Three Little Pigs (1933)

Notice the portrait of their father hanging on the wall?

Disney's 8 minute animated version of Three Little Pigs was released on this day, May 27, 1933. The audiences loved the cartoon, and theatres actually continued running it several months after its release. (Some theatre owners even draw beards on the posters of the cartoon, to mock the fact that they were still running it.) It's hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" immediately stuck. (Try listen to it and not sing it for the rest of the day... I failed, epically.) The song reflected and encouraged the people's attitude to the Great Depression as "the Big Bad Wolf", and even transcended into representing Hitler during WWII.

According to IMDb, Walt Disney himself actually has one of the voices to the Practical Pig. (For some reason there are two people doing his voice.)

The cartoon actually had to be cencored, believe it or not. Originally the Big Bad Wolf dressed up as a caricature of a Jewish peddler (!), but was changed to a Fuller Brush man instead (still having a Yiddish accent, though).

I read some interesting trivia about schools in England actually modified the classic tale to "Three Little Puppies" in 2007, "to avoid offending Muslim families". A man called Ibrahim Mogra from the Muslim Council of Britain made the statement "bizarre" about that move, and the tale was changed back to its original form. Jeez...

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf - big bad wolf - big bad wolf? Who's afraid of the bid bad wolf? Lalalalala...