Jim Korkis - The Vault of Walt (Volume 6): Other Unofficial Disney Stories Never Told

2017 Jim Korkis

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To Leonard Maltin, Bob Thomas, and David R. Smith, whose pioneering efforts in researching and sharing Disney history still inspires me today and constantly reminds me to emulate their high standards.

I have something to get off my chest: despite having spent a disproportionate part of my life collecting and writing about all things Disney: my earliest encounter with the Mousetros work proved deeply traumatic for me and acutely embarrassing for my parents.

What ended as a nightmare had begun as a treat for my fourth birthday: a visit to a now-long-gone British institution, the News Theatre on Londons Waterloo Station. Open daily, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., the News Theatre screened a continuous program of newsreels, comedy one-reelers, and cartoons.

On this particular day, the bill featured the vintage 1938 Disney short, Brave Little Tailor, in which Mickey Mouse, in the title role, tackles an enormous giant in order to win the hand of the Princess Minnie.

At a crucial point in this drama, Mickey hides in a cart laden with pumpkins and, when the giant grabs a handful as a snack, Mickey finds himself being hurled into the giants mouth. Dodging the pumpkins as they hurtle by him like bowling balls, he only avoids being swallowed by hanging onto the giants uvular.

These antics were, naturally, greeted with hilarity by every other youngster in the cinemabut not, unfortunately, by me! Terrified at the mouse-threatening scenario unfolding before me in the dark, I screamed and screamed until my humiliated parents bundled me out of the theatre and rushed me off to the nearest caf to pacify me with tea and buns.

I make this confession as it may help to explain the fixation with Disney that has obsessed me virtually ever since that harrowing day. Without that shock to my young system, that jolt to my nascent psyche, would I have co-authored several books on Disney topics (from Mickey Mouse and Snow White to Mary Poppins) or made several dozen hours of radio programmes for the BBC about Uncle Walt, his company and movies? Probably not.

One of the by-products of this career (of which Ive only provided the sketchiest of detail since Im taking up space in somebody elses book on Disney) is the occasional invitation to write a foreword such as the one Im just about to get down to writing here.

Within the annals of cinema history there is a small but growing coterie of dedicated scribes who are dubbed Disney historians. There is an urgent imperative to chronicle the life and times of Walt Disney and the achievements of his studio because it is the story of many people, most of whose contributions have only begun to be recorded in the past 50 years since the death of the man whose internationally recognized signature came to represent the combined talents of an army of artists, writers, musicians, and technicians.

Some of us of a certain age can still recall when there were scarcely more than a handful of books about the art and industry of Disney. Today there are shelf-loads of such booksrepresenting a wide range of approaches from the academic and authoritative via the critical to the anodyne and scurrilous.

Nevertheless, there are still first-hand recollections needing to be recorded and new chapters of the story waiting to be writtennot to mention the tedious task of correcting inaccuracies and remedying misconceptions.

One of the most prolific of these Disney historians is the indefatigable Jim Korkis (At last! you say, This foreword is finally getting to the point!) whose Disney vault you are about to enter.

I first met the vault keeper sixteen years ago, on December 5, 2001 (Walts hundredth birthday). We were in the VIP lounge of the Norway pavilion in Epcot and, whilst I no longer recall the reason for that choice of venue, I mention it since the fact that Epcot has a Norway VIP lounge will be, for some, an irresistible piece of Disney park trivia eagerly learned.

After signing a book of mine for Jim (despite my protestations that the only valuable copies are the unsigned ones), he gave me a cracking interview for one of my radio shows as a result of which I immediately had the measure of Jims talent: he was, like Shakespeares clown Autolycus, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, by which I mean that he collected a wealth of information that others had overlooked or disregarded and stored it away in his vast memory bankor, you could say, vault!

Korkis books are always filled with these discoveries, fashioned together so as to create a series of diverse narratives of varyingbut satisfyingly appropriatelength where the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.

Jim is a born teller of tales, able to engage, excite, intrigue, and amuse us with stories that reveal not just his talent for research but also his gift of infectious enthusiasm. If something fascinates Korkis, he will make sure we share his fascination.

This is not surprising since he has met and talked with dozens of Disney animators and those theme park wizards known as Imagineers and has been writing about them and their genius boss for three-and-a-half decades.

Looking through the table of contents I cant quite decide where Ill start: maybe with the stories about Walts enthrallment with Abe Lincoln and Charlie Chaplin; or, perhaps, with the appreciation of Disney park dinosaurs; or, possibly, with the articles on the Oscar-winning documentary Seal Island, and the zany comedy that introduced the world to Car 53Herbie, the Love Bug. Wherever I start, I can guarantee to be riveted and end up knowing immeasurably more than when I started.

In view of the distressing recollection with which I began this foreword, I was wondering if an essay on Disney giants might be on offer; but it really doesnt matter because Jim can always add it to the possible contents list for his next foray into the Disney vault; meanwhile (since Ive detained you far too long already), you can start enjoying this one.

Right, then! Off you go

Brian Sibley
Disney Historian and Author

Where do the stories come from? That was the title of an episode of ABCs Disneyland weekly television show that originally aired on April 4,1956.

Walt said at the beginning of that show:

We have often been asked where do we get the ideas for our stories. Potential story ideas exist all around us and our story men have been trained to closely observe every day happenings with the thought of twisting a common occurrence into a story.