Probably best known for his animated films and live-action fantasies like Mary Poppins and The Absent-Minded Professor, Walt Disney also produced many full-throated historical adventures, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island, and Swiss Family Robinson. Now you can go behind the scenes on each of these films and many more in Disney historian John G. West’s Walt Disney and Live Action.

Learn how Walt Disney’s love for Tom Sawyer inadvertently led him to produce a film version of Treasure Island instead, how studio Set Decorator Emile Kuri located the pipe organ played by Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in someone’s garage, and how the Disney studio had to hire 400 workers to rebuild an entire lagoon after it washed away in a monsoon before they had finished shooting key scenes for Swiss Family Robinson. Filmed with fascinating anecdotes and stories, Walt Disney and Live Action is based on extensive research in the Disney Studio Archives as well as original interviews with many of those who actually made Walt Disney’s live-action films and television features. The book includes more than 80 behind-the-scene photos, some never before published. Walt Disney and Live Action is a must-have for anyone who loves the classic Disney films of the 1950s and 60s.