Walt Disney by Bob Thomas
Before working at Walt Disney World in the Disney College Program, I had a basic idea of who Walt Disney was. He was clearly a public icon for entertainment, and as a child, I remember the statue of Walt Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand. As a filmmaker in my studies, I grew to be infatuated with his films and the nostalgia and whimsy they gave me to escape my adulthood. However, I still didn’t really know who Walt Disney was.
At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, there is an exhibit called One Man’s Dream, a walkthrough museum with artifacts of Walt’s childhood and projects. Through the technological innovations and the dreams and stories he accomplished, I was immediately interested. I needed to know more.
Of course, there are many books on Walt Disney, relating different parts of his life. Some are built completely on opinion, some are biased. I chose the only biography of Walt Disney that was sanctioned by the Walt Disney Company. Bob Thomas had interviewed Walt four times during Walt’s life and was given full access to archives after his death. The 360 page book spans Walt’s entire life, painting a complete picture of who he was, what he accomplished, and how he did it. I will try to summarize what I found to be the most important parts.
I. The Midwest Years 1901-1923
Elias Disney moved his family to Marceline, Missouri in order to rear them in a nice Christian town. An entrepreneur with many past failed ventures, Elias was moving the family often to reach into new fields and new opportunities. Walt Disney’s first memories are of Marceline, and they are incredibly fond. Walt had memories of working on the farm, drawing with crayons, and enjoying his family until they moved to Kansas City in 1910. Elias’s next venture was the newspaper distributor business where Walt had his first job working for his father as a delivery man. (Something that was mentioned as an anecdote in Saving Mr. Banks (2014), although the film is far from true in all aspects of the story).
Walt began as a cartoonist for the McKinley High School newspaper in Chicago, his first publication. Despite his humor and love for art, deep down his heart wanted to be in the war. However, being below draft age, he found it difficult to sneak his way in. Walt finally found a way into the war through the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver. Eventually, as an ambulance driver, Walt was sent to France in 1918. After returning from overseas, Walt applied to the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art for advertising. After seeing his sketches, he was hired to create drawings for advertisements. There he also made a valuable friend in Dutchman Ubbe Iwerks, talented animator and artist. After working together for a short time, Walt started his first venture into creating a business in the “Iwerks-Disney Commercial Art” for one month.
Walt, then, got a job with the Kansas City Film Ad Company where he began making cartoons that moved and were shown in motion picture theaters. He curiously learned every aspect of the business on the creative side, including how the camera worked. Once he gained enough experience through the advertising side, he decided to make his own shorts with the financial and business wizardry of his brother, Roy Disney. The enterprise was called Laugh-o-gram. Despite ingenuity and popularity, Walt had to declare bankruptcy. He left Kansas City with a one-way ticket to California.
II. The Cartoon Maker 1923-1934
Unemployed and living in his Uncle Robert’s apartment in California, he began to create a crude cartoon shop in the garage after no successful filmmaking prospects. He sent a letter to Margaret Winkler, a cartoon distributor in New York City, about a series he was creating, Alice’s Wonderland. Alice’s Wonderland, later called the Alice Comedies, was a mixture of cartoons and live-action. Shortly after, Margaret Winkler’s husband took over her job, Charles Mintz. Mintz strained the relationship between Disney and his enterprise, not living up to the contract financially or supportively. However, success still found the Disney Brothers, as they were able to put down a $400 down payment on a studio at 2719 Hyperion Avenue on July 6, 1925.
By 1926, The Alice Comedies had reached a stopping point, as Walt looked for fresh new material. Universal Studios wanted to commission someone to make a cartoon starring a rabbit. Walt Disney was chosen, sent off sketches of a rabbit named Oswald, and Poor Papa went into production. Although Oswald didn’t begin as a knock-out series, by the third cartoon, newspaper reviews praised their improvement and comedy.
Despite the popularity, Charles Mintz had a trick up his sleeve. Walt asked Mintz for more money of $2,500 per cartoon instead of the usual $2,225. Mintz said he was going to give Walt $1,800. Walt was shocked, and then Mintz added, “If you don’t accept, I’ll take your organization away from you. I have all of your men signed up.” Behind Walt’s back, all of his animators had signed up to work for Universal. Walt stalled to try to find a way to get Oswald to another studio, but Mintz showed Walt in the contract where Oswald belonged to Universal Studios, not Walt Disney. Walt lost Oswald, but in a telegram to Roy he said “DON’T WORRY EVERYTHING OK.”
