‘A great moviemaker was talking...and his studio executives were both surprised and embarrassed. The man had an obsession with the human digestive tract. Later, one of the circle recalled, “On and on he went...and we just stood there waiting for the punch line, assuming it was some kind of joke. But there wasn’t any punch line. The man just had a permanent hangup about bowel movements.”

‘One could easily imagine some avant garde moviemaker with this odd preoccupation. But this was one of the best-loved creative artists in Hollywood. The man with basic physical functions on the brain was Walt Disney, the wizard of animation whose cartoon characters transcended childhood fantasies and have become part of American folklore.’

‘But that was only part of the enigma of Disney; a man whose enormous sensitivity on film was suddenly and mysteriously shot through with moments of unexpected violence; whose saccharin sentimentality could easily “turn” to become sinister and menacing, like the imagines of some fevered child.

‘Disney, in fact, was a world-famed illustrator who could not draw the creations of his own studio. while merchandised under his name, these were created by his hundreds of employees. Even the familiar looping Disney signature was not his own, and autograph hunters often felt cheated when he signed in a conventional hand.’

-- “Mickey Mouse Saved My Life” Volume 21, Out Of This World, The Illustrated Library of the Bizarre and Extraordinary edited by Perrott Phillips (Phoebus Publishing Company 1976, 1977, 1978)