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As Dr. Seuss's Read Across America Day approaches, children all around the world will be reading his books and watching the movies based on those books. And one of those movies is Horton Hears a Who, which can be found on Disney+.
Maybe it's just me, but there's something about Dr. Seuss and Disney that's just a little off, because there doesn't seem to be any sort of connection between the two, right? Well, apparently, thanks to a 2014 blog post called "The Duck in the Hat," published by Dear Derges of the Disney History Institute, Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney collaborated on a secret project that no one really knew about until now. Here's the story.
Back in 1939, Disney was in negotiations with Random House about a new line of books for the year. And one of the books that both companies were high on was a biography titled "The Life of Donald Duck." Heading up the project was Disney executive John Clark Rose and Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, the man whose bet with Dr. Seuss launched one of the best-selling children's books of all time, "The Cat in the Hat."
But the Disney writers from the story department in Burbank struggled with this idea, leaving Random House a bit concerned. After viewing the final manuscript, Cerf expressed his disappointment to Rose. Despite calling the layout absolutely perfect, he referred to the text as "corny and lacking in sparkle." When asked for his opinion of the book, Rose's response was a hand-drawn picture of Donald Duck with the saying, "Confidentially, it stinks."
So Random House and Disney had a book concept with tremendous visuals and absolutely no story. They tried to look for different authors, including Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote "Goodnight Moon," but never quite found the right person. And this caused a lot of stress for Rose, to the point that he was lamenting his worries to his house guest one Christmas. And that guest was Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.
The two friends had a long history. Back in the late 1920s, Seuss lived with Rose when he first moved to New York City after graduating from Dartmouth. Rose helped Seuss land his first job with a magazine, Judge. You'll notice the trademark Dr. Seuss artwork on the cover here. And that job paid 75 dollars a week, which allowed Seuss to marry his first wife, Helen. So you could say that he owed Rose a favor. And that favor was that Seuss agreed to write the book anonymously, without any compensation.
A few months after this Christmastime conversation, Seuss was in Burbank at Disney Studios, writing their first manuscript. When it was finished, everyone loved it. "The Life of Donald Duck" was released in 1941 and was a success for years. Eventually, it was re-released almost 50 years later, in 1994. While it's credited to Walt Disney, the book was really written incognito by Dr. Seuss. It remains the first and only documented time that Seuss did business with Disney.
It's a story that Disney and Seuss historians didn't even realize until the guest post was written in 2014. So the next time you see a Dr. Seuss movie on Disney+, hopefully the connection between the two won't seem as distant as it did before. And when you celebrate Read Across America Day by reading Dr. Seuss books, there may be one more book that you want to check out. And if you ever find yourself in a bit of a jam, never hesitate to ask your friend for help.