Two photos of Walt spotted on Facebook yesterday. The caption reads:

[In this photo you can see the famous Walt Disney with his wife Lilian on the island of Matica (in the Dominican Republic in February 1957), on one of his visits to Mr. Rogers at the Hamaca Hotel, located in the Boca Chica Spa. Mr. Roger was the manager of the Hamaca Hotel and creator of the Matica Zoo.]

 

UCLA's Film and Television Archive has just released some astounding Disney-related footage thanks to Randy Yantek. You can watch all of it as this link. Enjoy!

Let's start the day with two photos of Walt which I just discovered this weekend while looking for something else. The one on the set of Paramount's "Untamed" was shot in August 1940. The second one is from a trip to Maine in June 1947. Walt was there with his wife Lillian as well as with Bill Cottrell and his wife. The spent from June 10 to June 11 in Lakewood according to the article. They had visited Bethel the day on June 9. It was, apparently, the first time that Walt visited Maine, where he had sent artist Jake Day a few years earlier on a research trip linked to the making of "Bambi."

 

This weekend, I was researching Walt's short trip to Mexico City in late August 1943 to receive the Order of the Aztec Eagle, when I realized that Walt had not stopped traveling during the whole month of August. On July 25 he had left L.A. to go to New York City and, on August 19, a short notice was sent to some Michigan newspapers that read:

"Walt Disney... is in Detroit conferring with Henry Ford and his staff of soybean specialists. He will make a film about soybean to be shown in South America."

On August 20 Walt, Lillian and Diane visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. That night or the night before they dined at Dearborn Inn with the inventor William B. Stout and his wife.

I had never seen any of those photos of the Ford Museum visit (save one) nor the photo of Walt with Stout and I thought you might enjoy them as much as I did.

Walt was back in L.A. on August 22 (he travelled back by train) and on August 24 he boarded a plane to go to Mexico City to receive the Orden del Aguila Azteca (which he got on August 26).

 

VOLUNTEER NEEDED IN MEXICO CITY

We all know about Walt Disney and El Grupo's trip to Latin America in 1941. But did you know that Walt and / or some of his artists went back to Latin America (especially to Mexico) in 1942 and 1943?

JB Kaufman, Ted Thomas and I are slowly starting to dig deeper into those later trips, and for this we need a volunteer in Mexico City, to help conduct some in-person research at the Hemeroteca Nacional and at the Archivo General de la Nacion, where we know that great photos and documents about the 1942 trip are preserved.

If you are based in Mexico City and willing to help, could you please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com? 

Here are two photos of Walt I had never seen before and that I located this week. In the first one he is traveling to the Chicago's Century of Progress exhibition. On the second one he is on his way back.

 

Walt with Louis Lumiere and Mlle. Hélène Vacaresco, President of C.I.D.A.L.C. in Paris in 1935 (See my book Disney's Grand Tour for more details). I had never seen this specific photo before.

Thanks to  François Monferran for the heads up!

Here is another photo of Walt I had never seen before, courtesy of François Monferran. 

This is apparently Walt at the Chingford Festival in the United Kingdom, in July 1952. More info at this link.

While browsing through the Eisenhower Library digital collections yesterday, I stumbled upon these two photos of the first lady of Pakistan, Begum Liaquat Ali Khan, visiting the Disney Studio in May 1950. She met both Walt and director Wilfred Jackson. I had never seen those photos before.

Some wonderful footage of Walt visiting Ireland. (Thanks to Tim O'Day for the heads up.)

A few good Disney-related posts found on this site today.

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.

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?

Mark Sonntag was kind enough to send me recently those marvelous photos of Walt visiting the house of author Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) in 1949. According to the Getty Images website the date was October 15, 1949, but I am still trying to confirm the month and the day.

I discovered those two photos recently thanks to my friends Tom Morris and Jim Hollifield. Jim wrote:

[This photo (of Walt and the rabbit) was taken when Walt visited Hot Springs, Arkansas and met animals in the now defunct "IQ Zoo," an unusual organization which studied and demonstrated learned animal behaviors. The woman is Marian Breland, who operated the IQ Zoo with her husband. Here's another photo from the same day in which it appears Walt is wearing the same jacket and tie. A reporter who covered Walt's visit shared this with me. He remembered that Walt was hoping for some Hot Springs therapeutic relief from neck and back pain in late 1965; a colleague snapped the photo of him as he waited to talk to Walt. Sadly, this gentleman only took notes while he talked to Walt, and the reporter seen interviewing Walt for a radio station is now deceased. Perhaps there's a recording out there somewhere! Here's a link to a page with info about the IQ Zoo.

More info, including the original photo and Walt's follow-up letter.]

 And here are the scans I had promised...

If you are reading this blog, you all know that this is a photo of Walt Disney during his visit to the London Zoo in 1935. If you read Disney's Grand Tour, you also know that in the background we can see publicist Francis Meynell with his son, Ben (left). Believe it or not, Michael Barrier and I a few days ago received an email from the little girl who holds Francis' other hand, Felicia Osiakovski-Richardson.

Felicia has authorized me to share her memories here:

[My parents were Dr. Stanislas and Joan Osiakovski and they ran The Bloomsbury Gallery in 34 Bloomsbury Street, London, which specialised in then unknown, artists whose works they exhibited. Within their wide circle of friends were Francis and Vera Meynell and their son, Ben, who was a little younger than I was, so that Ben and I grew up together both in London and in their beautiful Tudor house in Essex. When Walt Disney came to open the new Penguin Pond, it was plainly a good idea to have children about the place  which is where Ben and I came in. I remember parts of the day very well. We were told that we had to walk around the pond holding the Penguin’s flippers and I recall not being too keen on doing that and the surprise when I touched the Penguin as it did not feel as I had expected it would! I remember that Walt Disney was very kind and friendly towards us and that we were rather awed by the whole occasion as you might imagine. We were taken to the cinema the next day, I recall, to see ourselves on Pathe News in glorious black and white and we were thrilled to bits!]

Not to be missed:

- The Story of Walt Disney’s Final Official Visit to Disneyland by Dave Mason.

I just picked up on ebay a copy of the British magazine Illustrated from July 30, 1949, which contains this marvelous  article about the Disneys' visit to the United Kingdom from around June 15 to August 15, 1949. I have a feeling that many of you will enjoy it. You can click on each of the pages to enlarge them.

This just in through CartoonBrew and Andreas Deja:

15 Rare Color Photos Of Walt Disney And Artists You Probably Haven’t Seen Before