Jim Denney's Blog
January 9, 2014
The Honest Truth about Walt Disney
In the wake of the release of the motion picture Saving Mr. Banks, a few ignorami have resurrected the vicious canard about Walt Disney being a “racist” and an “antisemite.” This slur on Walt Disney’s reputation is provably untrue—and my writing partner Pat Williams and I did, in fact, demolish this claim in our 2004 book
How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life
(that book, by the way, would not have been possible, without the insight, assistance, and resources of my good friend, Peggy Matthews Rose).
Walt was not a perfect man, and Pat Williams and I honestly present his imperfections in our book. But as we proved in the book, Walt Disney was not a racist. Anyone who says otherwise is a shallow thinker at best, and at worst … well, I’ll leave that unsaid. Read the evidence for yourself, below, as it appears on pages 377-378 of How to Be Like Walt.
---------------------------------------
Walt’s utopian vision of the future was more real to him than the “real world” of international tensions, racial tensions, and the Cold War. ... He envisioned a better world—a world beyond hate, beyond divisions of race, ethnicity, religion, and class.
Some revisionist critics have accused Walt of racism or anti-Semitism—and a lot of intellectually lazy people have repeated the accusation without bothering to check the facts. It’s hard to know where these charges originated, but some Disney scholars believe they may have originated in the union smear campaign against Walt during the 1941 strike. In any case, there should be no doubt about this: Walt Disney was not a racist.
"Walt was sensitive to people’s feelings," composer Robert Sherman told me. "He hated to see people mistreated or discriminated against. One time, Richard and I overheard a discussion between Walt and one of his lawyers. This attorney was a real bad guy, didn’t like minorities. He said something about Richard and me, and he called us ‘these Jew boys writing these songs.’ Well, Walt defended us, and he fired the lawyer. Walt was unbelievably great to us."
Artist Joe Grant, who is also Jewish, agrees. “Walt was not anti-Semitic,” Grant told an interviewer. “Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish. It’s much ado about nothing. I never once had a problem with him in that way. That myth should be laid to rest.”
Floyd Norman, an African-American story artist, also rejects the racism accusation. He recalls that, during the 1960s, several civil rights leaders tried to force the Disney studio to hire more minorities. “The funny part,” he said, “was that minorities weren’t knocking at the gates to get in. The jobs were there if they wanted them and if they were qualified. It’s like the old ruse that Walt didn’t hire Jews, which was also ridiculous. There were plenty of Jews at Disney. Personally, I never felt any prejudice from Walt.”
Katherine and Richard Greene, authors of Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney, discussed this question in an article on The Disney Family Museum website. Like me, they interviewed hundreds of people who knew Walt well—and they, too, found that in all of those interviews, “not one recalled a single incident in which this alleged anti-Semitism reared its head.” They observed:
"Jewish employees like Joe Grant and the Sherman Brothers all violently defend Walt’s memory. Meyer Minda, a Jewish neighbor of Walt’s in Kansas City, didn’t remember any evidence whatsoever of anti-Jewish feelings in Walt or the Disney family. Even when Sharon dated a young Jewish man, her parents didn’t voice any objections… . In fact, the authors of this essay are Jewish, and from the outset of a decade of research into Walt Disney have looked carefully through the record—letters, memos, conversations with reliable sources—for any evidence that Walt may have harbored a dislike of Jews. None was found. Furthermore, in 1955 the B’Nai B’rith chapter in Beverly Hills cited him as their man of the year. Hardly an award likely to be presented to an anti-Semite."
Those who truly knew the man will tell you—emphatically and unanimously—that Walt had a heart so big it embraced all of humanity, regardless of meaningless distinctions such as language or skin color. The only race he recognized was the human race, and nothing did his heart more good than to see people coming together from all over the world to share their hopes, goals, and dreams.
Ralph Kent of the Disney Design Group told me, “Walt Disney was a humanitarian and a utopian. That’s what his dream of EPCOT was all about. That’s one reason he was so excited about producing attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair. He was always thinking about tomorrow and how to make life better for the people of the world. He was promoting ecology in the 1950s, way before it was the thing to do. He was promoting peace, human understanding, and human progress. We’d tell him, ‘No one will be interested in that stuff.’ Walt said, ‘I’ll teach by entertaining people.’ And he did.”
Excerpted from How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life by Pat Williams with Jim Denney; foreword by Art Linkletter (Deerfield Beach, FL: HCI, 2004), 377-378.
