The Making of Walt's People
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The Making of Walt's People
"Re-animate Disney research: unlock the vaults!"
By Didier Ghez

The Walt's People project was born out of an email conversation I conducted with Disney historian Jim Korkis in April 2004. The magazine Persistence of Vision had not been published for years, The "E" Ticket's future was uncertain, and of course the grandfather of them all, Funnyworld, the best magazine that ever existed about animation (and comics) history, had passed away 20 years ago. In summary, access to serious Disney history was becoming harder that it had ever been.

The most frustrating part of this situation was that both Jim and I knew that huge amounts of amazing material was sleeping in working cabinets of Disney historians, unavailable to Disney enthusiasts for lack of publishing venues. Some would appear from time to time in a book released by Hyperion, some would see the light of day in a fanzine or on a website but this seemed to happen less and less often. In addition what would surface was only the tip of the iceberg: Paul F. Anderson alone conducted more than 250 interviews over the years with Disney artists, most of whom are no longer with us today.

Jim had conceived the idea of a book originally called Talking Disney that would collect his best interviews with Disney artists. He suggested this to several publishers, but they all turned him down. They considered the potential market to be too small.

Jim's idea, however, awakened long forgotten dreams, dreams that I had of becoming a publisher of Disney history books. By doing some research on the web I realised that "print on demand" techniques now allowed these dreams to become reality.

Hence the Walt's People series. Its aim: to collect the best Disney interviews ever conducted, uncut, uncensored.

Key Disney historians, including Dave Smith, Paul F. Anderson, Michael Barrier, J.B. Kaufman, Jim Korkis and Charles Solomon have accepted my offer to contribute to the project, which will give us access to the source material they use for their works. Much of this material is published in Walt’s People, for the first time, in its entirety. I am also uncovering new or quasi-unknown material virtually every day: an in-depth written interview with Wilfred Jackson, lost tapes of talks with Paul Murry, rare conversations with background artist Al Dempster, with star animator Art Babbitt, with Fred Moore’s assistant Ken O’Brien, and many others that I hope to release in the upcoming volumes of this series.

Volume 1 features in-depth interviews with artists Rudy Ising, Dave Hand, Bill Tytla, Ken Anderson, Jack Hannah, John Hench, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Harper Goff and Joyce Carlson. These interviews discuss among many other subjects the Disney Studio before Mickey Mouse, the challenges in directing Snow White, the making of Destino with Dali, the process that led to the production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the frustrations and joys of Marc Davis and Milt Kahl, and the creation of It's a Small World, plus many other subjects.