Walt Disney Productions (a): The Walt Years

In 1940, Walt Disney was faced with crafting a message of corporate accountability under duress. His company, the product of his creative genius, had been forced to submit to public accountability. It had a pressing need to raise preferred equity finance for a major expansion during a period of market uncertainty, war, and reported losses. This paper conducts a “close reading” of the “Letter to Stockholders” in Walt Disney Productions' 1940 annual report, the first such letter signed by Walt Disney. The letter's rhetorical features, including metaphor and ideology, are examined in the context of the times. What is revealed is an accountability document skillfully crafted with the exigencies faced by Disney's company firmly in mind. The letter offers suggestive insight to the world as Disney made sense of it. The paper contributes to understanding the use of rhetoric by top management in activities related to aspects of financial accountability and reporting. It also helps to understand better a significant public persona of the 20th century, Walt Disney.

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Trading Places: Das doppelte Lottchen and The Parent Trap

Transnational Film Remakes ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474407236.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Constantine Verevis

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Cultural Production ◽

Commercial Success ◽

Walt Disney ◽

Textual Production ◽

The Us ◽

Walt Disney Productions ◽

Transnational Connections ◽

Transnational Film ◽

Live Action

In 1961, Walt Disney Productions released The Parent Trap. A huge popular and commercial success for the Disney studio, it was theatrically re-issued in 1968; extended through three television sequels (1986, 1989, 1989); and remade in 1998. Perhaps less well known is that Disney’s 1961 version of The Parent Trap was itself already a remake of German, Japanese and British versions – Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), Hibari no komoriuta (1951), and Twice Upon a Time (1953) – each in turn derived from Erich Kästner’s 1949 novel Das doppelte Lottchen. While the cultural production does not end here – with subsequent versions reported in India, Iran and Korea, and animated and live action remakes in Japan and Germany – this chapter inquires into the transnational connections between Kästner’s novel and the US and German versions (originals and remakes). This chapter extends its analysis beyond Kästner’s twin figures of Lisa (from Vienna) and Lotte (from Munich) to chart not only a cartography of transnational flows – a political economy of textual production and reception – but also indicate the way in which the films’ exchange of twins is symptomatic of that between original and transnational film remake.

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