The Vanishing Prairie

• Director: James Algar
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Nature
• Movie Type: Natural Environments
• Release Year: 1954
• Country: US
• Run Time: 60 minutes

Plot

The second of Walt Disney's feature-length "True Life Adventures", The Vanishing Prairie concentrates on that portion of the United States bounded by the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. After a brief tableux of extinct animal species, the film shows us several "endangered" types: The Whooping Crane, the Buffalo, the Prong-horn Antelope, the Big-horn Sheep, the Prairie Dog, etc. While mankind is clearly to blame for much of the "vanishing" alluded to in the title, the film demonstrates how the various species themselves enact a process of natural selection. Expectedly, The Vanishing Prairie has its corny moments-Winston Hibler's aw-shucks narration, the use of "The Anvil Chorus" as background music for a deadly battle between two bighorn sheep-the film is on the whole a well-balanced and adroitly assembled presentation. Incidentally, this was the first Disney film to be (briefly) banned in New York, thanks to a superbly photographed--and utterly harmless--scene of a buffalo giving birth to a calf ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cast

Winston Hibler - Narrator

Credit

James Algar - Director, James Algar - Screenwriter, Winston Hibler - Screenwriter, Ted Sears - Screenwriter

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