Remembering Diane, one last time this year, thanks to this great photo sent by Jim Korkis.

[The wedding of Diane and Ron on May 9, 1953 in a little Episcopal church in Santa Barbara.]

It took me a month to accept the fact that Diane Disney Miller is gone.

As explained yesterday in the introduction of Disney's Grand Tour, the whole project began thanks to a question I received two and half years ago from Diane. Michael Barrier had been kind enough to introduce me to her by email in 2007, which led to a face to face meeting in New York a few months later. I had presented to Diane a project linked to Disney history preservation and told her that I would be in New York for a short vacation which might give us an opportunity to meet via video-conference. In what I later came to realise was Diane's typical enthusiasm she stunned me a few days before the trip by telling me that she had decided to fly from San Francisco to discuss the project face to face with me in New York. I had the pleasure to meet her on two ulterior occasions, both times in California, once a year before the inauguration of the Museum and once the day of the inauguration. Each time she struck Rita (my wife) and I as a bundle of energy and enthusiasm sharing candidly with us her passion for the Museum, her enthusiasm for new Disney-related projects, her frustrations with whatever was in the way and her millions of ideas. To say that she was full of life is the understatement of the century. She loved her parents, she enjoyed those who really cared, and she was immensly generous with her time and her memories.

It hurts to know that she won't see the book. It hurts to know that her enthusiasm is no longer there to move mountains. It hurts horrendously to think of the stupid accident. And yet her energy and passion were such that her light still shines bright in all of us, and that her youthfullness is still alive.

She became for a few years the bearer of the flame when it came to preserving Disney History. The burden is back on our shoulders. It is only justice.

Rest in Peace.

This just in from Garry Apgar:

[Diane, her dad, and “What Would Walt Do?”

Tomorrow, December 5th, will mark the 112th anniversary of the birth of Walt Disney. Two weeks from today, December 18th, the late Diane Disney Miller (and her many friends and admirers around the world) would have celebrated her 80th birthday. 

Over the last two decades Diane’s great public passion was her dedication to preserving, researching, and promoting the achievements and legacy of the man she referred to quite simply as “dad.” Diane, her husband Ron Miller, their son Walter, and other members of the Miller family turned that passion into action in 1997 by establishing the non-profit Walt Disney Family Foundation, whose first major project was an interactive biography on CD-ROM called Walt Disney: An Intimate History of the Man and His Magic (1998). Three years later, the Foundation released a 90-minute documentary on VHS (Walt Miller, Executive Producer) entitled Walt: The Man Behind the Myth. (A 2012 version of the film on DVD is 2 hours long.)

After the release of The Man Behind the Myth, Diane and the Foundation embarked upon a far more ambitious and more complex project: the creation of The Walt Disney Family Museum, located on the grounds of the Presidio in San Francisco, overlooking — as seen from the grand picture window in the back of the museum — the Golden Gate Bridge. 

The Walt Disney Family Museum, which opened on October 1, 2009, houses a fascinating and visually delightful array of art and artifacts, video, and other displays. In addition, under Diane’s leadership, the Museum initiated a program of exhibitions, the high point of which so far has been Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic, curated by Lella Smith, Creative Director of the Walt Disney Animation Research Library in Glendale. The Snow White show ran from mid-November 2012 through mid-April 2013 and traveled in June to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.

In tandem with the creation of the Museum, the Walt Disney Family Foundation launched The Walt Disney Family Foundation Press, which published two Snow White books in 2012. The first of these, an oversize 320-page volume, The Fairest One of All, is a definitive history of the film. A smaller, 256-page book, Snow White: The Art and Creation of Walt Disney's Classic Animated Film, was designed to serve as a “catalogue” or companion publication to the show curated by Lella Smith. Each of these handsomely produced books was written by the distinguished film and Disney historian, J. B. Kaufman, who is now working on a book for the Press on the making of Pinocchio, originally intended to serve as the companion volume to a second major exhibition, devoted to Walt’s second feature-length cartoon masterpiece, and planned for 2014 at the Disney Family Museum, but which for the time being has been taken off the schedule.

There have been a number of eloquent and heart-felt tributes to Diane since her death on November 19th, most notably, I think, those written by Leonard Maltin, Andreas Deja, and Charles Solomon. 

Today, however, to celebrate the memory of both Walt and Diane, I believe it might be nice to take a more light-hearted approach and reproduce the two images below. These images address, ironically (though that was not the intent, I’m sure, of their makers), the question that ever since Walt’s passing in 1966 seems to surface whenever a particular problem would arise at the Disney studio, or whenever the future of the studio itself appears to be at risk: “What Would Walt Do?”

The first image, posted online on March 23, 2009 by “Juanma”, is a spoof on the idea of what a Disney treatment of Lord of the Rings would be like. The second drawing is by the great caricaturist Robert Grossman, published around 1996 when the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame came out. Diane Miller loved Bob Grossman’s work. I don’t think she ever saw this particular image, but I am pretty sure she would get a chuckle out of it.

