Pictured above is Animator Milt Banta with Pluto
By 1956, Walt Disney had released numerous successful feature films and cartoon shorts, but many were left to wonder, “Where do the stories come from?” So on this day in 1956, Walt set out to explain just that to television viewers in an installment of the Disneyland television series entitled, appropriately enough, Where Do the Stories Come From? As Walt Disney explained in the program’s introduction, “We will try to answer in part this question. Potential story ideas exist all around us, and our story men have been trained to closely observe everyday happenings with the thought of twisting a common occurrence into a cartoon story. Occasionally we find that books are adaptable to cartoon ideas or maybe a song will suggest a story.” Next, composer Oliver Wallace appears, recreating the conception of a song for Daisy Duck, “Crazy Over Daisy,” and explaining how that song inspired a Donald Duck cartoon short. Other cartoon shorts and their inspirations are featured, including footage of the various backyard railroads of Walt and Disney Legend animators Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball, and their explanation of how their combined passion for their hobby got them on the track to creating the cartoon short “Out of Scale.”
