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Sleeping Beauty was the sixteenth film in Walt Disney’s canon, following Lady and The Tramp and preceding One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It was the last feature to be based upon a fairy tale, written by Charles Perrault. Indeed, Disney Studios would not return to a fairy tale again until the 1989 release of The Little Mermaid. Moreover, this was the last feature to use hand-inked cells.

The film was supervised by Walt Disney himself, though he charged the direction of the feature to his trusted animators Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman. The three animators, as well as six other co-workers, were known collectively as “The Nine Old Men.” The Nine Old Men were the key animators who had worked with Walt beginning with Snow White and ending with The Rescuers. The film’s score was performed by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, based on the 1890 Sleeping Beauty ballet composed by Pytor Tchaikovsky. Production of Sleeping Beauty stretched nearly the entire decade of the 1950s. According to Wikipedia, the story was rewritten through 1951, the actor’s voices were recorded in 1952, the actual animation spanned from 1953 to 1958, and the stereophonic score was recorded in 1957. Walt Disney wanted the style of the film to mimic medieval art. This marked a decided break from the characteristically rounded and fluid animation style Disney had become famous for. Since the feature would be screened via the Super Technirama 70 format, Disney was keen on making Sleeping Beauty as complex and detailed as possible. The Super Technirama 70 format was a method that optically enlarged 35mm film stock to a 70mm print. The Black Cauldron is the only other Disney film to have been presented Super Technirama 70.