Jim Korkis: Storyteller and Renaissance Man – Part 2

If you missed Part 1 it’s HERE!

Jim Korkis grew up in the Glendale-Burbank area of California and had an opportunity to meet and talk with many imagineers and animators and feels obligated to share the stories that were shared with him.

Korkis puts it all in perspective when he describes how in trying to save all these stories he saw himself as, “”¦the little boy putting his finger in the dike” to keep those stories from washing away.

This book talks very much about the many relationships Walt had with celebrities and personalities. But as Korkis says, there was never really one dominant person who influenced Walt Disney.

Korkis feels that Walt Disney was influenced by many individuals such as Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln. Charlie Chaplin was a great influence when it came to comedy and storytelling. In fact, Chaplin was very instrumental during Walt Disney’s transition from animated shorts to a particular animated feature film entitled, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Chaplin gave Walt Disney his lawyer to help Disney make that move. Chaplin had gone through a similar transition from silent movies to something longer and felt that his lawyer could lend his experience to Walt in making the jump to a full length animated feature. Korkis remarks that Walt Disney was greatly influenced by both his parents and that many of the decisions he made later in life were strongly influenced by his feelings and his relationship with the two of them.

What sets “The Vault of Walt” apart from so many other books that talk about the life and legacy of Walt Disney is the determination of Korkis to validate not once, not twice, but three times each and every fact and story before he put it down on paper.

Korkis says it took him almost 30 years to write the book because the most difficult aspect of writing this book was not the gathering of the information but the verifying of the information.

Korkis explains that for each piece of information contained in the book he sought out at least three independent sources to validate the facts. He sought out original sources like original newspaper articles”¦or letters that Walt Disney himself wrote.

Korkis describes Disney history as being “a huge jigsaw puzzle” in which we are constantly trying to find all the pieces.

Jim says he may not have all the pieces but he shares the pieces he has through writing books and articles then maybe someone else may be encouraged to say “Oh well I have this little piece to share and that completes one part of that puzzle.”

An interesting sidelight Korkis likes to talk about is how he was able to verify the facts in his book. He would publish bits and pieces of the book, as articles for “dry runs” during his research in the hopes of possibly catching the eye of someone who could either give him corrections or possibly supplement his information with even more info.

In one case he published an article about a little know Radio show called “Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air.” He was contacted by the daughter of Felix Mills who was the music director of that series and she had transcriptions of all of the shows; memories of her father working on the show; and even as a little girl she was on the show.

Korkis says the most interesting thing about Walt Disney was that he was exactly like all of us.
He worried about his health; worried about his family; worried about paying bills”¦he had his good days”¦he had his bad days.

Korkis says Walt’s greatest quality was ignorance”¦the one quality Korkis says made him a success. “He didn’t know that something COULDN’T be done!”

He didn’t know you couldn’t make a cartoon in Technicolor.

He didn’t know you couldn’t make a cartoon with synchronized sound.

He didn’t know you couldn’t make a feature length animated film because nobody would come to see it.

He did not know you couldn’t make true life adventure documentaries.

Korkis describes the writing of this book as an adventure because as he recalls it gets very exciting when you start tracking down information”¦sometimes the story takes you places you didn’t know existed.

Such was the case with Walt Disney’s 30th Wedding Anniversary celebration at Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Saloon a few days before Disneyland opened.

As Korkis started to look at that he found all kinds of interesting facts that led to him talking to many Disney historians. As he uncovered these facts Korkis began to assemble the story so that the readers would be able to experience it themselves.

Korkis says he wanted the book to be accessible to those who knew absolutely nothing about Disney as well as those who were just casually interested about Disney. He remarks that there are so many things about Disney that are elaborate that it’s almost as if you need to take a pre-requisite course in Disney 101 before you venture into reading any books and try to understand what it’s all about.

He also wanted it accessible to those who have been to the parks thousands of times or those who have Disney biographies on their shelves and the books about the making of Disneyland. So the goal was to make it accessible from the casual Disney fans to the Disney fanatic.

Korkis says, “I’d like them (his readers) to see Walt not as a corporate icon but as a son, a brother, husband, father, human being…we forgot that Walt is a real person. The more real he is the more wonderful he is as well.”

Jim Korkis wants people to come away from reading the book with a sense of wonder saying, “Now I understand that!” and share the stories with others.

The stories need to be passed along, to replace the false or misleading stories.

So what kind of satisfaction did he get from writing this book?

He says, “The most satisfying aspect of writing this book was holding a copy of the book in my hands. It is real. The second satisfaction is so many people have enjoyed it.”

So is there at least one more book begging to be written by this storyteller? Is there another book inside Jim Korkis?

Oh yes.

Just between you and me, Jim Korkis is working on a sequel, and a portion of it has already been written. Some 45,000 words have been written regarding a very popular Disney film”¦but you’ll have to wait to read the extraordinary stories behind the film.

Oh yeah, about the Wade Sampson reference? Well, as much as I would like to explain it, no one does it better than Jim Korkis himself so if you’re interested in Mr. Korkis’ pseudonym, you can read all about it in “The Vault of Walt” (Ayefour Publishing: 2010. ISBN-978-0-615-40242-0). It is also available for Kindle.

Comments (2)