Between Books - Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America

I’m tired! I think Walt Disney may have been tired too!

Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America by Theodore Thomas, J.B. Kaufman, and Didier Ghez outlines Walt Disney’s trip to South America in 1941. The book covers the entirety of the nearly 3-month fall expedition, spreading American goodwill as a strategy to win over South American neighbors away from Nazi sympathy. Disney was asked by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) to use his global celebrity to strengthen Western hemisphere ties. The story is told heavily in images with the authors providing narration to the group’s daily doings. The volume does not focus on just Walt Disney but recognizes that El Grupo the 18 Walt Disney employees and family members on the journey, were at times separated into smaller traveling parties or even in the same cities separated to meet with numerous local industries or celebrities. Due to the highly visual nature of the text, it at times feels like a documentary and less than a book.

I’m tired, did I mention that? The goal of the authors is to provide a detailed account of the trip. The trio, therefore, doesn’t provide us a thesis to prove, in fact, the three have other works on El Grupo that have this as a goal. As a reader, you understand this is a very visual book seeking to provide a daily accounting. Hence, I’m tired. It feels like the group, especially Disney, rarely had a chance to rest during this fact-finding and goodwill-building adventure. Even in “downtime” artists like Mary and Lee Blair and Jack Ryman were sketching, painting, and refining ideas for potential future movies Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Or perhaps, Jack Cutting may visit a local studio to supervise a movie dubbing into Spanish. The book makes it clear that this group of 18 were constantly in motion. And while early in the trip, they may have spent in the reader's mind “weeks” in Rio, it becomes clear to the reader that on later stays the group seemed to only linger a day or two in a location before moving on again.

Design-wise, I was pulled into the book and it often felt like a visual experience and not a book. That is why I feel tired. This isn’t an era of perfect staged pictures. The spontaneous nature of many of the pictures helps one to feel the emotion and action, like a tired Lillian Disney asleep on a train car one can feel the stuffiness within. The closed eyes and the improperly directed glances remind us this is a different time before everyone had a camera and the time to coordinate numerous shots for the perfect social media image.

My only complaint with the design is some pages have maps on the layout that pictures and text sit upon. These maps have notations to locations on the page design. Sadly at times, I read these like image captions and not part of the page design which took me out of the journey for a bit.

Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America by Theodore Thomas, J.B. Kaufman, and Didier Ghez is a book for those who want to go deeper into Disney’s trip to South America in a highly visual way. For those who want to see Disney legends like the Blairs and Frank Thomas working, drawing, and immersing themselves into a culture this offering is for you. The authors help me to understand the kinetic and tiring nature of the trip, even without making this an overt goal. I wondered, can El Grupo just kick back and relax? An answer that seems like no as Frank Thomas was teaching himself Spanish even on the long-trip home.


Quick Note: While you can purchase this text on Amazon. I grabbed mine at Stuart Ng books where I was able to pick up an autographed copy. 

 

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