100 days before Disney celebrates 100 years, the director of the Walt Disney Archives, Becky Cline, explained how the great itinerant centenary exhibition was conceived, for which they decided to “return to the origins”. “We didn’t want to make a chronological history. , we thought it would be a little boring”, said the chief archivist in an interview with the Lusa agency, backstage at the company in Burbank. “We wanted to tell the story in a different way and go back to the origins, to Walt Disney himself, and focus on what he made special.”The Walt Disney Company celebrates 100 years on October 16 and on July 8 the countdown begins decreasing from 100 days to the centenary.The exhibition of almost 1,400 square meters includes ten galleries and passes through several cities: it started in Philadelphia, traveled to Munich and will arrive in London after the summer. the exhibition without having to wait until the end to see their favorite cartoons, which have come out in recent years. “Walt has always said that storytelling is at the heart of everything we do. He’s one of the best storytellers ever”, said Becky Cline. That’s what you’ll see in the exhibition and that’s also evident in the Walt Disney Archives, in Burbank, where you can find authentic treasures of the company’s history. , for example, the first ever ticket to the opening of Disneyland in July 1955. There is also a copy of the first issue of the Mickey Mouse comic strip in Portugal a month later, on 26 August 1955. parts in color and in black and white and cost 2.5 escudos – or 25 pennies. Archivist Ed Ovalle explained that the costs of printing in color were high and were borne by local distributors, so this may have influenced the decision to print parts in black and white. merchandising, publications and Disney-related rarities, many of which are sent in by fans or former employees. “We started the archives with publicity materials and documents. Over the years, we’ve collected merchandising and samples,” explained Beck Cline. “But we didn’t archive a lot of props and costumes, they were things made for the movies and they stayed with the company that made them, which they then rented to others.” That only changed in 2006, when the Archives took a proactive step to choose and keep the more representative pieces of all the series, films and productions with the Disney seal.“Each time a production ends, we receive items from that film or television series. And people give us collections and documents, which we have to analyze and decide if it’s important to archive”, stressed Cline. Every day the Archives are called upon to help researchers, authors and all kinds of people interested in the history of Disney.” We are constantly contacted to provide information and validate texts. People do a lot of research on the internet these days and that’s something we try to discourage,” said Becky Cline. “We spend a lot of time correcting things that people read and wrote.” The office where Walt Disney worked between 1940 and 1966, the year of his death, is also restored to its original layout. public, it is possible to visit it under certain conditions. There are the secretary, the rotary telephone, the notes, the miniatures, the piano and several other gems of the founder of the company. “He had a work office and a formal office to receive dignitaries”, said the ‘tour’ specialist. Julia Dimayuga.The facilities in Burbank have existed since 1939 and, according to her, were revolutionary for the industry at the time. “Unlike other studios, this was built in a way to speed up the animation process”, she said. “We had the montage on one side and the cinema across the street”.
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