{"id":268,"date":"2007-06-19T19:33:40","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T02:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harrymccracken.com\/blog\/?p=268"},"modified":"2007-06-19T19:33:40","modified_gmt":"2007-06-20T02:33:40","slug":"268","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/19\/268\/","title":{"rendered":"Deutschland Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, I think of this blog as a refuge from controversy, not a hotbed of it. But John J. Powers, author of the play about Walt Disney and Hitler I reviewed recently<\/a>, has written to me and Mike Barrier to protest our posts about his work. (I first learned about the play over at Mike’s site<\/a>; Mike has already commented on Mr. Powers’ communications.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Powers disputes some of the things I said and asks, “Please, McCracken, do your research, and have the responsibility to correct yourself to those who would pay attention to your blog. ” Okay, I’ll try.<\/p>\n

Mr. Powers on evidence that Disney met Hitler:<\/p>\n

Firstly, the evidence for the meeting of Disney and Hitler is in the Disney
\nArchives and in the Volkische Beobachter, the German Nazi newspaper. The
\nArchives point out that Munich newspapers, in the summer of 1935, welcomed
\nDisney (with headlines, no less) as “the great white hope against the Jews
\nof Hollywood.” Disney’s anti-Semitism and anti-unionism were well known in
\nHollywood, and Leni Riefenstahl came to Hollywood in 1938 and was wined and
\ndined by Disney while all other studio heads boycotted her. For
\ninformation on Disney’s anti-Semitism, please read DISNEY’S WORLD by
\nLeonard Mosley or WALT DISNEY: HOLLYWOOD’S DARK PRINCE by Marc Elliot, or
\nagain, WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION by Neal
\nGabler.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mike has responded to the above better than I ever could; Mr. Powers hasn’t, of course, provided proof of a Disney-Hitler meeting. If he has any specific evidence that one took place, I think that every Disney historian worth his or her salt would love to hear about it.
\n
\nMr. Powers also says “There was no bar code on the book onstage (you have a vivid imagination).” There were several books onstage; sitting in the audience, I thought I saw a bar code on one, in a stack under a table. After the play ended, I walked over to look more closely–and it sure looked like a bar code to me.<\/p>\n

Mr. Powers: “Incidentally, the Grimm tale “The Jew in the Thornbush” (not AND the Thornbush) is contained in the original complete Grimm tales (not the abridged collection most Americans know).” Point taken: I misheard the name of the tale.<\/p>\n

When I responded to Mr. Powers and expressed my distaste for Marc Eliot’s Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince<\/em> and Leonard Mosley’s Disney’s World<\/em>–which, as Mike said, are the worst Disney biographies ever written– and said the latter was riddled with basic errors, he responded, in part, “No one but you seems to be suggesting Mosley’s factual errors. If you could bother to cite them and back up what you say that would be different.”<\/p>\n

Lemme try to cite some errors, which I’ll do by reprinting the cover story we published in Animato <\/em>#10 (Summer 1986) in its entirety below. As for backing up the contention that Mosley made mistakes, anyone out there want to confirm that the mistakes Gary Hoo mentions are indeed mistakes? Alternatively, anyone want to argue, for instance, that Fred Moore did <\/em>work on Snow White<\/em>, or that Summer Magic<\/em> and The Incredible Journey<\/em> are<\/em> cartoons? (Side note: When Mosley’s book was published, Dave Smith of the Disney Archives sent me a very, very long list of the mistakes it contained.)<\/p>\n

mosleycover.jpg
\nmosley1.jpg
\nmosley2.jpg
\nmosley3.jpg
\nmosley4.jpg
\nmosley5.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally, I think of this blog as a refuge from controversy, not a hotbed of it. But John J. Powers, author of the play about Walt Disney and Hitler I reviewed recently, has written to me and Mike Barrier to protest our posts about his work. (I first learned about the play over at Mike’s … Continue reading “Deutschland Dispute”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[45,43,46,37,42,44,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animato","category-disney-in-deutschland","category-gary-hoo","category-hitler","category-john-j-powers","category-leonard-mosley","category-walt-disney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}