The Movies Came First
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“Disney Again Hears the Call of the Wild” (by Ernesto Lechner, March 4) reports that the “New True Life Adventures” series “resurrects the cozy television specials that Disney created in the ‘50s.”
This is wrong: The original “True Life Adventure” nature documentaries were all theatrical releases, as evidenced by the fact that many of them won Academy Awards for best documentary feature, including “The Living Desert” (1953), “The Vanishing Prairie” (1954) and “White Wilderness” (1958).
Many of the films, including those three award winners, were directed and/or written for Walt Disney Productions by my father, James N. Algar. It is true that the films were frequently featured on the Disney television series in its first years, but they were not “television specials.”
JAMES D. ALGAR
Valencia
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