“What Would Walt Do?” ... Now that Diane is gone, anyone concerned about cultivating Walt’s legacy is entitled to ask, ”What Would Diane Do?” The answer is clearly two-fold. Remain curious about all things Disney, and keep fighting the good fight to get the word out about everything her dad did and the kind of man he really was.

Walt Disney was not just a genius and a visionary. He was a good man, a good husband and father, and an inspiring leader whose accomplishments were the result of hard work and perseverance as well as innate artistic talent. Walt Disney was, as I like to say, the tent-pole of modern American popular culture. And because popular culture is American culture, Walt’s impact on our lives has been more profound, and will be longer lasting, than that of any other artist, writer, or film-maker in our history.

I still can't manage to write a proper homage to Diane, so in the meantime here is a small story that I believe you will enjoy.

Photoplay Magazine - October 1934

[My revered Walt Disney was at a cocktail party the other five o'clock with his charming, little wife. Such simple, genuine people, pet. You'd adore them. Mr. Disney hung  over the penthouse balcony by himself, admiring the Hollywood hills, so I slipped over and
commented with reverent voice on said scenery. That got us started. Pretty soon the  subject turned to wallabies. Wallabies?

Aren't you an ignoramus, though! Miniature  kangaroos, my child. And these were sent from some Australian admirers. (Pooh, that's nothing. You ought to see the elegant stuff he gets from Indian potentates!)

He keeps the wallabies in the yard and has a great time watching them. Even Diane Marie is crazy about them and she's only a baby with a rocking complex.

Papa Disney told me with a grin that the tiny dotter was going to have her picture taken in the garden, sitting in her focker, only she wouldn't stop rocking long enough. Mama Disney waited, Papa Disney waited, the photographer waited, but Diane Marie rocked on her non-stop flight. Suddenly, a baby wallaby popped out of its mother's pouch and skipped across the lawn. Diane Marie stopped dead still. Snap, went the quick-witted photographer, and now Papa Walt has gone back to drawing funny little pigs and bunnies with a relieved heart and a nice new picture of the Disney heiress.]

A few days ago, I sent the following question to Diane Disney Miller:

[I received the following question on the blog:

"Do you know if Walt visited the Cote d'Azur while in Europe? I'm sure he must have: I was recently drawing in Eze near Monaco and a friend informed me Disney was known to have visited the village. Can you verify that?"

A reader comented:

"Denise Fabre, famous French TV hostess and a native of Nice, mentions in her autobiography (I don't have it handy, right now!) that, when she was 18, she babysat for Diane's children. Diane was so pleased with Denise that she offered to take her to California, but Denise declined!"

Any truth in this?]

Diane was kind enough to answer with a very detailed email:

[My parents might have been on the Cote d'Azur when they traveled to Europe with Edna and Roy Disney in 1934. During this trip dad was presented with the League of Nations Award in Paris, and he also made sure that they saw the Strasbourg Clock that had impressed him so much in 1918.

In 1948 my sister and I traveled to England and the continent with our parents. It was during the making of Treasure Island. We stayed at La Reserve, in Beaulieu sur Mer, and it was wonderful. Several years ago I found a strip of film that dad had shot of Sharon and me around the swimming pool at La Reserve.

In 1961 much of the film Bon Voyage was shot in France. Mother and dad had been there on the location survey, and Ron was associate producer with Bill Walsh. I met them in New York, and we set sail the next day on the SS United States. Film was shot on the voyage. Fred MacMurray, his wife June and their 5 year old twin daughters were aboard, as well as Bill and Nolie Walsh and their two children, ages 7 and 4, and the whole crew. Our children were Chris, age 6, Joanna, 5, and Tamara, 4. We'd left our youngest daughter at home, in the care of Thelma Howard, my parents' wonderful housekeeper/cook/ nanny. It was difficult for me to leave her behind for such a long time .. about 3 weeks. At this time I was pregnant with Walter, who was born in November of that year.

We stayed in the George V Hotel in Paris, and I had a wonderful time with my children, all over Paris. This is the only time we might have had a baby sitter, because I recall Ron and I going out to dinner with Joe McEveety, the assistant director and Ron's good friend, and my parents requested that we get a sitter from the hotel, even though we were sharing a suite with them.

The [shooting] location moved to the south of France, and we stayed at Eden Roc, Cap d'Antibes, this time. The Walshes and the MacMurray families were always along, of course. It was really a family trip for everyone. We went to lunch in Eze once, and loved it, at the Columbe d'Or. My parents had been there with friends, Mary and Bill Sprackling, on a previous trip, and, before I joined the group in New York, had taken Ron and Bill Walsh... maybe several others... to dinner there.

My kids and I really enjoyed the ocean at Eden Roc, and we ate dinner as a family every night. We had no baby sitters during this trip, and Ron and I had a year earlier hired a lovely young Swedish woman to help with the house. She was in our Encino home while we were gone, and stayed with us for 3 or 4 years. I would never have asked anyone to come to California and work for us. This woman must have met someone else connected with a Disney project.

P.S.: I forgot to mention: Going way, way back, dad spent about 3 weeks in Monaco and other places waiting to sail home from France in 1918. From several of his letters to friends from that time, I sense that it was quite an exciting experience for this 17 year old Kansas City kid.]