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Winnie-the-Pooh

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For other pages about the Winnie-the-Pooh scenario, see Winnie-the-Pooh (disambiguation).
Winnie-the-Pooh
File:Pooh Shepard 1926.png
Winnie-the-Pooh (original version from 1926)
AuthorA. A. Milne
IllustratorE. H. Shepard
LanguageEnglish
PublisherMethuen & Co. Ltd. (London)
Publication date
14 October 1926
Publication placeUnited Kingdom

Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children’s verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard.

The hyphens in the character's name were later dropped when The Walt Disney Company adapted the Pooh stories into a series of Winnie the Pooh featurettes that became one of the company's most successful franchises worldwide: see Winnie the Pooh (Disney).

The Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, which was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the only Latin book ever to have been featured on the New York Times Best Seller List.[1]

History

Origin

Original Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys. Clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear ("Winnie the Pooh"), Eeyore, and Piglet. Roo was lost long ago; the other characters were made up for the stories.

Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character Christopher Robin. His toys also lent their names to most of the other characters, except for Owl and Rabbit, as well as the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version. Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York.[2]

Harry Colebourne and Winnie 1914

Christopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh", a swan they had met while on holiday. The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear "Winnie" after his hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Winnie" was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourne left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France; after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much loved attraction there.[3] Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in When We Were Very Young.

In the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne offers this explanation of why Winnie-the-Pooh is often called simply "Pooh":

"But his arms were so stiff ... they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think — but I am not sure — that that is why he is always called Pooh."

This explanation would be more believable, of course, if Christopher Robin had not already called him "Pooh" earlier in the story.

Ashdown Forest: the setting for the stories

The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, England. The forest is a large area of tranquil open heathland on the highest sandy ridges of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty situated 30 miles (50 km) south of London. In 1925 Milne, a Londoner, bought a country home a mile to the north of the forest at Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield. According to Christopher Milne, while his father continued to live in London "...the four of us—he, his wife, his son and his son's nanny—would pile into a large blue, chauffeur-driven Fiat and travel down every Saturday morning and back again every Monday afternoon. And we would spend a whole glorious month there in the spring and two months in the summer." [4] From the front lawn the family had a view across a meadow to a line of alders that fringed the River Medway, beyond which the ground rose through more trees until finally "above them, in the faraway distance, crowning the view, was a bare hilltop. In the centre of this hilltop was a clump of pines." Most of his father's visits to the forest at this time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot "to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill's Lap or to search for the marsh gentian". Christopher added that, inspired by Ashdown Forest, his father had made it "the setting for two of his books, finishing the second little over three years after his arrival".

Many locations in the stories can be linked to real places in and around the forest. As Christopher Milne wrote in his autobiography: “Pooh’s forest and Ashdown Forest are identical”. For example, the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" was in reality Five Hundred Acre Wood; Galleon's Leap was inspired by the prominent hilltop of Gill's Lap, while a clump of trees just north of Gill's Lap became Christopher Robin's The Enchanted Place because no-one had ever been able to count whether there were sixty-three or sixty-four trees in the circle.[5]

The landscapes depicted in E.H. Shepard’s illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh books are directly inspired by the distinctive landscape of Ashdown Forest, with its high, open heathlands of heather, gorse, bracken and silver birch punctuated by hilltop clumps of pine trees. In many cases Shepard's illustrations can be matched to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence. Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other forest scenes are on display at the V&A Museum in London.

The game of Poohsticks was originally played by Christopher Milne on a footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway in Posingford Wood, close to Cotchford Farm. It is traditional to play the game there using sticks gathered in nearby woodland. When the footbridge required replacement in recent times the engineer designed a new structure based closely on the drawings by E. H. Shepard of the bridge in the original books, as the bridge did not originally appear as the artist drew it. An information board at the bridge describes how to play the game.

First publication

Winnie-the-Pooh's début in the 24 Dec. 1925 London Evening News

There are three claimants, depending on the precise question posed. Christopher Robin's teddy bear, Edward, made his character début in a poem in Milne's book of children's verse When We Were Very Young (1924). Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, in a Christmas story commissioned and published by the London newspaper The Evening News. It was illustrated by J. H. Dowd.[6] The first collection of Pooh stories appeared in the book Winnie-the-Pooh. The Evening News Christmas story reappeared as the first chapter of the book, and at the very beginning it explained that Pooh was in fact Christopher Robin's Edward Bear, who had simply been renamed by the boy. The book was published in October 1926 by the publisher of Milne's earlier children's work, Methuen, in England, and E. P. Dutton in the United States.[7]

