DISNEY IS BACK—AND SO AM I—ON TCM

Featured Journal Leonard Maltin TV June 27, 2016

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I’m happy to announce another evening of Treasures from the Disney Vault on Turner Classic Movies beginning at 8pm EST/5pm PST Tuesday. I recorded my introductions to this selection of cartoons, features and TV episodes at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco and again it provided a perfect backdrop. (I’ll be writing soon about the Museum’s current Pinocchio exhibit, which is a knockout.)

As usual, TCM has scheduled a variety of goodies in the latest Disney potpourri. If you’re a baby boomer, like me, you’ll enjoy revisiting Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap. If you’re a Disney aficionado you’ll want to check out Waking Sleeping Beauty, Don Hahn’s fascinating 2009 documentary about the renaissance of animation at the Burbank studio in the late 1980s and early ’90s—and why it went off-track.

(Courtesy of Disney)

There are Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons from the 1930s that are deserving of the word “classic” (including my all-time favorite, The Band Concert), and a landmark from Walt’s long television career: the first episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, from 1961, called “An Adventure in Color.”

I remember watching that show the night it was broadcast. I was ten years old and already hooked on All Things Disney. Nothing much has changed as far as I’m concerned…and I’m delighted that TCM is diving into the studio vault on a regular basis. I hope you’re enjoying these evenings as much as I am. To see the Tuesday night schedule, click HERE.

Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin is one of the world’s most respected film critics and historians. He is best known for his widely-used reference work Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and its companion volume Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide, now in its third edition, as well as his thirty-year run on television’s Entertainment Tonight. He teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and appears regularly on Reelz Channel and Turner Classic Movies. His books include The 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, The Great Movie Comedians, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, Movie Comedy Teams, The Great American Broadcast, and Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia. He served two terms as President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, is a voting member of the National Film Registry, and was appointed by the Librarian of Congress to sit on the Board of Directors of the National Film Preservation Foundation. He hosted and co-produced the popular Walt Disney Treasures DVD series and has appeared on innumerable television programs and documentaries. He has been the recipient of awards from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Telluride Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, and San Diego’s Comic-Con International. Perhaps the pinnacle of his career was his appearance in a now-classic episode of South Park. (Or was it Carmela consulting his Movie Guide on an episode of The Sopranos?) He holds court at leonardmaltin.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook; you can also listen to him on his weekly podcast: Maltin on Movies. — [Artwork by Drew Friedman]