Celebrating Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective"!

Today, July 2 2025 marks the 39th Anniversary of Disney's animated feature, "The Great Mouse Detective". This film is a particular favourite of mine, as I consider it the last hoorah of that type of character-driven feature I'd always enjoyed. I saw it several times when it was out in 1986 and I had just recently begun my career as a character illustrator at Disney's Canadian Consumer Products Division.

A couple years later, Barrie Ingham was going to be playing here in Toronto in the musical, "Me and My Girl", so I immediately got tickets for the show. Also, having recently videotaped an episode of "Murder She Wrote" that he had guested in, I set about doing a caricature of him. About a week before his scheduled performance I wrote to him, care of the theatre, asking if it might be possible for me to visit backstage after the show so I could present him my caricature. I mentioned how much I enjoyed his Basil and I included my work number at Disney on the hopes he might respond. 

Well, respond back he did, making a personal phone call to me while I was working at my Disney office, and starting out his introduction in the character of Basil I might add! Anyway, he was very gracious in letting me know I'd 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 delightful gentleman and he was happy chatting for close to an hour. He regaled me and my friend with stories of the theatre, as well as the making of "The Great Mouse Detective", which he said he thoroughly enjoyed doing. The only disappointment he said, was that he never got to read his lines with Vincent Price, whom he had been hoping to reconnect with after having worked with him on something many years before. I think that his reading on Basil is a masterpiece. In fact, I think the reason I love that film so much is that it is one of the few Disney features where the hero is every bit as interesting (and quirky) as the villain. 

Here is a photo of Barrie Ingham and me backstage at Toronto's Okeefe Centre, where I presented him with one of two originals I'd inked up of my caricature, the other of which I had him autograph for me:

And here is a photo from several years earlier in 1981 when I'd had the great pleasure of meeting Vincent Price! I wish we'd had digital cameras back then, as the camera this was taken on was not a very good one. But it still brings back very fond memories that I have written about at length on another blog post from years back:

And finally, many years after I'd finished my Disney career and was now teaching in the Animation Program at Sheridan College in Oakville Ontario, I had the pleasure of renewing acquaintance with Disney animation director, John Musker, whom I'd originally met many years ago around 1981 when I was introduced to him while I visited the Walt Disney Studio Archives. John came to give a talk at Sheridan College around 2014, so I drew this caricature to present to him at that time: