American Experience (1988) s28e02 Episode Script

1
(crowd chatter)
NEAL GABLER:
Walt Disney could deal
with anything creatively.
He could yell and scream.
That's where he wanted
his energies to be devoted.
But he didn't want to be devoted
to this.
And he couldn't understand it.
NARRATOR:
Employees at the
Walt Disney Studios
had been begging
for better wages,
extra pay for overtime,
and a uniform system
for determining job titles
and screen credits for months.
Walt had waved this off
as the hobby-horse
of a few hotheads
and union agitators
right up to May 29, 1941,
the day nearly half
of his art department walked out
to take up positions
on the picket line.
The strike demonstrations
got bigger in the first weeks,
and louder,
and so did the threat
to the already shaky studio.
Disney's last two feature films,
Pinocchio and Fantasia,
had both lost money,
and investors were fleeing.
The company stock had dropped
from 25 dollars a share to four.
Walt Disney needed
a box office hit soon,
and his own workers
seemed intent
on derailing the studio's
only two hopes:
Dumbo and Bambi.
TOM SITO:
As the strike lingered
and kept going,
the mood of everybody
started to get ugly,
and people started
to get angrier,
and then Walt
was getting angrier.
NARRATOR:
A month into the strike,
Disney refused
to recognize the union
representing his workers,
the Screen Cartoonists Guild;
he refused to negotiate
with the guild's representative,
Herbert Sorrell;
and he refused to make apologies
to the man whose firing
had prompted the strike:
long-time Disney animator
Art Babbitt.
SITO:
There was one day
where Art Babbitt noticed Disney
driving to the gate.
And Babbitt
just kind of blew his stack
and just jumped over
and grabbed the bullhorn
and shouted out loud
so everybody could hear,
"There he goes, the great man,"
and basically just heaped abuse
on Disney.
"Shame on you, Walt Disney."
NARRATOR:
As the crowd cheered,
Disney jumped out of his car
and charged at Babbitt.
The two men
had to be pulled apart.
Walt Disney could not believe
that so many of his workers
had actually taken sides
with the union and against him.
Disney sniffed conspiracy,
and a big one.
He went public
with his pet theory
in a full-page advertisement
in a Hollywood trade paper,
Variety.
NANCY KOEHN:
He needed to have a bad guy.
He needs to blame it all
on a villain.
And in this case,
the new flavor of the month
in Hollywood
at that time and later
would be the shadow or specter
of Communism.
ERIC SMOODIN:
He becomes then
like a typical industrial boss.
Most American executives
at the time
blame unionization
on Communists.
So in this way, Disney becomes
completely conventional.
(whistle blowing)
GABLER:
Walt Disney is being bombarded
by all of this negativity,
and it's just not something
he was accustomed to.
NARRATOR:
"The entire situation
is a catastrophe,"
he wrote to a friend.
"The spirit that played
such an important part
"in the building
of the cartoon medium
"has been destroyed.
"I have a case of the DDs:
disillusionment
and discouragement."
The next day,
Disney skipped town
for a ten-week working tour
of South America
and left the headaches
to his brother
and long-time
business partner, Roy.
STEVEN WATTS:
What Walt Disney was doing
was getting away, period.
He just was sick and tired
of the whole business,
and he wanted to go away
and do something else.
GABLER:
South America is a real relief
for Walt Disney.
Wherever his plane lands,
people are there to greet him.
Dignitaries invite him
to dinners.
Everybody loves him.
And I think the contrast
between the affection
with which he's greeted
in South America
and the kind of hostility
with which he'd been greeted
in Los Angeles
isn't lost on him.
NARRATOR:
Disney was still on the road
in South America
when his father, Elias,
died unexpectedly.
Walt declined
to cut his trip short
and return home
for the funeral of the man
with whom he had clashed
much of his life.
This was just fine with Roy.
He was happy to have Walt
and his explosive temper
remain at a safe remove
while he tried to make peace
with the Screen
Cartoonists Guild.
WATTS:
Roy Disney sees
the writing on the wall.
He sees that unionization
is coming into the studios
whether we like it or not,
and he wants to settle this.
He wants to get things
up and running.
NARRATOR:
By the time Walt did finally
return at the end of October,
Roy had resolved the strike.
The workers had been granted
almost everything
they had asked for.
The Disney art department
was back on track.
But the studio would never again
feel like family to Walt.
The gal I married was
a secretary in personnel.
She was called up
to Walt's office
to help on the files,
and she would go through
and find people
that were out on strike.
And they were moved from here
to this file.
Walt came in and said,
"How's it going?"
She just said,
"What are we doing this for?"
And he said,
"Well, these are the people
that are true to Disney.
"These are the people
who at one time or one day
will not be here."
SITO:
After the strike,
Walt distrusted everybody.
One of the great animators
who worked on Snow White said,
"Walt Disney was a great man.
"Walt Disney was a genius.
"If you were his friend,
he was a warm friend.
If you crossed him,
he was a mean SOB."
(commander shouting
march cadence)
NARRATOR:
Just a few months
after the bruising strike,
World War Il arrived
at the Disney Studios,
much of which
was commandeered as a base
for anti-aircraft troops.
Walt kept up a happy front,
especially
for his two daughters,
but things were not great
on the Disney lot.
Funding for feature film
production had dried up
by the summer of 1942.
The company was limping along
on revenue generated
by government contracts
for propaganda
and training films.
♪♪
(sighs)
Winter sure is long, isn't it?
It seems long,
but it won't last forever.
NARRATOR:
Walt was counting
on a big box-office hit
to revive his faltering studio,
and he believed Bambi
could fill that bill.
He had nurtured the film
for nearly five years,
kept the project alive
through the worst of the strike.
Bambi!
Bambi, come here!
Look.
New spring grass.
NARRATOR:
When it was finally released
in August of 1942,
Bambi stood out as the most
ambitious feature-length film
in the history of the studio,
an artist's rendering
of the natural world
in all its beauty and peril.
Bambi
Quick!
The thicket!
(gunshot)
Faster!
Faster, Bambi!
Don't look back!
Keep running!
(gunshot)
We made it!
We made it, Mother!
We
Mother?
Mother!
Mother, where are you?
Mother!
DON HAHN:
A generation was
and still is traumatized
by that moment in Bambi.
Mother!
Mother!
HAHN:
And it's done
almost in pantomime
with the snow falling.
Fearless filmmaking.
Absolute fearlessness.
Mother
(crying)
(gasps)
Your mother can't
be with you anymore.
Come, my son.
GABLER:
Bambi is a triumph for Disney
in the sense that it probably
extends realistic animation
as far as it had gone
up to that point.
