I am likely to be visiting Disneyland as well as Disney's California Adventures on February 12th and 13th. If this were confirmed, would any reader of the blog want to meet there? Please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com if you do.

(And if you happen to work at Disneyland, could you please mention it in your email?)

Walt's People - Volume 10 is now available through Amazon. Please spread the news.

Disney Historian: Jim Korkis

I have a feeling you will love those two videos.

The Disney Books Network was updated this weekend.

Walt Disney at the Copenhagen Airport

This just in from Are Myklebust:

[Here's an extremely short film clip of Walt Disney at Copenhagen Airport (Denmark) in the 1960s. You can spot the Scandinavian Airlines System logo (SAS) on the shuttle bus behind him.]

Here is a book I am really looking forward to. I am biased since I contributed an essay about Joe Fowler and Carl Bongirno to this volume, but the subjects explored as well as the contributors are bound to make it worthwhile if you are interested in the history of the Disney parks.

Here is the table of contents:

[Jim Hill: Foreword
Chad Emerson: Introduction
Tom Corless: The Sunset Boulevard that Was, Is, and Never Will Be
Tom Corless: When is the 3 O’Clock Parade? Then, Now, and Forever
Michael Crawford: Tomorrow’s Windows: Looking Back at Horizons
Michael Crawford: A Brief History of the Future: From EPCOT to EPCOT Center
Jason Diffendal: The Walt Disney World Monorail System
Jason Diffendal: Spaceship Earth
Greg Ehrbar: Much Ado About Hoop-Dee-Doo
Greg Ehrbar: The 65th Year for Mickey, the Very First Visit for Kids
Sam Gennawey: Walt Disney’s EPCOT and the Heart of Our Cities
Didier Ghez: Joe & Carl: Two Men Who Built the World
Adam Goswick: Disney Brings Sports to the World
Scott and Carol Holmes: Whatever Happened to Beastly Kingdom?
Debra Martin Koma: Magic of the Night: The Evolution of Walt Disney World’s Nighttime
Fireworks Displays
Jim Korkis: Meeting Mickey: Remembering Mickey’s Toontown Fair
Jim Korkis: For Your Pleasure: The Mythology and Reality of Pleasure Island
Mike Lee: The Relative Truth About If You Had Wings
Mike Lee: Thunder Mesa & the Western River Expedition: A Neverending Story
Chuck Mirarchi: History of the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue
Chuck Mirarchi: History of the Main Street Electrical Parade
Chuck Mirarchi: History of the Contemporary & Polynesian Resort Hotels
Lou Mongello: Walt Disney World Resorts That Never Were
Foxx Nolte: Goodnight, George: A Ghost Story
Foxx Nolte: Another Magic Corner of the World
Jeffrey Pepper: EPCOT 1939
Michael Scopa: The Carousel of Progress: What Would Walt Think?
George Taylor: An Island Filled with Tropic Beauty, Colorful Birds, and the Mystery of Ben
Gunn’s Buried Treasure!
Kevin Yee: Honoring the Cast: Insider Tributes & Homages
Kevin Yee: Theme Park Archaeology]

Do not miss today:

- Carl Fallberg and Lost Disney Books by Jim Korkis
- Book Review: Walt's People Volume 10 by Didier Ghez by George Taylor

Grace Huntington worked at the Disney Studio in the '30s as a storywoman. I was excited to stumble upon her autobiography yesterday. The book was edited and released last year by her son Berkeley Brandt. I suspect that the book does not contain very much about Grace's Disney career but even that small section will probably satisfy me. We will see.

The new issue of the Twenty-Three magazine will be released on February 1. I am particularly looking forward to Becky Cline's article about Walt and Roy's 1935 trip.

Jim Korkis and I are in the process of interviewing another one of the individuals who were involved in the making of the True-Life Adventures, artist and naturalist Boyd Shaffer.

I discovered the existence of Boyd Shaffer thanks to the book pictured above. Based on Boyd's wife's review of the book I do not recommend that you buy it since it seems to be full of inaccuracies. The interview we are conducting with Boyd and that should be released in Walt's People - Volume 12 will probably become a good reference about him and his work for Disney.

Do not miss today:

- Walt Disney - February 9, 1939 by Mark Sonntag
- Walt Disney - January 22, 1937 by Mark Sonntag
- United China Relief - part 2 by David Lesjak
- Disney trainer Lloyd Beebe created Olympic Game Farm in Sequim
- Beebes remembered in Sequim, beyond

Luciano Berriatua bought recently from Leslie M. Brooks (who manages the Wabbits store on ebay) this great drawing by Ferdinand Horvath.

Luciano asked himself two questions: When was it created and who are the artists caricatured?

