Studio: Walt Disney Productions (Silly Symphonies)
Distributor: United Artists
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
In the enchanted dell where the Easter bunnies live, a place the storybooks say can be visited only by those who believe in them, the rabbits are at work on Easter. They dye eggs by dipping them in the end of a rainbow, paint them with brushes and striped designs, carve chocolate rabbits and spin sugar into baskets, while a chorus of hens lays the eggs to order and the bunnies sing. There is no plot and no villain: the cartoon is a tour of the factory, each process a musical number, ending as the finished baskets are sent off to the world's children. It was made as the Easter counterpart to the studio's Santa's Workshop of the year before.
Why It Matters
- The rainbow sequence is the reason the film exists: Disney's artists had been using three-strip Technicolor since 1932 without quite mastering it, and the Easter dyes, the painted eggs and the rainbow-dipping bunnies were a deliberate exercise in colour, the first Disney cartoon to fill the whole spectrum at once. The result is still one of the prettiest Silly Symphonies.
- It belongs to the run of Silly Symphonies, between Three Little Pigs and The Tortoise and the Hare, in which the studio turned its colour and musical experiments into a style, and the egg factory is the model for a dozen later Disney workshop scenes. The Rhythmettes' close-harmony singing was a studio staple of the period.
Notes and Trivia
- The working title was The Funny Bunnies; story work began in October 1933 and the reel was finished in January 1934.
- The short was adapted as a Little Golden Book.
- See also: Three Little Pigs (1933), The Wise Little Hen (1934), The Old Mill (1937).
