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By Michael - January 19th, 2012
Over at the Walt Disney Family Museum’s blog Storyboard – which you should be reading regularly by now – I’ve written an article about the Disney studio’s contributions to the VIII Winter Olympic Games in 1960. It’s an interesting and rarely-told part of Disney lore, and an overlooked step in Walt’s progression from [...]
By Michael - January 10th, 2012
On his discussion thread at WDWMagic, Eddie Sotto posted a link to this video from 1965′s The Jack Benny Hour. In an attempt to take his entire studio audience to Disneyland, the notoriously stingy Benny heads to Walt’s office to hit him up for some free tickets. There’s an animatronic bird, a tiger, and [...]
By Michael - November 16th, 2011
Today, the Walt Disney Company is a multi-billion dollar hype machine cranking out a stream of press releases on a daily basis. But long ago, the Disney studio was literally a garage-based organization and hardly the talk of the town. Still, the 22-year-old aspiring mogul managed to get his name in print – [...]
By Michael - June 22nd, 2011
One thing that’s often forgotten nowadays is the fact that in Walt’s heyday – the golden age of Walt Disney Productions – the studio was a favorite of intellectuals and “serious” artists the world over. In recent decades Disney is often derided by cultural commentators, who view it as a vast hegemonic and homogenizing [...]
By Michael - June 7th, 2011
A couple of blogs I read have linked to this post today; it’s an “expose” about what a horrible person author Roald Dahl (allegedly) was. I know nothing of Dahl except for his books, which I read voraciously as a kid, and the story of his early years and dealings with Walt Disney. So [...]
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Four Decades of Magic

Essays about the first forty years of Walt Disney World, including two pieces by yours truly. Available in print and for Kindle.
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