Legend has it, although even from Walt itself it was never quite clear, that on the train ride back from New York City after losing Oswald to Mintz, Walt dreamed up Mickey Mouse. A lot of Mickey’s personality was derived from Walt, as well as his voice. Ub Iwerks animated and drew. However, there were three more Oswald cartoons left in their contract, and the conniving artists who were leaving Walt still had three months left at the studio. Roy, Walt, and Ub began working on Mickey Mouse cartoons in secret, hiding it from the other artists or working in Walt’s garage.
Despite the first two Mickey Mouse cartoons not being yet distributed, with climbing costs, Walt began on the third, Steamboat Willie which would jump onto the new craze of talking pictures. After working with Ub to time the cartoon on sheet music, Walt ventured to New York City with a score under his arm and a can of film, ready to find someone to record the audio for the cartoon. Walt began working with P.A. Powers in order to record the score. It took them two times and two different orchestras to get it right. Walt demanded quality, and the first orchestra were not able to follow the cartoon to get it right. Walt filmed a moving ball over the cartoon to keep beat and help the orchestra keep up. Even after the fact, Walt still had to sell this expensive and fancy new cartoon. Finally, Steamboat Willie opened at the Colony Theatre on November 18, 1928 and became the success of which Walt had dreamed.
Suddenly, during this success, P.A. (Pat) Powers) who originally collaborated with Roy and Walt for Cinephone Sound Systems began to not send his receipts and payments. Walt quickly found out what a crook he was, trying to snake him just the way Mintz had. Ub Iwerks signed a contract with Powers, shocking Walt once again that his best friend all these years would leave the company. Ub mentioned artistic differences being the divide between him and Walt, dissolving his contract and receiving 1/5 of interest from his shares.
Meanwhile, Mickey Mouse’s popularity exploded with a million members in the Mickey Mouse Club by 1931. With the help of Herman “Kay” Kamen, Mickey Mouse merchandise hit the shelves, bringing great economic refuge to the Walt Disney Studios.
Walt demanded that Flowers and Trees, a Silly Symphony production, be completely redone for technicolor. Through much trial and error, Walt and his men finally found a way to get color onto film with their cartoons. With more hires coming into his studio, Walt also arranged for his artists to continue their schooling experience with classes from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, believing there was always room to learn more. However, Silly Symphony’s really began to take off with the craze that was The Three Little Pigs. The songs and cartoon were everywhere. It was “unparalleled in cartoon history.”
III. Toward a New Art 1934-1945
Walt Disney could never officially explain why he chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as his first cartoon feature, but he loved the story elements and had fond memories of seeing the 1915 Marguerite Clark version as a young boy. He thoughtfully and carefully controlled every aspect of production, including the choosing of the voice for Snow White down to even his smallest animators. However, his initial budget ended up only being a third of what needed to be spent. Publicity was bad, dubbing the film “Disney’s folly.” Yet, when Disney finally premiered it in 1937, the audience stood and cheered. Celebrities turned out for “Disney’s folly.” Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs consisted of two million drawings. After the hard path that Walt tread to get there, he was finally feeling the euphoria of some success. He received a special Oscar, including seven small miniature statues as well.
Although the success was overwhelming, the studio did not have an easier time producing Pinocchio. There were animation issues with movement, story issues with character likability, and character design issues. Meanwhile, Walt worried about Mickey Mouse’s career. Walt’s attachment to Mickey was indescribable, and he planned to have the re-designed Mickey Mouse appear in a short cartoon titled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, synchronized to Dukas music performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. After meeting with the conductor, Walt began to collaborate on an entire feature, with the working title of The Concert Feature. In order to get the feel for the cartoons that Walt desired, he had his Sound Department develop an entire new sound system for theaters to create multi-aural sound, making a movie theater sound just like a concert hall. It was called Fantasound, leading to the title of the film: Fantasia. With Fantasia in pre-production, Walt also chose Bambi, the tale of a deer, to be his third feature film. With great financial issues and the coming of the second war, Walt had to start making more economically stable and reasonably inexpensive films. The company began having tough financial instances - again. Walt was tired of living “picture to picture.”