But by the time
the film came out,
it was almost as if Disney,
in the course
of a couple of years,
had become passé.
NARRATOR:
Bambi did not make back
its costs in its initial run.
Disney could tell his investors,
as he could tell himself,
that the war was to blame
for the deficit,
but that failure coming so close
on the heels of the strike
made it impossible for him
to deny the obvious.
He had invested too much
in animated features
Money, energy, effort,
his own heart
And what did he have
to show for it?
A crippled company filled with
people who had turned on him;
a mountain of debt;
scorchings
from the political press,
the art world, film critics.
SITO:
One of the things that was lost
was the great period
of Disney experimentation.
The first five Disney features
is known in the business
as The Big Five.
Hi ho, hi ho ♪
SITO:
And The Big Five is Snow White,
Pinocchio, Fantasia,
Bambi, and Dumbo.
Hi ho, hi ho ♪
SITO:
Now, if you look at those films
individually,
they don't look anything
like one another.
When you talk
about the Disney style,
there was no Disney style
back then.
Pinocchio looks
nothing like Bambi.
Bambi looks nothing like Dumbo.
GABLER:
The paradise that Disney had
at Hyperion
and into the early days
of the Burbank studio is gone.
And with that paradise lost,
the sense of the animations
and the greatness
of the animations is also lost.
It's never going to be the same.
JOHNNY MERCER:
Walt, how did you happen to
choose the tales of Uncle Remus
as the story
for Song of the South?
DISNEY:
Well, Johnny, I first heard
the stories of Uncle Remus
when I was a boy
down in Missouri.
And since then, they've been
among my favorites.
MERCER:
Your favorites
and a million others'.
CARMENITA HIGGINBOTHAM:
The Uncle Remus stories are
a piece of American folklore.
And that is the kind of story
Walt is interested in
after World War Il.
It's a way for him
to start to break away
from the European fairytale
as the foundation
of his narratives.
He sees it as being
very personal
and speaking
to his own sense of boyhood.
NARRATOR:
Disney took a cost-conscious
approach on Song of the South,
mixing cheaper live action
sequences with animation,
and for good reason.
His bankers were no longer
willing to risk their money
on the Disney Studios
full-length animated features,
even after the war was over.
Many of the first generation
of Disney animators
had left Burbank, and his once
cutting-edge equipment
was rusting like a junkheap
in a back lot.
By Walt's reckoning,
the studio had only one reliable
and undiminished asset
from its pre-war glory days:
his own instincts
about what story to choose
and how to tell it.
WATTS:
It's the story of outsiders:
a young white boy
who's dreadfully unhappy;
a young black boy
who is his good friend;
Uncle Remus,
the wise old black storyteller;
and in the animated sections,
Br'er Rabbit himself.
And in all of these things,
what you get is a typical
Disney populist story
of the triumph of the underdog,
outwitting your powerful
opponents, maneuvering,
doing what you had to do
to triumph.
NARRATOR:
Disney had been thinking
about the Joel Chandler Harris
stories for years.
He had optioned them
during his 1939 spending spree
following Snow White.
The Uncle Remus stories
were uncomplicated.
The politics were not.
Harris had set the action
on a plantation
in the Deep South
just after the Civil War,
which meant Disney's adaptation
would have to negotiate
the questions
of slavery and race in America,
a dicey proposition
after World War Il,
when white supremacists
in the South
were fighting tooth-and-nail
to maintain racial segregation.
HAHN:
The core issue is,
is it okay to be
an African-American
and have this kind of joyous
sense of storytelling about you
knowing that you went through
the most horrific chapter
of American history?
Civil rights
was not in full bloom,
but certainly the NAACP
and men coming back from war
were saying,
"I fought for an America
that was equal,
"and this is part of our history
that we have to deal with,
"a very profound social pain
that we all share.
"And we don't want
to whitewash it
into something that is
this jolly story."
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Walt Disney has never been,
up until this point,
really concerned
about social issues.
And to present the black body
in the South
the way he wanted to,
through a folktale
which was going to rely
very heavily on stereotype,
he was going to need
to vet that from some source.
NARRATOR:
Disney solicited notes
from well-known African-American
intellectuals and activists,
including the head of the NAACP.
One scholar told Disney
"he could do wonders
in transforming public opinion,"
but only if he avoided
the most hurtful stereotypes,
like scenes of former slaves
belting out happy songs
on Southern plantations.
Disney took the notes
and then trusted
his own instincts.
As usual,
when Disney got advice,
he often didn't pay
much attention to it
and he just sort of went ahead
with how he envisioned things.
NARRATOR:
Disney chose to celebrate
opening night
of Song of the South
in Atlanta, Georgia,
where the celebrated epic
of the Civil War South,
Gone With the Wind, had
premiered seven years earlier.
The actors who played
the major white roles
in Song of the South
were all there,
but not James Baskett,
who played Uncle Remus.
Georgia law
barred the movie's star
from entering
the segregated theater.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,
zip-a-dee-ay ♪
My oh my,
what a wonderful day ♪
Plenty of sunshine
heading my way ♪
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,
zip-a-dee-ay! ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
It is as if Walt
has divorced himself
from social context.
It's sort of stunning.
It's the same ol' thing ♪
Wanna get a bag of something
for the hungry lord ♪
Look up! ♪
NARRATOR:
Critics were split.
"The whole film is beautifully
produced," wrote one.
"The plantation is traditional
Deep South,
"a dream place
of magnolia blossoms
"and darkies singin'
all day long.
Don't let the children miss it."
Had the trouble
with the weaver ♪
I sure is sorry,
Ms. Sally.
No, it's my fault.
I should've known you couldn't
stop telling your stories.
I don't like to say this,
Uncle Remus,
but from now on, I want you
to stay away from Johnny.
NARRATOR:
Others, like the usually
friendly New York Times,
hit Disney hard.
"The master-and-slave relation
"is so lovingly regarded
in your yarn
"that one might almost imagine
that you figure Abe Lincoln
made a mistake."
The NAACP decried
Song of the South
as a "dangerously glorified
picture of slavery,"
and many of its local chapters
called for a boycott.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Disney was utterly dismayed
by the negative reaction
to Song of the South.
He very much believed in the
narratives that it was offering.
He believed that these were
American stories
finally getting an opportunity
to be on the big screen
and in a feature film.
And so Walt is sort of shocked
and disheartened
by the responses
that he's getting.
NARRATOR:
Disney decided the attacks
were being engineered
by his old foes, Communists,
who had been waiting
for another chance
to take a whack at him
since the strike.
