Walt Disney Legacy Collection - True Life Adventures, Vol. 2: Lands of Exploration (1948-1960)

Experience the wonder of Walt Disney’s groundbreaking nature series for the first time on DVD! These acclaimed stories, fully restored to their original beauty, offer previously unssen looks into the magical world of our animal friends. Enjoy a collection of Disney’s award-winning TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES, including “The Living Desert,” and the very first film, “Seal Island.” It’s a classic collection of animal adventures your whole family will treasure.There was a time when Walt Disney produced mesmerizing nature films for family audiences. Walt Disney Legacy Collection: True Life Adventures, Vol. 2 reaches deep into the studio’s vaults to pull together a selection of those remarkable little movies, a television staple for baby boomers who watched Disney’s variously-titled series in the late 1950s and ’60s.


Walt Disney Legacy Collection - True Life Adventures, Vol. 1: Wonders Of The World (1959) is here

Contents:
Disc 1
1. Introduction by Roy Disney
An introduction by Roy E. Disney, the son of Roy Disney, and nephew of Walt Disney, is included on each of the four volumes of the Disney's True-Life Adventures discs. It's a short introduction to the new line of Walt Disney's Legacy Collection discs, as well as what's featured on the following discs.

2. The Living Desert, 1953 (69:18) - IMDB
The first full-length True-Life Adventures feature, The Living Desert won the Oscar in 1953 for Best Documentary, Features. It's an amazing collection of location shooting and studio mock-ups that feature Paul Kenworthy's amazing close-up photography. Highlights include "nature's symphony of the mud pots," wild boars versus a bobcat, and the justly famous scorpion "square dance," and the desert wasp battle against a tarantula. Some of the desert shots have the same pictorial power as David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

3. The Vanishing Prairie, 1954 ( 70:46) - IMDB
The Best Documentary, Features winner for 1954, The Vanishing Prairie talks directly about the threat to nature by man - and man's gradual awakening to that fact, and his efforts to turn the tide. Mainstream America is introduced to the conservation movement. Highlights include spectacular shots of Monument Valley, the famous ducks sliding on the frozen pond (make sure you check out Roy Disney's story about this sequence on the second disc), and Bighorn Sheep, butting heads in the rutting season. A full-blooded documentary that has a message everyone needs to hear.

4. Seal Island, 1948 (26:46) - IMDB
The official start of the True-Life Adventures series, Seal Island won the Oscar for Best Short Subject, Two-Reel, in 1948. Brilliant in its use of a subplot involving a wayward young seal pup searching for its mother, Seal Island set the template for the successful series.

Disc 2
1. Islands of the Sea, 1960 (28:20) - IMDB
This 1959 feature was another feature that didn't fall under the True-Life Adventures banner (which, according to Roy Disney, still hasn't been explained adequately). Various islands are explored for their unique fauna, including the blue-footed booby, the complicated Man of War (Frigatebird) mating ritual, the hilarious albatross slo-mo take-off footage, and the battle between the Red Rock crab and the oyster catcher.

2. Nature’s Strangest Creatures, 1959 (15:46) - IMDB
This 1959 short highlights footage shot during the Milotte's travels to Australia. These naturalists brought back fascinating footage, including the lung fish in action, and duck-billed playtapus hatching its young.

3. Prairie, 1954 (22:50)
This episode from Disney's Wonderful World of Color inexplicably has a date listed as 1954 in the end credits, but that must be a mistake; I would say this is from 1961 or 1962. Walt introduces a look at how the various True-Life photographers get their footage. It's a great look behind-the-scenes of the True-Life Adventures unit.

4. Behind the True Life Cameras (24:24) - IMDB
This segment of Disney's black and white Disneyland show, from 1954, gives another great look at what went into producing the True-Life Adventures series. James Algar is the host.

5. Backstage with Roy Disney at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: Desert Insects (3:32)
6. Backstage with Roy Disney at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: Snakes (5:12)
Here are two more contemporary segments that feature Roy Disney backstage at Disney's theme park, Animal Kingdom. Mr. Disney is obviously the heart and soul of the Disney company, and his personable demeanor is very reminiscent of his father's and uncle's. It's an entertaining, informative 9 minute look at some exotic residents of the park.

7. Filmmakers’ Journal (36:39)
This documentary, again with no date (although it's a mixture of old and new interview footage) features a detailed look at some of the participants in the True-Life Adventures series, including Jimmy MacDonald, the sound effects wizard behind the True-Life Adventures series, and some great stories by Roy Disney (check out how Walt made his life miserable looking for some duck footage). It's an invaluable look at the series' production.

8. Collectors' Corner (3:15)
Disney historian Stacia Martin shows off some collectibles and marketing items from The Living Desert. This is an especially interesting segment for Disney fanatics and collectors.

9. Trailers & Promos (14:59)
Original theatrical trailers are included for The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie, The Living Desert/The Vanishing Prairie double feature, The Vanishing Prairie/Seal Island TV promo, and a Behind the True Life Camera TV promo.

Basically, teams of roving cinematographers and other technicians were sent into the field, working under the general guidance of a well-researched script, a director, production group, etc. Ingenious editing, creative uses of music, and even touches of animation resulted in marvelous pieces such as the ones in this collection. Among the six titles here are “Living Desert,” set in the American southwest; “Vanishing Prairie,” an overview of what were once endless grasslands between the mountainous west and the full forests east of the Mississippi; and “Seal Island,” shot on a remote Alaskan island. Nature programs are, of course, plentiful on contemporary television. But the Disney shows were unique at the time for applying high cinematic standards (the Technicolor on “Islands of the Sea,” set in the Galapagos, is something to see) to the task of filming lizards, road runners, sandstorms, and exotic flowers. These programs are also tailor-made for young audiences. The more harrowing sequences of predators stalking their lunch, say, or seal pups getting separated from their mothers aren’t censored, but they are softened in the editor’s room and via anthropomorphic narration. True Life Adventures stands up today as good family viewing, though they are also fodder for nostalgia for viewers of a certain age.

Tom Keogh

Much more than just nature documentaries, the Disney's True-Life Adventures Volume 2: Lands of Exploration shorts and features are true Disney works of art, which, through various repetitive editing rhythms and music cues, as well as slow motion photography, can provide moments as surreal and beautiful as Walt's masterpiece, Fantasia. These films give an awe-inspiring look at the wonders of our world, and the implacable impassiveness of nature and her laws. I can't think of a better gift for a young person or family – and certainly anyone interested in Disney – than these long-lost True-Life Adventures films. Therefore, I'm giving the Disney's True-Life Adventures Volume 2: Lands of Exploration disc set our highest rating at DVDTalk: the DVDTalk Collector Series recommendation.

DVDTalk

Walt Disney Legacy Collection - True Life Adventures, Vol. 1: Wonders Of The World (1959) is here

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