by Bob Thomas
He rarely issued direct praise for work that had been done well. He seemed to expect excellence and did not express gratitude when he received it. Commendation usually came in the form of a bonus check or a remark to a third person, with the realization that the praise would be handed on.
He commanded attention. Roy once remarked of his brother: “He had an eye that would grab yours when he was telling you something, and if you would waver and look around, he’d say, ‘What’s the matter—aren’t you interested?’ Oh, he wouldn’t let go of your eyes. He was so intent on everything he did, and that was his way of looking into you. You couldn’t lie to him and say you liked it if you didn’t; it would show right in your eyes. People couldn’t stand up to him if they weren’t pretty right.”
He did not like to be contradicted, either by his collaborators or by himself. In a story conference a director made the mistake of rebutting a Disney suggestion by saying, “But Walt, you said the opposite thing in our last story meeting. It says so in the conference notes.” Walt viewed the observation coldly. What mattered was the viewpoint he offered at the moment, not one he had held a week before.
He disliked having his view of fantasy confronted with logic. A Brazilian artist, brought to the studio to work on the South American features, attended a story meeting for a sequence in which an Argentine horse played ragtime piano. “But horses don’t play the piano!” the Brazilian protested. Walt immediately lost interest in him as a collaborator.
He could apply his own particular logic to win a point. In a story session for a jungle scene, dialogue was suggested for all the beasts, including a giraffe. Walt halted the discussion by declaring, “Giraffes don’t talk; they have no vocal cords.” The giraffe remained mute while the other animals spoke.
He listened to all ideas, but in the end he alone made the decision. When he suggested a switch in a Pinocchio sequence that Bill Cottrell had written, Cottrell said, “I like my way better.” “Yes, but let’s do it my way,” Walt replied. “But if we don’t try it my way, we’ll never know whether or not it would have worked,” Cottrell suggested. “No, we won’t,” Walt said with finality.
While he disliked opposition to his ideas, he would not tolerate yes-men. That was misunderstood by some of his underlings, including a director who was asked in a sweatbox session what he thought of an animation sequence. “I don’t know; Walt isn’t here,” he replied. Walt had no respect for men who uncritically assented to his suggestions; he himself realized that not all of them had value. He could ascend in a flight of fancy to such heights that both he and his listeners realized that his ideas wouldn’t work. The matter would not be mentioned again.
Some of Walt’s creative people enjoyed a lively relationship with him. One of those was Bill Peet, who made important story contributions to the cartoon features. Walt once paid him a rare compliment: “If I were you, Bill, I wouldn’t be working for me.” Because of his respect for Peet, Walt tolerated Peet’s heated arguments over story matters. Walt also endured the temperamental outbursts of Milt Kahl, whose talent as an animator was exceeded by no one’s. Walt developed a system of dealing with Kahl’s pique: “I just wait three days after Milt has asked to see me; by then he has forgotten what he was mad about.”
One of Walt’s most valued animators in the 1930s was a young man whose natural talent made him an instant success. If anything, animation came too easily to him, and, his fellow artists believe, the lack of challenge contributed to his alcoholism. As his drinking increased, his work output declined in volume and quality, and Walt shifted him to the position of supervisor, hoping the animator could impart his knowledge to others. But the added responsibility plunged him further into drink. Finally Walt discharged him, hoping that the shock would bring a turnabout. But it didn’t, and he died at an early age.
His was a rare case. As long as drinking did not interfere with an employee’s performance of his duties, Walt did not object. A supervisor once came to him to complain about a story man who kept a bottle in his desk drawer. Walt, who disliked informers, replied: “Find out what he’s drinking; I want you to try some of the same.”
