John Culhane - Special Disney Guest - author of Walt Disney's Fantasia
Mickey Mouse Movie Masterpieces and Walt Disney's Fantasia: April 4, 2009, Shea's Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
John Culhane hard at work on "Walt Disney's Fantasia"
John Culhane,
the self-proclaimed jolly journalist inspired by animation, has been
caricatured as a Disney character in two animated features 23 years apart.He inspired Mr. Snoops in “The Rescuers” in
1977, and Flying John in George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in “Fantasia
2000.”His cousin, James (later Shamus)
Culhane, animated the Seven Dwarfs marching home singing “Heigh-Ho” in Disney’s
“Snow White” in 1937.So John Culhane
was born and bred in the briar patch of animation.
When Flying
John was 17, he traveled by car from his hometown of Rockford,
Illinois, to the Holmby Hills of California,
to spend a Sunday afternoon, one-on-one, with Walt Disney.Disney’s daughter, Diane, then also 17,
brought them together in Walt’s backyard.When Culhane told Disney that he wanted to be a writer, “Walt said that
I seemed to love Rockford as much as he loved his own home town of Marceline,
Missouri,” Culhane remembered. “Walt advised me to “get a job on your hometown
newspaper, write for your neighbors, and just keep widening the circle’.”
So Culhane’s journalism career,
which has now lasted more than half a century, got underway on the Rockford,
Illinois, Register-Republic, where he was a reporter and daily columnist.Hewrote a prizewinning story about a meeting between poet and Lincoln
biographer Carl Sandburg and92-year old
retired Rockford farmer and active woodcarver Axel Farb (The headline was
(“Sandburg, sculptor in words, finds poetry in wood”).As a result, Sandburg recommended Culhane for
a job on his old newspaper, “the writer’s newspaper,” The Chicago Daily News,
where Culhane became a feature writer, foreign correspondent, and interviewed
Walt about Mickey Mouse’s 25th birthday.
Culhane then became an Associate Editor of
Newsweek, where his Christmas, 1970, cover story on “Nostalgia: the Vogue for
the Old”, put Santa Claus by Norman Rockwell on the cover, and covered Mickey
Mouse’s latest doings inside. Culhane next became a Roving Editor of the
Reader’s Digest, and wrote about “Unforgettable Snow White” (“It was not the
Prince’s kiss that brought Snow White to life.It was the genius of Walt Disney.” He also freelanced, putting Mickey
Mouse on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with a story about what
Disney was doing after Walt.
Along the way, he wrote three
animated prime time television specials with Shamus Culhane;books about ‘Fantasia’ and “Fantasia
2000;a book and a television special
about the making of Aladdin; anda book,
“Special Effects in the Movies” for which he learned how Mary Poppins
flew.He interviewed computer
animatedWoody and Buzz Lightyear for a
PIXAR DVD of “Toy Story” , andis filmed
for special features in the Premium Anniversary DVD’s of such Disney classics
as “Jungle Book”, “Sleeping Beauty” and, on March 10, 2009, “Pinocchio.”Throughout his life, he has spoken about
animation, from New York’s Lincoln Center to Cal Arts to France to Guangdong
University for Foreign Studies in China.
Mr. Snoops (aka John Culhane) snooping.
Flying John (Culhane) from Fantasia 2000
Buffalo International Film Festival celebrates Movies of the World
