Of Mouse and Men: The Disney Archives

Mickey Mouse turned 60 this year, an age by which almost everyone has amassed a good-size store of memories to relive and souvenirs to re-examine. Of course, if you’re the mouse that launched an entertainment empire, you can’t be expected to have kept all your stuff stashed in your basement.

That’s why you won’t find all Disney memorabilia at Disneyland. Because of a desire for a public collection near the theme parks of the photos, documents, magazines, books, souvenirs and other items pertinent to the history of Walt Disney and his creations, the Walt Disney Co. archives established two official public repositories of Disneyana--one in Orlando, Fla.; the other at the Elizabeth J. Schultz Anaheim History Room of the Anaheim Public Library. In addition, of course, independent collectors and others have set up their own operations.

The History Room could be a second home for local history buffs--it is packed with books, clippings and historical documents covering every aspect of Orange County’s past, with the Disney collection accorded prominent status. A glass case in the middle of one wall is devoted to a changing display of various Disney artifacts, from a belt buckle awarded to a Disney technical crew by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1933 to a card from the Disney family thanking someone for an expression of sympathy on the death of Walt Disney. There are Disney character statuettes, buttons commemorating special occasions at Disneyland and the occasional trinket from Walt Disney World in Florida or Tokyo Disneyland.

“We pick up a few things from the other parks,” said library acting curator Sharon Hybki, “but we mainly concentrate on Disneyland.”

A new batch of printed matter and historical items arrives at the library each month, sent by the Disney archives in Burbank, Hybki said. “We have regulars who come in at the end of each month to see what’s arrived in those packages.”

Most of the visitors are writers or historians researching some aspect of Walt Disney or his creations or business ventures, Hybki said. These scholars often find themselves happily wading through the nearly 2,000 photographs and the thousands of corporate financial records, annual reports, movie press kits, Disneyland employee periodicals, documents proposing the purchase of land in Anaheim on which to build Disneyland, brochures, pamphlets, children’s books, announcements and newspaper clippings.

Hybki said there is no accurate catalogue of the number of items in the collection, but she estimated the total to be “in the tens of thousands.”

A few miles away in Garden Grove is a substantially smaller, unofficial memorabilia collection, but it can boast of being housed in a historic structure. The small cases of Disney souvenirs and photographs sit inside the wooden single-car garage that served as Walt Disney’s studio in 1923--five years before he drew Mickey Mouse for the first time.

The garage originally stood behind Disney’s uncle’s house at 4406 Kingswell Ave. in Hollywood. Disney moved to Hollywood from Kansas City after failing to raise enough money to complete a pilot film called “Alice in Cartoonland.” He lived in his Uncle Robert’s home and tried to find a job as a director with one of the film studios. When he did not land a directing job, he moved into the garage, set up an animation stand out of scrap lumber, had stationery printed with the address of his new “studio” and began making joke films that he sold to Alexander Pantages, owner of a chain of West Coast theaters.

Although Disney Co. archivists do not consider the garage Disney’s first animation studio, a group of enthusiasts calling themselves the Friends of Walt Disney believe that the structure is worth preserving, said Terry Thomas, a volunteer with the Garden Grove Historical Society. The society is the organization that displays the garage. The Friends of Walt Disney bought the garage in 1982 for $8,500 and presented it to the Garden Grove Historical Society in October, 1984.

It is located today at Heritage Park in Garden Grove, a piece of land off Euclid Street the society uses to preserve historic buildings.

The concrete foundation of the garage is new, but the wooden walls and roof are original. Although there are no records to substantiate this, it is thought that the small room within the structure may have been Disney’s darkroom and the wooden workbench that sits in the garage may have been the animator’s original one, Thomas said.

THE DISNEY ARCHIVES AND GARAGE AT A GLANCE

Where: Archives--Elizabeth J. Schultz Anaheim History Room of the Anaheim Public Library, 500 W. Broadway, Anaheim.

Garage--Heritage Park, 12174 Euclid St., Garden Grove.

Hours: Archives--9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Closed weekends.

Garage--9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays, other days by prior arrangement.

Admission: Free.

Information: Archives--(714) 999-1880.

Garage--(714) 530-8871.