A dealer who is interested in selling this animation-training manual by Disney artists Charles Philippi, Ken O'Connor and Sam Slyfield contacted me this week. I promised to forward emails from anyone interested. I am not sure what price the dealer has in mind. If you are interested, please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com and I will forward your email.

I was conducting some research yesterday about the creation of a logo / mascot named King Mike by Disney artist Hank Porter for the King Radio station, in the context of David Lesjak's upcoming monograph about Hank Porter (that monograph will be a must have).

And that is when I stumbled upon this incredible photograph (c. 1947) of Walt Disney with Frank L. Newman. Yes, this is the same Frank Newman of Newman Laugh-O-Grams, who by then had moved to Seattle and become president of Evergreen Theatres Corporation.

The full story of how Walt and Newman met again via King Radio, will probably be told in David's upcoming monograph.

So, now that the They Drew as They Pleased - The Hidden Art of Disney series is virtually complete, what am I working on Disney-wise (aside from Walt's People and a few editing projects)?

I have just written the first draft of a monograph about The Origins of the True-Life Adventures (1938 - 1948), to be released by Hyperion Historical Alliance Press next year. This is the first volume in a planned series about True-Life Adventures-related matters.

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this project. I feel that I am venturing into an almost virgin field. I am discovering a lot of new information about the making of Bambi, the educational projects that were being developed between 1943 and 1947 (including all the abandoned ones which gave birth to many other Disney projects in the 1940s and 1950s), and the saga of Al and Elma Milotte that resulted in the making of both The Alaskan Eskimo (the first of the "People and Places) and Seal Island (1948).

And, of course, the monograph will be full of never-seen-before illustrations.

Thirty years after starting to conduct research about Disney history, I am finally beginning to feel that I am understanding how things really happened. This is truly exhilarating and I can't wait to share this new-found understanding and those discoveries.

It is hard to believe, but the sixth and final volume of my art book series They Drew as They Pleased - The Hidden Art of Disney is now complete and has been sent to the printer.

I am hoping to see a first physical copy late April or early May, for a release in bookstores around the end of August this year.

My good friend Alain Littaye mentions this new book on his blog this morning. Has any of you read it? Does Val Usle share many anecdotes about his work for Disney?

The new issue of Disney Twenty-Three will be released soon and I am especially looking forward to the article about Inside the Walt Disney Archives: 50 Years of Preserving the Magic, an exhibition of more than 400 treasures opening this March at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California.

I just stumbled upon this interesting Japanese book released last year to celebrate Mickey Mouse's 90th birthday. It seems to be 136-page long and a collection (on the model of The Art of Mickey Mouse) of drawings of Mickey and friends by famous Japanese manga artists. I just ordered a copy on ebay...

It thought that some of you might want to know that it exists.

This just in from my good friend Jim Hollifield:

[Dark Horse Comics recently published a collection of the 1978-1988 Winnie the Pooh newspaper comic strips.

While it's not a complete chronological collection, the book does have several hundred strips from the 10-year run, as well as a short history section crediting the artists who worked on the strip like Sparky Moore. Perhaps the best part, though, is that it prints all three of the Winnie the Pooh featurette newspaper adaptations from the "Treasury of Classic Tales" series. It was disappointing that the book series ended around 1961 with Volume 3, so it was nice that three adaptations from the later years were included in this new publication.]

I am still desperately trying to locate a copy of this very elusive book. If one of you has one for sale, could you contact me at didier.ghez@gmail.com? Thanks in advance!

 Both The Art of Soul and The Art of Onward are now available for pre-order on Amazon.

I am currently studying the early Disney educational projects, in the context of my upcoming monograph about The Origins of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures.  Which is how I stumbled onto this spread released in the July 27, 1943 issue of Look Magazine.

The article mentioned a movie about the electron that the Disney Studio was working on at the time, which intrigued me. I have now established that what the article was referring to is the third part of the Minneapolis-Honeywell training film, which you can discover at this link.

There is a lot more to this story, which eventually led to the making of Our Friend the Atom. More on this next year in the monograph :-)

Would one of you happen to own a copy of this Seal Island lobby card? 

If so, could you please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com? I need a high resolution scan of it.

Have some of you bought this monograph? If so, would you mind posting a review on Amazon? A million thanks in advance for your help!

I have been enjoying the One Day at Disney documentary on Disney+ and I am now also enjoying the One Day at Disney shorts which are being released weekly on the streaming service.

I received the One Day at Disney coffee-table book too late to review it before the holidays.

