Disney Archives
9:15
A sneak peak at the Disney Archives with Dave Smith
Tags: Disney Archives Dave Smith
Added: 4 years ago
From: themysticsdream
Views: 684
["The Secret Treasures of the Disney Archives" appears on screen, then cut to a teenage girl standing outside of the Walt Disney Studios and speaking directly to the camera]
CASEY: Hi, and welcome to the secret treasures of the Disney Archives! I'm Casey, here at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, and we have been given special permission to take an inside look behind the scenes at some special historic Disney treasures. I'm talkin' really behind the scenes here. Come on, let's go look!
[cut to several sped-up shots of Casey looking at various items inside the archives with an older man, then cut to her alone speaking directly to the camera]
CASEY: Now, the Disney archives are closed to the public, but Dave Smith, the director of the Walt Disney archives, has invited us in for a special tour. Come on, let's go take a look!
[she walks inside and points at a miniature buggy from the "Mister Toad's Wild Ride" park ride displayed in the entrance of the room]
CASEY: Ooh, look at that! That's from "Mister Toad's Wild Ride!"
[she continues looking around, as the man is waiting for her at the other side of the room]
CASEY: This place is amazing ... Oh, there's Dave!
[she shakes his hand]
CASEY: Hey Dave!
DAVE: Hi Casey, how are you?
CASEY: Great, nice to meet you!
DAVE: Well, welcome to the archives.
CASEY: Thank you! Thanks for letting us take a look at your secret collection here, it's amazing!
DAVE: Oh, you're very wlecome! We've had this department since 1970, so for the last thirty five years we've been collecting and preserving Disney history.
CASEY: Looks like you have quite the collection going on ...
[she points to the bookshelf behind him]
CASEY: What're all these books over here?
[the camera takes various shots of the volumes in the bookshelf, including issues of "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" bound together]
DAVE: These are all the Disney books, from the earliest days right up to more recent years. We've done probably about two thousand different Disney books in the United States alone!
CASEY: Wow ...
DAVE: Plus, we've published in about fifty different foreign languages.
CASEY: Fifty different foreign languages? So, a lotta people come here for information from you.
DAVE: Yes, people within the company. We're not open to the public.
CASEY: Right.
DAVE: We're only open to cast members of the Walt Disney Company ... I brought out a few special things to share with you today.
CASEY: Oh, I'd love to see them!
DAVE: Let me show you ...
[he picks up a small piece of paper from the table in front of them]
DAVE: This is ticket number one for Disney Land!
CASEY: Are you serious?
DAVE: Roy Disney--
[she takes it]
CASEY: It's so small!
DAVE: Walt Disney's brother, bought this ticket on opening day.
[she shows it to the camera]
CASEY: Oh my gosh, check that out!
DAVE: It was one dollar to get into the park!
CASEY: One dollar, wow!
[cut to Dave picking up a book from the table]
DAVE: Walt Disney wanted a guidebook to be sold in the park--
CASEY: Right.
DAVE: On opening day, but there was no time to get out into the park and do photography, so all of the renderings for the park are the illustrations in this first guidebook.
[he opens the book and shows a drawing for Frontierland]
CASEY: And Walt oversaw all of this, right?
DAVE: He did. He was very close to everything that was coming out of the company, whether it was a movie or a television show or a book or a new attraction down at Disney Land.
CASEY: Right. Now, do you have ... I mean, I see you have some handwritten stuff here. Is this stuff that Walt actually--
DAVE: We do have some Walt items, and actually, this is a fairly recent acquisition ...
[he picks up a box from the table]
DAVE: We found this box ... Actually, Roy Disney found this box in the back of his garage, and he thought "Y'know, this is something that should be in the Archives." Because it turned out, this box was the box that had all of the memorabilia of his grandfather, Elias Disney.
CASEY: Really?
DAVE: And such things as Elias Disney's marriage certificate, from 1888.
[he hands the certificate to her]
CASEY: Oh my gosh!
DAVE: And he was actually married about fifty miles north of the Walt Disney World property.
CASEY: Oh wow!
[they both laugh]
DAVE: A lotta people don't realize we have that connection--
CASEY: Before they even thought of buying that!
DAVE: With central Florida.
CASEY: Oh my goodness ...
