Animating Hans Christian Andersen

Chapter three focuses on Hans Christian Andersen, whose stories Disney has adapted more than the works of any other author. During his lifetime, Andersen presented his biography as a rags-to-riches tale, promoting the link between his life and his works by publishing three autobiographies and traveling throughout Europe, reading his stories aloud and crossing paths with major Victorian writers. Today Andersen’s biography is more often associated with his social anxieties and his non-normative sexuality, but his tales are always linked to his life experiences—and not only by scholars and biographers. Walt Disney, who similarly presented his own life as a rags-to-riches tale, at one point planned to collaborate on a biopic about the fairy tale author, whom he saw as a kindred spirit. All of the Disney company’s Andersen adaptations, from cartoon shorts in the 1930s to Frozen 2 (2019), were shaped by understandings of the author’s life. Differences among those adaptations reveal overlaps between scholarly biography and media production.