Last weekend, I got to serve as host and/or trade messages with four Disney greats. Here’s how that happened.
The previous weekend in Kansas City, Missouri a not-for-profit group called Thank You Walt Disney, Inc. held its annual fundraising party and auction, “Cocktails and Cartoons”, to support the effort to preserve and restore the building where the first Walt Disney Company operated. In that edifice, Walt set the pattern for his entire filmmaking career and met the mouse who inspired Mickey.
Photo by Dan Viets
Our special guests for the event were two talented people who were with Walt at the beginning and at the end of his work as a movie maker. Virginia Davis starred when she was only four years old in the last cartoon Walt made in Kansas City and in the first 13 installments of his first cartoon series in Hollywood, the “Alice Comedies.”
Photo by Dan Viets
Floyd Norman began work as an artist and story man at the Disney Studio in February, 1956. He continued there through 1966, the last year of Walt’s life, and still works for the Walt Disney Company today on special projects.
Photo by Dan Viets
My wife Sheila and I met Virginia at the airport Friday evening and checked her and ourselves into a fine old downtown Kansas City establishment, the Hotel Phillips. We dined on Kansas City strip steaks at the hotel’s excellent restaurant while she brought us up to date on her life and continuing work with the Company. Four of her Disney films will be featured on a new DVD package in the Walt Disney Treasures limited-edition series to be released soon. These include the “pilot” episode from Kansas City, “Alice’s Wonderland,” which was also on the two-disc Masterpiece Edition of “Alice in Wonderland” released in 2004.
A lot of people missed that one because it is not even mentioned anywhere on the outside of the packaging. You have to look closely at the Disc 2 Main Menu to find that gem as well as the previously-unreleased-in-any-format-and-also-very-historically-important first Disney television program, “One Hour in Wonderland.” That show was broadcast on Christmas day, 1950 and features Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd, Kathryn Beaumont, Diane and Sharon Disney and, of course, Walt, showing off his new Lilly Belle steam engine.
Photo by Dan Viets
Floyd and Adrienne arrived late Friday night. They were up early the next morning exploring the upscale shops of the Country Club Plaza, said to be the first shopping center in America. It consists of several blocks of stores in Spanish-style architecture. It began to develop in 1923, the year Walt left Kansas City.
We all met at the hotel for lunch and I was in heaven. Among them, Virginia, Floyd and Adrienne know just about everyone who ever worked for the Walt Disney Company and many who worked elsewhere in the business. They all have strongly-held and well-founded opinions about the Company’s past and future.
After lunch, Virginia and Sheila worked on preparations for the big event that evening, while I had the great pleasure of taking Floyd and Adrienne on a guided tour of the Disney history of Kansas City, Missouri. We visited the Disney family home, the building where Walt attended six years of grade school, the location of his first job in the movies at the Kansas City Slide Company, the bank where Roy worked for several years, the library where Walt and Ub Iwerks checked out books on animation, the beautifully-restored Union Station where Walt showered while living in his studio and the Laugh-O-Gram Studio building itself.
Photo by Dan Viets
“Cocktails and Cartoons” was held at the Screenland building, a recently-remodeled ice plant which now houses the Screenland Theater as well as many offices, all in a classic-film themed ambiance. My friend, fellow attorney and co-conspirator, Butch Rigby, owns the building and hosted the party.
In the large, ground-floor gallery, many of the silent-auction items were displayed. While about 200 attendees perused those, they sipped wine and other libations and snacked on hors d’oeuvres.
Many took advantage of the opportunity to visit with Virginia, Floyd and Adrienne and to pick up autographed copies of Virginia’s 8×10 photos and Floyd’s latest book of cartoons, “How the Grinch Stole Disney.”
