My brother Walt is no more, yet his influene
lingers like a living presence over the studio
here he turned out the artoons, nature
films and feature movies that made him
known and loved around the world. Even
now, as I walk around the studio crew. I half
expect to encounter that tall, country-boy
igure, head bowed in thought about some
ew project. Walt was so much the driving
force behind all we did, from making movies
o building Disneyland, that people
constantly mention his ame as if he were
still alive. Every time we show a new picture,
ropen a new feature at Disneyland, someone
is bound to say, "I wonder how Walt would like
it?" And when this happens, I personally
realize that it was something he himself had
lanned. For my imaginative, industrious
brother left enough projects in progres tokeep the rest of us busy for many, many years.
Walt was a complex man. To the writers.
producers and animators who worked with
him, he Was
extraordinary ability to add an extra stroke of
imagination to any story or idea. To the
millions of people who watched his TV show,
he was a warm, kindly personality, bringing
fun and pleasure into their homes. To the
bankers who financed us, I'm sure he seemed
like a wild man, hell-bent for bankruptey. To
me, he was my amazing kid brother, ful of
impractical dreams that he made come true.
genius who had an
The apple orchard and weeping willows
stand green and beautiful at our old farm
where Walt sketchedhis first animals . I recall
how Walt and I would snuggle together in bed
and hear the haunting whistle of a locomotive
passing in the night. Our Uncle Mike was anengineer, and he'd blow his whistle-one long
and two shorts just for us. Walt never lost
old
of the first
his love for trains. Years later
fashioned train
attractions at Disneyland.
As far back as I can remember. Walt was
drawing. The first money he ever made was a
nickel for a sketch of a neighbour's horse. He
studied cartooning in Chicago, and then
started a little animated-cartoon company in
Los
Angeles when Walt, just 21, decided to try his
luck in Hollywood. I met him at the station
He was carryng a cheap suitease that
contained all of his belongings. We borrowed
$500 from an uncle, and Walt started a
cartoon series called Alice in Cartoonland. It
was tough going. Walt did all the animation.
and I cranked the old-fashioned camera. The
Alice cartoons didn't make much of a splash,
so Walt started a new series called Oswald
the Rabbit. Oswald did better but when Walt
went to our New York distributor for more
Kansas City that flopped. I
money he ran into trouble.
"What kind of a deal did you make, kid?" I
asked.
We haven't got a deal," Walt admitted.
"The distributor copy-righted Oswald and
himself."
he's taking over the
"We're going t to start a new series,
we'll own the mouse."
Serie
Strangely, Walt did not seem downhearted.
enthused. "It's about a mouse. And this timeThe rot is a history Walt's mouse, Mickey,
elebrated his 40th birthday in 1968, and a
happy 40th it was. A rter of a billion s
people saw a Disney movie in 1968, 100
million watched a Disney TV show, nearly a
billion read a Disney book or magazine and
almost ten million visited Disneyland. And
Mickey, as Walt used to say,started it all
Mickey was only the first successful C
product of Walt's matehless imagination and
ability to make his dreams become reality It
was an ability he could turn on for any
occasion, large or small. Once, when my son
Roy Edward had the measles, Walt came and
told him the story of Pinocchio, which he was
making at the time. When Walt told a story, it
was a virtuoso performance. His eyes riveted
his listener, his moustache twitched
expressively, his eyebrows rose and fell, and
his hands moved with the grace of a musical
conductor. Young Roy was so wide-eyed at
Walt's graphic telling of the fairy tale that he
forgot all about his measles. Later, when he
saw the finished picture, he was strangely
disappointed. "It didn't seem as exciting as
when Uncle Walt told it," he said.
Like many people who work to create
humour, Walt took it very seriously. He would n
often sit gloomily through the funniest
cartoon, concentrating on some way to
improve it. Walt valued the opinions of those r
working with him, but the final judgement
was always unquestionably his. Once, after
viewing a new cartoon with evidentdispleasure, Walt called for comments from a
Eroup of our people, One after another they i
spoke up, all echoing Walt's criticism. "I can
get rubber stamps that say
snapped. Then he wheeled and asked the
projectionist what he thought. The
sensed that dissent was in order.
"Yes, Walt," he
"I think
, you're all wrong," he declared. Walt just
he
grinned. "You stick to your
suggested.
Walt involved himself in everything.
During one story conference on the Mickey
se Club TV Show, the story man, pointer
in hand, was outlining a sequence called How
e"Now when you get on your
" he began. Walt stopped him.
ur bicycle to a bicycle, he said.
"Remember, every kid isn't fortunate enough
M
to Ride a Bicycle
bieycle..
Change
to have a bicycle ofhis own."
The story of Disneyland, perhaps etter
than anything else, illustrates Walt's vi
and his stubborn determination to realize an
n. For years, Walt had
quietly nursed the dream of a new kind of
amusement park. It would be a potpourri of
all the ideas conjured up by his fertile
imagination. But the idea of sinking millions
of dollars into an amusement park, even
- Walt's kind of amusement park seemed so
us that he wouldn't mention it to
idea he believed i
preposter
anyone. Hejust quietly began planning.
As usual, though, he infused all of us with
his own enthusiasm when he finally told us
about the project. Someone asked, "Walt, how
should the Disneyland look?" Quick came the
reply, "It should look like nothing else on this
earth" Predictably, we had trouble raising
oney, but Disneyland did open, in July
- Since that first day, millions of people
have flocked to see the unique creation of
Walt's imagination. Like a kid with a new toy
- the biggest, shiniest toy in the world Walt
used to wander through the park, staring as
2happily as any tourist.The overwhelming success of Walt's "crazy
idea" triggered a dramatic about-face in the
Disney fortunes. Yet success never changed
Walt. He remained the simplest of men. He
hated parties, and his idea of a night out was
a burger and chilli at some little restaurant.
His only extravagance w
railroad that ran around the grounds of his
home.
"What do you do with all your money? a
friend once asked him. Pointing at the studio,
Walt said, " fertilize that field with it.A And
it's true that Walt ploughed money back into
the company almost as fast as it came in.
Being solvent for the first time since he
started in business gave Walt a chance to
develop other ideas. " These included the
development of Mineral K Kind (an alpine-like
valley high in the Sierra Mountains a
California Institute of Art, for which he
donated the land and several million dollars
and most ambitious of all, a 100-million:
dollar Disney World and City of Tomorrow in
Florida.
Tragically, in the midst of all this activity,
Walt was stricken with this fatal illness. I
heard him refer to this cruel blow only once.
Whatever it is I've got," he told me, "don't get
I visited him in the hospital the night
before he died. Although desperately 1l, he
was as full of plans for the future as he had
been allhis life.
Walt used to say that Disneyland would
never be finished, and it never will. I like to
think, too. that Walt Disney's influence will
never be finished: that through his creations,
future generations will continue to celebrate
what he once described as "that precious,
ageless something in every human being
which makes us play with children's toys and
laugh at silly things and sing in the bathtub
and dream."