"Hollywood was loaded with 'em,"
Walt would say.
"I had a lot of people
just hoping it was the end."
♪♪
There was a hot new animation
studio in town by 1947:
United Productions of America.
UPA and its founders
had very different ideas
from Walt Disney's,
and it looked like they were
leading a creative revolution
against everything
Disney had stood for.
SITO:
"Who says the natural goal
of animation is realism?
"Why can't we use the trends
"that are entering
into modern art?
"Why can't we do cartoons
like this
"instead of trying
to make everything
so damn realistic all the time?"
And UPA was the place
where suddenly,
people were free to experiment.
ROBERT GIVENS:
We had a whole new approach,
which was nothing like Disney's.
We looked at the great guys,
Picasso and Miro and those.
So we invented a whole new way
of doing it.
It was now west bank animation,
modern art, really.
NARRATOR:
Disney was keeping an eye
on UPA.
He wasn't so much threatened
by its work
as he was galled
by its principal talent.
Art Babbitt was
on the UPA payroll,
along with a number
of other artists and animators
who had fled the Disney studios
or been ushered out
after the strike.
SITO:
The Burbank River
goes past the Disney Studio,
and then it goes
a mile or two down
by where the UPA studio was.
And Disney used to call UPA
"Those damn Commies down river."
GIVENS:
Walt was curious, because
he'd send his spies over there
to see what us Communists
over by the river were doing.
(laughing):
He called us "The Communists."
NEWS REPORTER:
Labor strife on the movie front.
California studios picketed
in a dispute
between rival unions.
NARRATOR:
Hollywood had been hit
by another wave of strikes
in the first few years
after the war,
and studio bosses were
determined to blunt the unions.
Walt Disney was among them.
He was a founding officer
of the Motion Picture Alliance
for the Preservation
of American Ideals,
an organization sworn
to protect the movie industry
from what the alliance called
"Communists, radicals,
and crackpots."
In October 1947, Walt was
offered a chance to hit back
at his imagined antagonists.
He was invited to Washington
to testify
before the House un-American
Activities Committee
on the subject
of "Reds in the Movies"
and what might be behind
the new wave of labor strikes
against the Hollywood studios.
Disney, along with a dozen other
high profile Hollywood
executives and celebrities,
was deemed one
of the "friendly witnesses."
And at the present time,
you own and operate
the Walt Disney Studio
at Burbank, California?
NARRATOR:
The first thing Disney did
was reassure the committee
that he was running a clean shop
in Burbank,
free of any Communist taint.
DISNEY:
They bought
the Three Little Pigs
and used it through Russia.
NARRATOR:
But then he started
to name names,
among them one of the leaders
who had organized
the 1941 strike
against the Walt Disney Studios.
I believed at that time
that Mr. Sorrell was a Communist
because of all the things
that I had heard, and, uh
And had seen his name appearing
on many of the Commie front
things.
And when he pulled the strike,
the first people to put me
to smear me and put me
on the unfair list
were all of the Commie front
organizations.
My boys, my artists,
came to me and told me that
Mr. Sorrell,
Herbert Sorrell, was
Is that
Herbert K. Sorrell?
Herbert K. Sorrell.
He laughed at me and told me
that I was naive, I was foolish.
He said,
"You can't stand a strike,
"that I'll smear you
and I'll make a dust bowl
out of your place
if I choose to."
SITO:
All his testimony was focused
on the union leaders.
It wasn't just politically
who's a Commie
or politically
who's left or who's right.
It was all the union leaders.
GABLER:
The HUAC testimony is 1947.
The strike is 1941.
So we're talking
a six-year period.
But I think it goes to show
just how long Walt holds
a grudge, which is forever.
SITO:
He basically had
this narrative in his mind
of how he saw
the way things happened.
And that's when he decried
that Sorrell was a Communist.
Call them all
a bunch of Communists,
and I believe they are.
SITO:
He couldn't actually prove
he was a Communist.
He just said, "I don't know
if he's a Communist or not,
but he probably is."
"You think I'm a Communist,
don't you?"
And I told him that all I knew
is what I'd heard
and what I'd seen.
SITO:
That's not enough for a trial.
NARRATOR:
Disney and other
friendly witnesses
like Ronald Reagan
and Gary Cooper
won plaudits
for their performance
and provided cover for
the studio bosses' next move,
which was intended to crush
labor union activists.
SMOODIN:
The black list is designed
to rid the industry of leftists.
And in fact, it says that the
studios would themselves agree
not to hire anyone
who was understood to be,
alleged to be, a Communist.
So Disney is not responsible
for this,
but he's part of a movement
that produces it.
It means that
any number of people
lose their means
of making a living,
and so it in effect
ruins careers.
NARRATOR:
Walt Disney beat a hasty retreat
from the political battlefield
after his public testimony.
He had no stomach
for an ongoing fight
over ideology, and no interest.
He just wanted
to get back to work.
REPORTER:
Oh, Mr. Disney,
give me some more details
of your leprechaun hunt.
I just hope that
I can find that Leprechaun
with the pot of gold,
because I could really use that
in Hollywood,
with the cost of production
going up the way it is.
NARRATOR:
Disney was producing
more than ever by 1948,
but he was all over the map,
in search of the studio's
next big thing.
He traveled to England to launch
a series of live-action films,
starting with the pirate story
Treasure Island.
He made others in the U.S.
including So Dear to My Heart,
a nostalgic look
at turn-of-the-century
small-town America.
He spent a week holed up
in a hotel room in New York
watching television
to see if there was anything
to be done in the new medium.
He took his daughter Sharon
on a trip to Alaska,
scene of his first attempt
at making a nature documentary,
Seal Island.
HAHN:
If Disney's gonna make
nature movies,
he has to do
what he does naturally.
Walt Disney tells stories.
So he looks at this thousand
feet of footage for seals,
and to him he's looking for,
"Oh, well, that's the mom seal,
and that's the daughter seal,
"and that's the bad guy seal,
and they fight later on.
"They should fight.
If you don't have that footage,
go out and shoot it."
And he turns it
into a narrative.
DOCUMENTARY NARRATOR:
Since no one else
will nurse him,
let's hope mother
comes home soon.
For if anything
has happened to her,
this pup will surely die.
(seal braying)
There are no orphans
on Seal Island.
HAHN:
So to him, it's a way
of getting an animated film,
but out of live footage.
(seal braying)
DOCUMENTARY NARRATOR:
Yes, here they are at last,
right on schedule.
Swimming and diving playfully,
as though glad
their journey is over.
But they don't seem
in any great hurry to go ashore.