It is a beautiful complement to the series and a very enjoyable volume, which I am glad to own. Not in-depth, of course, since it covers so many cast members, but definitely full of good information and photographs about The Walt Disney Company today.

I spent part of the Xmas break editing a long (and fascinating) interview of Imagineer Roger Broggie, which will be released in Walt's People - Volume 25. In that interview, Roger mentions that when he retired he was replaced as the head of MAPO by astronaut Gordon Cooper.

I thought some of you might want to know that last year Cooper released his autobiography, which seems to contain a few pages about his Disney career...

 This is a new Italian art book which I will soon buy on Amazon.it

With the holidays right around the corner, I would like to remind all of you that there are still a few copies available of the newly released monograph by JB Kaufman about The Making of Walt Disney's Fun and Fancy Free.  This is a great hard-cover, full-color, 148-page long, heavily-illustrated (more than 150 illustrations) publication. All of you who are interested in Disney history will love it.

We do not know if this monograph will be re-printed so I would encourage to get your copy now.

(For our European members: The French distributor should have copies available by mid to late January.)

Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Bill Kroyer and Tom Sito's On Animation: The Director's Perspective look like two excellent books that I will definitely have to buy. I wish they were a little cheaper, though...

I just got a copy of the new Art of Frozen II book and it is pure delight. I simply cannot get enough of those beautiful concept sketches and character designs.

It took a little longer than expected but I am glad to announce that Walt's People - Volume 23 has just been released!

Here is the table of contents:

Foreword: Tom Sito
The Letters of Peter Adby
Joe Collura: Sterling Holloway - A Way with Words
Edward Summer: Sterling Holloway
EMC West: Tyrus Wong
Family Circle magazine: Ken Anderson and Woolie Reitherman
Edward Summer: Woolie Reitherman
Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz: Woolie Reitherman
Michael Barrier: Les Novros, Bill Hurtz, and Paul Julian
Didier Ghez: Rudy Cataldi
Michael Broggie: Bob Harpur
Jack Hannah
Jay Horan: Joe Potter
Didier Ghez: Jeff Burke

I just received a copy of Don Iwerks' book about his father Ub Iwerks, which will soon be released by Disney Editions.

This book meets and exceeds expectations. from cover to cover it is full of new information and of never-seen-before illustrations. Its in-depth exploration of Ub's technological inventions, an almost virgin field of research until now, is a breath of historical fresh air.

This book is clearly at the very top of my list of "must haves" for 2019.

By the way: between Leslie Iwerks and her outstanding 6-part documentary about Imagineering on Disney+ and now Don Iwerks and his book about Ub, what an impressively talented family! 

Spectacular auction coming up at Heritage Auctions this week.

Looking forward to this upcoming book (and to the movie itself).

As some of you know, I am in the process of researching and writing a monograph titled The Origins of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures (1938 - 1948). 

While doing this, I am exploring a lot of hidden Disney history nooks and crannies, including the research trip to Maine that Disney artist Maurice "Jake" Day and his friend Lester Hall organized in August 1938.

And while researching that trip I discovered the official Jake Day website which sells some of his non-Disney artwork. I have a feeling that some of you may like to know that it exists. 

We are nearing the end of the year and the "must-have" Disney history books of 2019 are becoming obvious. I will update this list in 6 weeks, but here is my initial selection. It is a highly subjective selection and I am focusing only on Disney history books (art books about Disney which are not strictly history-focused are not included for example, nor are books that pretend to be non-fiction and are really historical fiction). I hope you will enjoy this list.

Merritt, Chris; Docter, Pete: Marc Davis In His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks published by Disney Editions; 2019.

Kaufman, J.B.: The Making of Walt Disney's Fun and Fancy Free published by Hyperion Historical Alliance Press; 2019.

Ghez, Didier: They Drew As They Pleased book series - The Hidden Art of Disney's Early Renaissance published by Chronicle Books; 2019.

Ghez, Didier: Walt's People - Volume 22 published by Theme Park Press; 2019.

Kaufman, JB; Hollifield, Jim (editors): 2019 Hyperion Historical Alliance Annual published by Hyperion Historical Alliance Press; 2019.

Pierce, Todd James: The Life and Times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation published by University Press of Mississippi; 2019.

Johnson, Mindy: Pencils, Pens & Brushes: A Great Girls' Guide to Disney Animation published by Disney Press; 2019.

Iger, Robert: The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company published by Random House; 2019.

Rafferty, Kevin: Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career published by Disney Editions; 2019.

Sklar, Marty: Travels with Figment: On the Road in Search of Disney Dreams published by Disney Editions; 2019.

