Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince (?)

[mindflipper]

Are you going from personal experience or from the Walt you see on tv (token people don't count)? They can be two very different people. Again, doesn't really matter since they don't repeat his views (esp. since he was hard right wing and now the company is considered liberal).

It's ironic how times have changed...

[theBIGyowski]

Are you going from personal experience or from the Walt you see on tv (token people don't count)? They can be two very different people. Again, doesn't really matter since they don't repeat his views (esp. since he was hard right wing and now the company is considered liberal).

It's ironic how times have changed...

I'm just going by books I have read and documentaries I have seen. Walt's own daughter has said that he was different with the family than he was with his employees...but even the 9 Old Men said Walt was demanding but never cruel. I'm watching The Man Behind the Myth right now and it supports that same idea.

Also...it's well known that Walt was always like an uncle when he was around children. He loved children and I think when other people around him threatened his ability to make children happy he probably took it personally...be it financial reasons, unions, etc.

And yeah...it's one of the saddest things for me personally...seeing how recklessly liberal TDC has been at times since Walt passed away.

[Wizzard419]

You can't expect the family to say anything bad, nor the people that were elevated to the highest levels/best friends of him either. My boss could beat kittens with a 9 iron every day at lunch and as long as I still get what I want I won't have any reason to speak ill of him.

Again, the "uncle" thing is possibly a persona, but the company is the part we were talking about. How many members at the exec./upper eschelons were not white (probably christan) males? I'm guessing that number is pretty low.

I agree, women shouldn't be allowed to wear pants.

[Jacca5660]

You can't expect the family to say anything bad, nor the people that were elevated to the highest levels/best friends of him either. My boss could beat kittens with a 9 iron every day at lunch and as long as I still get what I want I won't have any reason to speak ill of him.

Again, the "uncle" thing is possibly a persona, but the company is the part we were talking about. How many members at the exec./upper eschelons were not white (probably christan) males? I'm guessing that number is pretty low.

I agree, women shouldn't be allowed to wear pants.

OY!!

[Wizzard419]

Yes, we haven't forgotten your views on unwed women being prohibited to walk about without an escort.

[mindflipper]

Yes, we haven't forgotten your views on unwed women being prohibited to walk about without an escort.

Are we straying a bit far from the topic here?

[Mr.ToadWildRider]

Also...it's well known that Walt was always like an uncle when he was around children. He loved children and I think when other people around him threatened his ability to make children happy he probably took it personally...be it financial reasons, unions, etc.

Well like I said i'm only halfway through the book and it's at the time of Snow White's release right now, but I just thought I'd point out this line. The book doesn't deny that in certain company Walt was extremely nice. There's a lot about him being a gentleman when women were around, basically to the extreme. It notes that there were specific employee rules for the men when female "co-workers" (mostly inkers and secretaries) were present i.e. if you swore in the presence of a woman you were fired on the spot.

As for the glowing comments from family and certain artists I wouldn't be surprised if a family member would speak highly of Walt, their income is partially based on his reputation. It's part of the reason the Disney company is notoriously protective of archives on the man and has essentially tried to suck in as many public documents as they can and limit access to them. Although Wizzard (I think) made the argument that no one really cares about Ford's anti-semitism I'm not so sure Disney would fare as well. If kind old Uncle Walt turned out to be a mean, hate-filled, little man I'm not sure people would be too pleased buying up children's merchandise with his name on it. People would still buy of course but I'm sure there would be financial reprucussions.

Some of the stuff in the book that tries to paint Walt as a tyrant I think really just shows a guy with moral character (some artists made a short of Mickey and Minnie doing the nasty for Walt on his b-day and after it was over Walt stood up and applauded feverishly and asked "Who is responsible for this?" and the guys who eagerly raised their hands were dismissed on the spot) but it's clear from interviews the author had with some of Walt's best animators, particularly Art Babbitt who was apparently responsible for the Chinese Mushroom scene in Fantasia, the Wicked Queen/Witch in Snow White and others, that Walt was not just demanding but rather cruel. So far the biggest issue though is that Walt intentionally went out of his way to personally take credit for all of the work that went into his cartoons despite his never having a role in drawing them.

Again, I think that a lot of what the book that I've read so far may really be at least partially if not fully true, what's unfair about the book is the way it is deliberately worded and assembled to cast the negatives about Walt into an even worse light. Like the examples about firing people who swore in front of women or the animators for the birthday short; I don't necessarily disagree with them, though the former may have been a little extreme, but the book seems to try to drive home that these were the actions of a tyrannical dictator.