HAHN:
He has to diversify.
He has no money.
They're really cheap to shoot.
I mean, the seals
don't go on strike.
DOCUMENTARY NARRATOR:
having a final fling
of single blessedness.
NARRATOR:
Seal Island won an Academy Award
and launched Disney's
new and profitable line
of nature documentaries:
True Life Adventures.
But Walt missed the excitement
of feature animation,
and by 1949,
he was ready to start anew.
Roy balked too expensive,
too risky, he said
And the brothers fought
an epic screaming battle.
Walt gave Roy an ultimatum:
find the money
for animated features
or sell off the business.
Roy walked out on him.
"You're letting this place
drive you nuts,"
he said on his way out.
"That's one place
I'm not going with you."
Roy did eventually relent
to Walt's desire, as always,
and agreed to raise the two
million dollars they needed
for a new animated feature:
Cinderella.
But once production on the new
film was up and running,
Disney was
uncharacteristically distant
from his studio's
signature undertaking.
That old Snow White feeling
of excitement and new
possibilities eluded Walt.
He seemed wary of fully
investing himself in the film
and left most of the hard work
to his staff.
Nearing 50, Disney was also
beginning to wear down,
and so precipitously
that he made sure
to keep a trained nurse
on the studio payroll.
Hazel George came to Walt's
office every afternoon at 5:00
to give him heat treatment
for his back,
a Scotch mist or two,
and a friendly ear.
ROLLY CRUMP:
She was a very pleasant lady.
Walt, because he had
hurt himself playing polo,
almost every night
or every other night,
he would go to Hazel,
and she would massage his back
and his hips
because he was in great pain.
GABLER:
Well, Hazel George becomes
one of those very few figures
in his entire life
to whom he can talk.
It wasn't a sexual relationship,
it wasn't anything like that,
but she was someone
to whom he could say
anything and everything,
and he could say it
in confidence.
WATTS:
He's very famous.
He's very powerful.
He absolutely runs the show.
But it's difficult to say
if Walt Disney had any close,
close friends,
bosom companions
that he could really talk to
and share things with.
GABLER:
Walt Disney is at low ebb.
He said, "I realize that
I'm never going to make anything
as good as Snow White."
When you think of Walt Disney
as the guy who's always looking
at the next horizon,
the guy who's always trying
to break a new path,
the guy who's lived
for excellence,
and then he can say, not only
to himself, but publicly,
"I'm never going to make
anything as good as Snow White."
You want to hear a man
in crisis?
That's a man in crisis.
NARRATOR:
In the fall of 1948,
as he had done
nearly two decades earlier,
Walt followed doctor's orders
and departed on a vacation.
Hazel George,
who had seen the enormous
new toy train layout
Walt had installed
in his private office,
had suggested he take a trip
to a railroad convention
in Illinois.
Walt had invited a fellow train
enthusiast to travel with him.
"Goddammit, you have more fun
than anybody I know,"
Disney told animator
Ward Kimball.
As the two men rode the rails
drinking Scotch mists,
Walt regaled Ward
with his life story,
from Marceline to Hollywood.
(horn blowing)
By the time they arrived
in Chicago, Disney was giddy.
WATTS:
It's Disney returning
to his roots.
The train is something that he
associates with his childhood,
with growing up
where the railroad ran
next to his house
right through the center
of Marceline.
The train is something
he associates
with that vanished age
of his childhood.
NARRATOR:
Disney arrived home
with a new obsession,
having his own large-scale
model train,
and he ordered one built
at the studio in Burbank.
He made it his business
to stop by the studio
machine shop most days,
just to check in
on the progress.
He was soon spending
three or four hours at a time
in the shop,
and then more hours
in the evening,
and then all day on Saturday.
The head machinist
had assigned Disney
his own bench and toolset
by then
and put him to work.
GABLER:
Walt Disney
was building these trains
with his own hands.
Manual labor.
The great Walt Disney
was now devoting his energies
to toy trains.
NARRATOR:
When a film critic
from the New York Times
visited during production
on Cinderella,
he found Disney, as he wrote,
"wholly, almost weirdly,
concerned
"with the miniature railroad
engine and his cars.
"All of his zest for invention,
for creating fantasies,
seemed to go
into this plaything."
When Walt's oft-neglected
progeny, Cinderella,
finally premiered
at the beginning of 1950,
critics hailed it
as the long-awaited return
of the classic Disney form,
and a must-see.
Now let's see, dear.
Your size
and the shade of your eyes
Mm-hmm.
Something simple,
but daring too!
(gasps)
Just leave it to me.
What a gown this will be!
Bippity-boppity,
bippity-boppity,
bippity-boppity-boo!
Oh, it's a beautiful dress!
NARRATOR:
Roy optimistically told Walt
that Cinderella would gross
five or six million
after those first reviews.
It made nearly eight million.
It's like a dream!
A wonderful dream come true!
Yes, my child.
NARRATOR:
Walt was happy to have
the financial cushion
the film provided his studio
and happy to have
the good reviews,
but he saw all the movie's
imperfections
and every corner cut.
It was no Snow White,
as far as he was concerned.
His interest remained elsewhere.
WATTS:
He builds a scale model
of the old Marceline barn
out behind his house
in the middle of Holmby Hills.
And he's out there in overalls
and a flannel shirt
and a train engineer hat,
just monkeying around for hours
with designing the track
and building the engine.
RICHARD SCHICKEL:
It was funny, you know,
you would see
those pictures of him
with his train, you know,
the train that went
around his house.
And I think there was pleasure
in that for him.
It was the toy he never had
as a little kid.
Something that was just pure fun
and pleasure for him to do.
NARRATOR:
There was more in that train
than just fun and games
for Walt.
When Salvador Dali
made a visit to Walt's house,
the famous painter understood
what Walt was up to.
Disney was seeking an ideal,
and Dali was taken aback
at the ambition of it.
"Such perfection,"
the surrealist told Walt,
"did not belong to models."
KOEHN:
It's comfort and salvation
and a working surface
for the disappointments
and confusions
that comes to him
in that period of his life.
"I can't control my workers,
it turns out.
"I can't control
the larger stage right now.
"I can't even completely control
my company.
"So here's a world
I can recreate
"down to the smallest detail,
"down to tunnels
under my wife's flower bed
that is mine and perfect
and brought to life and safe."
NARRATOR:
Lillian Disney could sense
something big brewing
in early 1952.
It was one of those moments,
she would say,
"when Walt's imagination
"was going to take off
into the wild blue yonder
and everything will explode."
Walt, Lillian noted,
was liquidating
long-held family assets.
