Disney (10 page)

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcasted live from Disneyland on opening day, for a special hour and a half program that granted millions at home entry into Walt Disney’s fantasy land. It was hosted by Disney’s friends, Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan. Linkletter opened the show from the railroad tracks of the Disneyland and Santa Fe Railroad, upon which Disney and a costumed Mickey character arrived on the E.P. Ripley, named for the president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Twenty-nine cameras and dozens of crews filmed the broadcast, which Linkletter called “not so much a show as a special event,” and compared to the unwrapping of “a $17 million bundle of gifts all wrapped in whimsy.” The first guests to be interviewed were Linkletter’s children, who were asked which Disneyland attraction they were most excited to visit. Six-year-old Diane said, “The great big castle where Sleeping Beauty is.” Sharon, who was eight, answered “Frontierland, where Davy Crockett fights the Indians.” Son Robert wanted to “take the boat trip down the Congo,” and daughter Dawn “a cruise to the moon in a rocket ship over at Tomorrowland.”

The hosts took viewers from the entrance of the park down nostalgic Main Street, U.S.A., a thoroughfare modeled after Disney’s beloved Marceline, Missouri. Linkletter described it this way: “You find yourself in a bygone time, another world. The clock has turned back a half a century, and you’re in the main square of a small American town. The year, 1900. There’s the city hall, quaint and dignified with its post office, the place where the citizens of the town gather to exchange gossip and hear the latest news of the day. The fire station, that’s of special interest to the volunteer bucket brigade whose horse-drawn engine and up-to-date hose and chemical wagon are a source of real local pride. Then there’s the car barn housing the horse-drawn streetcar, a great boon to speedy transportation. That little old streetcar will be going up and down Main Street here in Disneyland about every ten or fifteen minutes, day in and day out. It goes by a whole flock of very interesting and quaint little stores. There’s the emporium, where a lady could buy lisle stockings, or a silver button hook, or for a dollar, a new pair of tan high-button shoes. Main Street, U.S.A., and every one of those buildings is 5/8th real size. The doorways, of course, and the windows are full size, but the buildings themselves are five-eighths. The people you see walking up and down the street are full-sized people; they are not made by Walt Disney.”

The live broadcast had some hitches, which Linkletter warned viewers to expect, comparing it to “covering three volcanoes all erupting at the same time and you didn’t expect any of them.” Park-goers could be seen tripping over the miles and miles of television cable on the grounds; co-host Bob Cummings was caught on camera kissing a dancer in Frontierland. Miscues were played for laughs; when Linkletter lost his microphone in Fantasyland, Cummings, aboard a pirate ship, did a play-by-play as Linkletter searched for it in front of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Overall, opening day was a disaster. Thousands of counterfeit tickets turned up, and the crowd was three times larger than expected. Celebrities who were supposed to appear at staggered times showed up en masse. The temperature soared to 101 degrees, and most of the park’s water fountains malfunctioned. Faced with a plumber’s strike on the eve of the opening, Disney had been forced to choose between running toilets or water fountains. Since Pepsi was a sponsor of the day, many guests grumbled that the lack of water was a deliberate move to sell more soda.

Much of the park’s asphalt had been poured just that morning, and with the heat, the pavement became so soft that women’s high-heels sank into it. Vendors ran out of food. A gas leak closed the three major attractions – Fantasyland, Frontierland and Adventureland - for the afternoon. The lines were enormous; parents were seen throwing their children over other people to get them onto rides. For years, Disney executives referred to the day as Black Sunday.

But the problems were quickly solved, and the park went on to draw more than a million visitors in its first six months. It was a testimony to Disney’s vision, leadership, and attention to detail. Employees were trained to pick up every bit of trash within thirty seconds of it hitting the ground. They were also expected to be unfailingly cheerful and helpful. According to the Disneyland employee handbook, “At Disneyland we get tired, but never bored, and even if it is a rough day, we appear happy. You’ve got to have an honest smile. It’s got to come from within. And to accomplish this you’ve got to develop a sense of humor and a genuine interest in people. If nothing else helps, remember that you get paid for smiling.”

