Inside the Whimsy Works: My Life with Walt Disney Productions PDF
Preview Inside the Whimsy Works: My Life with Walt Disney Productions
InsIde the WhImsy Works This page intentionally left blank My life with Walt Disney productions JiMMy JoHnson edited by greg ehrbar and Didier ghez University Press of Mississippi • Jackson www.upress.state.ms.us Designed by Peter D. Halverson The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2014 by Grey Johnson All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2014 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, Jimmy, 1917–1976, author. Inside the whimsy works : my life with Walt Disney Productions / Jimmy Johnson ; edited by Greg Ehrbar and Didier Ghez. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-61703-930-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61703-931-7 (paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-932-4 (ebook) 1. Johnson, Jimmy, 1917–1976. 2. Walt Disney Company—History. 3. Sound recording executives and producers—United States— Biography. 4. Music publishers—United States—Biography. 5. Executives—United States—Biography. I. Ehrbar, Greg, editor. II. Ghez, Didier, editor. III. Title. ML429.J64A3 2014 780.92—dc23 [B] 2013030497 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available To my wife, Ann, and my children, Grey, Glenys, and Gennifer J.A.J. To Suzanne, Katie, and Colin G.E. To Rita, the music of my life D.G. This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword ix editors’ introduction xiii Author’s introduction xvii Chapter 1 Halcyon Days at Hyperion 3 Chapter 2 World War II 19 Chapter 3 Back to the Studio 25 Chapter 4 The Perilous Postwar Years 39 Chapter 5 Disney Publications 47 Chapter 6 Music Publishing and How Davy Crockett Turned It Around 57 Chapter 7 We Take the Plunge into the Perilous Record Business 73 viii • Contents Chapter 8 Disneyland Park Springs from an Orange Grove 97 Chapter 9 Buoyant Days at Burbank 105 Chapter 10 Music and Mary Poppins 115 Chapter 11 Walt and Roy and the Right Wavelength 135 Chapter 12 Walt Disney’s One World 145 Chapter 13 Roy Completes Walt Disney’s Dream 161 A World at War 175 epilogue 179 notes 181 index 185 ForeWord wAlt disney needed Boy scouts. lots oF Boy scouts For the final scenes of Follow Me, Boys! starring Fred MacMurray, Vera Miles, Kurt Russell, and Lillian Gish. No studio employee with a son was ex- empt, and of course who wouldn’t want to be in The Movies? So we all stood tall and looked trustworthy during the casting call. And I’ll never know whether I just looked more trustworthy than the rest, or that my father had something to do with the fact that I was one of four boys chosen for the Color Guard. We spent a chaotic day on The Walt Disney Studios backlot, all marching around a fake city square in front of the fake Bijou movie the- ater following Fred MacMurray’s open convertible as he was heralded by the town as the best Boy Scout leader ever, because he’d saved the troubled Kurt Russell from a life as a juvenile delinquent. And then we spent an even more chaotic day marching around at the Disney Ranch doing similar activities. It was awe inspiring, but the thing I remember most was the form I had to fill out at the casting call. It must have been an all-Hollywood, Screen Actors Guild, or other sort of General Form that every extra in any film for years before and years after filled out. And the impressive thing to me was the list of movie studios that you had to look at, and then check the one that was making this movie. In nonalphabetical or- der the list read something like this: MGM Paramount 20th Century Fox United Artists Universal Columbia ix
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