4. A Nerd Grudge
J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and creator of the Lord of the Rings universe, was a good frenemy of C.S. Lewis, the author of Narnia. They had religious differences, and frequently argued about the minutiae and nitty-gritty of Middle Earth versus Narnia. One thing, however, brought them together in perfect agreement: a shared hatred of Walt Disney. Lewis eventually got over the Disney hate with the passage of time, but Tolkien kept the grudge going strong for decades, until his dying day.
It began in 1938, when the two authors went out together to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Lewis did not like Disney and his movie. As he put it: “Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfs’ jazz party was pretty bad. I suppose it never occurred to the poor boob that you could give them any other kind of music … What might not have come of it if this man had been educated-or even brought up in a decent society?” Overall, he thought the whole thing was lowbrow comedy. That was mild compared to Tolkien’s take.
