Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  Copyright © 1976, 1994, The Walt Disney Company

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney Editions, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Editions, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-02718-2

  Cover photograph hand tinted by Christine Rodin

  Cover design by Louise Fili

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface to the Hyperion Edition

  Foreground

  I. The Midwest Years 1901–1923

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  II. The Cartoon Maker 1923–1934

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  III. Toward a New Art 1934–1945

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  IV. Stretching the Horizon 1945–1961

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  V. The Distant Reach 1961–1966

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Photographs

  Sources

  Books by Bob Thomas

  To my daughters, Nancy, Janet and Caroline with sweet remembrance of their Disney years

  “My father was not a complicated man.”

  Diane Disney Miller was speaking in late 1993 at the office of Retlaw, a mile from the studio that Walt and Roy Disney had founded seventy years before. Walt established the backward-spelled Retlaw in 1952 to protect the use of his name and to finance the designing of Disneyland.

  “I think Dad was very easy to read,” Diane continued. “He didn’t want to be complicated. He was always straightforward, never devious. Not unless he could be devious in a constructive way. When he was making Mary Poppins, the people involved with the picture would go to the daily rushes, and they’d see Song of the South. They were confused. They thought, ‘Jiminy Christmas, does Walt want to put animation in this picture?’ They knew that P. L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, had said she didn’t want any animation. What Dad was doing was planting the seed. He might want to use animation in Mary Poppins. And he did.”

  Diane talked about Walt Disney in the role that she knew best, as a father:

  “My aunt Ruth told me that Dad once said, ‘I want to have ten kids, and I’m going to let them do anything they want.’ That’s pretty much the way he treated Sharon and me. He gave us liberty, but he didn’t spoil us. Like a lot of adolescent girls, I was crazy about horses, and I got quite good at riding. I yearned for my own horse, but Dad wouldn’t buy one. And we didn’t have a lot of clothes and other things.

  “He didn’t want me to work. Some of my friends got summer jobs, but Dad wouldn’t let me. ‘You’d just take a job from someone who needs one,’ he said. Maybe it was that, maybe he felt that he had worked all his life and he didn’t want his kids to do the same thing.

  “It never occurred to me to be part of the studio, and he never pushed me. The only time Sharon and I would go to the studio was on Sunday. We followed him around from room to room as he looked at the work that was being done. Later, when he started building his train, we went with him to the machine shop, where he worked with Roger Broggie.

  “We always ate dinner late, because Dad worked late at the studio. He would tell about what he was doing, but he also wanted to know about our lives, too. And he would listen.

  “I don’t think he had a fierce temper, but there were times when I felt his temper. When I was fifteen or sixteen and just starting to drive, I wasn’t home very much. He didn’t like that. When we were on vacation in Palm Springs, I hung out at the Zanucks’ house, which was wide open for all of Susan’s and Darrylin’s friends. I was there all the time with Dad’s car, a beautiful Olds convertible. I came home one day, and he snapped, ‘You’re running a rat race! You’re never here! Why am I here if you’re never around? I’m leaving!’ And he went back to the studio.

  “A day or so later, I was driving down Indian Avenue, and I passed a car on the right. It made a right turn into my dad’s fender. I called him and cried, ‘Oh, Daddy, I had an accident in your car!’ He said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He drove right down. Not a word of recrimination. That’s the way he was. He only got mad when he felt hurt.”

  Diane Miller was speaking out in reaction to revisionist histories that have attempted to paint a far different picture from the father she knew. Those conceptions also differ sharply from the Walt Disney I interviewed and observed over thirty years as a reporter, as well as three years spent in researching and writing this biography. Not that he was saintlike. He could be aloof, angry, wrong-headed, intemperate. His accomplishments outweighed such foibles.

  The project began in 1973, when I was invited to lunch with a few Disney executives at the studio. Card Walker, president of the Walt Disney Company, represented the management, and Ron Miller, vice president of production and Walt’s son-in-law, spoke for the family.

  “We’ve had two writers try their hands at writing Walt’s biography, and neither of them proved satisfactory,” said Walker, a tall, persuasive man whom I first knew when he worked in the publicity department. “We’d like you to undertake it. You can have complete access to all the studio personnel and all the records.”

  “The family would like to see Walt’s story written, and they will be completely available for your research,” I was assured by Miller, who still looked like an offensive end for the Los Angeles Rams, as he once was. “You will have complete freedom to write Walt’s story as you see it.”

  The proposal was irresistible. I had written biographies of Harry Cohn, Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick, and Walter Winchell, always without official sanction. In one aspect, that was preferable: I enjoyed the freedom to write frankly about those persons without fear of offending sensitivities. The drawback was that working on the outside denied me access to most family members, as well as others who declined to be interviewed for fear of reprisal. Access to letters and official documents was also hampered.