Her husband sold their
Palm Springs vacation home
and borrowed $100,000 against
his life insurance policy.
He even sold rights
to his own name,
to Walt Disney Productions.
Then he started
an entirely new company
for an entirely new enterprise.
WATTS:
He gets a little building,
the back part of the studio lot,
and he creates this organization
called WED,
which were his initials:
Walter Elias Disney.
GABLER:
"I'll get a few guys,
"just like we did when
we were making Mickey Mouse,
and we'll come up
with some ideas."
So that's what WED is.
WED is the old days.
NARRATOR:
Walt Disney had one
very specific vision in mind,
and he had already
drawn up plans
for building this new project
on a vacant lot he owned
next to his studio.
Disney had actually been kicking
around the idea for years.
ALICE M. DAVIS:
When he had his girls
and they were very young,
he wanted to take them to places
they would have fun.
But every time he'd go to see
a carnival or something else,
the men were all filthy,
dirty looking,
and the place was filthy.
And he said, "I want a place
where people can take a family
and have a good time."
Whenever he thought
of something,
it kept getting bigger
and bigger and bigger.
NARRATOR:
Disney first dubbed the park
Mickey Mouse Village,
but then hit on Disneyland.
By the end of 1952,
the plans for Disneyland
had outgrown
the little eight-acre lot
next to his studio.
He started culling talent
from the Disney production team
and sending them to WED.
"I want you to work
on Disneyland,"
he told one slightly confused
layout artist,
"and you're going to like it."
GABLER:
Roy thinks it's a nutty idea.
"An amusement park?
"And an amusement park
that's going to cost
tens of millions of dollars,
and it's not going to work."
SUSAN DOUGLAS:
Amusement parks were
carnival-esque places.
These were places where you went
to have your sensations
stimulated
by very, very fast rides,
by carnival barkers
inviting you in
to see Tom Thumb
or the Giant Lady.
These were places where you went
to have the rules not apply.
When Walt told Mrs. Disney
that he was going
to start a park
she said,
"Why would you want to do that?
"They're not safe.
The people in them are not
people you want to be around."
And Walt said, "Mine's not going
to be like that."
NARRATOR:
Disney's newest notion
was not unlike
his very first
commercially successful idea.
Just as he had inserted
the real Alice
into a cartoon world,
Walt thought he could put real
people inside a new adventure,
live and three-dimensional.
He would construct
the make-believe world for them,
just as he had constructed
his railroad.
RON SUSKIND:
This is a "leap from the tub,
eureka, run down the street"
moment here.
I mean, just think about that.
"I am gonna take
what these movies have done,
"these landscapes
that we've invented
"that are just drawings on paper
and colored pencils,
"I'm gonna create a place
where you can actually
walk within it."
This is kicking down many walls
of perspective and reality.
Disney has this great idea
for building Disneyland.
Now, one problem:
where's the money
going to come from?
So you see, this is the result
of being a good boy
for 30 years.
Santa finally came across.
See the little shovel in there?
See that thing there?
This up here, this is the
(whistling)
whistle.
Mr. Disney
NARRATOR:
Disney had been looking
for the best way
to exploit the new medium
of television
since the late 1940s.
He had even taken it
for a test drive in 1950,
hosting a one-off
Christmas special,
One Hour in Wonderland,
to promote one of his films.
The Disney program drew 90%
of the viewing audience
and gushing reviews.
"Walt Disney can take over
television any time he likes,"
the New York Times suggested.
You kids help me
with the magic words.
Bippity-boppity-boo!
NARRATOR:
The three major networks
had been asking Disney
for more shows ever since,
and by the summer of 1953,
Walt was hot to make a deal.
Roy traveled to New York
to make an offer
to each of the major
television networks.
The Disneys were willing
to produce a weekly show,
but for a price:
the network that got the show
would have to provide
much of the five million dollars
the brothers needed
for the construction
of Disneyland.
Just two days before the pitch
meetings, on a Saturday,
Roy decided he needed a sales
tool that didn't yet exist:
a drawing of the entire park.
Disneyland, at that point,
was still largely
in Walt's head,
and his head alone.
Roy called Walt
and Walt called
an old Disney art director
and begged him to help
"Like a little boy
with tears in his eyes,"
Herb Ryman recalled.
Walt stayed at Ryman's side
for more than 42 hours straight,
delivering him sandwiches
and milkshakes
and describing what he wanted
through billows
of cigarette smoke.
HAHN:
So Walt can stand there
and direct him around and say,
"No, make the castle bigger,
"and let's put Frontierland
over here,
and maybe there's gonna be
an Indian village,"
and direct the orchestra.
It's like Walt can stand there
and go,
"A little more viola, please,"
and have Herb Ryman
lay out this whole plan.
NARRATOR:
The two men put the drawing
on a plane that Monday,
but Roy still had a hard time
sealing the deal.
NBC and CBS had no interest
in putting up the money
for something called Disneyland.
It took Roy months
to convince the perennial
third-place network, ABC,
to take the bait.
Walt later joked,
"ABC needed the television show
so damned bad
that they bought
the amusement park."
SCHICKEL:
That was a pretty dangerous
moment for him,
corporately speaking.
Will it be a success?
Will it be a failure?
If it's a failure,
the whole company
is kind of on the line.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He saw this as his personal
statement about who he was,
who the Walt Disney company was,
and who he thought America was.
He believed in this so strongly.
NARRATOR:
Disney's plans
for the 160-acre building site
in Anaheim, California,
called for 5,000 cubic yards
of concrete,
a million square feet
of asphalt pathways,
and acres of flowers
and greenery.
The designs included
a three-quarters-scale replica
of an 1890s Main Street,
suspiciously similar
to Walt's memories of Marceline;
man-made riverbeds
for the steamboat
in Frontierland
and the Jungle Cruise
in Adventureland;
and a Bavarian-style castle
towering 80 feet
above Fantasyland.
There were also plans
for more than a mile
of narrow-gauge railroad track
ringing the park,
and beyond that,
a 20-foot-high berm
so that the real world
could not intrude.
BOB GURR:
The first time I ever saw
Disneyland,
it was a great big dusty place
full of bulldozers
and orange trees
being knocked down
and concrete forms being built.
And when I first saw it,
I thought,
"We're going to open
in six months?
How in the world are they ever
going to do this?"
NARRATOR:
The desire for escape
and amusement was growing
in mid-'50s America,
and more and more people
had the means of pursuit.
Americans were fanning out
into the suburbs.
More families than ever before
had a television set
in the living room
and extra cash
in the family paycheck
for entertainment, travel, toys.
