paramount Studios to distribute the superhero films that Marvel Studios are producing?According to Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige, the agreement which will see Paramount distribute Iron Man 2 next summer, Thor and Captain America in 2011, The Avengers in 2012 and a possible Iron Man 3 will stay in place, at least until all those films have been released. It is doubtful that Marvel would re-up the agreement with Paramount when they can utilize Disney’s own distribution and formidable advertising networks.

As for studio interference, I think Disney will leave well enough alone. Paramount’s deal kept them hands off on the production side of things, and that has allowed Feige to build Marvel Studios’ plan for interconnecting films.While Marvel might not have the string of hits that recently acquired PIXAR Studios has been granted, if the cross-film build-up towards 2012′s The Avengers continues not just with fans but on the year-end balance sheets, then expect Disney to grant Marvel the same autonomy that they have granted PIXAR.

But what of Marvel’s myriad deals that have licensed out many of their characters to other film companies? Currently, 20th Century Fox has the X-Men, Daredevil and Fantastic Four characters, while Sony has rights to Spider-Man and his supporting cast. While Fox has bungled both the potential for long-running Daredevil and Fantastic Four franchises, they seem to be quite happy with the box-office number on their X-Men films. This summer’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine has done over $363 million in worldwide ticket sales, which is enough for the studio to have several more films in development, including a direct sequel to Wolverine and numerous spinoffs. Sony isn’t about to give up their Spider-Man franchise without a fight. The first three films have brought the studio nearly $3 billion dollars and they have plans in place for another three films.

But the answer to how long these two studios can milk their respective franchises lies in their individual contracts with Marvel. These deals were originally struck in the late-1990s, when Marvel was in financial straights and looking for fast infusions of cash. The deals they made then might not have been in their best long-term interest. It is unknown what the terms of the deals are. Were the characters licensed for just a specific amount of time with the rights reverting back to Marvel at that span’s end, whether or not any films have been made? What mechanisms are in place in regards to the option to extend the licensing? If films do get made, are the options to extend the deal automatically activated or do the studios have to meet to hash out an extension?

While on one hand, I can see where it would be tempting for Marvel to just sit back and collect whatever percentages they’re entitled while letting Twentieth Century Fox and Sony take all the financial risks in making these films. On the other hand, I can see the desire to have the characters back under their own corporate umbrella. And I have to confess that the fanboy in me relishes the idea of all of those characters having the potential to interact in Marvel Studio’s burgeoning cinematic universe. With the might of Disney behind them, Marvel Studios just might be able to crowbar back those characters for themselves.

Of course, there is the opportunity for working with other companies under the Disney corporate umbrella- specifically, PIXAR Studios. PIXAR head stated today that he has already met with Marvel execs last week and that the discussion got “pretty excited, pretty fast.” Given that even the worse of PIXAR’s film is still head and shoulders above what any other animation studio is churning out, it is tantalizing to think what these two groups can do when combined.

Of course, all this is speculation, and Disney could do something as surprising and seemingly out of left field as today’s announcement was. Then again, when it acquired PIXAR in 2006, Disney remained hands off and even brought several of its execs into their own corporate hierarchy. While the various components of Marvel Entertainment Group might not have the same levels of financial success that PIXAR had before their acquisition, I don’t think Disney would have forked over $4 billion for a company that was a fixer-upper.

The more I think about Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, the more I am anxious to see the film.

Sure, there is the possible local angle for myself, living here in the Wilkes-Barre, PA area. But there’s more. From the trailer, it looks like Moore is once again putting himself more in the forefront, utilizing the same style of theatrical pranks that he has used in the past. Moore downplayed that in his last film, a look at the problems with the United States health care system, Sicko, and I think that the film is the better for it. While I normally agree with the thesis of a Michael Moore documentary, I sometimes wonder of his antics actually hurt the point he is trying to make. To be sure, there are some who will reject what Moore has to say immediately out of hand, but are those people who may be open to being swayed to Moore’s side of the issue balking due to how he presents things.