  The Disney offer seemed ideal. I would be able to interview all those still living who worked closely with Walt, as well as members of his family, and I could explore the company archives without restriction. Importantly, I had been assured that I could interpret Walt’s life without fear of compromising my standards as a reporter and biographer. (Ron Miller’s assurance held true. In only one instance did I hedge on information: the fact that Sharon Disney had been adopted. Over the years the family had not publicized Sharon’s adoption because she had been sensitive about it. Sharon Disney Lund died in early 1993.)

  I enjoyed a head start on the biography. In 1956, Walt had asked me to write a book about animation at the studio (coincidentally, two other writers had been assigned to the project, but each had failed). Walt explained: “Look, I’ve been taking all the bows here; everything is ‘A Walt Disney Picture.’ I did that for a reason. I wanted people to know that when they saw ‘Walt Disney’ on a picture, they would know that meant good, family entertainment. Now I want to give credit to the guys who have made these pictures for me
.”

  Having brought to the task only the faintest knowledge of how animation works, I began interviewing animators, story men, background artists, composers, layout artists, directors, and anyone else involved in the production process. I also delved into the history of the Disney studio and of animation itself, from cave drawings to Gertie the Dinosaur to Sleeping Beauty. The result was The Art of Animation.

  Then in 1965, a publisher suggested that I write a biography of Walt Disney for children. The book would be published outside Disney company auspices, but I was allowed to proceed. Knowing that Walt was heavily involved with a full production schedule, his television show, a proposed theme park in Florida, new attractions for Disneyland and a host of other projects, I expected to write the book from file material. But Walt insisted on giving me four lengthy interviews. He dwelled on his early years on the farm in Marceline, as a newspaper delivery boy in Kansas City, and as a student and mailman in Chicago. He seemed eager to sum up the lessons he had learned as a boy and tell young people how he applied them in his later life. He died within a year after the interviews.

  For someone famed worldwide for forty years, Walt Disney the man was little known. Partly this was due to the exigencies of the Hollywood image factory. Joe Reddy, a jovial Irishman with a passion for cigars and Notre Dame football, conducted Disney’s press relations with the same skill he had exercised with his former clients, Harold Lloyd and Shirley Temple. Reddy knew when to fuel up the publicity machine and when to cool it down, how to zigzag through hostile journalists and cultivate friendly ones. He also had the wisdom to realize that Walt was his own best publicist. Joe merely introduced an interviewer to the boss and leaned back and puffed his cigar.

  In interviews Walt rarely indulged in retrospection. His visionary eye focused on the future. The completion of an animated feature might be three years hence, but he could relate it in striking detail. Most of his conversation dealt with future projects, and they seemed to be forming shapes and patterns as he was speaking. So while interviewers came away dazzled by the creative surge of Walt’s imagination, they had learned little about the wellspring of his talent.

  In 1956, Walt gave lengthy interviews to his daughter Diane and Pete Martin, a feature writer of the Saturday Evening Post, for a series of articles in the magazine, and later a book, The Story of Walt Disney. Transcripts of the interviews proved valuable in my research. So were company records dating back to the earliest years. It was fascinating to read Walt’s brave wires from New York to Roy, the give and take of a story meeting for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt’s angry memo to those responsible for allowing a Disney character to appear in a beer commercial.

  But, as in any biography of recent personalities, the heart of the book emerged from the testimony of family, friends, and co-workers. My timing was fortunate. Although Roy O. Disney and Ub Iwerks had died, many others who could relate Walt’s early years were available. Wilfred Jackson and Les Clark had been present at the creation of Mickey Mouse. The Nine Old Men, who had animated the features from Snow White onward, still contributed their wonders at the studio. Walt’s widow, Lillian, his daughters and his sister, Ruth Disney Beecher, provided rare views of his personal life.

  As the interviews progressed, the figure of Roy O. Disney emerged in sharper focus. Less powered by ambition than his younger brother, Roy had been content to remain in the background during most of the studio’s history. Only after Walt died and Roy was forced to assume the company leadership did he adopt a more public role. He invariably gave credit to Walt for fueling the studio’s creative drive, and he insisted that the Florida park be named Walt Disney World as a permanent tribute. Many realized for the first time Roy’s brilliance as a financier after he had assembled the backing for the huge undertaking in Florida.

  Roy’s widow, Edna, and his son, Roy E. Disney, and his co-workers contributed to the portrait of a man at peace with himself and devoted to his brother, despite their sometimes angry disagreements. Unlike Harry and Jack Warner and Jack and Harry Cohn, brothers at odds throughout their lives, Roy and Walt Disney maintained an ideal relationship.

  With most of the biographies I have had the good fortune to encounter one person who provided extraordinary insight into the character of the person I was writing about. Sidney Buchman, the gifted filmmaker whose career was destroyed by the blacklist, gave me the key to Harry Cohn. Eddie Sherman, longtime manager of Abbott and Costello, helped me understand that contentious partnership. In the case of Walt Disney, the serendipity was Hazel George.