DAVE: Uh, Walt Disney's baptismal certificate--
[he holds up the certificate]
CASEY: That's a neat item, wow.
DAVE: Was in the box.
[she starts reading the certificate]
CASEY: "Walter Elias Disney ... "
DAVE: There is no birth certificate for Walt, so this is the closest we come to an actual document about his birth.
CASEY: His middle name is his father's name ... Oh, wow!
DAVE: Right.
CASEY: And what's this one?
[he picks up another paper]
DAVE: And this one is my favorite. This is a postcard that Walt wrote to his mother when he was fifteen years old.
CASEY: [reading] "Dear mother, everything is going well here" ...
[she laughs]
CASEY: That's so cute! Oh my gosh!
DAVE: Up here in the corner, he's written "P.S. Ten below here." Well, on the back, he did a drawing.
[he flips the card to show a cartoon of a man looking at a giant thermometer]
CASEY: Wow!
DAVE: And this is a fifteen-year-old's drawing, it's very good! A lotta people have said that Walt Disney did not have great art talent, but he did! He could really draw!
[he puts the postcard down, then she points to a folder on the table]
CASEY: And what's this?
DAVE: This is actually a drawing that he did a number of years later ... He found out very early that he could hire animators that could animate a lot better than he could, so he didn't draw the Disney characters, but somebody asked him to occasionally and he would.
[he opens the folder to show a sketch]
DAVE: So this is one early sketch of Mickey Mouse by Walt.
CASEY: So this is an original--
DAVE: Mm-hmm.
CASEY: This, he actually did himself.
DAVE: Yes.
CASEY: Oh my, I think it ... I think it looks amazing.
[she laughs]
DAVE: Well, it's a lot better than I can do, I mean ...
[he laughs]
CASEY: And now this ...
[she points to a toy bird in a birdcage]
DAVE: Oh yes.
CASEY: We went to Disney Land and saw the Enchanted Tiki Room. Is this--
DAVE: This is what got the whole idea started.
CASEY: I can't believe it.
[he picks up the birdcage and turns a key on the base, as the bird starts chirping]
DAVE: Walt found this little antique in a New Orleans antique shop. It dates back to the 1850s.
CASEY: See, that's pretty impressive for the 1850s.
DAVE: He was very impressed by this, and he thought "Y'know, we've been doing animation on film for years, it'd be kinda fun to try some dimensional animation."
CASEY: Mm-hmm.
DAVE: So he hired a sculptor to start working on some movable figures, and it all had started from this ...
[cut to various shots of animatronic figures found in the various Disney parks]
DAVE: [in voice over] And soon became the Enchanted Tiki Room and Pirates of the Caribbean and all the other attractions that we have in our parks that feature these audio-animatronics.
[cut back to Dave and Casey, as he picks an animation cel (featuring Mickey holding a potato as a parrot laughs at him) off the table and opens it]
DAVE: Lemmee show you this ...
[he laughs]
CASEY: Oh, what's that?
DAVE: This is from "Steamboat Willie," the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon!
CASEY: Oh, I love those penny movies, when you go to Disney Land and you can watch the penny movies! I remember the "Steamboat Willie" one!
DAVE: Original background from the making of that film, it came out in November of 1928.
CASEY: Oh, he's so cute!
[he laughs, then she points to an Oscar statuette on the table]
CASEY: Wow, and this ...
DAVE: Oh yes, may I present it to you?
[he picks it up, then hands it to her]
CASEY: I would love it if you would present that to me, as a matter of fact! Thank you!
[cut to various shots of Casey in Disney Land, then back to the archives]
DAVE: Walt Disney, of course, won more Oscars than any other person. He won thirty two, which is way more than anybody else.
[the camera zooms in on the Oscar]
DAVE: The number two in line, uh ... Cedric Gibbons, an art director at MGM, got eleven. And he's second, so nobody's ever gonna catch up to Walt's thirty two!
[she hands it back to him]
CASEY: Wow, it's kinda heavy ...
DAVE: They are heavy!
CASEY: Sheesh ...
DAVE: Well, lemmee show you around our displays a little bit.
CASEY: Okay, great!
DAVE: Come on over this way ...
[they walk towards a glass display case]
DAVE: Here in this case, we have some of our animation art ...