While we wait the five weeks until the film opens, we at least have a look at the film’s poster.

Rocker-turned-writer/director Rob Zombie is moving on from his revitalization of the Halloween horror franchise to remake another classic film, 1958′s The Blob. Variety has reported that Zombie has signed a deal to write, direct and produce a remake of the film, with production slated to start as early as next spring.

A remake of The Blob has been in development almost since the last remake of the film hit theaters in 1988. Most recently, Carey W. and Chad Hayes, the scripters behind the lackluster 2005 remake House Of Wax, took a crack at the screenplay. Jack Harris, producer of the original 1958 film is on board as one the project’s producers. The film is projected to have a $30 million budget and is shooting for an R rating.

Zombie certainly seems to have found a, shall we say, unique vision for the movie. He’s not that interested in having the creature we have come to know as the Blob actually in the film.

My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing — that’s the first thing I want to change. That gigantic Jello-looking thing might have been scary to audiences in the 1950s, but people would laugh now… I’d been looking to break out of the horror genre, and this really is a science fiction movie about a thing from outer space. I intend to make it scary, and the great thing is I have the freedom once again to take it in any crazy direction I want to.

Now, I have to admit that I flew in the face of conventional wisdom in regards to Zombie’s remake of John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween. In Zombie’s 2007 remake he explored the tragic, abusive childhood that lead Michael Myers to become a mask-clad killer who slashed his way across the unsuspecting town of Haddonfield, Illinois. This realistic approach unfortunately didn’t gel well with the movie’s second half where Zombie recreated many scenes from the original film that feature a Michael Myers as a seemingly unstoppable, supernatural force. Many horror fans felt that Zombie’s attempt to plumb Myers’s psychology was antithetical to what Carpenter originally created.

Now I know that my stating that I think what Zombie is doing wrong here by abandoned the most core aspect of the original Blob movie will seem hypocritical. However, I think that the psychological examination of Michael Myers is a completely valid approach to the movie. It still left him a killer, it just tried to examine why he became what he was. However, how can you take “red blobby thing” out of The Blob and still have a movie you can call The Blob!??!

I’m not adverse to the idea of a remake of The Blob.  There are enough stories and ideas in the concept that a new film has a good chance of being interesting in its own right. And it is not like film studio goons are going to come to our homes and remove the nice Criterion Collection DVDs of the original film from our book shelves. And while I will very likely go to a theater and see what Zombie’s vision for The Blob will be.

He just isn’t instilling much confidence for the project in me right now.

Now you’re probably thinking that the current trend of adapting television shows into films has gone too far when they decide to try to transition a dance show to the big screen. But according to Variety,the longtime showcase for R&B and soul music, Soul Train, is being readied for feature film treatment.

Warner Brothers has hired Dead Presidents writer Malcolm Spellman to craft a story about the syndicated series that ran for 35 years between 1971 and 2006. Set in the early 1980s, the plot will center on a young breakdancer from L.A., who sees securing a spot on a proposed concert tour sponsored by the show as a way out of the ghetto. Soul Train creator and longtime host Don Cornelius had always wanted to actually mount such a tour, showcasing music and dancers from the show, though it never happened.

I have to admit that this sounds fairly interesting. I’m always up for a good story about a talented, poor kid out to make his fortune in the world and with the emergence of breakdancing in the early 1980s, the movie is set in a visually interesting time for dance. Scoff all you want at movies like Beat Street or Breakin’, the dancing featured in them was fun to watch.

My one concern is how much of a role will Cornelius play as a character in the script. If you’ve seen his acting turns in Roadie (1980) and Tapeheads (1988), then you know that Cornelius is a suave and magnetic presence on screen. It will be interesting to see how much screen time Cornelius-as-character gets and who they cast in the role.

1. The Final Destination (Warner Brothers/New Line, 3,121 Theaters, 82 Minutes, Rated R): The “final” Final Destination? Gosh, I certainly hope so!