Koenig, David: The 55ers - The Pioneers Who Settled Disneyland published by Bonaventure Press; 2019.

Gurr, Bob: Legendary Imagineer: Life and Times - Disney and Beyond published by Bob Gurr; 2019.

Korkis, Jim: Disney Never Lands: Things Disney Never Made published by Theme Park Press; 2019. (And all of the other books released by Jim this year).

Great photos of Walt and Lillian visiting Colonial Williamsburg on October 14, 1944. If I am not mistaken the second person from the right is Studio executive Carl Nater. Can someone confirm this?

Thanks to François Monferran‎ for his heads up about this great video of Walt visiting the Swiss national exposition of 1964.

Walt's People - Volume 23 - An Update

You may have noticed that the release of Walt's People - Volume 23 is a little bit late. Some good news, though: I will deliver the final manuscript to the publisher on Monday and I am hoping that the book will be released by mid-December at the latest. Here is what it will contain:

Foreword: Tom Sito
The Letters of Peter Adby
Joe Collura: Sterling Holloway - A Way with Words
Edward Summer: Sterling Holloway
EMC West: Tyrus Wong
Family Circle magazine: Ken Anderson and Woolie Reitherman
Edward Summer: Woolie Reitherman
Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz: Woolie Reitherman
Michael Barrier: Les Novros, Bill Hurtz, and Paul Julian
Didier Ghez: Rudy Cataldi
Michael Broggie: Bob Harpur
Jack Hannah
Jay Horan: Joe Potter
Didier Ghez: Jeff Burke

I have been working in recent days on an in-depth essay about, Grace Huntington, the second woman to join Disney's Story Department. I am extremely proud of that essay which covers a lot of new ground and which will be released next year in the second volume of the Hyperion Historical Alliance Annual.

For those of you who have yet to pick up the first HHA Annual, it is still available on Amazon and contains some really in-depth essays exploring a large variety of fascinating Disney-history-related topics. From my standpoint (I am not the most objective observer, of course) this is Disney history at its best.

Speaking of which: you will notice that I try to review or promote all the relevant Disney history books that are released. You will also notice, from time to time, that I specifically avoid mentioning a few books. Usually when I ignore them it means that they do not meet bare minimum of quality standards when it comes to Disney history, This is especially the case for books that present themselves as "non-fiction" and end up being "historical fiction."

Thankfully there are not too many of those and there are enough well-researched, reliable new Disney history books that I still have my work cut-out for me for years to come.

This website contains some marvelous documents. Thanks to Michael Goldberg for the heads up!

I thought I had finally caught up on all the great Italian books about Disney comics that have been released in recent years, when I realized that three more have been published when I wasn't looking. Oh well...

This newly released book by Les Clark's daughter could be really interesting. I am especially looking forward to the illustrations and the personal insights about Les that only Miri can share.

As the holidays are getting closer, please remember that the great hard-cover, full-color, 148-page long, heavily-illustrated (more than 150 illustrations) monograph about The Making of Walt Disney's Fun and Fancy Free by J.B. Kaufman is now available for purchase at this link and on Amazon.

For those of you who live in Europe, it should become available soon via a French distributor in order to lower the shipping costs (more about this soon).

The new Vault of Walt volume has just been released.

The Disney Books Network has just been updated.

The fifth volume of They Drew as They Pleased is being sold at a very great 36% discount on Amazon at the moment. Time to pick it up if you are looking forward to get it now or for the holidays.

There have been so many good books released about Disney history in recent months that I started re-reading my recent reviews a few days ago to make sure than I did not short-change some of them by reviewing them too quickly.

While doing so, I realized that I had made at least one obvious mistake in one of those reviews. I have now been able to read in detail The Art of Disney Costuming and, while I do regret that it does not feature more costumes and historical info about Walt's era (which I suspect comes from the fact that those costumes did not survive), I really, really enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous photographs of the new costumes as well as the great stories and anecdotes that discuss their creation!

If you are a fan of the new live-action Disney features or if you have friends who are, this is definitely a "must-have" for you or a great gift for your friends.

And there is even a double-page about one of The Black Hole costumes, which truly made my day!

I have now removed my original review which does not reflect how I truly feel about this beautiful book.

Someone just found our full 2019 D23 Expo presentation on YouTube. Glad to share.

I just received a copy of this upcoming book.

If you love Disney musicals you will love it. It is beautifully illustrated and well-written. Not a lot is new in it. It is just a very enjoyable, very well produced book that makes for a great gift for the holidays.

Did anyone of you read this recently released Italian book? Is it worth picking up?