The Disney-Oz Connection

For its 2015 convention, OzCon International, the longest-running annual Oz event, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company's 1985 feature film Return to Oz. I presented the theme-related program "The Disney-Oz Connection." I discussed all the Oz and Oz-related projects the Disney company has worked on during its history, whether an individual project came to fruition or not.

Five years passed. The world found itself in the grip of an epidemic. OzCon 2020 was held virtually because of Covid. The convention chairman, Colin Ayres, asked whether I'd record my Disney-Oz presentation as a feature for the virtual convention. Sure, I said. I revised and updated the presentation for 2020. You can watch it for free on OzCon's YouTube channel, the OzConnection. "The Disney-Oz Connection" is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cib_gArPPoM

I don't know how it occurred, but the presentation has a mistake. The second slide goes by too fast. In the online version, the narration for the second slide consists of only one sentence. The missing narration isn't vital to the presentation, but it sets the stage for Walt Disney's interest in Oz. Here's the full text I wrote and recorded for that slide:

Any discussion of Oz and Disney starts with Walt Disney himself. Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901. Whether he was familiar with the Oz books when he was a child is unknown, but I think the chances are that he was. As a young child he listened while his mother read him fairy tales. As he grew older he became a voracious reader. He devoured the works of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, and as a teenager he loved the adventure stories of Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal.

OzCon for 2021 will be virtual again. I'll be presenting a program or two, if you're interested. Here's the link to more info on the OzCon website:

http://www.ozconinternational.com/

Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.