am2xAnimated Movies was launched by Olivier Mouroux in 1999. In addition to a daily news report, he also created a database of information about past, current, and upcoming films. In 2003, he took a job in the industry and had to give up his work on the site. Several fans of Animated Movies decided to take on the task of keeping the news portion of his site going, and founded what is now Animated Views.

As AV turns 15, let's take a look back at the site we descended from. Below you can explore the database Olivier compiled at Animated Movies during its existence, as it last appeared online in October 2003.

Cast * Interesting Facts * The Real Story


Balto racing!Directed by: Simon Wells
Written by: David Cohen & Elana Lesser
Music by: James Horner & Barry Mann

Released on: December 22, 1995
Running Time: 74 minutes

Budget: Less than $20 million
Box-Office: $11.3 million in the U.S., $ million worldwide
 
 

CAST

1995 Promotional PosterBalto... Kevin Bacon
Jenna... Bridget Fonda
Boris... Bob Hoskins
Steele... Jim Cummings
Muk and Luk... Phil Collins
Nikki... Jack Angel
Kaltag... Danny Mann
Star... Robbie Rist
Ros... Juliette Brewer
 
 

Composer James Horner (1953)James Horner was born on August 14, 1953.  He began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. Currently, with over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, and James Cameron (Aliens and his most famous work, the Oscar-winner Titanic), James Horner has firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring.  In addition, he composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  His contribution to the animated world is especially unvaluable, with work on An American Tail, The Land Before Time as well as We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, and Once Upon A Forest.
 
 

INTERESTING FACTS

Thanks to the Official Balto Site for some of the information below--check it out for more!
 

  Brendan Fraser (1999's The Mummy) was originally hired to provide the voice of Steele, the evil dog. He did record his part but his voiceover was subsequently discarded and the role went to Jim Cummings.

  The nasty malamute, "Steele", was rather ironically named after North-West Mounted Police Superintendent Samuel B. Steele, one of the famous contingent of Mounted Police charged with keeping order during the chaos of the 1896-1899 Klondike Gold Rush.

1995 Promotional Poster"Steele"'s three-dog fan club, "Nikki", "Kaltag", and "Star", derive their names from different sources.  "Kaltag" is a town in Alaska that sits on the route of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.  "Star" could be a generic reference to the North Star, but could also be lifted from a tome on the Siberian Husky, in which is stated, "one should avoid giving names to dogs that are too phonetically similar to commands....(as)...the name 'Star' is too similar to "Stay", etc.", in keeping with that particular Husky's personality as depicted in the film.

  "Nikki" is another venture into irony.  In 1960, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company shot a film about sled-dogs on location in Banff, Alberta, entitled "Nikki, Wild Dog of the North".  After filming of the movie wound up, the company found themselves with 200 or so sled dogs surplus to their requirements and all in need of a good home.  The various dogs that played the title character "Nikki" (including "Nikki" himself), were given to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to form the foundation of their revitalized breeding program for use in northern patrols.

  The animation crew behind Balto was 98% European.

  A direct-to-video sequel, Balto II: Wolf Quest, was released in 2001. This new adventure picks up where Balto ended. After settling down with Jenna and having 6 pups, it soon becomes time for Balto to give his children up for adoption to human families. However, no one wants Aleu, his daughter, because she looks so much like a wolf. When Aleu figures this out, she runs away, forcing Balto to go after her and sending her on a journey full of self discovery. The voice cast includes Mark Hamill, Jody Benson (The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina), David Carradine and Lacey Chabert.
 
 

THE REAL STORY

Courtesy of DogSled.com
 

Nome's hospitalNome, Alaska appeared on the map during one of the world's great gold rushes at the end of the century. Located on the Seward Peninsula, by 1900 the town's population had swelled to 20, 000 after gold was discovered on beaches along the Bearing Sea. By 1925, however, much of the gold was gone, and scarcely 1, 400 people were left in the remote nothern outpost. Nome was icebound seven months of the year and the nearest railroad was more than 650 miles away, in the town of Nenana.

Nome was able to communicate with the rest of the world via the radio telegraph, a relatively new invention in those days. And, although Alaska was still a U.S. Territory until 1959, the government maintained a route over which relays of dog teams carried mail from Anchorage to Nome. A one-way trip along this route, called the Iditarod Trail, took about a month and the "mushers" that traversed the trail were the best in Alaska.
 

A CRY FOR HELP

On January 20, 1925, a radio signal went out, flashing for miles across the frozen tundra:
 

Nome calling... Nome calling... We have an outbreak of diphtheria... No Serum... Urgently need help... Nome calling... Nome calling...