Sequel

An authorised sequel Return to the Hundred Acre Wood was published on 5 October 2009. The author, David Benedictus, has developed, but not changed, Milne's characterisations. The illustrations, by Mark Burgess, are in the style of Shepard.[8]

Stephen Slesinger

On 6 January 1930, Stephen Slesinger purchased U.S. and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to the "Winnie-the-Pooh" works from Milne for a $1000 advance and 66% of Slesinger's income, creating the modern licensing industry. By November 1931, Pooh was a $50 million-a-year business.[9] Slesinger marketed Pooh and his friends for more than 30 years, creating the first Pooh doll, record, board game, puzzle, US radio broadcast (NBC), animation, and motion picture film.[10] In 1961, Disney acquired rights from Slesinger to produce articles of merchandise based on characters from its feature animation.

Red Shirt Pooh

The first time Pooh and his friends appeared in colour was 1932, when he was drawn by Slesinger in his now-familiar red shirt and featured on an RCA Victor picture record. Parker Brothers also introduced A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Game in 1933, again with Pooh in his red shirt. In the 1940s, Agnes Brush created the first plush dolls with Pooh in his red shirt. It is important to note that E.H Shepard had drawn Pooh with a shirt as early as the first Winnie-The-Pooh book, which was subsequently coloured red in later coloured editions.

Disney

Main article: Winnie the Pooh (Disney)
Disney's adaptation of Stephen Slesinger, Inc.'s Winnie-the-Pooh.

After Slesinger's death in 1953, his wife, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, continued developing the character herself. In 1961, she licensed rights to Walt Disney Productions in exchange for royalties in the first of two agreements between Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and Disney.[11] The same year, Daphne Milne also licensed certain rights, including motion picture rights, to Disney.

Since 1966, Disney has released numerous animated productions starring Winnie the Pooh and related characters. These have included theatrical featurettes, television series, and direct-to-video films, as well as the theatrical feature-length films The Tigger Movie, Piglet's Big Movie, and Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

In December 2005, Disney announced a Disney Channel animated television series, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, focusing on adventures had by 6-year-old Darby and the Pooh characters, with the occasional appearance from Christopher Robin.[12] The show began airing on the Disney Channel on 12 May 2007.

The Disney version of Winnie the Pooh was featured in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, the Kingdom Hearts videogames and the TV series House of Mouse

Pooh also appears at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts as a meet-able and child friendly character.

Merchandising revenue dispute

File:Fifi i cvjetno drustvo 280309.jpg
Winnie the Pooh with Stingo from Fifi & the Flowertots in Zagreb, Croatia

Pooh videos, soft toys, and other merchandise generate substantial annual revenues for Disney. The size of Pooh stuffed toys ranges from Beanie and miniature to human-sized. In addition to the stylised Disney Pooh, Disney markets Classic Pooh merchandise which more closely resembles E.H. Shepard’s illustrations. It is estimated that Winnie the Pooh features and merchandise generate as much revenue as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto combined.[13]

In 1991, Stephen Slesinger, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Disney which alleged that Disney had breached their 1983 agreement by again failing to accurately report revenue from Winnie the Pooh sales. Under this agreement, Disney was to retain approximately 98% of gross worldwide revenues while the remaining 2% was to be paid to Slesinger. In addition, the suit alleged that Disney had failed to pay required royalties on all commercial exploitation of the product name.[14] Though the Disney corporation was sanctioned by a judge for destroying forty boxes of evidential documents,[15] the suit was later terminated by another judge when it was discovered that Slesinger's investigator had rummaged through Disney's garbage in order to retrieve the discarded evidence.[16] Slesinger appealed the termination, and on 26 September 2007, a three-judge panel upheld the lawsuit dismissal.[17]

After the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, Clare Milne, Christopher Milne's daughter, attempted to terminate any future U.S. copyrights for Stephen Slesinger, Inc.[18] After a series of legal hearings, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the US District Court in California found in favour of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On 26 June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, sustaining the ruling and ensuring the defeat of the suit.[19]

On 19 February 2007 Disney lost a court case in Los Angeles which ruled their "misguided claims" to dispute the licensing agreements with Slesinger, Inc. were unjustified,[20] but a federal ruling of 28 September 2009, again from Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, determined that the Slesinger family had granted all trademark and copyright rights to Disney, although Disney must pay royalties for all future use of the characters. Both parties have expressed satisfaction with the outcome.[21][22]

Adaptations

Theatre

Audio

RCA Victor record from 1932 decorated with Stephen Slesinger, Inc.'s Winnie-the-Pooh.

