Song of the South is a 1946 American live-action/animated musical comedy-drama film directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, produced by Walt Disney, and released by RKO Radio Pictures.

The film makes several indirect references to the Reconstruction era: clothing is in the newer late-Victorian style; Uncle Remus is free to leave the plantation at will; Black field hands are sharecroppers, etc.

Johnny evades being discovered, but Uncle Remus catches up with him, offers him food for his journey, and takes him back to his cabin, where he tells the boy the traditional African-American folktale, "Br'er Rabbit Earns a Dollar a Minute".

Johnny makes friends with Toby, a young black boy who lives on the plantation, and Ginny Favers, a poor white girl.

Uncle Remus takes the dog in and delights Johnny and his friends with the fable of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, stressing that people should not get involved with something they have no business with in the first place.

In the aftermath of World War II, Walt Disney Studios faced financial difficulties due to a lack of foreign markets for animated films during wartime.

In another treatment, Uncle Remus gathers the critters together for a prayer meeting and to encourage them to build a church that would bring peace between predators and prey.

[9] Disney first began to negotiate with Harris's family for the rights in 1939, and by late summer of that year he already had one of his storyboard artists summarize the more promising tales and draw up four boards' worth of story sketches.

"[10] Disney's brother Roy had misgivings about the project, doubting that it was "big enough in caliber and natural draft" to warrant a budget over $1 million and more than twenty-five minutes of animation.

[9] In June 1944, Disney hired Southern-born writer Dalton Reymond to write the screenplay, and he met frequently with King Vidor, whom he was trying to interest in directing the live-action sequences.

Maurice Rapf, who had been writing live-action features at the time, was asked by Walt Disney Productions to work with Reymond and co-writer Callum Webb to turn the treatment into a shootable screenplay.

[9] Clarence Muse lobbied for the role of Uncle Remus while consulting on the screenplay, but left the project due to Dalton Reymond's depiction of African-Americans in the original treatment.

Filming began in December 1944 in Phoenix, Arizona where the studio had constructed a plantation and cotton fields for outdoor scenes, and Disney left for the location to oversee what he called "atmospheric shots".

[28] On the final day of shooting, Jackson discovered that the scene in which Uncle Remus sings the film's signature song, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", had not been properly blocked.

Nearly all of the vocal performances are by the largely African-American cast, and the renowned all-Black Hall Johnson Choir sing four pieces: two versions of a blues number ("Let the Rain Pour Down"), one chain-reaction-style folk song[29] ("That's What Uncle Remus Said") and one spiritual ("All I Want").

As had been done earlier with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942), Disney produced a Sunday comic strip titled Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit to give the film pre-release publicity.

At Eisner's request, [citation needed] Uncle Remus was not featured in the Splash Mountain attraction, instead being replaced as the narrator by Br'er Frog in the Tokyo Disneyland and Magic Kingdom versions of the ride.

[58][59] “As Uncle Remus, James Baskett is so skillful in registering contentment that even the people who believe in the virtues of slavery are going to be impressed and want to know his secret.”—Film critic Manny Farber in The New Republic, December 23, 1946.

[60] Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times, "More and more, Walt Disney's craftsmen have been loading their feature films with so-called 'live action' in place of their animated whimsies of the past, and by just those proportions has the magic of these Disney films decreased", citing the ratio of live action to animation at two to one, concluding that is "approximately the ratio of its mediocrity to its charm".

[63] Harrison's Reports praised Driscoll and Baskett's performances, particularly the latter writing "his tender understanding of the child's problems gives the picture many appealing moments."

Overall, the review felt the film had "a simple but sensitive and pathetic story, filled with deep human interest and fine, clean comedy situations, and it has an air of wholesomeness that comes as a pleasant relief from the general run of pictures nowadays.

"[64] Dorothy Masters of the New York Daily News wrote: "Although plot is practically ignored, Disney has worked a lot of magic with brilliant animation, effective and wonderful music, besides having made the very best possible choice for Uncle Remus.

James Baskett, who portrays the sagacious dean of plantation workers, has both the benign appearance and mellifluous voice to make him the perfect spinner-of-tales.

Herman Hill in The Pittsburgh Courier felt that Song of the South would "prove of inestimable goodwill in the furthering of interracial relations", and considered criticisms of the film to be "unadulterated hogwash symptomatic of the unfortunate racial neurosis that seems to be gripping so many of our humorless brethren these days.

[76] A special Academy Award was given to Baskett "for his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and story teller to the children of the world in Walt Disney's Song of the South".

[8] The Hays Office had asked Disney to "be certain that the frontispiece of the book mentioned establishes the date in the 1870s"; however, the final film carried no such statement.

[88] Disney historian Jim Korkis, in his 2012 book Who's Afraid of Song of the South, alleged that White and June Blythe, the director of the American Council on Race Relations, were denied requests to see a treatment for the film.

Making use of the beautiful Uncle Remus folklore, Song of the South unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master–slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.

[14]White had not seen the film; his statement was allegedly based on memos he received from two NAACP staff members, Norma Jensen and Hope Spingarn, who attended a press screening on November 20, 1946.

"[61] As early as October 1945, a newspaper strip called Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit appeared in the United States, and this production continued until 1972.