''The Living Desert'' is a 1953 American nature documentary film that shows the everyday lives of the animals of the desert of the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...

. The film was written by

James Algar James Algar (June 11, 1912 – February 26, 1998) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He worked at Walt Disney Productions for 43 years and received the Disney Legends award in 1998. He was born in Modesto, California ...

, Winston Hibler, Jack Moffitt (uncredited) and

Ted Sears Edward Robert Sears (March 13, 1900August 22, 1958) was an American animator during The Golden Age of American animation. Sears worked for the Fleischer Studios in the late-1920s and early-1930s, and was hired away from Max Fleischer to work at ...

. It was directed by Algar, with Hibler as the narrator and was filmed in

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

. The film won the 1953 Oscar for Best Documentary. It is featured in the 2006 DVD ''Walt Disney Legacy Collection Volume 2: Lands of Exploration''.

Production

''The Living Desert'' was the first feature-length film in Disney's '' True-Life Adventures'' series of documentaries focusing on

zoological Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and dis ...

studies; the previous films in the series, including the Oscar-winning '' Seal Island'', were

short subjects A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

. The documentary was filmed in

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

. Most of the wildlife shown in the film was donated to what would soon become the

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre (40 ha) zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles (3.2 km) of walking paths ...

. The film was inspired by 10 minutes of footage shot by N. Paul Kenworthy, a doctoral student at the

University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

. Kenworthy's footage of a battle between a

tarantula Tarantulas comprise a group of large and often hairy spiders of the family Theraphosidae. , 1,040 species have been identified, with 156 genera. The term "tarantula" is usually used to describe members of the family Theraphosidae, although m ...

and a

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...

intrigued Disney, who funded a feature-length production following the lives of diverse desert species. Disney was highly supportive of Kenworthy's work and its impact on nonfiction filmmaking: "This is where we can tell a real, sustained story for the first time in these nature pictures".

Release

Prior to the production of ''The Living Desert'', Disney was releasing his films through

RKO Radio Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orph ...

. But due to a long-frayed relation with the studio, which had little enthusiasm for the producer's documentary releases, Disney opted to sever his relation with RKO and create his own distribution subsidiary –

Buena Vista Distribution Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. until 2007, is an American film distribution studio within the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. It h ...

, which he named after the street where his office was located. ''The Living Desert'' received some criticism for bringing unsubtle humor to its scenes of desert life –

Bosley Crowther Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' called Disney to task for adding jokey musical effects to several of the film's scenes, including hoedown music for a sequence involving a

scorpion Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always en ...

mating dance. Nonetheless, the film was a commercial success: the US$300,000 production grossed US$4,000,000 at the box office. The film was very popular in Japan surpassing '' Gone With the Wind'' as the highest-grossing film of all time with a gross of over $800,000. The film is available on

Disney+ Disney+ is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned and operated by the Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. The service primarily distributes films and television se ...

Honors

The Academy Award that Disney earned for ''The Living Desert'' helped the producer make history as the individual with the most Oscar wins in a single year. At the

26th Academy Awards The 26th Academy Awards were held on March 25, 1954, simultaneously at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood (hosted by Fredric March), and the NBC Century Theatre in New York City (hosted by Donald O'Connor). The second national telecast of ...

, in addition to winning the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, Disney also won the

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year 1 ...

for ''

Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom ''Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom'' is a 1953 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Ward Kimball and Charles A. Nichols. A sequel to the first ''Adventures in Music'' cartoon, the 3-D short ''Melody'' (r ...

'', the

Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short film. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are annou ...

for '' The Alaskan Eskimo'' and the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel) for '' Bear Country''. In addition to its Oscar, the film also won the International Prize at the

1954 Cannes Film Festival The 7th Cannes Film Festival was held from 25 March to 9 April 1954. With Jean Cocteau as President of the Jury, the Grand Prix went to the '' Gate of Hell'' by Teinosuke Kinugasa. The festival opened with '' Le Grand Jeu'' by Robert Siodmak. Th ...

, an award at the

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...

and a special achievement award from the

Golden Globe Awards The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...

. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

References

External links

* ''The Living Desert'' essa

by N. Paul Kenworthy, N. Paul Kenworthy Jr. on the

website * * * * * "The Living Desert", essay by Daniel Eagan i
''America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry''
A&C Black, 2010 , pp. 478–79 {{DEFAULTSORT:Living Desert, The 1953 films 1950s English-language films Films directed by James Algar American documentary films Disney documentary films Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners United States National Film Registry films Documentary films about nature 1953 documentary films Films produced by Ben Sharpsteen Films produced by Walt Disney Films set in the Southwestern United States Films set in Arizona Films set in deserts Films shot in Tucson, Arizona Films scored by Paul Smith (film and television composer) Walt Disney Pictures films Films with screenplays by Winston Hibler 1950s American films