October was a great month for Jim Korkis fans. Adventurers Club enthusiasts who attended ConGaloosh 2010 got to hear him hold forth on the hidden history of this late, great Pleasure Island nightclub …
Special thanks to the ConGaloosh Society for use of this image
… while members of the World Chapter of the Disneyana Fan Club got a treat when Korkis came by the Thai Thani restaurant in Celebration, FL to then spin tales about the Mickey Mouse Club.
Photo by Ellen Petrokiewicz
Disney Vacation Club members got a similar sort of surprise when Jim made an appearance at a recent Welcome Home Wednesdays event and then shared some of his favorite stories about The Walt Disney Company.
Yeah, it’s always a thrill when you get the chance to catch this MousePlanet columnist live and in person. Watch as this internationally recognized Disney historian mesmerizes an audience with one of those stories that only Jim Korkis knows.
“And why is it exactly that this guy has access to information that no one else has?,” you ask. Well, a lot of that comes from where Korkis grew up. Which was Glendale, CA. A place where dozens of Disney Legends were literally right in the neighborhood.
(L to R) Carl Barks and Jack Hannah. Copyright
Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
When I talked with Jim recently, I asked him about the very first Disney-related interview he ever did, Which was with Jack Hannah, the director of many classic Donald Duck cartoons.
“I was so nervous about this interview that I got there a half hour early and then walked around the block over & over just trying to kill time,” Korkis recalled. “When I finally got up the nerve to knock on Hannah’s front door, Jack asked why I hadn’t come up to the house sooner. You see, he and his wife had been sitting in the window, watching me go around & around & around …”
As it turns out, Jim needn’t have worried. Jack turned out to be a sweetheart. Hannah spent hours telling Korkis about the years that he’d worked at the Studios, the various Disney Legends that he’d worked with. Jack was also quick to talk up some of the more promising students that he had in his animation classes at CalArts in the 1970s. Which then included a very young John Lasseter.
A very young John Lasseter circa 1979.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved
Now jump ahead 25 or so years to when Jim Korkis was an animation instructor at the Disney Institute. And who does Jim get to interview while he was working at this edutainment enterprise but John Lasseter. Who – just like Hannah – Korkis described as being ” … incredibly sincere and passionate.”
Getting back to Jack Hannah now … When he and I talked last month, Jim described how he basically owed his career to Jack. How Hannah kicked open a lot of doors for Korkis.
“Jack was this very gracious guy,” Jim remembered. “He’d say ‘You really should talk to such-and-such’ and then go pick up the phone and personally introduce me to these people. Which is how I then got to talk with dozens of animators & Imagineers over the next 10 years or so.”
Jim Korkis with Margaret Kerry, the original model for Tinker Bell in
Disney’s “Peter Pan.” Photo by Stephan Solovitz
And what Korkis learned from Hannah (i.e. Jack’s “pay it forward” attitude, being incredibly generous when it comes to time, friendship & information), Jim continues to this day. Just ask Disney historians like Paul Anderson & Didier Ghez about how Korkis has continually come through for them over the years. Regularly unearthing & then sharing arcane pieces of Company history that even the staff of the Archives didn’t know about.
And now a selection of these stories have been collected. Permanently preserved in a 478-page paperback called “The Vault of Walt: Unofficial, Unauthorized, Uncensored Disney Stories Never Told” (Ayefour Publishing, September 2010).
That’s one of the reasons that Jim has been making the rounds lately, meeting with NFFC members and his MousePlanet readers …
Photo by Ellen Petrokiewicz
… signing copies of “The Vault of Walt.”
Photo by Ellen Petrokiewicz
Now you have to understand that this is NOT Jim Korkis’ first book. A lot of us animation enthusiasts already have copies of his earlier opuses in our libraries. Well-thumbed editions of “Cartoon Confidential,” not to mention those two books that Korkis wrote with Jim Cawley, “How to Create Animation” and “The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars: From a to (Almost Z).”
But what makes “The Vault of Walt” different from those books is … Well, this is the first book that Jim ever done that is exclusively about Disney.
Now some people might think that “The Vault of Walt’ is just a collection of Korkis’ most popular MousePlanet columns or those presentations that he used to give for WDW Cast Members for the Learning Center. But that’s not really the case. Though Jim may have used some of those columns & presentations as the springboard for various chapters in ‘The Vault of Walt,’ every one of the stories featured in this paperbook have been thoroughly researched and – if necessary – rewritten. So that “The Vault of Walt” now features the most complete, up-to-date information possible. So – in a lot of ways — this is a brand-new book featuring all-new stories.
Copyright 2010 Ayefour Publishing. All rights reserved
And how did Korkis feel when he saw the final comp for the cover of “The Vault of Walt,” his first-ever Disney-only book? Here. I’ll let Jim himself explain:
“I just started to tear up. It was beautiful. I could imagine it on a book shelf. I could imagine it in someone’s hands. I don’t want these unique untold stories to go to the grave with me. I want others to have another piece of the big jigsaw puzzle that is Disney history.”
And me? What do I want? Well, I want lots of people to now learn about this new Ayefour Publishing release and then actively seek copies of “The Vault of Walt” for any Disneyana enthusiasts that they may have on their holiday shopping list. Which is why I’m now doing my Jack Hannah impression and paying it forward here by saying that – if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of hearing Jim give one of his Disney history talks in person …
Special thanks to the ConGaloosh Society for use of this image
(And why some speakers bureau hasn’t already signed Korkis up to go out & work on the rubber chicken circuit remains one of the great mysteries of the age. At least to me) … Well, then reading “The Vault of Walt: Unofficial, Unauthorized, Uncensored Disney Stories Never Told” is a pretty close approximation. Which is why I’m strongly suggesting that you go out and pick up a copy today, okay?
Your thoughts?