Some great news to start the weekend. Walt's People - Volume 26 has just been released today thanks to Skyway Press!!!

This new volume features interviews with Bill Cottrell, Armand Bigle, Pierre Nicolas, Antonio Bertini, Andy Thewlis, Gunnar Mansson, Horst Koblischek, Dan Gonzales, Herb Hughes, Royal “Mickey” Clark, Marvin Davis and Marjorie Davis, Marty Sklar, Jack Lindquist, Craig McNair Wilson, Kym Murphy, and Chris Runco.

I have been waiting for the book "Women of Walt Disney Imagineering" to be released for almost two years and finally got a review copy last week.

It was worth the wait. I absolutely love this volume. It is not an art book, although it does contain a section with color illustrations (including photos and pieces of concept art). It is first and foremost a book that allows 12 friends, who also happen to be some of the most talented of Disney's female Imagineers, to tell the story of their lives and careers.

I learned a lot and consider this book a page-turner. We are only in February, but I already know it will become part of my "best books of 2022" list.

 

I just received a copy of the book The Art of Turning Red (a movie that I am looking forward to watching when it released on Disney+ on March 11).

As always, Chronicle Books did a great job with that one. More than the character designs, what I really loved in this volume are the concept pieces.

I have to admit that I am really looking forward to discovering, some day, more artwork by some of the artists featured in the book, like Bill Cone, Rona Liu, Simon Baek, Rebecca Shieh, Tatsuro Kiuchi, and Tadahiro Uesugi, among others.

This weekend, while researching the origins of the Mickey Mouse clubs in Australia, I stumbled upon something totally unexpected.

Between April 12, 1930 and December 27, 1930, some Australian newspapers ran a locally-produced Mickey Mouse comic strip, two examples of which are shown here. 

While the strip was non-authorized, it was nevertheless syndicated throughout Australia. 39 stories were released in total. 

Two months after the demise of the Australian strip, in March 1931 another newspaper started running the official / authorized Mickey Mouse strip.

There are always new things to discover when it comes to Disney history!!!

 

Four exciting books are now available for pre-order on Amazon (thanks to David Peake for the heads up):

- Walt Disney's The Jungle Book: Making a Masterpiece by Andreas Deja

- The Imagineering Story: A History of Disney's Theme Parks as Told by the Designers by Leslie Iwerks

- Walt's Apprentice: Keeping the Disney Dream Alive by Dick Nunis

- 100 Disney Adventures of a Lifetime: Magical Experiences From Around the World by Marcy Smothers

From a historical standpoint, one of the most important items that was sold by Heritage Auctions over the past few days is this complete set of 81 storyboard drawings from the abandoned short The Little Wax Gaucho.

If you are reading this and are the person who bought those drawings, could you please, please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com? Ideally those drawings need to be scanned and preserved for future generations of Disney historians. Many thanks in advance.