The premise of these films is simple. A group of young people are supposed to die, but one of the group has a premonition about it and saves his friends. Death really doesn’t like it when people who are supposed to die don’t, and sets out to kill the survivors is the most gruesome and grisly ways.

Of course, the deaths, as far as I can see from the trailers, are so over the top that they defy believability.

I have an admission to make. I have a phobia about escalators. It all stems back to an episode of Trapper John M.D. I saw as a kid. A man fell down an escalator and later died. That was all that was needed to give me moments of hesitation getting on an escalator for the rest of my life.

Therefore you’d think that I’d be especially scared by the scene shown in this movie where the escalator breaks down and a character almost falls into the gears. But since the portrayal of the gears seems so blatantly unrealistic (What do they need such strong mechanics for? Does the escalator go to the moon?), I am not scared at all. Takes me right out of it.

2. Halloween II (Dimension Films, 3,000 Theaters, 101 Minutes, Rated R): Two horror films released in the same week? I had to check my calendar to see if it was the last weekend of August or the last weekend of October!

One of the most unique things about the first Halloween II was that the film was set a few scant seconds after the end of the first film. I always liked that about that film. It made it seem more like a true continuation of the story.

I don’t know if Rob Zombie will keep the same “seconds after” plot thread or not, but this is his adaptation of that sequel. This will probably do well, but odds are against it lasting tuntill Halloween actually roles around.

3. Taking Woodstock (Focus Features, 2,693 Theaters, 110 Minutes, Rated R): Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you must know the legendary concert called Woodstock took place 40 years ago. It seems hard to believe that those kids that were splashing in the mud back then are a stone’s throw away from retirement age.

Some of the concert’s mythic nature has tarnished over the years as the “3 Days of Peace, Love and Music” turned into decades of special edition DVD sets,  limited edition CDs, and stylish T-shirts. This film seems to know this, and takes a less formal approach.

This film looks at the days before festival and details how the concert came together. As such, it’s not about the concert, per se, so you won’t hear music from the concert or see actor’s playing any of the acts at the show.

This film opened in 1,393 theaters on Wednesday and is directed by Oscar-winning Director Ang Lee.

Will Smith’s return to superheroics took another step forward with the hiring of Adam Fierro and Glen Mazzara to script a sequel to Smith’s 2008′s summer blockbuster Hancock.

In the original film, Smith played an alcoholic superhero who has no memory of how he gained his powers. The Hollywood Reporter states that the film’s original production team, including director Peter Berg, are expected to return for the follow up.

If Will Smith indeed has a superpower, it is the incredible ability to take a really crappy movie and still turn it into a big moneymaker for a studio. Such is the case with his summer 2008 superhero film Hancock. Myself and many other critics didn’t like the film at all, but still managed to pull over $624 million at the box office. And that kind of box office take makes a studio think sequel.

But while I thought Hancock had some serious flaws, mostly due to the near dozen years that its script went through numerous writers and rewrites, I am not too put out by the possibility of a sequel. One of my complaints with the film was that the mythology behind Smith’s character and his origin was never really explained. In its place was a vague line or two about where he may have come from. Without a deeper understanding of his origins, the limitations about his power and what happens when gets in proximity with another of his kind simply felt like plot devices. If a sequel will delve deeper into the character’s backstory, then I am intrigued.

My main concern is Berg’s apparent involvement with the proposed sequel. While Hancock‘s long development process did dull many of its sharp satiric edges, Berg’s direction was all over the place in regards to its tone. With him being involved with the project from the beginning rather than being brought on board at the last minute, Berg will have a better grasp of the material this time around.

Back in April, we reported that a film crew for Michael Moore’s upcoming documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, had traveled to Wilkes-Barre, PA to interview unnamed figures in a recent courthouse scandal involving judges receiving kickbacks from local private prisons. Given the nature of documentary filmmaking and the fact that we knew very little about the documentary’s subject matter, it was uncertain if the interviews would ultimately fit into the overall theme of Moore’s film.

But now we know that the scandal will get at least a brief mention, as Wilkes-Barre daily, the Times Leader, has confirmed today that they have been contacted by Moore’s production company Front Street Productions, for photographs of the two judges accused in the scandal for inclusion in the film.

