Document details

In 2016, while researching the third volume of the They Drew as They Pleased book series, The Hidden Art of Disney’s Late Golden Age (Chronicle Books, 2017), thanks to Cecilia Estrada and Maria Helena Barrera, [Didier Ghez] had the pleasure of locating the correspondence of Disney’s concept artist Eduardo Solá Franco. The letters to his mother and father covered all of Solá Franco’s career at the Disney Studio from the time he joined on May 24, 1939, to the time he left in early October. In addition, a few months later, thanks to Rodolfo Kronfle Chambers, [Didier] was given access to the chapter in Solá Franco’s autobiography, Al Pasar, which discusses his work for Disney. All the documents were in Spanish, of course, and were translated by [Didier].

To read about Eduardo Solá Franco’s work at the Disney studio, to get all of the details about his life and to discover his arresting artwork, you will have to read the chapter [Didier] wrote about him in They Drew as They Pleased. In that book, however, [Didier] did not have the opportunity to include the full text of all of his letters, nor all of the autobiography extracts linked to his Disney career. Thankfully, [Didier was]  now able to do so in this volume of Walt’s People.

[Didier strongly recommends] reading They Drew as They Pleased first before trying to decipher the below entries.