Nome's only doctor had diagnosed cases of diphtheria, an extremely contageous disease affecting the throat and lungs, which can easily reach epidemic proportions. The Inuit Indians were particularly vulnerable. Whole villiages had been wiped out by earlier epidemics of measles and flu. The frantic search for antitoxin began:
 

Seattle calling... Seattle calling... Fresh serum available here... Airplanes standing by to fly to Nome...


A team racing in 1925 Alaska

A RACE FOR LIFE

The long twilight of the arctic winter had settled over Nome. Heavy snow had fallen and temperatures dropped far below zero. These weather conditions were beyond the technical capabilities of early airplanes with open cockpits.
 

Anchorage calling... Anchorage calling... 300, 000 units of serum located in railway hospital here... Package can be shipped by train to Nenana... Package weighs 20 pounds... Could serum be carried to Nome on Iditarod trail by mail drivers and dog teams?


Even though it was the 20th century, some problems could not be solved with machines. For years the settlers of Alaska had trusted in courageous men and strong dogs. They would trust in them again.

By the next day, three children in Nome had died of diphtheria and more cases had been diagnosed. Time would be a matter of life and death. A relay of dog teams along the Iditerod Trail was quickly organized.
 

JANUARY 27, 1925

The serum arrived in Nenana by train, and the relay to the stricken city began. "Wild Bill" Shannon lashed the life-saving cargo to his sled and set off westward. Except for the dogs' panting and the swooshing of runners on the snow, there were no other sounds on the trail. The temperature was dropping fast. It was 30 degrees below zero when Shannon started. Then it fell to 35 degrees... 40 degrees... 45 degrees... and finally 50 degrees below in the arctic darkness. Shannon rushed on, mindless of the cold, until he handed the serum over to Edgar Kalland in Tolovana, 52 miles from Nenana.
 

JANUARY 28, 1925

Team fighting the coldKalland, in turn, passed the serum to Dan Green at Manley Hot Springs (31 miles). Green took it to Fish Lake (28 miles), averaging an astonishing nine miles an hour. From Green it passed to Johnny Folger (26 miles). He passed it on to Sam Joseph (34 miles), then to Titus Nikolai (24 miles) and Dave Corning (30 miles). New snow fell and the wind picked up, creating whiteouts, but on and on the mushers went: Harry Pitka (30 miles), Bill McCarty (28 miles), and Edgar Nollner (24 miles). Eskimo, Indian, and white mushers carried serum in the "Great Race of Mercy." The relay teams were challenging the limits of endurance. From frozen hands to frozen hands the serum passed, itself frozen until thawed out in one of the shelters, only to freeze solid again on the trail.
 

JANUARY 30, 1925

At Galena, Edgar Nollner gave the serum to his newly married brother, George. The young Indian chanted Athabascan love songs through the wilderness to keep warm in the minus 50° weather. On his 30-mile stretch, Charlie Evans harnessed himself to the sled when two dogs froze on their feet. The serum passed on to Tommy Patsy (36 miles); Jackscrew, the Koyukuk Indian (40 miles); Victor Anagick (34 miles); Myles Gonangnan (40 miles). Men and dogs used their own bodies to break trail through four-foot snow drifts.
 

JANUARY 31, 1925

At Shaktolik, Henry Ivanoff had traveled a half-mile along the trail when his team darted after a reindeer. While untangling the dogs, the Russian Eskimo spotted Leonard Seppala, the greatest musher in the territory, and Togo, one of the territory's greatest dogs, rushing down the trail. Due to a breakdown in communications, Seppala and his famous Siberian huskies had set out from Nome, 150 miles away, to meet the relay and return with the serum. The serum was handed off to Seppala, who mushed 91 miles to the next relay point. Each dog on a team has an important position, but it is the leader that must guide them through safely. In addition to having courage and endurance, a leader like Togo must be obediant and have an uncanny instinct to find the trail and sense danger. As the storm grew more vicious, Seppala was faced with the decision of whether to take a shortcut across frozen, and yet dangerous, Norton Sound or to go around it. Gale-force winds hurled seawater over the ice, which threatened to break up at any moment. But Seppala was confidant of his team, and Togo unearringly led them across the jagged, groaning ice floes to the safety of land. Just three hours later, the ice broke in Norton Sound.
 