Disney artists cherished a tale about a story man we shall call Al, a brilliant, inventive fellow who sometimes drank his lunch at a nearby restaurant. One day he returned to the studio and crawled behind a stack of storyboards leaning against his office wall. He quickly fell into a blissful, silent sleep. An hour later he awoke groggily in his confined quarters. Terror struck his heart as he heard the unmistakable cough of Walt Disney. A storyboard session was going on, and Walt was making comments as a story man described the action. “All right, let’s see the next one,” Walt remarked, and a storyboard was removed from the stack. Another cough by Walt made Al’s throat start to tickle, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. The story man raced through the presentation, removing one board after another. Finally he was reaching the end of the sequence, and only one board remained. Al concluded that exposure was inevitable. It never came. In his muddled state he had failed to realize that the final storyboard would remain in place.
The story of Al’s near-disaster circulated through the studio and finally reached Walt. “We ought to have a place at the studio where guys can sleep it off,” he commented. He was also tolerant when an animator was arrested on a homosexual charge. “Let’s give him a chance; we all make mistakes,” Walt said. The animator continued at the studio for years afterward.
A group of story men once discovered that by sticking a pushpin in a lump of clay and balancing a ruler on the pinpoint, they could make the ruler spin indefinitely, like a propeller. It became the office toy, and they improved upon the device by counterbalancing chunks of art gum on the ruler. One early afternoon they were huddled over the spinning ruler when Walt’s portentous cough was heard down the hallway. They quickly wheeled a storyboard in front of the ruler, hiding it as Walt entered. During the story session, two of the men stared fixedly at the whirling ruler. Finally Walt said, “What the hell are you looking at?” The men froze as Walt gazed around the storyboard and saw the object of their fascination. He studied it for a moment and said, “You’ve got too much friction there, with the pin sticking into the wood. What you need is some kind of a bearing….” For weeks afterward, he inquired of the story men, “How are you doing with that gadget?”
When Walt entered a meeting, the men automatically rose to their feet as a matter of courtesy. The ritual was nothing that Walt asked for, and it was the only deviation from the consistent informality of the studio. Unlike other studios, where creative people worked behind closed doors, the office doors at Disney’s were almost always open, and visiting between offices was approved.
Everyone at the studio, from Walt and Roy downward, used first names in addressing each other. New employees sometimes learned this from Walt. One day after the new studio had opened, Walt called the barbershop for a haircut appointment. Before his arrival, the new barber, Sal Silvestri, debated what to call the boss. When Walt walked in the shop, the barber said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Disney.”
“What’s your name?” Walt asked.
“Sal.”
“Mine’s Walt. The only Mister we have at the studio is our lawyer, Mr. Lessing.” (A few others were called Mister in early years at the studio: Joseph Rogers, a white-haired carpenter; Emile Flohri, once a cover artist for the old Life magazine; A. G. Keener, a venerable paymaster.)
Walt rarely fired anyone. When an employee fell into disfavor, he was usually given a meaningless assignment and soon left the studio voluntarily. Walt employed a pair of writers who seemed to produce nothing of value. He admitted their incompetence and explained why they remained: “Because they always do a story the wrong way; once I’ve seen how they do it, I know the right way.”
From all of his employees, Walt required a devotion to the collaborative effort, a sublimation of their own egos for the benefit of the studio product. The animated cartoon, as developed to an art by the Disney studio, required
the efforts of many creative people. Those who were willing to contribute their work with selfless dedication remained and flourished. Some could not find gratification under such a system and left the studio to seek more individual achievement. Among the Disney alumni who achieved success elsewhere were Walt Kelly, Frank Tashlin, Virgil Partch, Hank Ketchum, George Baker, Sam Cobean, Chuck Jones and David Swift. Similarly, Disney’s attempts to collaborate with well-known personalities usually ended in failure. Over the years such figures as Aldous Huxley, Thomas Hart Benton, Salvador Dali and Marc Connolly came to the studio to work on projects. Each time their efforts failed to reach the screen.
From the earliest years, when he changed the company from the Disney Brothers Studio to Walt Disney Studio, Walt had promoted his own name. Was this evidence of his ego drive? Possibly. But it was also shrewd business. Increasingly over the years, “Walt Disney Presents” became recognized throughout the world as a symbol of quality entertainment for the family.
