Interviews
Interactions with Walt Disney
You meet him on elevators and so on, never really had to answer to him in terms of an assignment. When he was still working and heavily involved in animation, I was too new. The only thing I remember was the fact that you got really strict orders from the time you were hired to not call him Mr. Disney, you call him Walt.
I used to answer the phone for Milt Kahl, who was an avid chess player. He would play chess at noon and if he were out of the room and his phone rang, I picked it up for him and it would be Walt on the phone, and he would say,” Hi, did he win?” And I would say, “No, he lost.” “Okay, I’ll call him back in a couple days.” That was about the only ways I can remember relating to Disney himself.
Date: August 6, 1998
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Janice Tanaka
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