[the camera pans across the various animation cels (including "Pinocchio" and "Winnie the Pooh")]
DAVE: Some of the cels and backgrounds used in making our animated films, all the way from the early black and white era up to more recent years.
[cut back to Dave and Casey]
DAVE: One thing you won't see anywhere else are these glass backgrounds.
[he points at one of the cels]
DAVE: They were done for our multi-plane camera, which for the first time enabled us to get a feeling of depth and dimension to the films.
CASEY: Oh, that's what did it. Okay, now I heard that you have a camera here that's the original camera used for "Snow White"?
DAVE: Yes, it's on display out in the lobby of our building here.
[cut to a shot of the "multiplane camera" in the lobby]
CASEY: [in voice over] And it has five different planes of glass, is that right?
DAVE: [in voice over] They can do up to six.
CASEY: [in voice over] And why, why do they use those? It's just to add--
DAVE: [in voice over] To get dimension and ...
[cut back to Dave and Casey]
DAVE: And sort of a 3-D effect to a film.
CASEY: Okay.
DAVE: Um, it really gave a lot more realism to the films when they started using that camera.
CASEY: Oh, wow!
DAVE: Over here we've got memorabilia related to Walt Disney himself.
[he points to another glass display case]
DAVE: Some materials up on the top shelf, regarding his backyard railroad, which he called the Carolwood Pacific.
[the camera zooms in on the model train in the display case]
DAVE: And it was really one of the things that got him thinking about Disney Land, because he wanted a place where parents and children could go together and they could all have fun. And this was happening in his backyard, he was having fun with his daughters, and they were having fun with their dad.
CASEY: So, is that where he got the idea for the train that goes through Disney Land now?
DAVE: Mm-hmm.
CASEY: Alright ...
[cut to black-and-white footage of Walt Disney and someone in a Mickey Mouse costume riding the train through Disney Land]
DAVE: [in voice over] And once he got a big train to play with, he took out his little one at home.
[cut back to Dave and Casey]
CASEY: Yeah!
[she laughs]
CASEY: Don't need that one anymore!
[he laughs, then cut to Dave pointing out another document in the display case]
DAVE: There's his passport, when he served in the Red Cross--
CASEY: Oh wow!
DAVE: At the time of World War One.
CASEY: Oh, I didn't know he had done that, my goodness.
[the camera zooms in on a picture of Disney in uniform]
CASEY: Oh, and a picture of him there ...
[cut to Casey pointing out a bronzed Donald Duck statue on the bottom shelf]
CASEY: And there's Donald!
[he laughs]
DAVE: That's a Donald award called a Duckster. We also have a Mouse-kar, which is our version of the Oscars that are presented by the company itself to primarily employees of the company that have done some specific service to the company.
[cut to Dave showing another display case]
DAVE: The very first Mickey Mouse watch came out in 1933 ...
CASEY: Mm-hmm.
DAVE: And it was done by the Ingersoll Company, and here it is right in this case.
[the camera zooms in on the "Ingersoll Mickey Mouse Wrist Watch" in the display case]
DAVE: In May of 1933, this watch came out, it was two dollars and ninety five cents.
CASEY: Oh my gosh!
[cut to Casey pointing to another shelf]
CASEY: Wow, and you have some bottle caps here?
DAVE: Yes ... and anything you can think of has had Mickey Mouse on it some time or other!
[he points to the bottom shelf]
DAVE: The oldest items in here are these little crickets, they're from 1930. You click them. When you press them together, it makes a clicking sound.
[cut to Dave pointing out a toy handcar with Mickey and Minnie on either side]
DAVE: The train there is actually one that saved the Lionel Company from bankruptcy. They actually filed for bankruptcy back in the Thirties, and the judge allowed them to make that particular handcar at Christmastime, and they sold enough of them to take themselves out of bankruptcy!
CASEY: Really?
DAVE: So, we got a lot of good publicity about Mickey saving Lionel from bankruptcy ...
[cut to Dave pointing out an old Donald Duck toy]
DAVE: And, uh, that only lasted for about a year. So, if you find any merchandise with that long-billed Donald, as they call it, you know you've got a very early piece ...
[cut to another shot of Dave and Casey talking to each other]
CASEY: I'm so glad I got a chance to see all of this stuff, it's just amazing!
DAVE: Well, I'm so happy you were able to come, and I was able to show you around!