Detail mattered to Disney. Sheets of blue note paper popped up all over the park, with orders from Disney to change a burned-out light bulb or empty an overflowing trash can. The same blue notes had been used in Disney’s studio for years. Disney told his team that cost was secondary: “You and I do not worry whether anything is cheap or expensive. We only worry whether it’s good. I have a theory that if it’s good enough, the public will pay you back for it.”

Disney liked to say that Disneyland would never be finished; after the opening, it only occupied more of his time, energy, and imagination. “He practically lived there,” Lillian said. In fact, Walt furnished an apartment overtop the park’s fire station on Main Street and stayed there often. It had the look of a late-nineteenth-century home, with red-velvet and lace décor. Sometimes, he could be seen in a window, gazing out at the park.

Walt walked through Disneyland with the loping stride of a farm boy; occasionally, he zipped by on an electric cart. He could suddenly appear on a ride platform and commandeer a coaster or boat or simply stand back and watch riders come and go. “I come down here to get a real rest from the humdrum of making pictures at the studio,” he told Joe Fowler, a retired United States Navy admiral who supervised the construction of Disneyland’s riverboat and stayed on as a general manager at the park. “This is my real amusement. This is where I relax.”

Disney was like a kid with a massive play set, constantly thinking of accessories to add to it. Months after the park opened, he called in a Swiss company to design a cable gondola to traverse the park. The Alpine Skyway would be part of a more-than-$7 million Disneyland expansion announced the following May.

Disneyland filled another gap in Walt’s life. His backyard Carolwood Pacific Railroad, which had brought him so much joy, was retired shortly after the park opened. He had been taking some neighborhood children on a ride when the train skipped the track. The crash wasn’t serious, but it was enough to break the train’s whistle. One of the children jumped off the train to take a look at the damage and was scalded slightly by a hiss of steam. Walt’s daughter Sharon said there was another incident that followed shortly thereafter, in which the train – remotely controlled by the barn – crashed into the garage. That was its last run. “Daddy took a lot of pictures of it and stashed it for good in a cubby at Disneyland. He was through with toy trains,” Sharon said.

Around the same time, Walt’s beloved poodle Duchess died. The Disneys’ veterinarian had diagnosed Duchess gallstones, and rather than surgery, recommended euthanizing the dog. Walt would not agree and stayed with her. Though the poodle somehow seemed to be improving, she suddenly passed away. Walt suspected Lillian of agreeing to euthanize Duchess and ordered an autopsy. He was upset about losing his companion and kept her blanket undisturbed in his studio office as a sort of memorial.

In March 1959, Walt was in a hospital bed, recuperating from a bout with kidney stones. His daughter Sharon came to visit with her boyfriend, an interior designer from Kansas City named George Hurrell, and announced they were getting married. Walt approved of Hurrell, but he was melancholy at the thought of losing his daughter. At the wedding two months later, Walt cut in on a dance between the bride and groom, telling Hurrell, “It’s not your dance yet.”

Suddenly, the palatial home on Carolwood that he had built to bring his family closer was empty but for Walt and Lillian – and their cook and housekeeper, Thelma. Walt confided in Thelma, a feisty woman who, like him, smoked and played gin rummy. When Walt was running late at the office, his secretary called Thelma to tell her to keep dinner warm. Lillian didn’t cook; days Thelma took off, she and Walt went out – they were regulars at the Tam O’Shanter restaurant.

In the coming decade, people flocked to Disneyland, while Walt Disney gradually pulled back. He and Lillian took trips – he would not call them “vacations,” insisting that the work followed him. Sometimes, he scouted locations for films; other times, ideas for Disneyland. But in truth, these were escapes. They went on long Caribbean cruises, cross-country drives, and stayed in posh resorts. Every year, they retreated to Europe for weeks or months at a time. Walt had a vacation home built in Palm Springs, Florida, where he made it an “inviolable rule not to do anything but rest and relax.”

Meanwhile, the studio released more than fifty family-friendly movies, many of them live action.