 

February 1, 1925 headlines







FEBRUARY 1, 1925

Through blinding snow and hurricane force winds, the desperately needed serum was passed from Seppala to Charlie Olson (25 miles) and then to Gunnar Kaasen. Had Kaasen an inkling of how wild the storm would rage, he would not have chosen Balto to lead his team out of Bluff. Although Balto was one of Seppala's dogs, he simply was not thought of as a very good leader. But Balto proved his mettle when he plunged into the roaring blizzard, at one point halting to save driver and team from instant death in the Topkok River. No one believed Kaasen would make it through the storm, so when he arrived at the Safety Shelter, 21 miles from Nome, he found the next driver asleep. The team was running well and so they forged ahead. Their endurance was tested even further when a sudden, fierce blast of wind lifted both sled and dogs into the air. While fighting to right the sled and untangle the team, Kaasen's heart sunk - the serum was gone! Only after frantically searching the snow with his bare hands did he miraculously find it.
 

FEBRUARY 2, 1925

Before daybreak on February 2, 1925, Balto led Gunnar Kaasen's team into Nome. The town was saved! Exhausted and nearly frozen after the 53-mile run, Kaasen, Balto and the rest of the mushing team became instant heroes across the United States. The 674-mile trip was made in 1271/2 hours, considered by mushers to be a world's record.
 
 
 

TIMELESS HEROES

Fans lined streets nationwide to see musher Gunnar Kasaan and the dogsled team on a celebration tour.  Balto is at right.The glory showered on the dogs was short-lived. Hollywood movie producer Sol Lesser brought the dogs to Los Angeles and created a 30-minute film, Balto's Race to Nome. His son later explained: "Ages ago, Balto, the sled dog hero of Universal's animated feature, was as famous as reigning sports champs Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey.  After the Alaskan dog made his dangerous 1925 race with serum to beleaguered Nome, he appeared onstage in first-run Los Angeles theatres, presented by my father, producer-exhibitor Sol Lesser.  Father also made a film of him, then trucked him to 3rd Street grammar school so my sister Marjorie and I could show him to classmates.  By 1927, Balto had moved to an L.A. sideshow, exhibited for 10 cents admission.  An Ohio man bought him for a comfortable retirement in Cleveland's Brookside Zoo, where Balto died in 1933.  Balto was so popular that he was stuffed and reverently placed in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he has inspired generations of visitors ever since."

Balto parade in NomeIndeed, Kaasen and his team then toured the U.S. during the summer and fall of 1925. In 1926, in honor of the epic trek, admirers erected a statue of Balto in New York City's Central Park.  But later Balto and the rest of the dog team were sold to an unknown vaudeville promoter. Two years later, Balto and his famous companions had become lost in the world of sideshows and the whirl of the roaring twenties. It seemed the world had forgotten the "Heroes of Alaska." Then, on a visit to Los Angeles, Cleveland businessman George Kimble discovered the dogs displayed at a "dime" museum and noticed that they were ill and mistreated. He knew the famous story of Balto and was outraged at seeing this degradation. A deal was struck to buy the dogs for $2, 000 and bring them to Cleveland - but Kimble had only two weeks to raise the sum. The race to save Balto was on!

The real BaltoA Balto fund was established. Across the nation, radio broadcasts appealed for donations. Headlines in The Plain Dealer told of the push to rescue the heroes. Cleveland's response was explosive. School children collected coins in buckets; factory workers passed their hats; and hotels, stores, and visitors donated what they could to the Balto fund. The Western Reserve Kennel Club gave a needed finantial boost. The people had responded generously. In just ten days the headlines read, "City Smashes Over Top With Balto Fund! Huskies To Be Shipped From Coast at Once!"

On March 19, 1927, Balto and six companions were brought to Cleveland and given a heroes' welcome in a triumphant parade through the Public Square. The dogs were then taken to the Cleveland Zoo to live out their lives in dignity. It was said that 15, 000 people visited them on their first day there.

Central Park's statue and plaque in tribute to BaltoBalto died on March 14, 1933, at the age of 11. The husky's body was mounted at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it has been kept as a reminder of the gallant race against death.  Today, some Alaskan schoolchildren are campaigning to bring Balto back to his home state. The students want his body moved to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race museum in Wasilla. But Cleveland officials aren't ready to give Balto back, noting he spent more than half his life in their city. Balto did return to Alaska though in 1999 as part of a temporary exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art -a testament to the strength of Balto's memory and a fitting memorial to his indomitable spirit.  Balto was suddenly a world-famous celebrity; for two years after the serum run, the dog and some of his teammates traversed the continental United States as part of a traveling show. After Balto died in 1933, his body was preserved and displayed at Cleveland's Natural History Museum.

Statues at the Cleveland ZooLong after his death, Balto's popularity lives on. Today, some Alaskan schoolchildren are campaigning to bring Balto back to his home state. The students want his body moved to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race museum in Wasilla. But Cleveland officials aren't ready to give Balto back, noting he spent more than half his life in their city. Balto returned to Alaska in 1999 as part of a temporary exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art -a testament to the strength of Balto's memory and a fitting memorial to his indomitable spirit.
 
 




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