The scandal, which made national news when it broke at the beginning of the year, involved Luzerne County judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, are currently awaiting trial after admitting that they convicted hundreds of juvenile defendants and sentencing them to privately run detention facilities in exchange for nearly $2.6 million in kickbacks. The two are currently facing up to seven years in prison, while a class action law suit is being organized on behalf of the children falsely convicted. Since the two judges were charged, the federal corruption invetsigation has expanded to include local school boards and a wastewater treatment facility.

According to it’s logline at the IMDb, Moore’s documentary will “look at the global financial crisis and the U.S. economy during the transition between the incoming Obama Administration and the outgoing Bush Administration.” Presumably, this will include looking at the impact of privatization of traditional government services such as the prison services involved into the Pennsylvania scandal.

Moore released the first trailer for Capitalism: A Love Story late last week with our first look at some of the footage Moore has assembled. It does contain some things Moore has been well-known for over his past decade as a filmmaker- the political theater stunts and interviews that often make satirical comment on Moore’s thesis.

Capitalism is set for a limited release on September 23, with a wider release on October 2.

“You’re not in Kansas anymore!”

So intones Stephen Lang’s Col. Quaritch in the opening moments of the sixteen minute preview of director James Cameron’s upcoming science-fiction epic Avatar which screened yesterday evening at IMAX theater locations around the country.

Yes, the line’s use could have been cliché-ic and hyperbolic. Except for the fact that Cameron’s film may just be able to live up to the hype and expectation that has slowly been building up around the project for the last couple of years. Hype and expectation that in no little part has been fueled by Cameron himself, with talk of immersive 3D presentation and photo realistic, computer generated characters and creatures.

(Surprisingly, reports from around the country state that not all showings of the preview were sold out. I say surprising, because when the free tickets for the event were made available last Monday online, the website offering them almost immediately crashed and experienced delays for several hours afterwards.)

Last night was Cameron’s “proof of concept” demonstration, and he brought the goods. The first of the five scenes previewed, all from the first half of the film, introduces viewers to the film’s basic conceit. A couple of centuries in the future on the planet Pandora, humanity has established a research outpost. However, since the planet’s atmosphere is not oxygen-rich like here on Earth, an ingenious way of exploring the planet has been devised. Copies of Pandora’s indigenous intelligent population, the Na’vi, are created and controlled via a sort of telepathic remote control. Everything that the Na’vi body experiences is experienced by its controller back at the base. It is as if the controller is their Na’vi avatar. Quaritch warns the group of Marines about to begin their assignment on the world that “Every living thing that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes…”

The second scene shows us the process in which is used to transfer control to a na’vi avatar. The film’s hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a former marine now confined to a wheelchair. He looks at the avatar program as a way to, in at least some way, regain his mobility. Once the transference process is complete, Jake in his Na’vi body, quickly jumps up and ignoring doctor’s and technician’s orders, begins moving about a laboratory.

It is here where Cameron begins to show off the leaps in computer-generated imagery that he claims to have made for the film. We see Jake’s Na’vi avatar close up in several shots. We see his feet and hands close-up enough to see pores, hair, wrinkles and finger prints. The depth of detail is amazing and breathtaking.

The following three scenes showcase Jake in his Na’vi avatar moving through the jungles of Pandora. In one sequence, he and some others encounter some weird six-legged beasts that look like a cross between an elephant, a rhinoceros and a hammer-head shark. The scene culminates in a pell-mell dash through the forest as Jake is chased by another, even more ferocious creature.

The fourth scene features Jake meeting one of the indigenous Na’vi, Ney’tiri (Zoe Saldana) in a clearing at night. They don’t see quite eye-to-eye at first, but they must come to an understanding as the final scene shows Ney’tiri and a few other Na’vi showing Jake, now in native garb, a ritual which bonds him to a flying, dragon-like creature.

