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Authors: Jennet Conant
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to the future historians who, unraveling the tale of our troubled times, discover that in the critical year 1942, a distinguished American traveled five thousand miles in order to make a film about elves; elves which, admittedly, no one has ever seen.”
When gossip columns started reporting rumors of Walt Disney’s impending invasion of “Gremlinland,” Dahl’s superiors urged him to contact the studio head and find out if he was really headed for England. Dahl queried Walt, who telegraphed the air commodore that he was unable to get away due to pressure of work, but he wrote Dahl that that was the least of his problems. The studio was getting letters from all over England and Canada written by people who claimed not only to have seen gremlins but had very fixed ideas about what they looked like. Disney had also heard from one Flight Lieutenant Douglas Bisgood, an RAF pilot who had crossed the Atlantic with Dahl, who claimed that during the two-week journey he had regaled Dahl with many of his own gremlin tales. In his letter, Bisgood made it clear he felt that he had first claim to the gremlin family names. In the meantime, the studio’s research department had unearthed a number of books on the subject by British authors and was worried that they did not have exclusive rights to the gremlin legend. Disney did not want trouble. As he worried to Dahl in a letter in October: “We would want this film to be satisfactory to the RAF in every way. Our only concern is that we do not want someone to find petty faults or assume a picayunish attitude after the film is completed and thereby put us to considerable expense in making changes.”
In late November, Lord Halifax consented to his assistant air attaché working on the morale-boosting picture, and Dahl was granted a short leave to go to Los Angeles. His arrival in Hollywood was noted in the gossip columns, and Leonard Lyons quoted an earnest-sounding Dahl dutifully touting the party line, saying, “We’re doing this because the Gremlins are part of the RAF.” Dahl spent ten days living it up as a guest of the studio, which arranged for him to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel and provided him with a huge American car. To the twenty-six-year-old Dahl, everything about Disney’s Burbank operation was big and impressive, from the sprawling black-topped studio lot to Walt’s enormous office, where a stenographer took down every word uttered by the various parties present and typed them up afterward for the boss’s perusal.
While he was there, Dahl succeeded in thoroughly charming both Walt and Roy Disney, particularly Walt, who, upon discovering their shared fondness for Kipling, nicknamed the lanky airman Stalky, after a British schoolboy featured in a story by the same name. Dahl persuaded both Disney brothers that it made sense to bring out an illustrated book version of the gremlins in advance of the planned movie. Following the success of an article in the December Cosmopolitan featuring Dahl’s gremlins, accompanied by Disney’s colorful illustrations, he wrote Walt urging him not to delay the book any longer, as he had already been approached by a big publishing house in England and felt certain there would be other competitors entering the field, given how “the whole subject is gaining way to such an extent now.” He signed the letter, “Yours, Stalky.”
Convinced that the charismatic, self-dramatizing British pilot was a good investment, Disney agreed. In April 1943 the studio joined forces with Random House, and The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl was published to glowing reviews. The New York Times awarded him honors for his moral fable about the self-destructiveness of mankind and hailed the young English author’s “remarkable adeptness at building up a tall tale in the American tradition.” After the book’s publication, Dahl was inundated with offers. When he returned to Hollywood to confer with Disney, his
When gossip columns started reporting rumors of Walt Disney’s impending invasion of “Gremlinland,” Dahl’s superiors urged him to contact the studio head and find out if he was really headed for England. Dahl queried Walt, who telegraphed the air commodore that he was unable to get away due to pressure of work, but he wrote Dahl that that was the least of his problems. The studio was getting letters from all over England and Canada written by people who claimed not only to have seen gremlins but had very fixed ideas about what they looked like. Disney had also heard from one Flight Lieutenant Douglas Bisgood, an RAF pilot who had crossed the Atlantic with Dahl, who claimed that during the two-week journey he had regaled Dahl with many of his own gremlin tales. In his letter, Bisgood made it clear he felt that he had first claim to the gremlin family names. In the meantime, the studio’s research department had unearthed a number of books on the subject by British authors and was worried that they did not have exclusive rights to the gremlin legend. Disney did not want trouble. As he worried to Dahl in a letter in October: “We would want this film to be satisfactory to the RAF in every way. Our only concern is that we do not want someone to find petty faults or assume a picayunish attitude after the film is completed and thereby put us to considerable expense in making changes.”
In late November, Lord Halifax consented to his assistant air attaché working on the morale-boosting picture, and Dahl was granted a short leave to go to Los Angeles. His arrival in Hollywood was noted in the gossip columns, and Leonard Lyons quoted an earnest-sounding Dahl dutifully touting the party line, saying, “We’re doing this because the Gremlins are part of the RAF.” Dahl spent ten days living it up as a guest of the studio, which arranged for him to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel and provided him with a huge American car. To the twenty-six-year-old Dahl, everything about Disney’s Burbank operation was big and impressive, from the sprawling black-topped studio lot to Walt’s enormous office, where a stenographer took down every word uttered by the various parties present and typed them up afterward for the boss’s perusal.
While he was there, Dahl succeeded in thoroughly charming both Walt and Roy Disney, particularly Walt, who, upon discovering their shared fondness for Kipling, nicknamed the lanky airman Stalky, after a British schoolboy featured in a story by the same name. Dahl persuaded both Disney brothers that it made sense to bring out an illustrated book version of the gremlins in advance of the planned movie. Following the success of an article in the December Cosmopolitan featuring Dahl’s gremlins, accompanied by Disney’s colorful illustrations, he wrote Walt urging him not to delay the book any longer, as he had already been approached by a big publishing house in England and felt certain there would be other competitors entering the field, given how “the whole subject is gaining way to such an extent now.” He signed the letter, “Yours, Stalky.”
Convinced that the charismatic, self-dramatizing British pilot was a good investment, Disney agreed. In April 1943 the studio joined forces with Random House, and The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl was published to glowing reviews. The New York Times awarded him honors for his moral fable about the self-destructiveness of mankind and hailed the young English author’s “remarkable adeptness at building up a tall tale in the American tradition.” After the book’s publication, Dahl was inundated with offers. When he returned to Hollywood to confer with Disney, his
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