WaltDisney.org Search

This is the second in a series titled "What Do YOU Do?" where we'll be asking a museum staff member to answer five questions about their position at The Walt Disney Family Museum, their fondest Disney memories, and other personal tidbits. This month, we highlight Pam Spedus!

We’re rolling out the red carpet with KCBS AM/FM and KRON TV’s Jan Wahl as we celebrate Walt Disney’s Academy Award® winning and nominated films! Watch clips from Flowers and Trees to Mary Poppins and learn about the Walt’s 26 Academy Awards—the most any individual has ever won in the history of the Oscars®!

On this special day of love, Reed Milnes, Volunteer Services Coordinator, tells us a bit about a very special gift that Walt gave Lillian for her birthday during the Valentine's season. Humor is best shared with those you love. Walt shared a lifetime of laughter with the world, but more importantly, he shared love and laughter with his family and friends. His playful sense of humor inspired our lives and was inspired by his own. Images and stories of the relationship Walt shared with his wife Lilly, showed the depth and humor they fostered...

As part of our month-long salute to Donald Duck, we asked Disney historian, Paul Anderson, to tell us about Donald's golden era of the 1940s. In my esteemed colleague’s essay on Don ald Duck, we had an insightful look at the inception and evolution of the quarrelsome quacker throughout the thirties. As the story unfolds we are witness to Donald’s meteoric rise in popularity with the eventual eclipsing of Walt’s much beloved Mickey Mouse. It is in the decade of the forties where Donald Duck finds...

To this day, those words increase my heart rate. I didn’t care much for the Lawrence Welk show, but I’d routinely sit through a half hour of The Lennon Sisters to be certain not to miss a minute of what was to come. Once Tinkerbell appeared over the Disneyland ®castle, I would start the incantation: “Please be animation, please be animation, please be animation…

Over Thanksgiving, our registrar, Anel Muller, traveled with her family to visit her parents in Miami. During this visit, Anel's father, Rene Rodriguez, wore his WDFM logo wear proudly, especially on the family trip to Walt Disney World, where he wore not only his cap but his logo tee-shirt as well.

A cold wind whipped through the buttes and chilled the small town of Yuba City on a wet Christmas Eve. Residents prepared for the following morning, filled with the joy of the season, but also with a watchful eye on the Feather and Yuba Rivers, swollen with winter rain. At four minutes past midnight, the emergency announcement went out and visions of sugarplums were dashed, as parents snatched sleeping children from their beds and headed for higher ground...

Over the course of nearly eight decades, Donald Duck has become one of the most celebrated and fondly remembered of all Disney characters. What is sometimes not remembered is that Donald began life in 1934 as a very different duck. His physical appearance, in his earliest films, was one that many of today’s Disney fans would scarcely recognize.

To highlight our new exhibition of Disney Live-action film posters in our theater lobby, we asked Disney historian, Jeff Kurtti, to give us some background on why Walt Disney moved into that genre and the success he found there. Although popular legend has a confident and sprightly Walt Disney stepping off the train from Kansas City, Missouri in Los Angeles, with visions of a cartoon empire dancing in his head, the reality is somewhat different. “It was a big day, the day I got on that Santa Fe...

For the new year, we're introducing a series titled "What Do YOU Do?" where we'll be asking a museum staff member to answer five questions about their position at The Walt Disney Family Museum, their fondest Disney memories, and other personal tidbits. This month, we highlight Jessica Blake!

In most parts of the country, New Year's Day can be cold and dreary, but in my hometown of Pasadena, California, the roses are always in bloom. The Tournament of Roses Parade was first held in 1890 by members of Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club. The club members were eager to showcase their new home's mild winter weather...

We're really pleased and impressed that video game producer Warren Spector went to such extremes to study the original animations from early Disney shorts to create the newest video game from Disney: Epic Mickey. We were fortunate enough to sit down with Warren--who has a Walt Disney Family Museum family membership, by the way!--and chat with him about the game, what inspired him, his love for all things Disney, and what it was like to bring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back to life. What is the...

It's Thanksgiving, so we've asked Museum staffers what they're all thankful for... here's what they said!

Disney historian Paul Anderson, a big Mickey Mouse Club fan, takes us on trip down memory lane:

Disney author and film historian, J.B. Kaufman graciously wrote this piece for us for Veteran's Day.

There are two rules for participating in the volunteer program at The Walt Disney Family Museum. First, have fun. Second, learn something new. For some volunteers, only the first rule truly applies. Join us to have fun and learn, and as Volunteer Joseph Titizian demonstrates how you might get more out of your experience than you expect...

Disney historian Jeff Kurtti penned this tribute to James MacArthur for us: One of Walt Disney’s many talents was a flair for casting, and a genius for recognizing unusual talent. Although the application of this gift within the Animation trade is well-known, as is the roster of live-action stars who came to be associated with Walt, both professionally and culturally—Annette Funicello, Hayley Mills, Fess Parker, Fred Mac Murray, and Dean Jones to name a few—there is one actor whose relationship with Walt Disney is frequently forgotten: James MacArthur.

We'd like to thank everyone who came out for the Anniversary Weekend (Oct 1-3), as well as all our guests who visited the Museum during the month of October! Here are photo highlights of all our celebratory activities!

Just in time for the creepiest of holidays, we asked our Preparator, Ben Peters, to give us a look at some of the more creepier artifacts in our Collection. As a general rule, my favorite parts of Disney films are the scary scenes and of the characters, I generally prefer the villains. My coworkers always call me over when they pull out an artifact that is especially sinister looking because they know I will love it. So for this Halloween blog I’ve chosen to share just a few of the more creepy artifacts in our collection. Happy Halloween!

This is the last of a five-part series that looks back at the Museum's roots and its journey to opening day, Oct. 1st, 2009. If mountmakers, installers, preparators, art handlers (we have lots of different names) do their job well you will never know they exist. We might spend hours, days, months, even years preparing and installing an exhibit but when you, the visitor, come to see it we don’t want you thinking anything about the work we do. Our charge is to get the artifacts into the cases in...