Marty, Mickey and Me - Celebrating My Friendship with Disney Legend Marty Sklar (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798896092964)

Celebrating a cherished friendship

Retired journalist Chuck Schmidt has been covering the ins and outs of the Walt Disney Company for more than four decades, first on the pages of the Staten Island Advance newspaper, then on the paper's website, SILive.com. Since 2014, he's shared his Disney expertise with followers of the popular AllEars.Net site through his Still Goofy About Disney blog.

As part of his Disney coverage, Chuck had the pleasure of meeting and striking up relationships with a host of Disney luminaries, many of whom attained coveted Disney Legend status. The unquestioned "leader of the club" is Marty Sklar, whose long and storied career took flight after creating The Disneyland News for guests entering Disneyland on July 17, 1955 - opening day.

Marty, Mickey and Me opens a window into Chuck's cherished friendship with Marty, which began after he conducted the first of many interviews with the Disney Legend in 2010, one year after he retired. Over the next few years, Chuck discovered that Marty Sklar was a shining star in the Disney firmament, adored by millions of Disney fans worldwide, as well as the men and women who worked with him at Walt Disney Imagineering ... in large part because Marty was a conduit to Walt Disney himself.

Marty, Mickey and Me offers intimate, first-hand accounts of Marty's involvement in Disneyland's struggles during its first few years, Disney's participation in the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, Walt Disney's desire to build a "city of the future" in Florida, and Marty's retirement years, when he toured the world touting his books.

As Kevin Rafferty, one of Marty's Imagineering proteges, wrote in the foreword to Marty, Mickey and Me: "I love this book because it's about one of my all-time favorite Imagineers written by one of my all-time favorite authors!"