Each of these segments have an increasingly higher technical difficulty but each sequence shows no sign of slippage in the quality of work being presented. A little voice kept reminding me that eight foot tall, blue, cat-like humanoids and strange six-legged elephant-rhino-hammerhead shark creatures do not exist in real life, but yet, there they were in front of me on, and popping out of, the screen. The environs of Pandora are an impressive bit of world building and one suspects that Cameron probably has reams of notes on a hard drive somewhere that delve into far greater detail than will ever be seen or even hinted at in the final product how the ecology of the planet works. It is a hostile world and danger looks behind or underneath every tree, fern and bush. For all intents and purposes, Pandora is a real world that Cameron has somehow managed to transport us to while keeping us in the safety of our comfy cinema seats.

But will this film be as game changing as some insist it will be?

Possibly, but we can’t really make that judgment until well after Avatar‘s December 18th premier. Several factors yet to be played out, including how the final product works as a film and how other filmmakers follow in Cameron’s footsteps in regards to using the new technology and techniques he has developed for the film, will inform that verdict more than any excitement-fueled decree made today will. The 3D process used in the 1950s showed much promise, but virtually no filmmakers beyond Alfred Hitchcock (with Dial M For Murder) and George Sidney (with the musical Kiss Me Kate) really tried to push it much further than its exploitation roots. From the footage shown, Cameron seems to be using it in a similar way, as a way to draw the viewer into the world he has created rather than have the film thrust things out at the viewer.

As a way of generating excitement and showing what he has up his sleeve, Cameron has definitely succeeded in what is probably the most interesting bit of marketing of a motion picture in a long time.

In the meantime- here is the standard trailer for Avatar that was released Thursday. It does contain some footage not seen in yesterday’s preview.

If you had any thought that Quentin Tarantino was going to deliver a conventional World War Two picture with Inglorious Basterds, then you really don’t know the director or his work at all. For a war film, Inglorious Basterds is short on action sequences and long on dialogue. That’s not to say that there is no action at all, though. What there is often serves as punctuation- short, machine-gun staccato bursts that cap a scene and relieve its rising tensions, demonstrating that if anything, Tarantino knows to heed Alfred Hitchcock’s observation “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is in command of a special team of commandos. Dropped behind German lines, their mission is to cause as much havoc and mayhem to the Nazi troops as they can before the upcoming D-Day Invasion. Raine has given his small squad of soldiers an extra incentive- They each owe him 100 Nazi scalps. And he doesn’t mean that figuratively.

Meanwhile, Paris movie theater owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) has caught the eye of a young German soldier, Frederick Zoeller (Daniel Bruhl). Zoeller is something of a war hero to the Nazis, to the point where the story of his bravery has been turned into a film where he stars as himself. (Think the Nazi propaganda equivalent of Audie Murphy and 1955’s To Hell And Back.) In order to impress Shosanna, Zoeller uses his new found fame to convince Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels that the premier of the film should be at Shosanna’s theater. Unbeknown to Zoeller is the fact that that Shosanna has been hiding the fact that she is Jewish and sees the film premier as an opportunity to kill the entirety of the German High Command who will be at the event, with a plan that only a cinephile like Tarantino could conceive. However, when the Allies hear of the film premier and its gathering of high ranking Nazi officials, they order Raine’s squad in to assassinate who they can, oblivious to Shosanna’s own plans.

But Tarantino films are never as much about the plot as they are about the characters and their dialogue. And Tarantino has crafted some amazing scenes here. The movie opens with a long scene in which Nazi officer Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, more on this guy in a moment), whom we will come to learn is nicknamed “The Jew Hunter,” is interviewing a French dairy farmer about the whereabouts of some neighboring Jewish farmers who have disappeared. Landa asks seemingly routine questions, interspersed with more benign ones, the farmer giving short, almost guarded answers. Is Landa just a bored functionary going through the motions of his work? But if so, why did he insist on conducting the interview with the farmer in English, not in either French or German?

