Jim Korkis recently returned from being a guest lecturer at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa where he talked about everything from the creation of the Disney Brand to Disney in a Global Society to the Three Business Innovations that Walt used to position his “mom and pop” company for growth.

On the plane flight to and from Iowa, Jim read the book The Monster Show by David Skal, a well respected writer about Hollywood’s early horror films.

Here are two Disney gems Jim discovered in the book:

“Along with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, another favorite, King Kong, occupied a place of honor in (Adolf) Hitler’s private cinematic pantheon….(and Hitler had) an abiding affection for the Disney tune ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’ which he liked to whistle.”

Skal is using for reference Robert G.L. Waite’s The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (New York: Basic Books 1977) as the source of this information.

“(Actress and wife of Charles Laughton, star of Island of Lost Souls) Elsa Lanchester recalled several years later that Island of Lost Souls was banned for twenty-five years in England , on the basis that its theme was a challenge to natural law. ‘Of course, it’s against nature,’ quipped Lanchester. ‘So’s Mickey Mouse.’”

Skal used the book Charles Laughton and I by Elsa Lanchester (Doubleday, 1976) as the source for the quote.