Walt was not a perfect man, and Pat Williams and I honestly present his imperfections in our book. But as we proved in the book, Walt Disney was not a racist. Anyone who says otherwise is a shallow thinker at best, and at worst … well, I’ll leave that unsaid. Read the evidence for yourself, below, as it appears on pages 377-378 of How to Be Like Walt.
---------------------------------------
Walt’s utopian vision of the future was more real to him than the “real world” of international tensions, racial tensions, and the Cold War. ... He envisioned a better world—a world beyond hate, beyond divisions of race, ethnicity, religion, and class.
Some revisionist critics have accused Walt of racism or anti-Semitism—and a lot of intellectually lazy people have repeated the accusation without bothering to check the facts. It’s hard to know where these charges originated, but some Disney scholars believe they may have originated in the union smear campaign against Walt during the 1941 strike. In any case, there should be no doubt about this: Walt Disney was not a racist.
"Walt was sensitive to people’s feelings," composer Robert Sherman told me. "He hated to see people mistreated or discriminated against. One time, Richard and I overheard a discussion between Walt and one of his lawyers. This attorney was a real bad guy, didn’t like minorities. He said something about Richard and me, and he called us ‘these Jew boys writing these songs.’ Well, Walt defended us, and he fired the lawyer. Walt was unbelievably great to us."
Artist Joe Grant, who is also Jewish, agrees. “Walt was not anti-Semitic,” Grant told an interviewer. “Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish. It’s much ado about nothing. I never once had a problem with him in that way. That myth should be laid to rest.”
Floyd Norman, an African-American story artist, also rejects the racism accusation. He recalls that, during the 1960s, several civil rights leaders tried to force the Disney studio to hire more minorities. “The funny part,” he said, “was that minorities weren’t knocking at the gates to get in. The jobs were there if they wanted them and if they were qualified. It’s like the old ruse that Walt didn’t hire Jews, which was also ridiculous. There were plenty of Jews at Disney. Personally, I never felt any prejudice from Walt.”
Katherine and Richard Greene, authors of Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney, discussed this question in an article on The Disney Family Museum website. Like me, they interviewed hundreds of people who knew Walt well—and they, too, found that in all of those interviews, “not one recalled a single incident in which this alleged anti-Semitism reared its head.” They observed:
"Jewish employees like Joe Grant and the Sherman Brothers all violently defend Walt’s memory. Meyer Minda, a Jewish neighbor of Walt’s in Kansas City, didn’t remember any evidence whatsoever of anti-Jewish feelings in Walt or the Disney family. Even when Sharon dated a young Jewish man, her parents didn’t voice any objections… . In fact, the authors of this essay are Jewish, and from the outset of a decade of research into Walt Disney have looked carefully through the record—letters, memos, conversations with reliable sources—for any evidence that Walt may have harbored a dislike of Jews. None was found. Furthermore, in 1955 the B’Nai B’rith chapter in Beverly Hills cited him as their man of the year. Hardly an award likely to be presented to an anti-Semite."
Those who truly knew the man will tell you—emphatically and unanimously—that Walt had a heart so big it embraced all of humanity, regardless of meaningless distinctions such as language or skin color. The only race he recognized was the human race, and nothing did his heart more good than to see people coming together from all over the world to share their hopes, goals, and dreams.
Ralph Kent of the Disney Design Group told me, “Walt Disney was a humanitarian and a utopian. That’s what his dream of EPCOT was all about. That’s one reason he was so excited about producing attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair. He was always thinking about tomorrow and how to make life better for the people of the world. He was promoting ecology in the 1950s, way before it was the thing to do. He was promoting peace, human understanding, and human progress. We’d tell him, ‘No one will be interested in that stuff.’ Walt said, ‘I’ll teach by entertaining people.’ And he did.”
Excerpted from How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life by Pat Williams with Jim Denney; foreword by Art Linkletter (Deerfield Beach, FL: HCI, 2004), 377-378.
January 19, 2013
"The Trouble with Quotes on the Internet..."
A couple of months ago, my friend James Scott Bell posted a fascinating entry at
The Kill Zone blog site
. Jim is the author of thrillers like
Try Dying
and
One More Lie
. He's also a great writing teacher (
Plot & Structure
). Here's a snippet from his blog:
"Recently, I’ve seen another bastardized quotation zapping around the internet. It’s a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway. As a Hemingway-phile, I was quite interested. The quote goes like this: 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.'
"I was immediately suspicious. Something was rotten in the state of Bartlett, for it was the great sports writer Red Smith who said, 'There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and just open a vein.'”