Mary Poppins
, released in 1964, one of the most technically ambitious films the studio generated, featured animated characters interacting with live-action actors, and took more than twenty years to bring to the screen. In 1951, the persistent Walt Disney finally succeeded in bringing author
P.L. Travers
from Ireland to Hollywood for a meeting. By then, Mary Poppins was the heroine of five children’s novels – 1934’s original book,
Mary Poppins Comes Back
(1935),
Mary Poppins Opens the Door
(1943),
Mary Poppins in the Park
(1952),
and Mary Poppins From A to Z
(1962). P.L. Travers was a pen name (the initials stood for Pamela Lyndon); her real name was Helen Lyndon Goff. Although she agreed to hear Walt’s proposal to adapt her books to film, she was highly protective of “her Mary” and insisted on script approval rights, though Disney stipulated that final say on the finished project was his.

Production on Disney’s
Mary Poppins
took three years, mostly because of Travers’ wrangling over the script. She was particularly hard-nosed about the use of animation in the film, which she felt cheapened her story. She was ambivalent about the music, and opposed the softening of her domineering, but ultimately endearing, governess. This conflict was embellished and dramatized for a 2013 film, “Saving Mr. Banks,” which cast Tom Hanks in the role of Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers.

In the end, Disney got his way. He cast rosy-cheeked
Julie Andrews
as Mary Poppins and
Dick Van Dyke
as her closest friend, Bert, a chimney sweep who sells kites and works as a street artist for spare change.

A strong wind carries Mary Poppins on her umbrella – with an animated duck-head handle that talks – to Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane in London, home of the Banks family. George Banks, played by
David Tomlinson
, is interviewing nannies for his two children, Jane and Michael, who chased off the previous one with their bad behavior. Mr. Banks’ ad calls for a disciplinarian; the children are seeking a fun, kind-hearted and caring nanny. After Mr. Banks tears up the children’s ad and tosses into the fireplace, he is stunned when Mary Poppins recites their ad word for word. Mary asserts that she can be both kind and firm, and sets the terms of her employment, which includes a trial period of one week. She charms the Banks children with her magic, extracting all manner of amusements from her bottomless carpetbag. With Bert, she takes them on adventures, galloping on merry-go-round horses that come to life and dancing with cartoon penguins. Through it all, Mary Poppins imparts lessons about responsibility. By the end, Mr. Banks, a banker with little time for his family, realizes what he’s been missing out on.

Mary Poppins premiered at Grauman’s Theatre in Hollywood on August 27, 1964. Walt Disney attended - his first premiere appearance since
Snow White.
Travers was not invited, and had to ask Disney to add her to the guest list. She was disappointed in the final film and approached Disney after the screening, screeching that the animated sequence be cut. “The ship has sailed, Pamela,” Disney told her. Critics and audiences alike loved the film, which topped the box office with $28.5 million in its first year. It was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won five: Best Actress for Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song (“Chim Chim Cher-ee,” sung primarily by Bert in a musical number across London’s rooftops).

In 1964, Disney built several exhibits for the World’s Fair in New York, including the
It’s a Small World
ride, a demonstration of “audio-animatronics”: lifelike robots whose movements were controlled by computers and synched with sound.

That same year, Disney representatives quietly bought more than sixty square miles of near-swampland in central Florida near Orlando that would eventually become
Walt Disney World
.

In his sixties, Walt Disney was painfully aware of his own mortality. He was plagued by kidney stones, debilitating toothaches, a bad elbow, and chronic sinus infections. He regularly battled colds, and his smoker’s cough worsened. Once lean and hatchet-faced, he was paunchy.

He attended to his legacy like a man in a hurry. His studio still produced five films a year, and Disney was hands-on with most of them. He retreated even more into his work and shrugged off social engagements. “I don’t know how much time I have,” he said. “I need to stay here to do as much as I can to keep this enterprise twenty-five years ahead of the competition.” But he was lonely.

His daughters were grown, with families of their own. Sharon had given him one grandchild, and by 1963, Diane had six children – one she named for her father, Walter Elias Disney Miller. Walt enjoyed his grandchildren, who spent a weekend a month with him on Carolwood. “We’d play on the lawn and around the great big pool,” granddaughter Joanna later recalled. “We’d stack up the patio furniture to make jets and rockets. And Grandpa would often be sitting there on the lawn, reading scripts, enjoying the glow of all the activity around him.” He liked to drive them to school; sometimes, they played at the studio while he worked. Occasionally, he took them to Disneyland, where after closing, they had the run of the park.

