Ub Iwerks was a man of many talents. He was a prolific animator and a brilliant technical mind. He was Walt’s Swiss Army knife, a man who was to Walt whatever he needed him to be.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s summer of love we are screening some classic 1960s Disney films all summer long, including The Gnome-Mobile, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
First known by the title Blue Bayou Lagoon, what came to be Pirates of the Caribbean was Walt’s crowning achievement in full-dimensional storytelling.
One story was about rubber and another was about a flying car; inspired by the stories of Samuel Taylor's short stories, the writers at The Walt Disney Studios created The Absent-Minded Professor.
President of the highly esteemed Courvoisier Galleries in San Francisco, Guthrie Courvoisier believed that the Disney paintings on celluloid that were used to create Snow White could be sold as valuable art pieces to the public through art galleries and museums all over the world. And he was right.
Walt’s varied experience with outside distribution companies, would take to heart owning his own characters, stories, and means of production; a lesson The Walt Disney Company embodies to this day.
Les Clark was a hard-working young apprentice animator at The Walt Disney Studios and would become one of Walt's most prized animators as well as an iconic member of “The Nine Old Men.”
Marc conceptualized characters, while Alice dressed them. To date, they are the only married couple to be dedicated Main Street, U.S.A. windows for their contributions to Disneyland.
The Disneyland Monorail System is one of many great examples of Walt Disney turning his dreams into reality. As fate would have it, Walt noticed a monorail train on a trip to Germany and immediately envisioned it as the transportation system of the future, and knew he wanted one in his park.
Walt first became acquainted with Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie’s story, Peter Pan, about the boy who did not want to grow up when watching a touring company’s production of the famous play forty years prior. Walt remembered the tale and kept it in his back pocket until 1939 when he acquired the rights to embark on his own version of Never Land.