CASEY: Thank you! What a great job you have--
DAVE: Thank you.
CASEY: To be able to come here every day!
DAVE: I love it!
[they both laugh]
CASEY: Thanks a lot, Dave.
[she shakes his hand]
DAVE: Sure.
CASEY: It's a pleasure to meet you.
DAVE: Mm-hmm. Bye.
CASEY: Bye!
---
From bbfc.co.uk:
DISNEY VACATION CLUB - DISNEY VACATION SECRETS REVEALED
Video Feature
Classified 29 October, 2007
Run Time 114m 8s
Description
"The Disney Vacation Club DVD reveals Disney Vacation secrets as well as Membership details, request or view a free DVD today! Discover a whole world of extraordinary vacation opportunities that await you as a Disney Vacation Club Member. Watch this exciting new DVD, Disney Vacation Secrets Revealed, which offers rare behind-the-scenes secrets of Disney Theme Parks, and share the experience of our Members."
Contents
n/a (PLAY ALL- OUR STORY / MEMBER GETAWAYS / DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORTS / HOW MEMBERSHIP WORKS / THE DISNEY DIFFERENCE / MEMBER BENEFITS / BECOME A MEMBER
00:06:20:00 OUR STORY
00:05:04:17 MEMBER GETAWAYS
00:08:00:07 DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORTS
00:08:59:16 HOW MEMBERSHIP WORKS
00:03:11:22 THE DISNEY DIFFERENCE
00:03:08:19 MEMBER BENEFITS
00:05:07:13 BECOME A MEMBER
00:00:31:00 (PRODUCT DISCLOSURES)
n/a (PRODUCT DISCLOSURES) - 00:00:31:00
00:01:42:00 PLANNING A DISNEY VACATION?
00:01:17:19 DISNEY'S ANIMAL KINGDOM VILLAS
00:01:33:24 DISNEY'S SARATOGA SPRINGS RESORT & SPA
00:09:30:13 THE SECRET TREASURES OF THE DISNEY ARCHIVES
00:04:59:17 DISNEY DESTINATIONS
N/A OTHER MEMBER GETAWAYS
00:01:48:09 DISNEY VACATION CLUB - DISNEY VACATION SECRETS REVEALED
N?A DISNEY'S ANIMAL KINGDOM VILLAS - A DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORT - A VILLAGE COMES TO LIFE
00:16:38:01 DISNEY'S ANIMAL KINGDOM VILLAS - A DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORT - A VILLAGE COMES TO LIFE
N/A THE BEVERLY FAMILY - PHILEDELPHIA
PA - WALT DISNEY WORLD VACATION 2002
N/A THE STANCIL FAMILY - JACKSONVILLE
FL - HAWAIIAN VACATION 1998
N/A THE SAYERS - CUYAHOGA FALLS
OH - DAD'S BIRTHDAY AT WALT DISNEY WORLD
N/A CINDY AND KEITH LANDRY - WINDERMERE
FL - BICYCLING VACATION 2000
N/A THE SHAFFERS - SUWENNEE
GA - KEYSTONE SKIING VACATION 1998
N/A THE HERNANDEZ FAMILY - MIAMI LAKES
FL - WALT DISNEY VACATIONS
N/A THE KING FAMILY - OAKLAND
FL - SWEET SIXTEEN BIRTHDAY PARTY
N/A THE SLAUGHTERS - RICHMOND
VA - WASHINGTON D.C. VACATION 2000
N/A THE ARMENIOS - FRANKLIN
MA - WALT DISNEY WORLD VACATION 2000
N/A LYNDA AND NORMAN BURR - SPRING HILL
FL - EUROPEAN VACATION 2000
N/A THE STRATTONS - WALES
UNITED KINGDOM - HOLIDAYS ACROSS THE POND
00:01:39:10 THE BEVERLY FAMILY - PHILEDELPHIA
PA - WALT DISNEY WORLD VACATION 2002
00:01:21:12 THE STANCIL FAMILY - JACKSONVILLE
FL - HAWAIIAN VACATION 1998
00:01:59:04 THE SAYERS - CUYAHOGA FALLS
OH - DAD'S BIRTHDAY AT WALT DISNEY WORLD
00:01:30:07 CINDY AND KEITH LANDRY - WINDERMERE
FL - BICYCLING VACATION 2000
00:01:45:17 THE SHAFFERS - SUWENNEE
GA - KEYSTONE SKIING VACATION 1998
00:01:53:09 THE HERNANDEZ FAMILY - MIAMI LAKES
FL - WALT DISNEY VACATIONS
00:02:10:13 THE KING FAMILY - OAKLAND
FL - SWEET SIXTEEN BIRTHDAY PARTY
00:01:47:02 THE SLAUGHTERS - RICHMOND
VA - WASHINGTON D.C. VACATION 2000
00:01:41:03 THE ARMENIOS - FRANKLIN
MA - WALT DISNEY WORLD VACATION 2000
00:01:38:14 LYNDA AND NORMAN BURR - SPRING HILL
FL - EUROPEAN VACATION 2000
00:01:42:10 THE STRATTONS - WALES
UNITED KINGDOM - HOLIDAYS ACROSS THE POND
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:03:00 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - MENU TRANSITION
00:00:33:00 WHAT IS DISNEY VACTION CLUB?