The biggest generation
America had ever seen,
the Baby Boomers,
had reached school age.
These children
were not yet old enough
to drive the family car,
but they were old enough
to drive family spending.
DOUGLAS:
These kids are eight
and nine years old,
and they're looking for
a kind of set of cultural values
that are a bit different
from the privations
of the Depression and the war.
TV ANNOUNCER:
American Motors,
builders of Nash Automobiles,
Kelvinator home appliances,
and Hudson Motor Cars
present Walt Disney's
Disneyland!
When you wish upon a star ♪
Makes no difference
who you are. ♪
ANNOUNCER:
Each week, as you enter
this timeless land,
one of these many worlds
will open to you.
Here now to tell you about it
is Walt Disney.
Welcome.
I guess you all know
this little fellow here.
It's an old partnership.
SKLAR:
I think he was one of
the great salesmen of our time
because he never tried
to sell something
he didn't personally believe in.
Now we want you to share with us
our latest and greatest dream.
That's it right here.
Disneyland.
Seen from about 2,000 feet
in the air
and ten months away.
GABLER:
Now Walt Disney is creating
anticipation for Disneyland.
And he's making people feel,
particularly children,
"This is the most magical place.
You have to come here."
He makes it a destination.
We hope that
through our television show
that you will join us
and take part
in the building of Disneyland,
and that you will find here
a place of knowledge
and happiness.
SARAH NILSEN:
He was very humble and open
and seemed very accessible.
At the same time,
he'd never condescend.
He always talked to children
as peers, as equals.
But this year
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Walt becomes the master
of dreams and hopes
not in an off-putting way,
not in a way
that feels unrelateable.
Now, at the foot of Main Street,
about where you're sitting,
is the plaza.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He's actually an individual
who could make
your dreams come true.
DISNEY:
Shooting out from here,
like the four cardinal points.
NARRATOR:
The Disneyland TV show
featured a different
hour-long offering every week,
each show mapped onto
one of the four realms
at the theme park
Walt was building.
DISNEY:
They are Adventureland
Tomorrowland
Fantasyland
and Frontierland.
NARRATOR:
It was a Frontierland offering,
"Tall tales and true
from the legendary past,"
that became the talk
of the schoolyard.
Now, in our TV series
from Frontierland,
we're going to tell about these
real people who became legend,
like Davy Crockett.
NARRATOR:
Davy Crockett aired
on three separate Wednesdays
from December of 1954
to February of 1955.
TV ANNOUNCER:
Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter.
NARRATOR:
Children across the country
fell hard
for the larger-than-life
frontiersman.
♪♪
DOUGLAS:
Davy Crockett was homespun,
plain spoken, tough,
enterprising.
He was the rugged individual
who triumphed over everything.
He really embodied a nostalgic,
idealized view
of American male values.
DOUGLAS BRODE:
Davy Crockett is incredibly
anti-authoritarian
in a way no other Western hero
for kids were
at that time.
When Davy Crockett arrives
at Andrew Jackson's camp,
the first thing he does
is disobey orders.
Excuse me, General.
Well, what do you want?
Well, nothing much.
Dropped in to say goodbye.
Goodbye?
Where do you think you're going?
Home.
You're going after Red Stick
with the rest of my command.
This war isn't over yet.
I ain't quitting the war.
Me and my neighbors
will be back directly.
You see, General,
we only volunteered for 60 days,
and that's long since up.
Catching Red Stick
is liable to take up
the rest of the year.
We've gotta see our families
is took care of
before we start in
on anything like that.
Well, Major?
Desertion is a serious crime
in the army, Crockett!
I ain't quitting the war.
I told you we was coming back.
You're confined to this camp.
That's an order!
My misses would worry about me.
Sorry, General.
BRODE:
Disney films told children
to emulate Davy Crockett,
and that means,
"Listen to your own inner self.
"Do not do what authoritarian
figures tell you to do
if you believe they're wrong."
Pa's back!
Oh Davy, you're back!
Hello, Pa!
Hi, Pa!
WATTS:
The ratings just
went through the roof,
and as the serialized segments
came on,
they got bigger
and bigger and bigger.
NARRATOR:
By the time
the third and final episode
of Davy Crockett aired,
a quarter of the entire American
population was tuned in.
Born on the mountaintop
in Tennessee ♪
NARRATOR:
The show's theme song became
a Number One hit record.
Boys and girls across America
were sporting coonskin caps,
just like the one
their hero wore.
Davy, Davy Crockett,
king of the wild frontier ♪
GABLER:
The Davy Crockett series
was one of those things
that hits American culture
in a way that
only a handful of things
ever hits American culture:
Elvis Presley, the Beatles,
you know, Davy Crockett
was kind of like that.
It was a sensation.
NARRATOR:
Davy Crockett even proved
a powerful pop culture symbol
in the Cold War
between the United States
and the Soviet Union,
a battle of ideologies
fought with words
and pictures and stories.
WATTS:
Davy Crockett's
famous saying was,
"Be sure you're right,
and then go ahead."
And I think
that's what Americans
wanted to think about themselves
in the Cold War.
"We're sure we're right,
and by God,
we're going to go ahead."
♪♪
GABLER:
His animations created
a perfect and artificial world,
and what he was really doing is
he was making that material
in Disneyland.
He always thought of Disneyland
as a living animation,
a living movie.
And he thought people
would love to enter a film,
not just watch it.
SKLAR:
You're walking into the story.
And the things that
we worked so hard
And this was Walt
That we worked so hard to avoid
is letting people
out of the story
with discordant details:
something out of the time period
that doesn't work.
Even the trash cans in the park
are for that particular story,
that theme.
NARRATOR:
Walt was down in Anaheim
almost every day.
He would walk every inch
of the construction site,
barking orders:
"Move that gazebo!
"It's blocking the view
of the castle.
"Can we make that lake bigger?
"Move the train wreck 50 feet!
"That tree's too close
to the walkway!
How about moving it?"
Never mind it weighed 15 tons.
GURR:
Walt was literally down there
every day, watching everything.
But never distraught,
never negative,
just urging everybody on,
exploring all the ways
how to fix stuff.
GABLER:
Walt is interested
in every blade of grass.
He's interested in every leaf
on a tree.
He's interested in where
everything is placed.
There's not an attraction
that Walt Disney
isn't deeply involved in.
NARRATOR:
Disney's constant demands
put the entire operation
behind the eight-ball,
as did his stubborn insistence
to get Disneyland up and running
in a hurry.
Six weeks from his
announced opening date,
panic was starting to set in.
