Diane Disney Miller, Daughter of Walt Disney, Passes Away at 79

Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, has sadly passed away. The last living child of Walt, Diane devoted her life to preserving and sharing personal artefacts from her father's rich history, as well as her philanthropy. She sadly died yesterday, at age 79, following complications from a fall in September.

The Fairest One of All Author Working on Making of Pinocchio Book

The Fairest One of All author, Kaufman (pictured with Walt Disney's eldest daughter, Diane Disney Miller).

We have learned that J.B. Kaufman, the film historian behind 2012's fantastic and superbly detailed The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, - a history of the making of Disney's first ever feature animated film - is now working on a similar book for the studio's second film, Pinocchio!

A113Animation reader/frequent contributor Munir Abedrabbo (who will be launching his own retrospective Disney review feature on this blog very soon) emailed the Fairest One of All author, congratulating him on the book and asking if he had considered doing a similar one for Pinocchio, Kaufman responded:

"It happens that I am already working on a book about the making of Pinocchio -- a fascinating subject, and I'm excited about it. Just as with the Snow White books, we're going to try to bring this one out in time for the 75th anniversary of the film, which means I have some very tight deadlines. Wish me luck!"

Pinocchio, first released theatrically in February 1940, is widely considered to be one of the greatest animated films of all time, eclipsed, perhaps only be its predecessor, so it's certainly exciting to hear that the author who so brilliantly recounted the making of Walt's first film is now doing the same with his second. The downside though, given the comment about coinciding the book's release with the film's 75th anniversary, is that the book will then likely not be complete until 2015. At least we know it will be worth the wait.

Our review of The Fairest One of All can be read here, and you can order it below, via Amazon.

The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Review - A Triumph Befitting Disney's Classic

Firstly, I apologise for the tardiness of this review; I've been snowed under, but hopefully normal service is now restored - there'll be a review up of The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation in the next week as well. Thanks to the team at Aurum Press for sending me a copy of this - US version sold by Weldon Owen.

The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an almost complete account of the huge production of Walt Disney's first feature length animated feature, the fantastic classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Such a gigantically important, influential and trend-setting picture, obviously, took a mammoth amount of effort, as such, this book is an absolutely mammoth undertaking itself.