Selected Pooh stories read by Maurice Evans released on vinyl LP:

  • Winnie-the-Pooh (consisting of three tracks: Introducing Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin; Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place; Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle) 1956
  • More Winnie-the-Pooh (consisting of three tracks: Eeyore Loses a Tail; Piglet Meets a Heffalump; Eeyore Has a Birthday.)

Unabridged recordings read by Peter Dennis of the four Pooh books:

  • When We Were Very Young
  • Winnie-the-Pooh
  • Now We Are Six
  • The House at Pooh Corner

Radio

Film

Theatrical featurettes

Full-length theatrical features

Television

Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends debuted on NBC Television in 1960.

A version of Winnie The Pooh, in which the animals were played by marionettes, was presented on 3 Oct. 1960, on NBC Television's The Shirley Temple Show. Pooh himself is voiced by Franz Fazakas.

Magical World of Winnie the Pooh (NOTE: These are episodes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh)

Television shows

Holiday TV specials

Direct-to-video features

*These features integrate stories from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and/or holiday specials with new footage.

Soviet adaptation

A postage stamp showing Piglet and Winnie-the-Pooh as they appear in the Russian adaptation.

In the Soviet Union, three Winnie-the-Pooh, (transcribed in Russian as "Vinni Pukh") (Russian language: Винни-Пух) stories were made into a celebrated trilogy[26] of short films by Soyuzmultfilm (directed by Fedor Khitruk) from 1969 to 1972.

  • Винни-Пух (Winnie-the-Pooh, 1969) — based on chapter 1
  • Винни-Пух идёт в гости (Winnie-the-Pooh Pays a Visit, 1971) — based on chapter
  • Винни-Пух и день забот (Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, 1972) — based on chapters 4 and 6.

Films use Boris Zakhoder's translation of the book. Pooh was voiced by Yevgeny Leonov. He looked distinctly different from both the yellow-and-red Disney incarnation and Shepard's illustrations - he was brown instead of yellow, as he is known in the US.

Video games

Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood

Main article: Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood

A Year at Pooh Corner

Released in 1994 December 31 for the Sega Pico.

Winnie the Pooh: Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood

Released in 2000 April for the Game Boy Color.

Tigger's Honey Hunt

Main article: Tigger's Honey Hunt

Winnie the Pooh's Party Games: In Search of the Treasure

Also known as Winnie the Pooh's Party Games of the Treasure, it was first released in 2001 for the PlayStation. It was later released as a downloadable title for PlayStation Network. It is of the party genre, and it has support for multitaps, allowing for up to four players to play at the same time.

The game was developed by Doki Denki Studio (who also made Tigger's Honey Hunt). You can play as Pooh, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Piglet or Roo. If turned on in the options menu, the game also has support for DualShock controllers (taking advantage of the vibration function, unlike Tigger's Honey Hunt).

Pooh and Tigger's Honey Safari

Released in 2001 December 5 for the Game Boy Color. The game was developed by Electronic Arts and has a total of 5 levels.

Winnie the Pooh Kindergarten / Preschool

Both these games were released in 2002 for the PlayStation and are in the edutainment genre. They are both pretty much the same except with a different opening FMV and different minigames.

List of minigames present in Winnie the Pooh Kindergarden:

  • Pooh's Thoughtful Spot
  • Roo's Number Balloons
  • Tigger's Treasure Hunt
  • Rabbit's Shape Sorting
  • Owl's Wordbook
  • Eeyore's Musical Mix & Match

Piglet's Big Game

Main article: Piglet's Big Game

Winnie the Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure

Main article: Winnie the Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure

Other video games

Ready to Read with Pooh is another game for the PC designed to help children learn English, however it is incompatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. There has also been a Winnie the Pooh version of Dance Dance Revolution for handheld electronics. Winnie the Pooh is also featured in Kingdom Hearts, however it is not his own game.