[theBIGyowski]

So...it was more in the way Walt enforced his own morals rather than him being a cruel person? Sometimes you have to see things in retrospect to understand how important they really were. Imagine if Walt had been more lax and liberal (in the strict definition of the word...not in terms of politics). TDC might be totally different or maybe even non-existent. It was the desire to stick to Walt's standards that got WDW built. Of course the ends don't justify the means...but I do think that Walt had the integrity of himself and his company in mind with the big decisions he made every day.

[mindflipper]

Mr.ToadWildRider: as you continue to read the book, can you continue to post some observations or bits from the book? And when you're finished, give us your final verdict on whether you or not you would recommend this book to anyone else.

[Wizzard419]

Well like I said i'm only halfway through the book and it's at the time of Snow White's release right now, but I just thought I'd point out this line. The book doesn't deny that in certain company Walt was extremely nice. There's a lot about him being a gentleman when women were around, basically to the extreme. It notes that there were specific employee rules for the men when female "co-workers" (mostly inkers and secretaries) were present i.e. if you swore in the presence of a woman you were fired on the spot.

As for the glowing comments from family and certain artists I wouldn't be surprised if a family member would speak highly of Walt, their income is partially based on his reputation. It's part of the reason the Disney company is notoriously protective of archives on the man and has essentially tried to suck in as many public documents as they can and limit access to them. Although Wizzard (I think) made the argument that no one really cares about Ford's anti-semitism I'm not so sure Disney would fare as well. If kind old Uncle Walt turned out to be a mean, hate-filled, little man I'm not sure people would be too pleased buying up children's merchandise with his name on it. People would still buy of course but I'm sure there would be financial reprucussions.

Some of the stuff in the book that tries to paint Walt as a tyrant I think really just shows a guy with moral character (some artists made a short of Mickey and Minnie doing the nasty for Walt on his b-day and after it was over Walt stood up and applauded feverishly and asked "Who is responsible for this?" and the guys who eagerly raised their hands were dismissed on the spot) but it's clear from interviews the author had with some of Walt's best animators, particularly Art Babbitt who was apparently responsible for the Chinese Mushroom scene in Fantasia, the Wicked Queen/Witch in Snow White and others, that Walt was not just demanding but rather cruel. So far the biggest issue though is that Walt intentionally went out of his way to personally take credit for all of the work that went into his cartoons despite his never having a role in drawing them.

Again, I think that a lot of what the book that I've read so far may really be at least partially if not fully true, what's unfair about the book is the way it is deliberately worded and assembled to cast the negatives about Walt into an even worse light. Like the examples about firing people who swore in front of women or the animators for the birthday short; I don't necessarily disagree with them, though the former may have been a little extreme, but the book seems to try to drive home that these were the actions of a tyrannical dictator.

The anti-semite stuff was the point. It was the 40's and 50's and in a lot of America jews weren't... I would say accepted. I'm not talking Nazi level stuff but they were not always seen as equals and, similar to AA's, they would be barred from various things/places.

Could you imagine Disney trying to make a cartoon like this today?



Pretty much any company that lasts for longer than 20 years is going to have something unsavory about it, look at the founders of apple and the work they did for the mob (Woz is forthcoming Jobs still keeps mum).

If you really want to keep your heroes in their pristine state then you should never touch anything that isn't approved by them, you won't be happy.

[annafab]

I'm reading "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" and it seems to be giving a positive but honest look at his life. It shows how he was a hard-ass but also how nice he could be. His daughters are interviewed throughout the book and they give honest answers to questions about his family life; like how he and Lillian argued and how he could be distant from her. It also talks about his alleged racism and anti-Semitism and has references from workers talking about how he wasn't racist, but he was racially insensitive - as almost everyone was back then. (Not that I'm trying to justify his racially insensitivity, but we have to remember when looking backward to take cultural context into evaluation.)

Anyway, I just wanted to throw my 2-cents in about that. The book doesn't give him a falsified sainthood but it doesn't paint him as a stain on humanity either.

[Mr.ToadWildRider]

Well I've read a bit further and it's getting more into Disney's attempts to union bust, firing anyone attempting to unionize and even bringing in mob connections; though I'm fairly sure any major corporation undergoing unionization had some at least indirect contact with mafioso types as they really pushed themselves into both sides of the labor organization movement.