Walt once expressed his feelings bluntly in a talk with a young animator, Ken Anderson. “I’m impressed with what you’ve been doing, Ken,” Walt remarked. “You’re new here, and I want you to understand one thing: there’s just one thing we’re selling here, and that’s the name ‘Walt Disney.’ If you can buy that and be happy to work for it, you’re my man. But if you’ve got any ideas of selling the name ‘Ken Anderson,’ it’s best for you to leave right now.”
Walt bore no rancor toward those who left him, and he welcomed many of them back. Among those who returned was Ub Iwerks. Walt’s earliest collaborator had parted with the company in 1930 to found Ub Iwerks Studio in Hollywood. He produced the Flip the Frog series for MGM, and later tried other series, with medium success. Ub’s real interest was the technical aspect of animation, and he returned to the Disney organization to pursue his research in 1940. After ten years apart, both Ub and Walt were reluctant to make the first move toward reconciliation. Ben Sharpsteen helped get the two old friends together. Neither Ub nor Walt was inclined to be demonstrative, but fellow workers thought they detected an unspoken affection between the two. Ub’s contributions in new optical techniques proved to be as valuable in the studio’s later history as had his animation of Oswald and Mickey Mouse in the early years.
“I take my hat off to talent,” Walt said on many occasions. He sometimes grumbled to his animators, “I’d like to have a machine to replace you s.o.b.’s,” but they never took him seriously. They realized that he was just as dependent on them for the creative impetus to the Disney product as they were on him for guidance and inspiration. No one could minimize the animator’s work to Walt, not even animators themselves. As a part of the Disney Art School curriculum, Alexander Woollcott, Frank Lloyd Wright and other noted figures addressed the evening classes. One of the young animators commented to Walt: “We’re lucky to be able to hear people like them.” “Listen,” Walt replied, “they’re lucky, too. They can learn as much from you guys as you can from them.”
While Walt was sometimes stern with his employees, he could also be compassionate, usually in a subtle way. During preparations for Victory Through Air Power, young Ken Anderson was demonstrating a storyboard about aerial tactics to Walt Disney, Alexander de Seversky and a group of visiting admirals. When Walt took out a cigarette, Anderson produced a brand-new lighter and sparked the flint. The lighter exploded in a blue flame, singeing Walt’s mustache white and blistering his nose. “What the hell are you trying to do, burn me up?” he exclaimed, rushing out of the room. Anderson was devastated. Word of the incident spread through the studio, and he was shunned like a pariah. He wept that night, fearing that his career with Disney was over. In the morning he was surprised to hear Walt’s jaunty voice on the telephone: “Hi, Ken, what are you doin’ for lunch?” The two men lunched together in the studio restaurant in full view of other employees. Walt, who had shaved off his mustache, made no mention of the previous day’s accident; he had a facility for ignoring disagreeable subjects. When Ken returned to his office that afternoon, his fellow workers no longer avoided him.
Walt Disney’s personal life became more private as he grew older and became more famous. Although she appeared dutifully for public occasions, Lilly did not enjoy the glare of publicity. Walt’s marriage to Lilly was one of mutual give-and-take. He discovered early that he had married no meek, acquiescent wife. Lilly listened to his dreams, but she did not respond with unquestioning support. When she thought he was wrong, she said so. She was especially chary about new and adventurous projects, often siding with Roy in opposing ambitious plans that might break the company. But, like Roy, she admitted her mistake when Walt proved himself right, and that made the triumph more pleasurable. “Lilly,” he said admiringly, “you’re the only person I can count on never to ‘yes’ me.” Although she had been afraid that Snow White would cost too much, she loved the film itself. She also enjoyed Fantasia and Bambi, cared less for Pinocchio. She didn’t like Donald Duck at all, especially his voice. But she admitted that she adored Mickey Mouse—“because there’s so much of Walt in him.”
Lilly grew accustomed to having Walt impose his work on their home life. His enthusiasm was contagious, and she listened as he spouted his newest ambitions—he demanded the same attention from her as he did from those at the studio. As his studio responsibilities grew, he brought more work home. He often ran movies at home, both his own and those of other studios. Lilly watched them with Walt, but when he started showing rushes of live-action filming, she asked, “Do we have to see those scenes over and over again?” Thereafter he always watched rushes at the studio. Walt and Lilly rarely dined out. It was often seven or seven-thirty before he arrived home from the studio in the evening, and he didn’t want to waste the time in going out to a restaurant.