References in other media

  • Winnie-the-Pooh is such a popular character in Poland that a Warsaw street is named after him, "Ulica Kubusia Puchatka." There is also a street named after him in Budapest (Micimackó utca). [27]
  • In the "sport" of Poohsticks, competitors drop sticks into a stream from a bridge and then wait to see whose stick will cross the finish line first. Though it began as a game played by Pooh and his friends in the book The House at Pooh Corner and later in the films, it has crossed over into the real world: a World Championship Poohsticks race takes place in Oxfordshire each year.
  • The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff use Milne's characters in an effort to explain Taoism in an accessible way.
  • In December 2000, a Canadian medical journal jokingly "diagnosed" characters in the books and films with various mental illnesses[28]
  • A number of philosophical books have been written about Winnie the Pooh – Postmodern Pooh and The Pooh Perplex by Frederick Crews rewrite stories from Pooh's world in abtruse academic jargon (from a number of sources including postmodernism, psychoanalysis and so on) for the purpose of satire [29]. Pooh and the Philosophers by John T. Williams uses Winnie the Pooh as a backdrop to illustrate the works of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, Plato and Nietzsche.[30]
  • Dorothy Parker was critical of what she considered A. A. Milne's "dumbing down of English for children", a criticism she had for many other children's book authors as well. In her pseudonym as Constant Reader in the New Yorker magazine she made one of her most famous barbs when she, while reviewing one of the stories, wrote, "and it is precisely at that word, 'hunny' that Tonstant Weader fwowed up."
  • Kenny Loggins wrote the song "House at Pooh Corner", which was originally recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band[31]. Loggins later rewrote the song as "Return to Pooh Corner", featuring on the album of the same name in 1991.
  • In the Dreamworks film Bee Movie, when Barry Benson orders that all bears should not be commercialized as "cute, adorable animals" after winning a lawsuit, Winnie the Pooh can be seen with Piglet in a field. He is tranquilized and his honey is taken from him.
  • Pooh, an Italian pop band active since the sixties, took their name from Winnie.

See also

References

  1. ^ McDowell, Edwin. "Winnie Ille Pu Nearly XXV Years Later", New York Times (18 November 1984). Retrieved 2 January 2010.
  2. ^ "The Adventures of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh. The New York Public Library.
  3. ^ "Winnie". Historica Minutes, The Historica Foundation of Canada. Retrieved on 2008-05-30.
  4. ^ Willard, Barbara (1989). The Forest - Ashdown in East Sussex. Sussex: Sweethaws Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) introduction pp. xi-xii
  5. ^ "Winnie-the-Pooh". Ashdown Forest. The Conservators of Ashdown Forest. Retrieved 30 May 2008. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ "A Children's Story by A. A. Milne". London Evening News. 24 Dec. p. 1. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  7. ^ Thwaite, Ann (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Alan Alexander Milne. Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ Kennedy, Maev (5 October 2009). "Sequel brings Pooh friends old and new". The Guardian. p. 15. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  9. ^ "The Merchant of Child". Fortune. Nov. 1931. p. 71. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  10. ^ McElway, St. Claire (26 Oct. 1936). "The Literary Character in Business & Commerce". The New Yorker. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  11. ^ "The Curse of Pooh." Fortune.
  12. ^ "New-look Pooh 'has girl friend'." BBC News.
  13. ^ "The Curse of Pooh" Fortune.
  14. ^ "The Pooh Files" The Albion Monitor.
  15. ^ Nelson, Valerie J (20 July 2007). "Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, 84; fought Disney over Pooh royalties". Los Angeles times. Retrieved 14 August 2007. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  16. ^ "Judge dismisses Winnie the Pooh lawsuit" The Disney Corner.
  17. ^ James, Meg (26 September 2007). "Disney wins lawsuit ruling on Pooh rights". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 September 2007.
  18. ^ "Winnie the Pooh goes to court" USA Today
  19. ^ "Justices Refuse Winnie the Pooh Case." ABC News.
  20. ^ "Disney loses court battle in Winnie the Pooh copyright case". ABC News. 17 February 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2008.
  21. ^ James, Meg (29 September 2009). "Pooh rights belong to Disney, judge rules". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 October 2009.
  22. ^ Shea, Joe (4 October 2009). "The gordian knot of Pooh rights is finally untied in federal court". The American Reporter. Retrieved 5 October 2009.
  23. ^ "Hastings Marionettes: Will Open Holiday Season at Guild Theatre on Saturday". New York Times. 22 Dec. 1931. p. 28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  24. ^ "A Children's Story by A. A. Milne". London Evening News. 24 Dec. 1925. pp. p. 1. {{cite news}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  25. ^ "His Master's Voice Speaks Again". Playthings. Nov. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  26. ^ Russian animation in letters and figures | Films | «Winnie the Pooh»
  27. ^ Google Maps
  28. ^ "Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne." The Canadian Medical Association Journal. 12 December 2000. V163: 12.
  29. ^ http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DB0F.htm
  30. ^ http://www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/poohandphilosophers.html
  31. ^ House at Pooh Corner by Loggins and Messina Songfacts
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