This is but one scene in which Tarantino really flexes his muscles as a dialogue writer. Nearly every conversation serves to build tension in a scene. As Pitt and company move through Nazi-occupied France in disguise, they encounter eternally suspicious SS officers and spies who may or may not be on their side. Every conversation has hidden layers and no question is ever really innocent. But Tarantino also keeps the proceedings from becoming too paranoid, perhaps the tug of his oft avowed influence of exploitation cinema.

In addition to acting as regulators on the film’s suspense levels, the conversations often help to challenge the audience in its perceptions of whom the good guys and the bad guys are in war films. In an early scene, the Basterds have ambushed a German patrol, killing all but soldiers- a private and the commanding officer. Raine explains to the officer that they need information about other German patrols in the area. The officer refuses to divulge anything, as would an officer on any side of a conflict. But rather than take the officer prisoner, Raine has him beaten to death by the baseball bat wielding Basterd Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth). Is the callous, cold-blooded, almost gleeful bludgeoning of a prisoner something we look for in our movie’s heroes? Tarantino doesn’t overtly comment on it, but leaves it to audience to discover and think about.

But while I am heaping praise on Tarantino’s scripting, I don’t want to neglect the film’s visuals. Tarantino stages many of his conversational moments quiet effectively, and one never gets weary just watching two or three people talk for long time at a stretch. Sure there are moments that look as if cribbed from other films; a shot in Basterd’s opening segment echoes an iconic shot from Ford’s The Searchers. Most directors do such things; it is only because Tarantino is often so vocal about his influences that we tend to make connections, whether intentional or not on Tarantino’s part, more quickly while watching his films. Additionally, the photography by cinematographer Robert Richardson manages to capture the warm earth tones of the French countryside as well as the stark, primary reds of Nazi iconography. His works especially helps sell the audaciousness of Tarantino’s finale, wherein the roles of Nazi tormentor and Jewish victim are literally reversed.

Finally, a word or two about Austrian actor Christoph Waltz. Although he has some fame in Europe, Basterds marks the actor’s first American film, and what a debut it is. His Col. Landa is cold and calculating, but yet still carries with him a certain amount of charm. It is an incredibly difficult performance, yet he manages it flawlessly, making him perhaps the most engaging screen Nazi since Ralph Fiennes in Shindler’s List. And if that means there is an Academy Award nomination in his future, there is no complaint from me there.

Virginia Davis, who starred in a series of short films for Walt Disney that combined animation and live action and pre-dated Mickey Mouse, died last Saturday, August 15, at her home in Corona, CA. She was 90.

Walt Disney was a struggling filmmaker trying to keep his Kansas City, Missouri Laugh-O-Gram cartoon studio in business when he hired the four-year-old Davis to star in Alice’s Wonderland, the first in a proposed series of one reel (about ten minutes long) short films which combined live action and animation. In the short, a young girl (Davis) sneaking into a cartoon studio to see how cartoons are made. She is surprised when the cartoon characters come to life and dreams of more adventures with them that night.

Unfortunately, Disney had to close the studio soon after the short was finished. He headed to Hollywood to find interest in financing the series, ultimately securing a distribution deal with Winkler Pictures. Disney sent back to Missouri for Davis, convincing her parents to bring his young star out to Hollywood.

Davis would go on to star in 14 more of the Alice shorts between 1924 and 1925. She would film the segments that combined live action and animation in front of a white sheet hung over a billboard in a vacant lot. (Films at the time were shot outside using sunlight as the powerful lights needed for shooting indoors in a studio had not yet been developed.) She often stated that acting opposite characters who would be added later by animators wasn’t hard thing to do because she had an active imagination and Disney was a good director. She sited 1924′s Alice’s Wild West Show as her favorite of the series, mostly because she gets to play a tomboy who beats up a bully. The success of the series helped Disney lay the groundwork for the entertainment empire he would eventually build.

After Davis’ contract with Disney expired, she turned her career more toward singing and dancing, appearing in College Holiday (1936), Footlight Serenade (1942) and, her final film, The Harvey Girls (1946). Following her retirement from show business, Davis pursued careers as an interior decorator, magazine editor and real estate agent.