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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/v27388qbbke.jpg]]
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3''The Living Desert'' is a 1953 documentary feature from Disney, directed by James Algar.
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5It was made as part of Disney's ''Film/TrueLifeAdventures'' series of nature documentaries. ''The Living Desert'' focuses on the wildlife of the American deserts of the inter-mountain west. After an opening that explains why the American desert is a desert--namely, the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges block the moisture coming in from the Pacific, leaving the land east of the mountains dry--the film focuses in on the animals that live in the western deserts. Birds nest in cacti, bobcats chase wild pigs and are chased in return, tortoises battle for a mate, and flowers bloom.
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7''The Living Desert'' was the first feature-length entry in the ''True Life Adventures'' series, which began with the short film ''Film/SealIsland'' in 1948. It also led to a parting of the ways between Disney and Creator/{{RKO}}, which had been distributing all Disney films since 1937. After RKO refused to distribute ''The Living Desert'', Walt Disney founded Buena Vista Film Distribution Co. as Disney's in-house distribution arm. ''The Living Desert'' grossed over $4,000,000 against a $300,000 budget, making it Disney's biggest profit-maker up to that point.
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12* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckwalla Chuckwalla]] lizards are described as "diminutive dinosaurs who dine on daisies."
13* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: One sequence features the story of a skinny ground squirrel who is ostracized by his peers for being a runt until he wards off a poisonous lizard.
14* AnimatedCreditsOpening: Starts with an animated sequence depicting the trade winds which bring rain to the Pacific coast, and how the Sierras and Cascades block the rain from the inter-mountain West, leaving it a vast desert. Then the film cuts to live-action with a shot of Mount Whitney.
15* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The Salton Sea is described as the "remainder of an ancient ocean." Actually the Salton Sea, formerly the Salton Sink, was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River overflowed a canal and a dam burst, flooding the basin.
16* BladeOfGrassCut: Many close-ups of flowers blooming in the desert.
17* {{Dramatization}}: As with most nature documentaries of the era, the bulk of the action was staged, with the filmmakers putting animals in studio sets made to look like the desert.
18* EerilyOutOfPlaceObject: The "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones sailing stones]]" of Death Valley, which leave tracks as they sail across the salt flats, a motion that in 1953 had never been observed and wasn't understood. (It took 60 more years and time-lapse photography to reveal that high winds and temporary ice sheets caused by condensation were the cause.)
19* InvitedAsDinner: Or so the narrator describes it when a tarantula comes out of its hole to catch a beetle.
20--> "Guests that might pop over for dinner--her dinner, of course."
21* LoveTriangle: A male tortoise is making mating displays to a female when another male tortoise shows up. They fight, eventually one male flips the other male over, and the winner goes off with the female.
22* {{Narrator}}: Winston Hibler, who also co-wrote the script, narrates. The narration is drolly humorous, and serves to provide comedy, anthropomorphize the animals, and make them come off as "cute".
23* PintSizedPowerhouse: The "tarantula hawk", not actually a hawk but a wasp. It kills a tarantula with a poison sting and then moves a large rock (which, to a human, is like towing a 30-ton truck with your teeth) while digging a hole to bury its victim for her young to feast on.
24* SceneryPorn: Most of the film was obviously shot on soundstages but there are some shots of the desert Southwest in all its beauty. One scene shows Monument Valley, star of many a Creator/JohnFord film.
25* TitleDrop: Two for the price of one, as the narrator says that "This True Life Adventure is the story of nature's living desert."
26* TimeLapse: Used for the final, beautiful sequence of desert flowers blooming after rain.

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