I've cited the Red Smith quote for years. So, like Jim Bell, I find the alleged Hemingway version annoying—especially since this fake quote is currently the fourth most-liked quote on the Goodreads quote page on writing . After all, the Red Smith wording ("open a vein") is far superior to the faux-Hemingway wording ("bleed").
It just goes to show that the timeless wisdom of our 16th president still holds true:
"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they are genuine." —Abraham Lincoln.
Read the rest of James Scott Bell's "The Perils of Internet Information" at The Kill Zone .
"Recently, I’ve seen another bastardized quotation zapping around the internet. It’s a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway. As a Hemingway-phile, I was quite interested. The quote goes like this: 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.'
"I was immediately suspicious. Something was rotten in the state of Bartlett, for it was the great sports writer Red Smith who said, 'There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and just open a vein.'”
I've cited the Red Smith quote for years. So, like Jim Bell, I find the alleged Hemingway version annoying—especially since this fake quote is currently the fourth most-liked quote on the Goodreads quote page on writing . After all, the Red Smith wording ("open a vein") is far superior to the faux-Hemingway wording ("bleed").
It just goes to show that the timeless wisdom of our 16th president still holds true:
"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they are genuine." —Abraham Lincoln.
Read the rest of James Scott Bell's "The Perils of Internet Information" at The Kill Zone .
January 9, 2013
The Blog Hop Tour
Ten Questions for "The Next Big Thing"
A lot of my author friends have been doing the "Blog Hop" tour, in which we all answer the same set of questions about our newest (or future) releases. My thanks to award-winning suspense novelist James L. Rubart , author of Rooms , The Chair , and Soul's Gate for pointing the way to my blog.
Thanks, also, to Dorothy Love , author of fine Southern historical fiction, for linking to this page. Dorothy is the author of the Hickory Ridge series, including Beauty for Ashes and Every Perfect Gift .
1. What is the working title of your book?
Actually, I want to talk about a series, not just one book. My Timebenders series, first published in 2002, has just been completely revised and updated, with Books 3 and 4 debuting on Christmas Day 2012. Plus, I am currently writing a brand-new book in the series with the working title War of the Electronic Brain.
The first four books in the series are Book 1: Battle before Time, Book 2: Doorway to Doom, Book 3: Invasion of the Time Troopers, and Book 4: Lost in Cydonia. These books are for middle grade readers, ages 9 to 14.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for the Timebenders series came from my son, who was a kindergartner at the time (he's now working on his master's degree!). One day, he came to me and said, "Daddy, would you write a book with me?" I said, "Sure. What kind of book should we write?" He said, "I want to write a book about a time machine and dinosaurs."
So we started working and we wrote a little each day for a week or two, then we forgot about it for a while. A few years later, I took a fresh look at the pages we had written, and I decided to finish the book. That first book was Battle Before Time, and the publisher asked me to write three more. Last year, I got the rights back from the original publisher, and I updated and rewrote the books, and Greenbrier Books has reissued them with stunning new covers.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
The Timebenders series is science fantasy for young readers. I deliberately chose titles that would have a campy, pulp-science-fiction feel.
I honestly can't remember a time when I wasn't a science fiction fan. When I was five years old, my favorite TV show was a space opera called Space Patrol . It had spacemen in space suits with fishbowl helmets spouting dialogue like "Smoking rockets! A cosmic storm!" And my favorite cartoon at that age was Popeye, the Ace of Space , in which Popeye battles space aliens on Mars.
In grammar school, I searched for science fiction books in the school library, and was ecstatic when I discovered A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle on the "new arrivals" shelf. I was only nine, but the scientific concepts and appealing characters captured my imagination. (I wrote about the impact of that book on my life in a recent op-ed piece .)
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
My protagonists in the Timbenders series are in their early teens. To play Max McCrane, I'd cast Zach Mills of Super 8 fame (with round-lensed eyeglasses, Zach is Max). The perfect Allie O'Dell would be another Super 8 alum, Elle Fanning (with the addition of red hair and braces). C. J. Sanders, who played a young Ray Charles in Ray, would be well cast as Grady Stubblefield. For villainy, either Max von Sydow or Christopher Plummer would make an excellent Dr. Delyrius, the evil alchemist in Doorway to Doom.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Here's Book 1: Battle Before Time in one sentence:
"Boy inventor Max McCrane turns a rusty orange Volkswagen into a time machine and takes three friends across time and space to battle a deadly dragon in a place before time began."
Here's Book 2: Doorway to Doom:
"Max and friends go back in time to an ancient kingdom ruled by evil King Wyvern and Max must either serve the king or doom his friends to a horrible fate."
