Q : I am a retired physician whose paternal grandmother was an Atwell and her brother Roy was the voice of Doc in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I am trying to find out information about Roy, his wife Ethel Smith, and his daughter June Carol Atwell. Can you help?
Jerrold, Wheaton, California
A: We do not have any information on Roy Atwell other than what you can find on the Internet, and in J.B. Kaufman’s recent book on the making of Snow White. One website is www.royatwell.net.  Atwell’s third wife, Ethel Smith, is not the same Ethel Smith (1910-1996) who played the organ in Disney’s Melody Time (“Blame It on the Samba”).
Q : I am a huge fan of the music in the animated features of the 1950s—Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, etc. I’d love more than anything to be able to purchase full scores for these movies, but all that exists are piano reductions. What happened to the scores for these classics after the recordings were made? Were they just thrown out or are they locked up in a vault somewhere?
David, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A: The Music Department at the Disney Studio maintains all the scores for the Disney films.
Q : First-time questioner here. A few people say that in Sleeping Beauty, at the part during “Once Upon a Dream” when Aurora and Phillip are dancing next to the water, that the reflection is that of Ariel and Eric! Not only do I not see the resemblance, but seeing as this film was made 30 years before Ariel and Eric were even designed, I find this hard to believe. Nevertheless, I’d feel better if you would look into it and prove it once and for all.
Sheila, Conestoga, Pennsylvania
A: You are entirely correct, in that Sleeping Beauty was made in 1959 and The Little Mermaid in 1989. There would certainly be no subtle references to the later characters in the former film since indeed they had not yet been created.
Q : Considering the Oscars® just happened, I have an appropriate question. I have searched and searched but can’t locate the source of the following: I read somewhere that Disney was so upset at the Academy for refusing to consider Fantasia worthy of a Best Picture nomination that he pulled all his cartoon shorts from consideration for the 1940 Best Cartoon awards. Indeed, not a single Disney cartoon was nominated for 1940, this after Disney dominated the category the first eight years prior and, skipping 1940, the two years following, winning every time. So what he did would explain the total absence of his work from the 1940 awards. Is this true?
Michael, Irvine, California
A: I cannot imagine that this is true. By 1940, Academy voters had become accustomed to Walt Disney winning the Best Cartoon Oscars each year, so perhaps they felt others should be given a chance. In fact, by then, many of the other studios had improved their cartoon-making capabilities so much that they had some films that would give Walt Disney some definite competition. The winner at the 1941 ceremony was former Disney animator Rudolf Ising’s The Milky Way for MGM.
Q : Recently I have become very interested in the behind-the-scenes of The Black Cauldron and have come across sources that say there were 12 minutes of film that were cut out of the film at the last minute due to some of the scenes being too scary. Can you give me detailed information about all of these scenes, please?
Mitchell, Roseville, California
A: You can find discussions of some of the cut scenes on the Internet. The production of The Black Cauldron was troubled, and its release was scheduled just about the time that Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg came to the Studio. After seeing an early version of the film, which had been started under the previous Studio administration, Katzenberg had definite ideas on what would improve it, so he was the one who ordered the cuts. Many of them concerned the scary “Cauldron Born,” the army of zombie-like creatures brought forth by the Horned King.
Q : My family and I watched The Ugly Dachshund, and we all thought the set looked similar to that used for The Brady Bunch (both the house itself and the turf grass). Were the same sets used for both?
Andrew, Nissequogue, New York
A: No, these were completely different sets. The Ugly Dachshund was filmed at the Disney Studio in Burbank in 1965, with the back of the house and swimming pool on Stage 3. In fact, the swimming pool was built in the same tank that had held the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Brady Bunch TV series, which had no connection to Disney, didn’t begin airing until 1969. (For the exterior of the Brady Bunch house, the producers of that show used a home on Dilling Street in North Hollywood.)
Q : Do you have any filming information on the Snowball Express movie? We are going to visit Crested Butte, Colorado, and would like to stop and see some buildings and areas they filmed at; via the Internet we see some of the buildings are still there. As for the hotel, did they actually build one or part of one, and do you know where they filmed the hotel and ski scenes? Any help would really make the trip fun.
Paul, Rochester, Minnesota
A: The Archives’ production records for Snowball Express do not give much detail of the filming in Crested Butte—just notations such as bank, garage, gas station, etc. The hotel exterior was indeed a set built at the location. It included rooms built behind the false front where the crew could warm up between takes in the frigid weather. The ski area was about two miles from town, and filming was done at Washington Gulch, Keystone Slope, and “ski slope near fish hatchery.”  Most of the interiors were filmed at the Disney Studio in Burbank, California. One item of interest:  During production, the name of the film was Chateau Bon Vivant.