“Flowers and Trees” (1932)
Two-color Technicolor had already been employed in several Hollywood features in the late 1920s and early ’30s (including “The Vagabond King,” “King of Jazz,” and “Under a Texas Moon”), but it paled against the rich hues available through the new three-strip Technicolor process.
Walt Disney was the first filmmaker to utilize it with this short “Silly Symphony” cartoon, whose vibrant hand-drawn animation charmed audiences, and presaged Disney’s transition to full color in all his shorts – and, later, his groundbreaking feature-length cartoon, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Flowers and Trees is also notable for being the first animated film to win an Oscar.