I’m excited about WALT’S PEOPLE - TALKING DISNEY WITH THE ARTISTS WHO KNEW HIM, a new book project being edited by Didier Ghez. Each book will collect rare unpublished interviews with Disney animation artists. With most of the Golden Age Mouse employees now gone, these raw interviews should offer a wealth of new, previously unavailable, information to students of Disney animation and allow everybody to hear these artists in their own voices. From the press release:

Contributors to the series include noted Disney historians Robin Allan, Paul F. Anderson, Michael Barrier, J.B. Kaufman, Jim Korkis, Mike Lyons, John Province, Thorkil Rasmussen, Arn Saba and Klaus Strzyz. These key Disney experts, by accepting to contribute to the project, are giving readers access to the source materials they used for their works. Many of these materials are being published for the first time in their entirety. We are also uncovering new or quasi-unknown material virtually every day: a forgotten interview with Woolie Reitherman, lost tapes of talks with Paul Murry, rare conversations with Al Hubbard, Floyd Gottfredson and many others that will be released in the upcoming volumes of the series. Each book will have as broad a focus as possible, discussing Disney animation, Disney theme parks and Disney comic-book history with interviews of the best artists in each of those fields, be they from the early ’20s or from the early 21st century.

The first volume is being released in early November. This initial offering will include interviews with Rudy Ising, Dave Hand, Bill Tytla, Ken Anderson, Jack Hannah, John Hench, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Harper Goff and Joyce Carlson. The book will be available on Xlibris, Amazon and other on-line retailers. This is an independently published book so hopefully Disney aficionados will get behind this project so we’ll see subsequent volumes in the series.