Uncle Walt (lost unauthorized Disney short film; 1964)

Animator and special effects artist, Robert Swarthe.

Uncle Walt is a short cartoon produced in 1964 by then-student Robert Swarthe as part of The UCLA Animation Workshop. The only known mass public screening of the short took place in June 1972 at the American Film Institute, as part of a presentation titled "50 Years of American Animation".

The short begins with images of Walt Disney at various ages, followed by a slow pan across a graveyard full of the headstones of Perri the squirrel and her family (a reference to Disney's 1957 live-action fantasy Perri, a film based on Felix Salten's 1938 novel of the same name). The next shot seen is that of a very early-style Mickey and Minnie Mouse, followed by racist caricatures and toilet humour. A sequence is then seen in which the female centaurs from Fantasia are seen working in a red light district, with Goofy as their pimp, followed by a scene in which various disturbing scenes from Disney films are shown, with a group of rabbit children looking on in horror (including the scene from Disney's 1937 animated fantasy Snow White in which the Queen transforms into a hag). The final images seen are that of the seven dwarves from Snow White gathering around Mickey Mouse in a "Mouse-ka-mausoleum", worshiping him in a scene reminiscent of one seen in the original 1937 production.

For a time, a rumor circulated that the short was actually produced by Disney employees in 1954, but this was quickly debunked (since the short, as previously mentioned, contains references to the then-non-existent 1957 film Perri). Uncle Walt has not been publicly screened since 1972, and it is unknown if anyone other than Swarthe are still in possession of a copy.