Most of the friendships he had formed over the years had faded from his life. He and Lillian seldom entertained guests; when they travelled, they always booked a room with double beds. Lillian sometimes protested long trips and would pine for her grandchildren. “Lilly just about had a fit having to be away from the grandchildren for so long,” Walt wrote after one extended stay in Europe, “and I guess I’ll have to admit to being homesick for them, too.” Walt’s beloved pets, who had provided him some solace, were gone, too.

His polo days behind him, Walt took up lawn bowling in an effort to stay active. He was a member of the Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club and another club in Palm Springs. He was about as good a lawn bowler as he was a polo player - not very. Once bested by an eight-year-old at the sport, he told the boy, “Don’t let it go to your head, everybody beats me!” Though he didn’t play, he was also an avid baseball fan. He bought a share of the Hollywood Stars minor league team and had box seats for their games. He was a part of the push to bring the major-league Angels to Los Angeles and hoped to establish a team in Orange County near Disneyland.

His thoughts sometimes drifted back to his childhood home of Marceline, Kansas. Walt, too, made his way there time and again, once for the dedication of a park in his honor and then the Walt Disney Elementary School. The school displayed his old Park Elementary desk, carved with his initials, in a glass case. Students in Tullytown, Pennsylvania, also voted to name their school for him.

Walt had the idea to turn his old family homestead in Marceline into a tourist attraction. It would be a model farm that families could explore. He tried to get a local entrepreneur on board, promising hoards of visitors. “When I introduce ‘Disney’s Wonderful World of Color’ on Sunday night,” Walt suggested, “I’d set the cheek of my ass up there on the table, and I’d say, ‘By the way, folks, when you’re on vacation, go by my hometown.’ What are you going to do with all the damn people?” His brother Roy talked him out of buying the family’s former farm in Ellis, Kansas.

Disney wanted to give the world more than movies, amusement, and merchandise. Since the early 1950s, he had given financial support to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where his animators had studied, sometimes tuition-free thanks to the generosity of the school’s namesake founder. But he envisioned something bigger. With Mrs. Chouinard’s consent, he took over the school and dedicated a committee to expanding it into a City of the Arts – a community in which students could promote and profit from their works. This concept was not fully realized; in 1962, the Chouinard school merged with the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to become the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts. Disney boasted, “This is the thing I’m going to be remembered for.”

Death terrified Disney; he hated talking about it, but it was often on his mind. At the studio and at home, he was often suddenly overcome with sadness. A sketch artist named Bill Peet remembers Disney gazing reflectively out a window during a storyboard meeting. “You know, Bill,” he said, “I want this Disney thing to go on long after I’m gone. And I’m counting on guys like you to keep it going.” Other times, he refused to accept his own demise. He rejected more than one writer’s attempt at a biography, saying “biographies are only written about dead people.” Dismissing one publisher’s proposal for a book on his “contribution to the education, entertainment, and the happiness of the world,” Walt wrote back, “As far as I’m concerned, I am just in the
middle
of my career. I have several years and several projects to go before my life story should be written.”

As his health continued to fail, he made plans for Walt Disney World, and worked long days at the studio, coming home most nights with the smell of liquor on his breath. One studio employee remarked that Disney “seemed to age twenty years right before my eyes.” Time was running out. In the summer of 1965, Walt and Lillian celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary on a two-week cruise with their daughters and their families. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and it’s the first time everything has worked out so that we could all go,” Disney said.

In the fall of 1966, Disney was scheduled to undergo surgery on an old neck injury he sustained playing polo at his country club. The hospital was St. Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the Disney Studio. On November 2, doctors going over pre-operative X-rays discovered a malignant tumor on his left lung. After the lung was removed, doctors told Disney, a lifelong smoker that he had six months to two years to live.

Walt wasn’t ready to accept this diagnosis. He continued to conduct business from his hospital bed and ordered the studio employee who delivered his mail each day to check him out and drive him to work. The day he was discharged, he was back in his office. He never talked about the cancer; and many, including two of his own siblings, found out about the surgery through the newspapers. Disney’s only acknowledgment was a telegram from actor
John Wayne
, also diagnosed with lung cancer. It said, “Welcome to the club.” His family clung to the hope that he may still recover. Roy, who was in Europe at the time of the surgery, was encouraged that Walt was back at work. In a letter to a former secretary, Walt wrote, “As far as my problem is concerned, it’s all over with and taken care of. I’ve been released from the hospital and am well on the road to recovery.”

