The Gremlins. From the Walt Disney Production. A Royal Air Force Story.

DAHL, Roald; Walt Disney [Bill Justice].

$2,800.00

Item Number: 111721

New York: Random House, 1943.

First edition of Dahl’s rare first book, with 14 vibrant full-page illustrations by Walt Disney Productions. Quarto, original half cloth, pictorial endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by Disney animator Bill Justice on the half-title page with a large drawing of a Gremlin, “Sorry Ray That’s a lousy Gremlin Bill Justice.” Justice joined Walt Disney Studios as an animator in 1937 and worked on such features as Fantasia, The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. He is arguably best known as the animator of the rabbit Thumper from Bambi and chipmunks Chip ‘n Dale. He was the director of The Truth About Mother Goose, Noah’s Ark, and A Symposium On Popular Songs, all of which were nominated for Academy Awards as Best Short Subject, Cartoon. In total, Justice worked on 57 shorts and 19 features. Good in the rare original dust jacket with some chips and wear.

Dahl was sent to Washington in 1942 as an assistant air attaché for the British Embassy. After having a story published anonymously in the Saturday Evening Post, he was encouraged by C. S. Forester. He produced The Gremlins, a children’s story expanding on a mythical creature enshrined for years in RAF lore (notwithstanding Dahl’s claims to have invented the word) and sent it to Sidney Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service, who sent it on to Walt Disney. Disney decided to make it into a movie, at one point bringing Dahl to Hollywood to work on the screenplay. The story was published in Cosmopolitan in December of 1942, and as a book by Random House six months later. The film project, however, was sidelined and has never been produced. The story was received positively: Eleanor Roosevelt read it to her grandchildren, and invited Dahl to the White House.