To find the answer, he followed the following reasoning:


The paper's three circular pegs and 2 rectangular ones started being used around mid-1935 and until 1944 but strangely the size of the paper (9,5" x 12") corresponds to pre-1935 sheets (the ones used starting in 1935 are usually 10" x 12") . It is therefore likely that pre-1935 paper was used with the new perforations in this case.


In addition, since Horvath left Disney in 1937, the drawing probably dates from between 1935 to 1937.

The first model sheets of Fantasia's centaurs, created for the "Cydalise" sequence, are from September 1938. Horvath's drawings would not therefore be connected to Fantasia. More on this below.

Who are the artists caricatured? The left centaur definitely looks like Ham Luske. The one on the right is identified as Gustaf Tenggren, which is definitely not impossible. Leslie Brooks guessed that the centaur in the middle was Gilles "Frenchy" de Tremaudan, but de Tremaudan always wore very recognizable Harold-Lloyd-type glasses and did not have the kind of hair which appear to be one of the two key features of the middle centaur, along with his nose. By looking at Studio photographs, Luciano recognized Johnny Cannon (see above).

If the drawing was not linked to Fantasia, what project inspired it?

In Robin Allan's book Walt Disney and Europe, in the Appendix B, we see a list of "Other unfinished European projects" which includes 1116 The Odissey (Adventures of Ulysses) and 1125 Mythological Research (Stories of Mythology), both probably from the '30s.

A large number of Hurter's drawings in the book He Drew As He Pleased seem to come from those projects, as is the drawing below from Horvath that appeared in the catalog of Graphic Gallery number 8.

Do not miss today this very fun article about Donald by Paul F. Anderson and please also try and leave comments on the Walt Disney Family Museum's blog.

- EVOLUTION OF A DUCK, THE 1940s “THE DONALD DUCK DECADE” by Paul F. Anderson

A nice caricature of Ollie Johnston and a few of Bill Tytla are being sold on HowardLowery.com at the moment.

Do not miss today:

- THE MISSISSIPPI MOVES AT DHI~Dixieland at Disneyland Continued by Paul F. Anderson
- The Disney's America Story - Part Three by Sam Gennaway

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[Ever since it appeared at Disneyland in 1993 and later at the other Disney theme parks, there have been a variety of stories on unofficial Disney websites of what Walt is pointing at and saying to Mickey. Even the Disney Company has suggested that at Walt Disney World, Walt is pointing to the statue of his brother Roy ("Sharing the Magic") on Main Street. Here is what Disney sculptor Blaine Gibson told the media at the unveiling about the Partners statue in 1993:

"I thought that it was an honor to do a statue of Mickey and Walt who was, in my opinion, the real genius behind all of this. For me, it was a labor of love. Walt gave me and many others some of the happiest times of our lives, and this project was important because it wasn't just for Walt...it was about Walt. Our faces are all we really have that can tell people who we are. Many people asked me what Walt might be saying as he stood there with Mickey, and the expression I tried to capture was Walt saying to Mickey, 'Look what we've accomplished together', because truly they were very much a team through it all."

Also at the dedication, Marty Sklar who was then President of Imagineering told the press, "From now on you can get three symbols of Disneyland in one photograph. What a memory and souvenir of Disneyland that will be."]

The Mouse Factory



I always wondered what Ward Kimball TV series from the '70s, "The Mouse Factory," looked like and why so many at the Studio (Woolie Reitherman, Wilfred Jackson and others) hated it. Now I know, thanks to someone who posted quite a few episodes on YouTube including Spooks and Magic (part 2 above), Fitness, Snow, The Reluctant Dragon, and Goliath.

Do not miss today:

- MOUNTAIN MANIA CONTINUES TO MAKE SPLASH AT DHI by Paul F. Anderson
- TUESDAY TRIVIA: What Does This Animal Have To Do With Disney History? by Paul F. Anderson
- "The Flying Gauchito" by Michael Barrier
- Paul Castle: The Man Inside the Mouse by Jim Korkis
- Lost Imagineering: Baby Herman's Runaway Baby Buggy Ride by Jeff Pepper

I just found the following image on the Ward Kimball page on Facebook. The person who posted it said:

[Another from the three-eyed women series. A couple have guessed it's for the Haunted Mansion. Not according to Ward. All we know is what he said in an interview once: "These are some portraits I did for Vincent Price. They called up the Studio for someone who'd do a painting of a woman. Nice, old-fashioned, with three eyes. So I sat down and made these sketches. They look like women you see."]

Any idea what this project might have been?

Do not miss today:

- DIXIELAND AT DISNEYLAND 1963 by Paul F. Anderson
- The American Magazine - August 1955 at Vintage Disneyland Tickets
- Lost Treasures - Euro Disney Preview Center 1990 - 1992 by Maxime (excellent article)