Here's Book 3: Invasion of the Time Troopers:
"Max McCrane is hijacked into the past by scheming Luna Skyes, and his friends are chased through time by robot warriors of the fourth dimension, the Time Troopers."
Here's Book 4: Lost in Cydonia:
"A frightening miscalculation sends Max and friends to Mars, where they encounter an ancient secret guarded by strange blue-skinned creatures, the Timelings."
Here's Book 5: (working title of work-in-progress) War of the Electronic Brain
"Max and friends go back in time to Los Angeles in 1942, and must foil a plot to attack America and change the outcome of World War II."
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Agency.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
My first four Timebenders books were each first-drafted in about six to eight weeks (each is about 45,000 words long). Once the first draft is written, there's a lot more work to do—additional drafts, substantive editing, copyediting, first proofs, and second proofs.
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I set out to write the kind of books I enjoyed when I was a boy—a wild roller coaster ride through time and space. I wanted my readers to have the same experience I had when I was a boy reading A Wrinkle in Time, The Martian Chronicles, and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
As time travel fiction, the Timebenders tales are part of a literary tradition going back to Washington Irving, H. G. Wells, and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. There's even an echo of Dickens' A Christmas Carol in Lost in Cydonia.
And, of course, there's a great tradition of adult time travel literature that I've enjoyed over the years—classic short stories such as Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies—" and "By His Bootstraps," Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner's "Vintage Season," and Harlan Ellison's "Soldier," to name a few. Great time travel novels include Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, Gordon R. Dickson's Time Storm, Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time, David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My son, who was in kindergarten at the time, inspired the Timebenders series. That's why the first book in the series is dedicated to him.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I vividly recall the writing process of the first four Timebenders books, especially Book 2: Doorway to Doom. I was a couple of chapters into the second book when we were attacked on 9/11. At first, the horror of that event disrupted my creative flow. At that time, some of my writer friends actually stopped writing for a few weeks. I had a tight deadline, so I had to keep writing. I wrote with the cable TV news blaring in the background, so I could keep an ear open for news developments.
As I wrote, I kept coming up with new ideas, including a new ending for the book. Later, I realized that most of those new ideas had to do with darkness. My mood was dark, and it showed in the writing. I added a scene where Max, my protagonist, was tossed into a dungeon by the villain, Dr. Delyrius. I added another scene involving Max's friend, Allie, threading her way through an underground maze by torchlight.
Even though the scenes dealt with darkness, they demonstrated the light of faith, hope, and courage. A number of readers have written to say that those scenes are their favorite passages in the whole series.
I recently gave an extensive interview that provides more background on the writing of the Timebenders series. You can read it at Random Writing Rants .
Thanks for stopping by on the Blog Hop Tour. Check out the Blog Hop interviews by these fine authors:
A lot of my author friends have been doing the "Blog Hop" tour, in which we all answer the same set of questions about our newest (or future) releases. My thanks to award-winning suspense novelist James L. Rubart , author of Rooms , The Chair , and Soul's Gate for pointing the way to my blog.
Thanks, also, to Dorothy Love , author of fine Southern historical fiction, for linking to this page. Dorothy is the author of the Hickory Ridge series, including Beauty for Ashes and Every Perfect Gift .
1. What is the working title of your book?
Actually, I want to talk about a series, not just one book. My Timebenders series, first published in 2002, has just been completely revised and updated, with Books 3 and 4 debuting on Christmas Day 2012. Plus, I am currently writing a brand-new book in the series with the working title War of the Electronic Brain.
The first four books in the series are Book 1: Battle before Time, Book 2: Doorway to Doom, Book 3: Invasion of the Time Troopers, and Book 4: Lost in Cydonia. These books are for middle grade readers, ages 9 to 14.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for the Timebenders series came from my son, who was a kindergartner at the time (he's now working on his master's degree!). One day, he came to me and said, "Daddy, would you write a book with me?" I said, "Sure. What kind of book should we write?" He said, "I want to write a book about a time machine and dinosaurs."
So we started working and we wrote a little each day for a week or two, then we forgot about it for a while. A few years later, I took a fresh look at the pages we had written, and I decided to finish the book. That first book was Battle Before Time, and the publisher asked me to write three more. Last year, I got the rights back from the original publisher, and I updated and rewrote the books, and Greenbrier Books has reissued them with stunning new covers.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
The Timebenders series is science fantasy for young readers. I deliberately chose titles that would have a campy, pulp-science-fiction feel.
