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Okay. Let's start your Monday morning off with a funny little Disney-related story from the September issue of " Star Wars Insider " magazine. Which alludes to a particularly bizarre moment during the production of " Episode IV - A New Hope ." It seems that -- with the hope that they might be able to...

Good God. Has it really been less than a year and a half since " High School Musical " originally debuted on the Disney Channel ? Copyright 2006 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved Back in January of 2006, Mouse House execs were just hoping that they hadn't wasted any of their promotional money...

Look, if you're a regular reader of JHM, I'm just going to assume that you already know what this is a picture of. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved Yep, that's Johnny Depp. Making his memorable entrance as Captain Jack Sparrow in the very first film of Disney's " Pirates of the...

Christian P. writes in today to say: I'm a huge Pirates of the Caribbean fan and I'm literally counting down the hours now until the third movie opens next week. Do you have any new stories that you can tell about these great great movies that might distract me for a while? Prevent me from spending so...

Karen M. writes in to ask a special favor: Dear Jim -- I just want to send you a quick e-mail to thank you for writing about Charlie Ridgway 's new book, " Spinning Disney's World ." On your recommendation , I picked up a copy and found that Mr. Ridgway's biography was just as you said it would be: Loaded...

First up, Kelly T. writes in to ask: Whatever became of Roger Colton ? I used to really enjoy his "Ruminations" column. But it's been months now since you last published anything from Roger. Is everything okay? Kelly T. Everything's fine. It's just that -- after almost four years of writing for JHM ...

Okay. How many of you remember that story that I told as part of last Friday's "Why For" column ? Where I detailed how -- back in the early 1990s -- Universal Studios swooped in & snagged the theme park rights to Jay Ward 's Rocky & Bullwinkle characters right out from under Mickey's nose? The...

Whatever you're reading, whatever you're doing right now ... Stop it. Drop everything and click on this link ASAP. This, my friend, is the on-line version of the Walt Disney Company's 2006 annual report. And -- as you burrow through all of the various sections of this report -- if you're a hardcore Disney...

This week's "Toon Tuesday" column (I.E. "How will 'Ratatouille' fare in Hollywood's Summer 2007 rat race ?" ) generated an awful lot of controversy. I got phone calls from Burbank, e-mails from Emeryville. With all sorts of folks who are intimately involved with this production chiming in, wishing to...

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." These were supposedly the last words of Sir Donald Wolfit , a British actor & director who passed away back in 1968. Though I'm sure that there's a few Imagineers at Walt Disney World right now who - after five weeks of watching their CG performers repeatedly die...

It's Christmas-crunch time, kiddies. You know what I mean. That horrible moment that arrives every holiday season. When you're feeling all smug & self-satisfied because you think that you've completed your Xmas shopping. Only to suddenly sit bolt upright in your chair and say: "Oh, cr*p! I forgot...

So here I was yesterday, talking about how the Mouse is growing frustrated with the on-line Disneyana community . Reportedly because us dweebs are so quick to condemn anything new that Walt Disney Imagineering proposes for the parks. But now comes word that WDI is actually thinking of using us weenies...

It was 50 years ago tonight that the 1939 version of " The Wizard of Oz " was first shown on television. Copyright 2005 Warner Home Video The first-ever telecast of this Victor Fleming film was a rating smash. Over 44 million people tuned in to catch this broadcast (Which was hosted by the...

Let's cut to the chase, shall we? The Walt Disney biography that all of us dweebs have been waiting for (Some of us, for decades now) ... is finally here . While there may have been other fine books written about the founder of the Walt Disney Company (Bob Thomas' " Walt Disney: An American Original...

You know, it was almost inevitable that Donny Osmond would wind up appearing in Disney's "Beauty & the Beast" on Broadway . Photo by Jeff Lange After all, back in 1962, the Osmonds supposedly got their start in big-time show business because they sang one day at Disneyland . As the story goes, Alan...

Has it really been just eight months since " High School Musical " was first presented on the Disney Channel ? Copyright 2006 Disney Enterprises Back in January of this year, Disney Channel execs obviously had very high hopes for this Kenny Ortega film. Otherwise, why would they have spent all of that...

First up, Roger A. writes in to ask: Jim, We just went to see Disney Live !, the new touring magic show this weekend, and were very impressed that Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Daisy all had mouths that moved in sync and their eyes blinked. Copyright 2006 Disney/Feld Entertainment Do you know if...

To answer your first question: Yes, the "Walt" that's referred to in the headline for today's story is Walt Disney. To answer your second question: The conversation in question actually happened back in the 1960s. A young reporter from the New York Times heard the old Mousetro say this. In the Disney...

First up, Ravi T. writes in to ask about Sunset Boulevard at Disney-MGM Studios . To be specific, something that he noticed was embedded in the asphalt on Sunset. Jim -- Last week, my family and I were down at Walt Disney World . And while we were walking through MGM to get to the Tower of Terror , I...