The entrance plaza
was not yet landscaped;
Main Street was unpaved,
the castle unfinished;
the Jungle Cruise boats
were moving,
but the robotic animals
had yet to be installed.
As opening day approached,
less than half
of the planned attractions
were ready to receive visitors,
and members of the WED staff
were lobbying
to push back the opening.
Walt was uninterested
in the naysayers.
He just kept pushing harder.
The construction crew tripled
in the final weeks
to 2,500 men, many of whom
were working 16 hours a day.
Costs climbed
to more than $17 million,
more than three times
the estimate made
when construction began.
SKLAR:
So many things were finished
at the last minute.
There was a plumbers' strike
in Orange County
which was settled about a day
before Disneyland opened,
so Walt had the choice
of finishing the bathrooms
or the drinking fountains.
And of course
he chose the bathrooms.
NARRATOR:
"People can buy Pepsi-Cola,"
Disney explained,
"but they can't pee
in the street."
GURR:
Well, the interesting thing
about Walt,
just before the park
was getting ready to open,
he was so excited.
Like a proud father.
Look what he's got now!
That was Walt at his best:
his enthusiasm of pursuing
where he wanted to go,
and everybody was just going
to follow him right along.
NARRATOR:
The park was a-bustle
the day before the opening.
ABC was setting its cameras
and running rehearsals
for the next day's broadcast,
which was planned as the biggest
and most ambitious
live telecast ever.
One work crew was frantically
trying to dig out
the 900-pound
mechanical elephant
that was sinking
into the Jungle River.
Another was adding lead weights
to the front of the train engine
to make sure
it didn't tip backward.
Painters were settling in
for an all-nighter.
Walt himself put on a mask
and helped spray-paint backdrops
for the 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea exhibit.
He was still at Disneyland
at 3:00 in the morning,
walking the grounds,
barking orders.
"We need new murals
for the trains!
Get me an artist!"
July 17, 1955 dawned unusually
hot in Anaheim, California.
The temperature was already
nearing 100 degrees
when word came that traffic
into the park
was backed up for seven miles
on Harbor Boulevard.
When the gates opened
that afternoon,
people flooded in,
many of them waving
counterfeit tickets.
You are now in the press room
of Disneyland,
which is equipped to service
over 1,000 members
of the worldwide press
here to cover
this truly great event.
And to start the proceedings,
we take you to the entrance
of Disneyland
and your host, Art Linkletter.
Well, this job
in the next hour and a half
is gonna be a delight.
I feel like
Well, I feel like Santa Claus
with a $17 million bundle
of gift packages
all wrapped in whimsy
and sent your way
over television
with the help of 29 cameras,
dozens of crews,
and literally miles
and miles of cable.
Now of course,
this is not so much a show
as it is a special event.
Hello, Walt!
Hello, Governor!
Hi, Art!
Hi!
How'd the run go?
Oh, fine, fine!
The Governor had her round
through Frontierland
and then Fred Gurley there,
he took her round,
I picked her up
and brought her in.
WATTS:
They have dozens of cameras
all through the park,
and the hope is that they
will go from this scene to that
and here to there
and show all parts of the park.
And about half of it worked
and half of it didn't.
Technology, of course,
in the TV age in that period
was very crude.
It was live TV,
and there were
a lot of screw-ups.
Bob Cummings
up at the pirate ship,
we're back to you, boy!
Oh, you're waiting for me?
Oh, thank you!
Everybody is waving
at Bob Cummings over here,
so I guess I'm back on.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
it's Bob Cummings again,
back with you.
And like the Peter Pan
Fly-Through
I'd like to read these few words
of dedication.
"A vista into a world
of wondrous ideas
signifying man's
achievements"
I thought I got a signal?
NARRATOR:
The audience for the live
broadcast that Sunday
was double Disney's
normal number.
Nearly half
of the American population
took in Disneyland
from the comfort
of their own living rooms,
which had its advantages.
Fantasyland was closed
by a nearby gas leak.
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
succumbed to an overload
of the park's power grid.
GURR:
It was so hot.
It was just not a day
you want to have that much heat.
The asphalt was still soft,
and gals with the high heels
were going down in the asphalt.
CRUMP:
The lines were so packed,
we didn't try to eat
because the lines to get food
was ridiculous.
The whole thing
was a bit of a nightmare.
SKLAR:
Oh, it was awful.
It was terrible.
There were rumors that some
of the Hollywood personalities
were using language that
shouldn't be heard by children.
(laughs)
NARRATOR:
Newspaper reporters
were crawling
all over the park that day,
filling their notebooks
with mishaps and misadventures
for their next-day stories.
Walt didn't care.
His daughter Diane said
she had never seen him happier.
Walt, you've made a bum
out of Barnum today,
but we've gotta go.
I know, but I just want to say
a word of thanks
to all the artists, the workers,
and everybody that helped make
this dream come true.
Let's go into Fantasyland
and have some fun.
Goodbye, folks!
NARRATOR:
Disneyland was thrown open
to the public
the day after the gala opening,
and people began lining up
at 2:00 that morning
for the chance to be
the first ones through the gate.
The park drew a million visitors
in its first ten weeks alone.
Pretty soon, there were
five million per year,
and Walt's paradise
had become a must-see
for foreign dignitaries
on tour in the U.S.
Prime Minister Nehru of India
touched down in the park,
as did the King and Queen
of Nepal,
the Shah of Iran,
political leaders from Europe,
Africa, and South America.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
threw a fit
when the U.S. State Department,
citing security concerns,
quashed his planned visit
to Disneyland.
These world leaders
saw Disneyland
as a quick and easy window
into the U.S. psyche
The Cliff Notes version
of American history and culture.
Walt's countrymen, meanwhile,
were enticed to this
new vacation destination
by a simple promise:
a day's escape from the cares
and concerns of everyday life.
WATTS:
What introduces all of it,
that you have to go through
when you come into the park,
is this idealized rendering
of small-town America
The values, the feel,
the ethics, all of that.
What Disney's trying to do
at some level of awareness
is to create an image of America
that people would like to think
exists.
(riverboat horn blowing)
RIVERBOAT ANNOUNCER:
On Tom Sawyer's Island,
you see Old Fort Wilderness,
shelter and protection
for the hearty pioneers
pushing ahead
into unsettled territory.
Off the port bow,
a friendly Indian village where
members of many tribes gather
to perform
ancient ceremonial dances.
(singing)
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Disneyland is a space in which
American ideals are celebrated.
So you have Frontierland,
and you have gestures
to America's past,
and not the complicated moments,
not the moments that are
about pain and suffering.
If there is a Native American
presence at Frontierland,
it's not about contest.
