Walt's Family & Friends DOROTHY PUDER As time goes on, the men and women who knew Walt at the earliest stages of his career are a diminishing resource. Dorothy Puder, Walt’s niece (and daughter of his older brother Herbert) held the record, for some time, of continuous involvement in Walt’s life. Walt was about 14 when she was born, and by the time she was five, he was utilizing her to help him experiment with animation. The Walt Disney Family Museum just became aware that Dorothy died last summer. In honor of the one year anniversary of her passing, the Museum is presenting the following assemblage of memories from this warm and lovely woman. ON WALT AND EARLY ANIMATION “He started quite early using the movie camera and that was rather new in those days, and he took some films of me. And he had one film that he sort of experimented with me in a way, in those early days. He was just a teenager then, I would assume he was about 18. He had me walk down the walk in front of the house and I was carrying a full milk bottle, and I was wheeling my baby dolly carriage, and I accidentally broke the bottle and the milk and everything went everywhere. And then he reversed the film so that I backed up, the milk all came up in the bottle. That was one little film that we did, and we did another one that had my mother coming out of the house with something like a warm coat to keep me warm. These were just little segments, little ideas that he had of experimenting with the movie camera.” ON WALT AS A LATE TEEN “He was always pulling tricks on us. Like he showed up at the house one time dressed in ladies clothes. Of course his mother knew him immediately but everybody had to have a good laugh over that. I think we had a picture of that, of Walt in ladies clothes.” ON WALT AND TRAINS “We have a son whose name is David and David received a whole train set that Walt had made himself. A beautiful train set and fortunately we had a house big enough to put it in because it had everything. All the trees, and the flowers, and all the little cars he'd put together.” ON WALT AND CURIOUSITY “He sent me a book on ants one time. He just thought that book was wonderful, I'm sure. But it was so boring to me. And I'm a lot more interested in ants now than I was then. But anyway we were getting ready to move to Los Angeles to be with the family and he called me on the phone and asked me if I still had that book. And I was so embarrassed; I just had to say that I didn't even know where the book was. So I had to tell him no, that I was sorry I didn't know where it was." ON FLORA “My grandmother (Flora) was famous for, it was a certain kind of candy, it was a lot like fudge but it was white ... divinity, wonderful divinity. She was a very good cook and we always loved to be invited over to her house.” ON ELIAS AND RUTH “He (Elias) played the violin, and my Aunt Ruth played the piano, and they made quite a team and it was very nice to hear them from time to time.” ON FLORA’S PASSING “The boys had done such a sweet thing for my grandparents. They had bought them a new house and a lovely housekeeper to do anything that they wanted or needed. And my grandmother was killed by gas seeping from the furnace. And she'd gotten up in the night and I don't know how long she laid there until my grandfather got up in the morning and my grandmother was dead. And the boys really loved that lady, we all did. She was a very gentle, very loving sort of person.” ON WALT’S MOON “After he was married and was living in Hollywood, he couldn't believe that he had enough money to buy himself a really snazzy car. I can remember that he bought a car called "Moon." It was a Moon and it was a racing coupe and he had this wonderful Moon and one of his other nieces and I sat in the rumble seat and, the air, it was just wonderful for a teenager, like 13 or 14.” ON WALT IN EARLY MARRIED YEARS “There was this very special store, had the most wonderful ice cream in the whole world plus wonderful salted nuts. And for some reason that was kind of a rarity at the time. And he took us by there and he got us ice-cream cones and salted nuts and we just sat in the backseat and giggled, oh dear, you only do it when you're about 13 then you finally go on, thankfully, to the next stage.”