Q : Several years ago I was watching Disney Channel late at night and ended up watching a show in black and white about the life and works of Tchaikovsky. The film focused upon how he came to create the music for the Sleeping Beauty ballet. I was wondering what the name of this film was and if it was a part of some special series. I’ve never been able to find any information on it since, but I’ve always wanted to watch it again. Any chance it might eventually be released to DVD?
Michelle, Orange, California
A: The TV show you saw was The Peter Tchaikovsky Story (1959). It was released as bonus material on the 2003 Special Edition DVD of Sleeping Beauty.
Walt Disney's Dreamfinder and Figment
Q : I had heard that sometime in the 1980s, The Disney Channel was going to produce a television show starring Dreamfinder from the Journey Into Imagination attraction at EPCOT. Did such a show exist?
Matt, Austin, Texas
A: The show, to be called Dreamfinders, was planned for Disney Channel and announced in the first issue of The Disney Channel Magazine, but no shows were ever completed. The show would have featured a cast of children in a “real world” setting, confronted with a perplexing dilemma. Then Dreamfinder would whisk them away on a magic journey to “The Realm of Imagination.” There, free of all worldly constraints, the children would use their ideas and dreams to find a creative solution to their problem. The show would have been an hour long, with a new [episode] each week.
Q : I was wondering if The Adventures of Chip ‘N’ Dale from season five of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color has ever been released on DVD somewhere? My four-year-old daughter loves them, and I remember the song they sang during this episode. I have only been able to find it on VHS so far and the tape is very old, so it’s of poor quality.
Jason, Edmond, Oklahoma
A: No, that show was only released on VHS tape, in the mid-1980s. Individual Chip and Dale cartoons have been released in various packages on DVD, such as Walt Disney’s Classic Cartoon Favorites, vol. 4: Starring Chip ‘n’ Dale.
Q : When I was a kid in a small town in Saskatchewan with one TV channel in the 60s and 70s, we would always watch the Sunday Disney movie. One particularly stood out, as it was in a swamp. I think it was about a kid who thought he saw a monster (dinosaur) in the swamp, and then he went in search of it. As an adult I went to Okefenokee Swamp because of the memory.
Margaret, Victoria, British Columbia.
A: You may be thinking of The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971), starring Burgess Meredith and Agnes Moorehead.