What a wonderful evening. I'm talking about the event last Wednesday night at the Motion Picture Academy. It was a program about Walt Disney — not the company, not the channel, not the corporate entity but the man in the picture above…the man pretending to be finishing a drawing that was probably done by someone else. On the date he would have been 100 years young, fans, co-workers and even a few family members convened to celebrate Walt and to view a perfectly-selected program of films.
Leonard Maltin was the host. We had dinner before the event and he expressed some trepidation that he would handle things properly — and he was, of course, worrying needlessly. He did a superb job of introducing clips, interviewing guests and providing spot-on factual info about Mr. Disney.
The film program consisted of excerpts from a number of Disney-produced movies, plus one whole Mickey Mouse short and couple of curios. One amazing item was the recently-unearthed footage of voice actor Billy Bletcher and Walt recording dialogue for a Mickey cartoon. Seeing Walt's face with Mickey's voice coming out of it provided a fascinating link between a man and his mouse. Later, when Walt's daughter Diane narrated some home movies, one could see an even more pronounced connection.
The real "find" of the night was a 10-minute sales film that was lensed shortly before the Disneyland TV show made its debut. It was made only to be shown to execs and/or perhaps stockholders at one of the companies that was sponsoring the new show — Derby Foods, purveyors of Peter Pan peanut butter. In the film, ABC president Robert Kinter keeps interviewing and praising Walt…who is obviously bored out of his skull by the whole experience and resenting ever second he has been forced to spend making this stupid sales pitch. It resembles that sketch on The Carol Burnett Show wherein Harvey Korman is making a horrendously insipid speech and it's all Tim Conway can do to not doze off. Every time the network biggie is talking, Walt is fidgeting and playing with some drawings on his desk…and you can almost read a thought balloon over his head that says, "Why must I put up with this nonsense? I have important things to do." Perhaps it is reading too much into the film to say it displays The Impatience of Genius. But when it was over, everyone in the audience the other night sure felt like they knew Walt Disney — the private man, not the public spokesman — a wee bit better.
Other insights were provided by some guests — Ilene Woods, who provided the voice of Cinderella; master matte painter Peter Ellenshaw, director Ken Annakin, and actor Robert Stack (who's 82 but looks like he shot The Untouchables a year or two ago). But the real treat was to hear — and for some of us, to meet at the earlier reception — three of the legendary "Nine Old Men" of Disney Animation. Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball appeared, and the love and respect of the crowd for these three legends was, in itself, thrilling. They all spoke affectionately of Walt, as did everyone, and of his amazing willingness to spend whatever it took to achieve the best possible product. (The picture above shows — left to right — Johnston, Thomas and Kimball, chatting with Ms. Woods.)
In fact, the reception and audience were filled with folks who worked with Walt — and, by the way, I don't think anyone referred to him as "Mr. Disney" or even "Disney" the entire evening. He was Walt to everyone, now and forever. His life and times were discussed for almost three hours and, as amazing as what was mentioned was what wasn't. Talk about barely scratching the surface: No one got around to mentioning around 90% of his features and 99% of his shorts. Disneyland (the theme park) was barely mentioned. The comic books, the comic strips, the toys, the technological breakthroughs that are credited to Disney and those he hired…there wasn't time for any of that. Even Goofy didn't get a mention.
Usually, I write these reports as much for myself as for any of you. I figure they'll serve as a diary to remind me of great events, long after they occurred. But this was an evening I won't forget. I don't think anyone who was there will forget it, either.