Saturday 5 December 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WALT!

Walt Disney was born 108 years ago, today: 5 December, 1901...


MICKEY HAPPY RETURNS!

7 comments:

Arts and Crafts said...

Mr Sibley, is it truth that Walt Disney was spanish, born in Almería?

Brian Sibley said...

No, it's not true, EUDORA. It is a persistent legend, but one without basis in fact, as you can read here.

Susan D-L said...

Happy Birthday to the man who, in a roundabout way, made it possible for me to make a living, buy a house, and have fun with Donald and Mickey. Cheers!

Suzanne said...

What a strange reality check... Seeing the numbers written down brings it home: that someone born in the same century as us would now be over 100 years old! Especially someone who has been a major part of all our lives! I think I may watch a Disney film this afternoon to celebrate...cubso: an animated bear cub that never actually made it to Walt's drawing board

Brian Sibley said...

I sometimes do intriguing back calculations, like the fact that I was born just 11 years after the first release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. So that film - that seems as old as the movies - is, in my reality, only a little bit older than me... :-)

Arts and Crafts said...

I see, is a logical point of view, without documents you have nothing. But let me tell you something about this, and sorry for the long story:

I have a friend of Mojacar, Almeria, who told me something of this matter. The legend begins because the mayor of Mojacar in 1945, Mr. Jacinto Alarcón, told that he had been visited by a couple of americans who were working for Disney, looking for documents of the birth of José Guirao. They didn’t find anything because the files, as many other files in Spain, were destroyed during the Civil War. I must say in this point that in 1945 nobody in Mojacar, not perhaps even in Spain, didn’t know who was Walt Disney. In those days, Mojacar, as other villages, was a little village in a very poor country.
There begins the legend, the memories of the oldest of the village with different versions, different but with something in common: Isabel Zamora went away of Mojacar in the 1900’s and went to America, some of them say that with his son, others say that alone.
Dalí said that Walt Disney had told him that he it was born in Mojacar, Spain. Pero Dalí, as well as a great artist was a great fibber.
Something is real: important figures make big legends, it’s part of some celebrities. And this kind of legends or rumours are very profitable for some people.

And another thing: My grandma is 99, is the living memory of her village, the eldest, and her mind is in perfect conditions. Sometimes I have repeat to myself: she born in 1910 !!, awesome.

Brian Sibley said...

Thanks for the extra background information, EUDORA. I think one of the reasons, some of us are loath to put credence on the story is because the two biographies that championed it were full of so many simple errors (dates, names etc) which brings the quality of their 'research' seriously into question. Nevertheless, of course, those books sold in significant numbers thereby keeping the story/legend very much alive...