  She had been the studio nurse—a warm, understanding woman who administered to hangovers, colds, broken romances, and other ills suffered by studio workers. She also gave nightly treatments for Walt’s pained neck in their “Laughing Place,” where they discussed happenings at the studio with utter candor. If ever Walt had a confidante, it was Hazel.

  I found her a few blocks from the studio in a modest apartment she shared with Paul Smith, who was retired and in poor health. He was a brilliant composer who had written music for the True-Life Adventures and other films. Smith listened with amusement as Hazel poured out priceless stories about her exchanges with Walt.

  As you will read in the following pages, Walt Disney was Mickey Mouse, and Mickey Mouse was Walt Disney. Their personalities were inextricable, especially in the first years of Mickey’s immense fame. The passage of time brought changes in how the public viewed both man and mouse. In the beginning, Mickey was viewed as fearless, resourceful, hungry for adventure. The mature Mickey became almost sedate, an amused spectator of the comedic antics of newer members of the cast. Now he reigns mostly as an iconic symbol.

  Mickey has suffered the devaluation of his name into a derogatory adjective. “That’s certainly a Mickey Mouse defense pattern,” a football announcer might say. Or an auto repair man could comment, “Whoever worked on your car before sure did a Mickey Mouse job.” The term has even entered the dictionaries as describing something “childish, oversimplified, unrelated to reality, etc.”

  The origin of the usage is clouded. Disney archivist Dave Smith has found no conclusive answer. Carl Nader, who was in charge of educational films in the 1930s and 1940s, recalled that a government auditor after viewing the overhead charges for wartime films cracked, “That’s certainly Mickey Mouse accounting.” Smith cites the term “Mickey Mouse music” dating back to the early talkies. “Mickey Mousing” a score meant punching every movement on the screen with a musical beat. Serious film composers scorned the technique as “music by the numbers.” It’s possible that the adjectival usage merely derived from the complicated and often futile schemes that Mickey cooked up in the early cartoons.

  The picture of Walt Disney in the public mind also changed during his lifetime and afterward. At the beginning he was viewed as an inventive, creative genius whose work was admired by intellectuals as well as the masses. From Disneyland on, he became more of a builder, a cosmic dreamer. A quarter-century after his death, the figure of Walt Disney has grown more remote, and some writers have tried to paint a picture of a man far different from the one remembered by those who knew him.

  If Walt Disney the man has grown amorphous in the public consciousness, he remains vivid and real to the survivors of the Nine Old Men, the artists who helped create the animation classics. There are four of them now, all vigorously involved in a variety of interests. I asked them for their memories of Walt.

  “He was a fair man,” responded Ollie Johnston, “but he had little patience for anything bad or weak. He had certain giveaways that you could detect. In the Animation Building we had chairs with curved wooden arms. If Walt got bored during a conference, you’d hear the drumming of his fingers on the chair arm.

  “He rarely complimented any of us. Even if he did approve of what you had done, he’d add, ‘Of course you’ll fix that little wiggle,’ or something like that. It was a put-down, but that was good for us. We would work a little harder. Some guys would get cocky when they were
complimented, and they wouldn’t work for two weeks.”

  Marc Davis: “My feeling was that Walt was a guy who knew what he wanted to do and then found the way to do it. Number one, he had to find the talent to carry out what he wanted to do. Sure, we were overworked and underpaid, but that didn’t bother us. Walt didn’t have a great deal of money himself; it wasn’t until his last years that he was well off.”

  Davis recalled accompanying Walt on a visit to the New York World’s Fair, with the idea of scouting the Disney-designed attractions which might fit into Disneyland. Walt declined the VIP tour and walked through the fair like any visitor. “I want to see how things work,” he said.

  “I remember once when Walt was going to Europe, and he was getting a haircut at the barbershop in the Penthouse Club,” Davis said. “He told Sal the barber: ‘Cut my hair a little different; I don’t want to be recognized.’ Sal said, ‘If you don’t want to be recognized, I’ll shave off your mustache.’ Walt immediately covered his upper lip. You knew he didn’t want to be that unrecognized. He was an open book.”

  “To me he didn’t seem a complicated man,” observed Ward Kimball. “He did seem to be a different man at different times, depending on his health, a hangover, or whatever. A lot of people said the best time to schedule a meeting with Walt was in the morning, when he was fresh. Others said he was grumpier in the morning, and afternoons were better. There were different schools of thought on that.

  “Some fellows would dream up an idea and say confidently, ‘He’ll go for that.’ Then they’d go in a meeting, and he’d throw it out. After Walt died, guys continued saying, ‘Walt would go for this.’ They were wrong before he died, and wrong afterward. What made them think they could read Walt’s mind?”

  Kimball remarked that Disney always believed in team play, yet nobody dared disagree with him. He cited the case of a studio composer who played a piece of music in a meeting. Walt shook his head and said, “You can do better.” The composer gazed at his musicians and said, “Well, that’s a good cross-section of one man’s opinion.” Kimball added: “He was gone by noon.”