Animation Artifacts &Articles on Animation &Disney 05 Dec 2007 08:41 am
Dec. 5th
– Today’s Walt Disney‘s birthday. It’s also the second anniversary of this blog. I thought I should post something appropriate for the Disney celebration, and decided to look back some fifty-odd years.
To a young, would-be animator, desperate to read ANYTHING about cartoons or Disney, the Saturday Evening Post offered a miraculous treat. Published in eight installments, Diane Disney Miller gave us a biography of her father. This was not something you saw elsewhere – let me tell you.
The library only offered a small handful of books on animation, and there were no biographies of ANY animator or animation producer/director. Here was the cr̬me de la cr̬me, a biography of the big guy. So I bought every one of those eight issues Рprobably using up my entire allowance for those weeks. (I was ten years old, at the time.) Then, after all eight articles were printed, the biography came out in book form. The perfect Christmas gift.
These days, publishing and marketing have gotten more sophisticated. A new animation book comes out every week, and a new film every other week. However, quantity does not mean quality, and Specials are no longer special. They were then. Things were innocent. A communist hid behind every telephone pole, and animation studios meant Disney.
So, for today, here’s that very first installment of Diane Disney Miller’s book. I’ve left it complete with ads, so you can take in the period as a whole. This book is still entertaining and worth reading, though I’d follow it up with Mike Barrier’s The Animated Man.
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______________(Click any image to enlarge.)
on 06 Dec 2007 at 3:47 am 1.syncope said …
Oh golly Thanks sooo much for sharing these.
I burst out laughing, grinning during several paragraphs.
jolly good stuff.
Looking forward to the other installments, complete with Ads. Sigh
on 08 Dec 2007 at 5:10 pm 2.Francesco said …
Dear Mr. Sporn,
first of all let me tell you thank you for the beautiful art and
pictures you use to illustrate your posts and the large format you offer them in.
I really would be grateful if you could share the remaining 7 instalments of the Walt Disney biography by Diane Disney Miller.
I hope you don’t mind.
Thanks
on 08 Dec 2007 at 5:23 pm 3.Michael said …
Sorry, at the moment I only have this initial segment. I may get my hands on more though; if I do I’ll post them. I do have the book, but it probably wouldn’t be ethical or appropriate for me to post that entire thing.
on 20 Jun 2022 at 6:14 pm 4.Garry Ogilvie said …
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been a great fan of Walt Disney all my life & have many books on both him, his films & animation. As another 10 year old in 1956, I also devoured the Post instalments. All the best,
Garry