In Alice in Wonderland, a doorknob tells Alice she’s too large to go through the small door. It’s simply impassible. She asks, “You mean impossible?” “No,” he replies, “Impassible. Nothing’s impossible.” Walt Disney believed that, and on this day in 1956 on the Disneyland TV series, he set out to prove that. As Disney Legend Blaine Gibson remembered many years later, “Walt’s whole aim seemed to be away from slapstick, but into believability. That doesn’t mean it had to be real. It had to be believable.” From Mickey Mouse in Thru the Mirror to the debut of the deleted soup-eating scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in pencil test form, Walt offered viewers a look into the art of animation, proving in that medium, some things may be impassible, but nothing’s impossible. But wait, this is Halloween! Certainly, Walt wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to add some tricks or treats. The “trick” was a book Walt held up and referred to as Walt Disney’s The Art of Animation. There was no such book that existed. That was simply a prop created for the program, but it was enough to get viewers trying to find it in their bookstores. A couple years later, Bob Thomas borrowed the title for his book The Art of Animation. The “treat” was an appropriately chilling segment from Fantasia, the haunting “Night on Bald Mountain.”