I honestly can't remember a time when I wasn't a science fiction fan. When I was five years old, my favorite TV show was a space opera called Space Patrol . It had spacemen in space suits with fishbowl helmets spouting dialogue like "Smoking rockets! A cosmic storm!" And my favorite cartoon at that age was Popeye, the Ace of Space , in which Popeye battles space aliens on Mars.
In grammar school, I searched for science fiction books in the school library, and was ecstatic when I discovered A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle on the "new arrivals" shelf. I was only nine, but the scientific concepts and appealing characters captured my imagination. (I wrote about the impact of that book on my life in a recent op-ed piece .)
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
My protagonists in the Timbenders series are in their early teens. To play Max McCrane, I'd cast Zach Mills of Super 8 fame (with round-lensed eyeglasses, Zach is Max). The perfect Allie O'Dell would be another Super 8 alum, Elle Fanning (with the addition of red hair and braces). C. J. Sanders, who played a young Ray Charles in Ray, would be well cast as Grady Stubblefield. For villainy, either Max von Sydow or Christopher Plummer would make an excellent Dr. Delyrius, the evil alchemist in Doorway to Doom.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Here's Book 1: Battle Before Time in one sentence:
"Boy inventor Max McCrane turns a rusty orange Volkswagen into a time machine and takes three friends across time and space to battle a deadly dragon in a place before time began."
Here's Book 2: Doorway to Doom:
"Max and friends go back in time to an ancient kingdom ruled by evil King Wyvern and Max must either serve the king or doom his friends to a horrible fate."
Here's Book 3: Invasion of the Time Troopers:
"Max McCrane is hijacked into the past by scheming Luna Skyes, and his friends are chased through time by robot warriors of the fourth dimension, the Time Troopers."
Here's Book 4: Lost in Cydonia:
"A frightening miscalculation sends Max and friends to Mars, where they encounter an ancient secret guarded by strange blue-skinned creatures, the Timelings."
Here's Book 5: (working title of work-in-progress) War of the Electronic Brain
"Max and friends go back in time to Los Angeles in 1942, and must foil a plot to attack America and change the outcome of World War II."
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Agency.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
My first four Timebenders books were each first-drafted in about six to eight weeks (each is about 45,000 words long). Once the first draft is written, there's a lot more work to do—additional drafts, substantive editing, copyediting, first proofs, and second proofs.
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I set out to write the kind of books I enjoyed when I was a boy—a wild roller coaster ride through time and space. I wanted my readers to have the same experience I had when I was a boy reading A Wrinkle in Time, The Martian Chronicles, and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
As time travel fiction, the Timebenders tales are part of a literary tradition going back to Washington Irving, H. G. Wells, and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. There's even an echo of Dickens' A Christmas Carol in Lost in Cydonia.
And, of course, there's a great tradition of adult time travel literature that I've enjoyed over the years—classic short stories such as Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies—" and "By His Bootstraps," Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner's "Vintage Season," and Harlan Ellison's "Soldier," to name a few. Great time travel novels include Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, Gordon R. Dickson's Time Storm, Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time, David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My son, who was in kindergarten at the time, inspired the Timebenders series. That's why the first book in the series is dedicated to him.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I vividly recall the writing process of the first four Timebenders books, especially Book 2: Doorway to Doom. I was a couple of chapters into the second book when we were attacked on 9/11. At first, the horror of that event disrupted my creative flow. At that time, some of my writer friends actually stopped writing for a few weeks. I had a tight deadline, so I had to keep writing. I wrote with the cable TV news blaring in the background, so I could keep an ear open for news developments.
As I wrote, I kept coming up with new ideas, including a new ending for the book. Later, I realized that most of those new ideas had to do with darkness. My mood was dark, and it showed in the writing. I added a scene where Max, my protagonist, was tossed into a dungeon by the villain, Dr. Delyrius. I added another scene involving Max's friend, Allie, threading her way through an underground maze by torchlight.
Even though the scenes dealt with darkness, they demonstrated the light of faith, hope, and courage. A number of readers have written to say that those scenes are their favorite passages in the whole series.
I recently gave an extensive interview that provides more background on the writing of the Timebenders series. You can read it at Random Writing Rants .
Thanks for stopping by on the Blog Hop Tour. Check out the Blog Hop interviews by these fine authors:
Southern historical writer Dorothy Love (author of Beauty for Ashes)
Fantasy novelist Jill Williamson (author of By Darkness Hid)
Science fiction writer Steve Rzasa (author of The Word Reclaimed)
