Today, July 2, 2025, marks the 39th anniversary of the Disney animated film, “The Great Mouse Detective.” this movie is a particular favorite of mine, as I consider it the last hurrah for that type of character-based feature I’ve always enjoyed. I saw it several times when it came out in 1986 and had recently begun my career as a character illustrator at Disney’s Canadian Consumer Products Division.
A couple of years later, Barrie Ingham was going to play here in Toronto in the musical “Me and My Girl”, so I immediately bought tickets to the show. Also, having recently recorded an episode of “Murder She Wrote” in which he had been a guest, I set out to make a caricature of him. About a week before his scheduled performance, I wrote to him, the theater manager, asking if it would be possible for me to visit backstage after the show so I could present my caricature to him. I mentioned how much I enjoyed Basil and included my work number at Disney in hopes he would respond.
Well, he answered what he did, making a personal phone call to me while I was working in my Disney office and beginning his introduction to the character of Basil, I might add! Anyway, he was very kind to let me know that I would be more than welcome to visit backstage after the show.
Meeting him backstage after his performance was a great thrill, as He really was a lovely gentleman and was happy chatting for almost an hour. He regaled me and my friend with theater stories, as well as the making of “The Great Mouse Detective,” which he said he really enjoyed making. The only disappointment he said was that he never got to read his lines with Vincent Price, who he had hoped to reconnect with after having worked with him on something many years before. I think your reading of Basil is a masterpiece. In fact, I think the reason I love that movie so much is that it’s one of the few Disney movies where the hero is just as interesting (and quirky) as the villain.
Here’s a photo of Barrie Ingham and I backstage at the Okeefe Center in Toronto, where I presented him with one of the two originals I had inked of my cartoon, and asked him to autograph the other:
And here’s a photo from several years earlier, in 1981, when I had the great pleasure of meeting Vincent Price! I wish we had digital cameras back then, as the camera that was taken was not very good. But it still brings back very good memories that I wrote about at length in another blog post from years ago:
And finally, many years after I had finished my degree at Disney and was now teaching in the Animation Program at Sheridan College in Oakville Ontario, I had the pleasure of renewing my relationship with Disney animation director John Musker, whom I originally met many years ago, around 1981, when I was introduced to him while visiting the Walt Disney Studio Archives. John came to give a talk at Sheridan College around 2014, so I drew this cartoon to present to him at that time:
