40 years ago on 4/13/80 “Disney’s Wonderful World” presented “Disney’s Oscar Winners”, an episode that was airing at the time of the airing of the Academy Awards on Monday 4/14/20, back when it was given yearly in April.
It’s a pleasant special showing the history of the studio in earning many Oscars over the decades, with John Forsythe narrating, who was currently the voice of Charlie on “Charlie’s Angels”, this being his only Disney project.
Disney Oscar Closeup
Walt Disney won more Academy Awards than any other filmmaker. There are reasons for it. Dick Van Dyke says in “Mary Poppins”, “When you’re with Mary Poppins suddenly you’re in places you never dreamed of. The most unusual things begin to happen.” The same words could describe what Walt Disney did in his career, the most influential filmmaker in history, touching people around the world from the time they are children till the time of old age.
40 years ago today, on Easter Sunday 4/6/80, I went to see the reissue of Walt Disney’s classic “Lady And The Tramp”, along with the reissue of Walt Disney Productions’ “The Island At The Top Of The World”.
I’d seen “Lady” in 1975, but this would be my first exposure to “Island”, which had been released as the big Christmas Disney film of 1974. A loose remake of “In Search Of The Castaways”, also directed by Robert Stevenson, it stars David Hartman, Donald Sinden, Jacques Marin, Mako, David Gwillim, and Agneta Eckemyr in an adventure of a man searching for his son, traveling across the world, to find him in a lost Vikings world, flying by a dirigible, and encountering challenges from locals from an Arctic civilization. The film has many visual wonders, and a nicely played low-key sense of humor.
With a wonderful score by Maurice Jarre, it would be the last film to be finished by Disney veteran Winston Hibler. I’d see it at the State Theater in Jersey City on Kennedy Blvd, which unfortunately wasn’t a very safe theater at that time, marring the cinematic experience, the only time we’d ever step foot in that theater.
Top of the world entertainment from the Disney studio.