Photo by Dan Viets
Outside the building, my 30-feet tall TWA Moonliner rocket ship was displayed. In 1956, it stood on top of the TWA building only a couple of blocks from Screenland, back when Howard Hughes was running the airline which sponsored the Rocket to the Moon attraction in Disneyland. Just as it was then, it is now illuminated through each porthole and cockpit window, as well as by floodlights at its base. I was amazed and very pleased to find that while my friend, rocket scientist Don Jourdan and I, worked to restore this Hughes/Disney icon here in Missouri, Bruce Gordon, Tony Baxter and other Imagineers with a respect and appreciation for Disney history were recreating a nearly identical rocket for the new Tomorrowland in California.
Photo by Dan Viets
The Walt Disney Family Foundation’s excellent biographical film, “Walt: The Man Behind the Myth“, featuring interviews with both Virginia and Floyd, was shown in the Screenland theater, before the live auction. As that event began, both Virginia and Floyd were introduced and thanked for their contributions to the Disney legacy.
Virginia had been presented with a lifetime achievement award by our group during a previous visit to Kansas City. That night we announced that we were naming the award for her. I had the honor of presenting to Floyd Norman the first “Gini” award for his work with the Disney Company and for his help with the effort to save Disney history in Kansas City, Missouri.
Among the many items sold at the live auction was a copy of the November 17, 1956 Saturday Evening Post featuring a painting of Walt on his backyard steam train with Disney characters riding along behind. The cover announces the first installment of the serialization of the book, “The Story of Walt Disney,” written by Diane Disney Miller and Pete Martin, in that issue. The painting is by Gustav Tenggren who did concept art for Disney on “Snow White” and “Pinocchio.” The copy we auctioned was prominently autographed by Diane Disney Miller.
I had accumulated some copies of that magazine and sent them to Diane a few days before the auction after confirming with her son, Walter Elias Disney Miller, that his mom would be happy to sign them for us. Unfortunately, they had not arrived back from Diane in time for the auction. But since we had announced that one would be sold, we went ahead and sold it, even though it was not present to be viewed. It brought nearly $200.
The next evening, Don and I went to see Hayley Mills. What an amazing coincidence that she was performing in Kansas City that weekend. I had met Hayley and her father, actor John Mills, (the father in “Swiss Family Robinson” among many great roles) on October 16, 1998 (I.E. the 75th Anniversary of the Walt Disney Company) at the Studio, on the day that both Hayley and Virginia were inducted as Disney Legends on the newly-created Courtyard of the Legends in front of the Team Disney building in Burbank.
I had sent Hayley a copy of the book I co-authored for the Kansas City Star, “Walt Disney’s Missouri,” the previous week. I reminded her of our previous meeting and suggested that we would be glad to show her the town’s Disney history. I had not heard back from her by Sunday evening, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of her performance at Kansas City’s New Theatre Restaurant where she is appearing in “Two Can Play,” a clever romantic comedy, through the end of October.
Photo by Dan Viets
Monday morning, I took Virginia to the airport, met with Don to help get the rocket prepared for blastoff back to Mid-Missouri and went back to meet Sheila and pack our things (which now included a few auction items) and head home, back to reality.
On Friday, Sheila called to tell me I had gotten two letters that day. Hayley Mills had written a very sweet note thanking me for the book and apologizing for being unavailable to do the Disney history tour on Monday. She said she would call if she found time to do it before leaving Kansas City. If that happens, you can count on another article covering the tour.
The other letter was from Diane Disney Miller, thanking us for our work on behalf of the Laugh-O-Gram building. Along with it were the Saturday Evening Posts, each with a big, red, felt-tipped pen autograph just above her name on the cover.
Just another typical week of fun here in Missouri, the boyhood home of Walt Disney.
Editor’s note: Dan Viets is the author of arguably one of the better Disney history books to be published in the past few years, “Walt Disney’s Missouri: The Roots of a Creative Genius.” So if you’d like to learn more about Walt’s formative days in Marceline & Kansas City (Not to mention detailed information about Disney’s aborted indoor theme park project, “Riverboat Square”), then I urge you to pick up a copy.