It's ironic that Wizzard mentioned Ford earlier with respect to anti-semitism as there was a paragraph about how Ford met with Disney and one of the words of advice he imparted to him was to consider just selling his company outright if he couldn't afford the operation in-house instead of publicly trading shares as otherwise the Jews would slowly eat up the company and take it over.

The book's also touched on a rather odd bit about speculation that Disney might actually be Spanish, as in the illegitimate son of a rather promiscuous woman and a married Dr. in Mojacar Spain. The mother then fled with the son to a Franciscan Mission in CA where Elias met them and took the boy and neither Elias or Flora Disney were Walt's parents. Alternatively, that Elias was in fact Walt's father but that this Spanish woman was the mother. This is all based around Walt's apparent suspicion that he was actually adopted as there was no birth certificate for him when he tried to join the army. The book, based on documents obtained through FOIA requests to the FBI, alleges that Walt assisted the FBI in hunting communists in Hollywood in exchange for assistance in finding information of his "true" origins. Apparently, Elias' trip to CA in an attempt to make some money in the gold prospecting market coincided with this woman from Mojacar being in CA and then a weird birth announcement in the Chicago Tribune (?) [where the Disneys were living at the time] of Walt, despite it being 10 years before he was actually born.

The book seems to draw 3 potential conclusions about the birth announcement. Either that is when Walt was actually brought back from CA to Chicago making him 10 years older than officially recognized (which the author in some ways tries to paint as plausible due to Walt's relatively young death at 66, and his advanced aging, remarkable success in his 20's. The author then seems to discredit this though by pointing out that while a 66 year old might be able to pass as 56, a 13 year old cannot pass as a 3 year old. The next conclusion is the paper made a mistake and tried to correct it in its own archives and got the date wrong. The third conclusion is that the FBI/Disney Company doctored the document to hide the truth. I'm not really sure I understand any of it to be frank.

The author also makes passing reference that is clearly designed to make the reader draw a specific conclusion: Elias hired a mysterious woman from Mojacar Spain to be the family's housekeeper and then Walt hired the same woman and moved her out to CA with him.

[theBIGyowski]

I don't see it being possible that neither of Walt's parents (Elias and Flora) were his biological parents...because how would you explain Roy? Sure they didn't look exactly alike, but his son, Roy E. Disney, looked much more like Walt. So would Roy have been adopted as well? Another thing is that Walt had other brothers and a sister as well, so if his age was very different you would think it would be obvious.

I definitely believe the part about doing everything he could to avoid unionization. Union bosses were very ruthless back then and I bet Walt was scared of losing everything again, like he did with Alice and Oswald. If a mafioso would have come to Walt and told him that he would make sure the union bosses would stay away if Walt wanted his help...I bet Walt would have given him an ear.

What I love is that I watched the documentary, "Walt & El Grupo" a while back, so I was able to fill in the gap when Walt and his central crew just disappeared to go down to Central and South America while the strikes were going on. It was very enlightening to see where all of the Latin American things came from and how Disney had such a huge impact on that culture and bringing that culture back to the States.

[Wizzard419]

In what way do you see it not being possible? Considering that there is no clear line (it not unusual to not have a birth cert in that time), it is totally plausable that he wasn't their kid. I've seen adopted children that "look" (it's a trick the mind plays on you) like their parents/siblings. Still, he probably was their kid, but "international adoption scheme" is way sexier than "she popped out another kid".

I'm not sure if the unions were as strongly tied to the mafia on the west coast as they are portrayed on the east coast. The big union fears here were mostly because of "commies" (who mostly were jewish) and he was one of many who complied with the HUAC that ruined many lives.

[theBIGyowski]

In what way do you see it not being possible? Considering that there is no clear line (it not unusual to not have a birth cert in that time), it is totally plausable that he wasn't their kid. I've seen adopted children that "look" (it's a trick the mind plays on you) like their parents/siblings. Still, he probably was their kid, but "international adoption scheme" is way sexier than "she popped out another kid".

I'm not sure if the unions were as strongly tied to the mafia on the west coast as they are portrayed on the east coast. The big union fears here were mostly because of "commies" (who mostly were jewish) and he was one of many who complied with the HUAC that ruined many lives.

Can't disagree with you.