Hola! On this day in 1941, Walt Disney and his staff arrived in Rio de Janeiro on a goodwill tour of South America. Ted Thomas is the writer/director of the film on this subject, Walt & El Grupo, so we felt he was a perfect source to learn more about the topic. “Fearing growing Nazi influence in Latin American capitals, Nelson Rockefeller’s agency, the Coordinator for Inter-America Affairs, asked Hollywood filmmakers to include Latin American themes in their films as part of a Good Neighbor Policy,” he said. “This quickly developed into a program of sending representatives of American art and culture on South American tours and fellowships. The Disney trip in 1941 was probably the most successful.” When asked if he thought there might be a fun piece of trivia that might not be well-known to Disney fans Ted replied, “I wonder how many people know the story of Walt greeting a theater full of school kids in Mendoza, Argentina. As Bill Cottrell, story man and Walt’s brother-in-law, recalled, Walt soon exhausted his rudimentary Spanish, so he entertained them by standing on his head. One of the eyewitnesses we interviewed (in the making of El Grupo) had his own memory. He remembered being told that the children were going to meet someone very important… and then Walt came out, walking on his hands, jumped up and said in Spanish, “Hola, chicos!” In either version, it’s an extraordinary and spontaneous moment.”
