Q : I have heard that in Walt’s formal office there was this bookshelf, and I was told that some of those books later became Disney movies. Do you know which books later became movies? The one that I was curious about was the C.S. Lewis one that I heard he had.
Dennis, Buena Park, California
A: The only C.S. Lewis book on Walt’s office bookshelves was his Poems (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962). Other books there that were made into Disney movies include Sterling North’s Rascal (autographed to Walt), Robert Lewis Taylor’s A Journey to Matecumbe, A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Upton Sinclair’s The Gnomobile (autographed to Walt), P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins in the Park and Mary Poppins from A to Z (autographed to Walt), The Gordons’ Undercover Cat (autographed to Walt), and Paul St. Pierre’s Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse (autographed to Walt).
movie still of Tom Hanks at Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks
Q : Is Tom Hanks really the first actor to portray Walt Disney in a movie?
Avi, Irvine, California
A: No, he was not. Walt was played by Walter Fenner (1886–1947) in the 1944 Columbia picture, Once Upon a Time. Christian Hoff played a young Walt Disney in the TV film, Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream, in 1981. In the last two decades, Walt has been played on various TV shows and documentaries by a number of different actors.