Jim Korkis - The Vault of Walt (Volume 4): Still More Unofficial Disney Stories Never Told

2015 Jim Korkis

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This book is dedicated to Didier Ghez, an outstanding friend and fellow Disney historian, whose persistence, patience, generosity, and enthusiasm enriches Disney scholarship and inspires so many other people.

Didier is responsible for many great books sharing Disney history, including the critically praised Walts People series available from Theme Park Press. Without him, many Disney stories, including some in this book, would have been lost forever.

In the age of the internet, Disney historians are a dime a dozen. There appears to be a conventional wisdom that if you like something, and can cobble some cohesive sentences together, and post them for people to read, some degree of expertise is inherent, or at least implied.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I recently spent far too many hours on a web site trying to pull the plug on yet another Disney myth being put forward as truth by an overly enthusiasticand quite ill-informedfan. (Seriously, his resource was that a bartender at [the location being discussed] told me. So much for scholarship.)

In their eagerness to be a part of the community, too many people dont start from the beginning. Its important to learn from those who have gone before. Bob Thomas. Pete Martin. Christopher Finch. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. John Canemaker. Brian Sibley. J.B. Kaufman. The collected works of Didier Ghez and his colleagues. And as many eyewitnesses as might be left.

Information needs to be weighed in an overall balance, contextualized, and perpetually cross-referenced, checked, and confirmed (or denied). Too much scholarship is left by the wayside as people rush to publish without seeking proper sources. Even eyewitness accounts are often questionable, altered by time, enhanced for retelling, and requiring context and corroboration. Thats one of the reasons historians have to be careful, Jim Korkis says, even if they are getting the information from a first-hand source.

As a writer, documentarian, curator, lecturer, consultant, Disney historian, and overall fan, Im delighted to tell you that what you hold is the genuine article. I have known Jim Korkis for years (decades?) since our first collaborations during the glory days of The Disney Institute at Walt Disney World.

Over the years I have relied on Jim as a resource, researcher, sounding board, and contributor to many projects, including the member newsletter and blog for The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Jim balances deep and informed research and investigation with a proper amount of skepticism and questioning. Jim has certitude where appropriate, and doubt where necessary. He is a confident historian, and a fearless yet humble enquirer.

Its a boon to any Disney fan of any level of interest to have another collection of Jims excellent essays to call on. The stories here are varied and fascinating, and shed light on frequently unknown or unconnected bits of Disney history, or illuminate the character and personality of Walt Disney himself. There is a wonderful alchemy that results from Jims combination of scrupulous research, informed passion, and the felicity of well-turned storytelling.

As the years move by, so many of these stories, and the thoughts and memories of the people who tell them, would have been lost to time. In addition to the value of preserving this information, Jim has done so in a way that educates and entertains his readers, and I believe not only inspires their own scholarship, but also informs how they seek their informationand how much they trust their sourcesand challenges those who wish to follow in his footsteps as historians.

So its time again to open up The Vault of Walt and enjoy the work of Walt Disney, his colleagues, and creative heirspresented by someone who carries on a tradition of quality and value commensurate with his subject matter.

Enjoy!

Jeff Kurtti

Jeff Kurtti is one of the leading authorities on The Walt Disney Company and its history. The author of more than 25 books, Kurtti worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, the theme park design division of the company, and then for Disneys Corporate Special Projects Department. He was creative director, content consultant, and media producer for The Walt Disney Family Museum.

Is there anything new still left to be said about anything in Disney history?

There are a plethora of books, websites, blogs, and podcasts devoted to sharing stories of Disney history.

In fact, most of them simply repeat the same stories and secrets over and over, indicating that all there is to know about Disney is already known, or will never be known since the people involved have passed away and documentation has disappeared.

Ironically, there is more to be discovered and shared about Disney today than at any other time in recorded history.

Several unpublished memoirs and scrapbooks have been recently uncovered and put into print. Thanks to the internet, people now have access to international sources as well as newspaper archives, previously out-of-print material, and even direct contact with people who worked at Disney.

Countless books, especially from Theme Park Press, have unlocked previously unknown stories and insights, and many more are slated to be published in the near future.

When it came time to put together this latest volume in the Vault of Walt series, I worried that I might not have enough good and rarely shared stories, especially compared to the previous editions. That was not the problem.

The problem was that I had too many good stories and I had to decide which ones to leave on the cutting room floor, perhaps for a future edition. The original table of contents changed several times from first submission to the publisher to final proof copy.

Like the previous editions in this series, I think I can guarantee that these are Disney stories that you have not heard before, or at least not with this amount of detail and documentation.

Of course, new information is always appearing. Everyone knew that Walt Disney must have climbed into the cabin of a train on the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad to take over as engineer every now and then, but there was no proof.

Yet, just last year, an old Retlaw Enterprises (Walts private company that owned the trains and the use of his name) itinerary kept by a former employee who was getting rid of it clearly showed that every Sunday in 1957 at 2:00 pm, Walt would tap out the engineer and, dressed in his overalls and cap, take the train around the park for a few hours without the guests ever knowing.