His taste in clothes continued the dapper inclination of his youth. He liked to wear sport jackets of bold colors and designs, with sweaters of gray or blue underneath. He also had a passion for hats. Tyroleans, fedoras, panamas, the jauntier the better. He bought several at a time, and he always wore his hat at an angle he considered rakish. Lilly thought the angle made him look cocky. She hated the hats and had her revenge one day at a bullfight in Mexico City, where he and his staff were researching for The Three Caballeros. During an accolade for a bullfighter, Lilly removed Walt’s hat and sailed it into the ring. Walt once bronzed a hat Lilly particularly disliked and presented it to her as a gift.
Walt considered himself religious, yet he never went to church. The heavy dose of religiosity in his childhood discouraged him; he especially disliked sanctimonious preachers. But he admired and respected every religion, and his belief in God never wavered. His theology was individual. Once the studio nurse, Hazel George, asked him if he believed in the Immaculate Conception. His reply: “I believe every conception is immaculate, because a child is involved.” Unlike Cecil B. DeMille and other film makers, Walt did not believe in mixing religion and entertainment. He never made a religious film, and churchmen were rarely portrayed in Disney movies. Walt and Lilly sent their daughters to Sunday school, but made no attempt to impose their own religious views on the girls. Walt’s attitude was expressed in an excerpt from a 1943 letter to his sister Ruth: “Little Diane is going to a Catholic school now which she seems to enjoy very much. She is quite taken with the rituals and is studying catechism. She hasn’t quite made up her mind yet whether she wants to be a Catholic or a Protestant. Some people worry about her interest in Catholicism, but I feel differently about it. I think she is intelligent enough to know what she wants to do and I feel that whatever her decision may be is her privilege.”
Walt drove Diane and Sharon to Sunday school and afterward they often went to amusement parks in Los Angeles. At Griffith Park near their Los Feliz home, the girls rode the big merry-go-round again and again. Their luck at grabbing the gold rings and winning another ride seemed uncanny. They didn’t know that their father was bribing the merry-go-round attendant.
On Christmas m
orning, a huge tree appeared in the Disneys’ two-story living room; Walt had spent much of the night decorating it while Lilly filled the stockings and laid out the multitude of gifts. Many of them were toys of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters (aside from the children’s toys, there was no evidence of Walt’s studio life in the Disney house). Walt strove to maintain the Santa Claus myth as long as possible. One Christmas morning when Diane was eight, she awoke to find a beautiful playhouse on the back-yard lawn. It looked like a fairy-tale house out of a Disney cartoon, with tiny leaded-glass windows and a mushroom chimney. It had running water and a fully equipped kitchen, even a telephone. While Diane was admiring the house, the telephone rang. A jolly voice announced himself as Santa Claus—Diane suspected later that he was their rotund butler—and asked how she liked the place. “I love it, Santa,” she said. Later she was telling a neighbor boy how Santa Claus had brought her the lovely playhouse. “Santa Claus!” the boy said. “There were men from your dad’s studio putting up that house all day.” She refused to believe him.
While Walt did not overindulge his daughters, he delighted in finding them gifts. Hazel George chided him for giving them too much. “You’re depriving Diane and Sharon by making life too easy for them,” said the studio nurse. “There will be no challenges for them if you give them everything.” Walt thought about it and replied, “Girls are different.”
He lived surrounded by women. Besides Lilly and the two daughters and the cook, there was often a female relative living with the Disneys; Walt complained wryly that even the family pets were female. But his grumblings seemed half-hearted. He appreciated femininity, and he liked to play the role of father; he spent long hours in the swimming pool teaching Diane and Sharon to swim, though he himself was not a practiced swimmer. By the time each girl was three, he had taught them to ride horseback, and the family rode together during vacations in Palm Springs.