00:00:37:00 HOW IS DISNEY VACATION CLUB DIFFERENT FROM TRADITIONAL TIME-SHARES?
00:00:35:00 WHAT IS A HOME RESORT?
00:00:32:00 AS A MEMBER
---
From awn.com:
Walt's business card. Maquette models from Beauty and the Beast. A Mickey Mouse children's book in Bulgarian. Background art from 101 Dalmatians. Boxes of memos from Roy Disney. These are a few of the treasures of Disney history which the company has saved in The Archives and The Animation Research Library.
The Walt Disney Archives was created in 1970 and is a collection of books, periodicals, corporate correspondence, and other items from the history of the company. Founder Dave Smith states the purpose of the archive is "to collect and preserve all the history of Disney and make it available to the people who need it. It is primarily for company use but serious students and writers doing research on Disney subjects can make an appointment to use the collection as well."
The Animation Research Library emerged from the Animation Department's morgue in the late 1980s. It houses art from all of Disney's 36 animated features and numerous short subjects. It caters to artists in Disney's Feature Animation division and is not open to the public.
An Interview with Dave Smith of The Disney Archives
Katie Mason: You founded the Archives in 1970. What moved you to do this?
Dave Smith: I had been working as a librarian at UCLA for five years, and I'd done a little work with Disney. On my own, I'd prepared a Disney bibliography, listing Disney films, television shows, books and things like that. I got to know people at the Disney Company while I was doing that. When they decided to do something about preserving their own history, I was in the right place at the right time. I wrote a proposal for them, saying they might want to set up an archive and they hired me to come and do it. We started from an empty office, but we've got a lot of stuff today.
KM: What was the company's interest in creating an archive?
DS: We were starting to lose some key old-timers here in this company. Walt Disney died in 1966, Roy Disney died in 1971, and up until that time if you'd had a question about the early days of the company, you could go and talk to the person that worked on Snow White or Steamboat Willie for example.
If you think of all the companies in this country, not many others reuse their past as much as Disney does. So many things that Disney did years and years ago are still important in the company's projects today. A good example is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a film we made back in 1937. We put it on video cassette and I think it's the second largest selling video cassette ever.
But, of course, we can use that film in so many other ways. We can do books, records, educational materials, computer software, an attraction at Disneyland, run it on the Disney Channel, put an illustration on our Disney cruise ship. There's so many new different ways we can use these projects than we did so many years ago. When you're delving into your company's past so much, you need a department that's put together the information that you need to have access to--that's why the archives were set up.
KM: How do you go about preserving animation history when so much is being done on computers?
DS: The question that we're asking [here at the Archives] is how are we preserving the business correspondence of executives when they're doing it on e-mail. You learn so much about a company through the correspondence of its executives. If they're doing a lot of their work on e-mail or over the telephone, which seems to be a lot more common today, it's going to be a lot harder to document. When people come along 20 years from now [it will be harder] to know what was going on in 1998.
KM: Do they have all of Walt's correspondence?
DS: We have all of that. That was, thank goodness, maintained by his secretaries and it's well arranged by year and then alphabetical by each year. It must be a couple hundred boxes of correspondence. We have Roy Disney's correspondence too and various correspondence of other executive officers of the company through the years. I'm sure some day we'll get Michael Eisner's correspondence.
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