After several rounds of chemotherapy, Disney took Lillian on a trip to Palm Springs. Five days later, on November 30, overcome with pain, he was flown back home to Los Angeles. Disney collapsed. He was revived by a fire-department medic and rushed to St. Joseph’s. From the hospital, he sent word to his studio executives that, while he would continue to read scripts, he would count on them to handle the rest. He refused any visitors except for family, who had a room adjacent to his. On December 5, 1966, Walt marked his sixty-fifth birthday in a hospital bed. On December 14, his daughter Diane bought him a pair of slippers because he complained his feet got cold. Lillian was hopeful on the phone that night, saying, “I know he’s going to get better.”

But the next morning, Disney took a turn for the worse. Diane drove her mother to St. Joseph Medical Center, but they were too late. At 9:35 a.m., Walt Disney died. With the exception of the cardiologist and hospital staff, he was alone.

Walt Disney never liked funerals and attended few of them. “When I’m dead,” he told his daughters, “I don’t want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive.”

The memorial service on December 16 was small and private, with only close relatives attending. The press was informed of the funeral after it was over. On December 17, Disney’s body was cremated and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Disney left a thriving empire. In the year of his death, an estimated 240 million people watched a Disney movie, and 100 million watched Disney’s television shows each week. Annual merchandise sales brought in $80 million. Disney comic strips were read by 150 million, and 50 million listened to Disney records. Attendance at Disneyland was 6.7 million in 1966. All told, Walt Disney Productions’ revenue was $116.5 million that year.

Once asked by a reporter to name his most rewarding experience, Disney replied “The whole damn thing. The fact that I was able to build an organization and hold it.” His stubborn and prideful determination to control every facet of his Magic Kingdom had ensured its survival and secured its future. Roy Disney boasted, “Since Walt and I entered this business, we’ve never sold a single picture to anybody. We still own them all.” In 1966, the Disney collection included:

Walt Disney died debt free, owing nothing to the bank, nor his stockholders. He was the last of the Hollywood moguls. Disney’s studio stood alone in producing every reel of film stamped with its name; there were no deals with independent producers, or stars taking box-office percentages. In 1940, tougher times had forced Disney to make a public stock offering, but his stockholders were happy - a third of them were children, given a share in Mickey Mouse as an introduction to capitalism. Walt himself owned 262,941 shares of Walt Disney Productions stock, worth slightly more than $18 million when he died. In all, the Disney family owned about 34 percent of the company, with the Disney Foundation owning another nearly 3 percent.

Disney’s wealth eclipsed the $182,000 annual salary he had taken since 1961, and the millions he made in interest on his films. Walt Disney’s greatest fortune, the one that would pay out for generations after his death, was the hearts and minds of children.

But sentiment only went so far with Disney. He was a dreamer, but above all, an entrepreneur who didn’t measure success by fame. He often said he had “no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.” He saw money as a tool with which to develop new ideas and enterprises. Success, for Disney, was the product of struggle and hard work, the payoff for countless gambles, on which he had staked and often nearly lost everything. It was triumph over critics and naysayers. It was acknowledgement of his genius, and endorsement of his grand dreams. It was immortality.

Ultimately, Walt Disney’s greatest creation was Walt Disney. Disney was more than a man, more than a name. It was an entity, a brand, and an illusion. Disney the man was often mean and tyrannical, obsessive, and no doubt the ruin of many careers. The Walt Disney the world loved and admired would smile, wink, and speak to them from their television sets. He left his mark on popular culture – movies, music, books, and an endless array of merchandise. He presented a world scrubbed clean of the grime and cynicism of reality. In a 1933 interview, Disney summarized the appeal and wonder of his creations: “The Mickey audience is made up of parts of people; of that deathless, precious, ageless, absolutely primitive remnant of something in every world-wracked human being which makes us play with children’s toys and laugh without self-consciousness at silly things, and sing in bathtubs, and dream and believe that our babies are uniquely beautiful. You know . . . the Mickey in us.”