Balto

The true story first. In the winter of 1925, diphtheria broke out in icebound Nome, Alaska, and the antitoxin had to come by train to Nenana and then 674 miles by dog sled. Twenty mushers and about 150 dogs relayed it across the territory in five and a half days through blizzard conditions, and Balto, leading Gunnar Kaasen's team on the final stretch into town, became the most famous dog in America after Rin Tin Tin. A statue of him went up in Central Park that December, with Balto in attendance. The musher who ran the longest and most dangerous leg, Leonhard Seppala, was not amused: his lead dog Togo had covered 261 miles to Balto's roughly 55, and Seppala, who owned both animals, dismissed Balto as a scrub freight dog. Fame treated Balto badly too. He was sold to a sideshow and found in a Los Angeles dime museum, rescued by a Cleveland fundraising drive in 1927, and his mounted body still stands in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Screenwriter Elana Lesser had heard the story from her grandfather as a child; she and her husband Cliff Ruby pitched it to Amblin, and Steven Spielberg's one worry was that a movie of dogs in snow would not be colorful enough. Simon Wells directed at Amblimation, Spielberg's London studio, under the working title Snowballs. The animators held drawing classes with seven Siberian huskies, and on a tight budget had to choose between footprints and shadows in most shots. The voice cast was rearranged late: Kevin Anderson had recorded the whole part when Universal demanded a bigger name, so Kevin Bacon had to match his lines to finished animation ("It was very hard. I didn't like it."), and Brendan Fraser's Steele was replaced by Jim Cummings because Spielberg wanted a clearer sense of the villain's menace. Bridget Fonda voiced Jenna, Bob Hoskins the goose Boris, and Phil Collins phoned the studio to ask for the polar bears Muk and Luk. Miriam Margolyes anchored the live-action bookends, shot in Central Park, as a grandmother looking for the statue.

Universal released it on December 22, 1995, a month after Toy Story, and it opened in fifteenth place with $1.5 million on its way to $11.3 million against a $31 million budget. Reviews were mixed; Roger Ebert gave it three stars, calling it "a nice, little children's adventure movie about a brave dog." It was the third and last film from Amblimation, which closed in 1997.

The tape did what the theaters would not. Balto sold well enough on video that Universal made two direct-to-video sequels, Wolf Quest in 2002 and Wings of Change in 2004. The film takes liberties: the real Balto was a Siberian husky, not the wolfdog of the film, and the Central Park unveiling was ten months after the run, not the ending of it.