Today on the podcast, we are continuing our story of Walt Disney, Larry Watkin, and how the

Disney studio transformed itself from a modest animation company into a full-blown live-action

studio. I know at the end of last week's episode, I said, I thought we had one more part to finish up this story,

but really it's two. One this week and then one next week. There was simply too much to

explore in a single episode and to cover all of the interesting developments in depth. But the

series does end well with a few surprises that I think will be new for most of our listeners.

At some point over the years, I think I've described my process in creating these series.

I work on outlines, which I often develop over many years.

The outlines have most of the quotes and sources that I'll use

in creating the script. On my end here, everything is footnoted like an article or an essay.

The script for our current series on Larry Watkin, for example, has exactly 332 footnotes

that identify each of the sources that I've used to put this story together.

Sometimes these outlines are very long.

The single spaced outline for the series on Herb Reimann, for example, was almost 200 pages.

Then, as we moved to the series together, I arranged the outline into a script, usually

a week or two at a time, and sometimes it simply takes more words to explore the drama

and the events than I had anticipated.

And that's more or less why we have two episodes left and not just one.

But there are lots of interesting elements as we move

toward the end. This is the story not only of Larry Watkin and Walt Disney, but also of how

the Disney company reinvents itself in the 1950s. But in terms of our story this week,

we are just about up to the premiere of Darby O'Gill,

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