Song of the South has officially turned 72 today! It premiered at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia on November 12, 1946. Song of the South has never been released commercially in the United States, so if you want Disney to know you want this film released, please be sure to sign the Song of the South Petition.
Also of note, the 500th memorabilia item has been added to the Song of the South Memorabilia Museum! Recently, I found a third party to assist me with purchasing Song of the South & Brer Rabbit (“Rabito”) memorabilia from Argentina, and it’s turning out to be bigger than I thought. It seems that Disney released dozens of books and comics in this country in the 1950’s through 1970’s.
The 500th item is a book from Argentina entitled “Rabito Pierde Y Gana” which translates to “Brer Rabbit Loses and Wins”. Usually I’m able to guess the synopsis of the story because it was also released in the United States, but in this case the story was completely unique and I’d never seen it before. Granted, there are pictures so I could get a very rough idea of what the story is about, but I wanted to get more detail. Now, I could type the entire book into Google Translate, but I decided to try the Google Translate app on my phone. All I can say is… WOW! I was able to point my phone’s camera right at the book and it translated it in real-time. While the translation was very rough, it was enough for me to get the gist and give more detail in my synopsis than I could have done just based on the pictures alone. Pretty cool! I expect to do the same for any other unique stories in foreign languages I happen to come across.
Expect more items to be added to the museum in the coming months! And as always, if you find a piece of memorabilia I’m looking for (please see the Wanted section), let me know!