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 I cannot assess the veracity of the rest of the story (although it’s telling that the author openly admits that his feelings about Dahl stem from some unspecified problems in his own childhood), but I can speak to this absurd quote from the story:
According to the post, “[Dahl’s] interest in writing, combined with his ludicrous tales of his wartime experience, quickly led him to Hollywood, where he immediately had much in common (appetite for clandestine inappropriate sex, hatred of Jews) with the Disney brothers. Walt Disney gave him the use of a car and put him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel!”
No. No, no, no.
Those of us in the Disneysphere have been dealing with this absurd urban legend for years, and I tire of correcting those who repeat it as fact without attribution. Perhaps the best analysis of this problem that I’ve read online was contained in an excellent post on Cartoon Brew. It’s worth taking a few moments to read.
As to the Dahl story, it treats its subject with a series of equally unsourced, specious statements and uses them to draw unfounded conclusions. Dahl was a racist and Nazi sympathizer, but also hated Nazis from his time fighting them in World War II? Wha?
I’m sure Dahl has his own fans and supporters, though. I’m here for Walt, and as to my feelings on the matter… well, just read the title of the story.
At times, the workings of the cosmos are so peculiar as to be completely inscrutable. And so it is that Betty Taylor, who brought Slue Foot Sue to life for thirty years at Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Jamboree, passed away within a single day of her fellow performer of over 40,000 shows, Wally Boag.
Taylor debuted at Disneyland in 1956, and performed there five days a week until her retirement in 1986 (Boag having retired in 1982). Her more than 45,000 performances helped make the Golden Horseshoe Jamboree not only a legendary Disneyland experience, but also the most-performed stage show of all time.
I suppose it’s strange to view the passing of two individuals who lived such long and rich lives as tragic, but one can’t help but to feel that way when two very unique and special people have passed out of this world.
Again, perhaps its best to let Betty’s work speak for itself. Her she is in 1962, performing her signature number, Bill Bailey.
I have one question, though – how many of you fellows who grew up out California way also grew up nursing a crush for Ms. Taylor? I have a feeling that quite a few of you did…
Since we’ve seen my home-made attempt at a Disney recruitment brochure, why not a peek at the real thing? Courtesy of John Donaldson, here’s the cover of a Disney recruiting flier from the 1970s:
Why does this feel like some kind of awkward “health and hygiene” literature that would be distributed to teenagers?
I suppose that some are born into Disney fandom, some achieve fandom, and others have fandom thrust upon them; I’m not sure which of these categories I fall into, but my Disney predilection certainly manifested itself early. Perhaps it was the smuggled copies of Disney News in my elementary school knapsack, or the scribbles of Spaceship Earth and monorails in the margins of my notebooks, but my personal obsession was well-known and acknowledged by all. People signed my yearbook “See you at EPCOT!”, and I recently found a document from my 8th grade graduation that predicted what the denizens of Shelby Middle School would be doing in the distant year of 2010. Whoever put together those prognostications suggested that I would be working as Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World; I recall being incensed by the suggestion at the time – nothing against the Character Zoo, but I was convinced that by 2010 I would be well on my way to replacing Eisner as Chairman.
But the full weight of my early fandom – and the realization of how truly unbearable I must have been – didn’t hit me until I was at home over the holidays and came across several boxes of old papers and school things from elementary and middle school. To even my surprise, it appears that hardly any assignment crossed my desk without me finding some backwards way of working Walt Disney World into the mix. There seems to have been a general tone of resentment that I was being asked to do busy work when I could be in Orlando or, at the very least, thinking about Epcot Center and reading about water hyacinths purifying waste water.
I could probably put together a whole book of my bizarre attempts to insert Disney into my schoolwork, from doodles of Epcot pavilion logos to vocabulary assignments where I managed to come up with a sentence about wanting to be at Walt Disney World for every single vocabulary word. Naturally, I also worked my tendencies into various school projects – sadly, I have never been artistic, or I would have been one of those genius kids who builds scale models of theme parks. Instead, I mostly wrote (surprise). I remember doing a biography of Walt very early on in school, but what inspired me to post today was this hilarious brochure for Disney Animation that I whipped up for some long-forgotten assignment.
From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.
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