But also the coming of unionization and Walt surprised to find a picket line in front of his studio in 1941 changed a lot about the way the studio worked. To combat this, Walt took a South America trip to film short films with his men. To make it a work trip that would help with his stress and nerves, as well as creating revenue for the company was right up Walt’s alley. The film turned into Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. This was all well and good until the US Army occupied and moved into Walt’s studio on the morning of December 7, 1941 without warning. For the rest of the war, Walt worked on training films, propaganda, and ways to help the service however he could. Yet, with foreign markets frozen, the company was having more financial issues than could be imagined.
IV. Stretching the Horizon 1945-1961
After the war, the Disney studio was ready for revival. The first picture to be produced was Song of the South, a 70 percent live acton and 30 percent cartoon with some combined sequences. The cost was high, the critical reception was mixed, and the profit was low. Looking for ways to sustain the company, Walt began researching and production on a series called “True-Life Adventures,” starting with Seal Island. Still, Walt knew he needed a hit like Snow White and went into production on Cinderella. Despite being a success, Walt was reminded just how long animated features take to produce and the amount of man-power that goes into him. He began working on live-action films to be produced in England due to frozen funds.
Walt had reservations about going into production for Alice in Wonderland, but continued, ending up to lose $1,000,000. Finally, in 1951, Peter Pan was put into production. Meanwhile, television. Walt experimented with a Christmas special in 1951. But, the idea of an amusement park continued to grow in his mind. He took touring trips everywhere of different fairs and amusement parks to research. He borrowed on his life insurance in order to finance the park himself since Roy was against the idea. Walt continued to borrow money from studio workers and investors, but finally he came to the conclusion: he would finance his park through television. Bill Walsh wrote the first official description of Disneyland for investors: The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge.
ABC Network ended up being a 35% owner in Disneyland with a contract for Disney to produce one hour television specials. In 1954, Walt made the official announcement of the television series to begin in October 1954 and the park to open in July 1955. The TV show was a hit, along with Davy Crockett. Merchandise sales took off for the Davy Crocket phenomenon.
Meanwhile, Disneyland construction ran into many problems with the Orange County building inspectors, with the builders being able to create Walt’s vision, and with the plumbers’ strike. Walt was incredibly involved in every single aspect of the park, down to the trash cans and the water fountains. Each attraction and land brought with it new challenges that Walt had to diligently lead his group through. If anything, I admire Walt for his dedication to his vision and hope that I can emulate that in my own work some day. When people told Walt no, he had confidence in his vision and persevered and asked them to do the same.
Thomas writes that “within seven weeks, a million visitors had come to Disneyland. Predictions of attendance had been exceeded by 50 percent...” At the same time as Disneyland’s success, The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC was taking off greatly. It was the first quality programming for children on television, and it was incredibly profitable and another craze.
As a current cast member of Disney World, one of the stories that stands out the most to be from this section of the book is about Walt and his wife, Lillian, spending the day in Disneyland. A guard stopped the two of them while they were about to go into an exhibit. Not only did he not recognize Walt, but he was rude and would not allow his wife to enter the exhibit. Walt later ordered the guest to be fired because if he was so discourteous to him, imagine how he was acting to the other guests. He said, “You can’t expect outsiders to give the courtesy we want.” Walt always wanted more for the guests, no matter the cost. A lot of the Park Operating Committee did not want an extravagant Christmas parade because it wouldn’t bring more money in, but would cause money to be spent. Walt declared, “We can’t be satisfied, even though we’ll get the crowds at Christmastime. We’ve always got to give ‘em a little more. It’ll be worth the investment. If they ever stop coming, it’ll cost ten times that much to get ‘em back.”
Walt was one of the most interesting men I have ever read about. As complex as he was, he was a born leader with a clear vision in his films, his parks, and the image and branding of his company. Although I do not think he was a flawless man as many immortalize him to be, I do aspire to have similar drive, motivation, clear vision, and creativity, as well as his leadership. This was an amazing read, especially to read in his dreamland at Walt Disney World.