It's about resolution.
NARRATOR:
Frontierland and Adventureland
pointed back,
Fantasyland inward.
Tomorrowland compassed advances
in science and technology
that assured
better days to come.
And all under the guidance
of corporate America.
DISNEYLAND ANNOUNCER:
Welcome to Monsanto's
Plastics Home of the Future.
As you entered
this experimental model home,
perhaps you noticed
that the house itself
is constructed entirely
of plastics.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Disneyland is the idealization
of the past
and the hopeful regard
for the future.
It is not about now.
It is a complete release
from all of those burdens.
GABLER:
What people find there
is a perfection that
you can't find in real life.
It's odd to say that
something's better than real,
because after all,
what's better than real?
But Walt Disney was the man
who helped discover things
that are better than real.
NARRATOR:
"Disneyland materializes bigger
than life and twice as real,"
one magazine writer gushed.
Another praised Disney
for tending his creation
"with the sureness
of a mature master
who can still retain
the vision of a child."
There were a handful
of early critics.
"The whole world, the universe,
"and all man's striving
for dominion
over self and nature,"
wrote a journalist,
"have been reduced
to a sickening blend
"of cheap formulas
packaged to sell.
Life is bright colored, clean,
safe, mediocre, inoffensive."
Walt Disney wanted bright
and clean and safe.
He loved the place.
GURR:
Walt treated that park
as his personal toy.
Over the firehouse there
next to the City Hall,
they had a little apartment.
He and Lilly would go down there
on a Friday or Saturday night.
He'd get up early in the morning
before anybody showed up,
and he'd go over
to a little store
where they had orange juice
being freshly squeezed,
and he'd go out there
in his bathrobe and get it
and come back up
to his little apartment.
RON MILLER:
It was a good place
for Walt to relax,
get away from the crowd.
But it was adjacent
to the jungle ride.
All night long, you would hear,
"Ha-ya-ya-ya, ha-ya ya-ya."
All night long.
CRUMP:
If you saw him in person,
you'd never recognize him
from the man that was on TV.
Walt was really quite bent over.
With his little sweater
that he wore,
his little golf sweater,
and he never combed his hair,
he'd wander around Disneyland
and nobody knew who he was.
He used to get in line
and stand in line for as long
as it took to see the attraction
and just listen
to what people had to say
because there might be something
that he would hear
that would spark him
into some of the attractions
that he was doing.
NARRATOR:
At a dinner party one evening,
a friend suggested to Disney
that he was popular enough
to be elected president.
Walt fixed him
with an incredulous stare.
"Why would I want to be
president of the United States?
I'm the king of Disneyland."
In July 1956, the summer
after his theme park opened,
Walt Disney alighted
in Marceline, Missouri,
the town where he had briefly
lived a half-century earlier.
He had been asked back
to dedicate a park
named in his honor
and surprised the town fathers
by accepting the invitation.
(applause)
Marceline accorded Walt and his
brother Roy a hero's welcome,
and Disney luxuriated in the
glow of the town's adoration.
The reception seemed to confirm
Walt Disney's fondest idea
of himself.
He was the exemplar
of the simple and steadfast
virtues of middle America:
a small-town boy made good.
It didn't matter
that Walt had spent
nearly his entire childhood
in Kansas City and Chicago
and his entire adult life
in Los Angeles.
He was reclaiming Marceline
as home.
This was classic Disney:
an act of will
and of imagination.
He was rewriting his own
childhood with a happy ending.
HAHN:
Mark Twain had his Hannibal,
Walt Disney was gonna have
his Marceline.
He could go out and just play
and sit in his wishing tree
and hear the trains go by
at night time,
trains that could take him
anywhere in the world.
NILSEN:
For him, everything
springs out of Marceline.
"This is the place you need
to represent and signify
as the one where I came from."
HIGGINBOTHAM:
It almost feels like
it's locked in time.
It's frozen.
And he can relive it
over and over and over again.
I think that is
the appeal of it.
It's a romanticized period
of his youth.
And he accesses it,
he can go back to it,
use it as a touchstone
for his understanding
of what an ideal childhood
should be.
NARRATOR:
By 1960, Walt Disney stood atop
one of the world's
most profitable
entertainment enterprises.
The steady stream of revenue
from Disneyland
meant Walt was free from
interference from his bankers
for the first time
in his 40-year career.
But whether he was making
improvements on his theme park
or overseeing his TV shows
and the half-dozen movies his
studio was producing every year,
he was always thinking
about protecting his legacy.
"Disney is something
we've built up in the public
over the years," he explained
to one young writer.
"Disney stands for something."
SUSKIND:
"Brand" wasn't used back then,
but you know,
"I now am a symbol,"
is what he's saying.
And I think what he's trying
to wrestle with is,
how does it feel to be a symbol?
How does it feel to be,
essentially,
a one-word representation
of a lot of stuff?
TV ANNOUNCER:
Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse
present The Mickey Mouse Club!
M-I-C-K-E-Y
M-O-U-S-E ♪
Mickey Mouse! ♪
Donald Duck!
Mickey Mouse! ♪
Donald Duck!
Forever let us hold
our banner high ♪
High, high, high! ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He starts to internalize
that sense of he's standing
for something more.
And it's not shareholders.
Those are not who he feels
responsible to.
ALL:
Yay, Mickey!
Yay, Mickey Mouse!
HIGGINBOTHAM:
As he solidifies as a brand,
you don't have that risk-taking
that you felt
in the early years
of his career.
MILLER:
He invited Diane and I over
to watch a film.
The film was
To Kill a Mockingbird.
He said, "Boy, that was a hell
of a picture.
I wish I could make
a picture like that."
And you could feel that
he felt restricted
in how far he could go.
And one more thing we want
you always to remember:
M-I-C ♪
See you real soon!
K-E-Y ♪
Why?
Because we like you!
HAHN:
It is entertainment
that is bounded by Walt's ethics
and his aesthetics
and his perception
of what a family audience wanted
and needed.
You're going to see
the happy ending.
You're going to see a film
or a theme park or a place to go
where it shows the hope
of the human spirit
excelling and winning
at the end of the day,
because that's who he was.
NARRATOR:
Disney made no apologies
for his work,
whatever his private misgivings.
He would sometimes say,
with more than a little
revisionist history,
that he had never thought
of his movies as art,
but as show business,
and could point
to his huge box-office take
as proof that he was serving
an appreciative public.
DISNEY:
Hello!
I'm sorry you got lost.
NARRATOR:
When ABC expressed frustration
over the falling ratings
of his television show,
Disney simply moved it
to NBC's Sunday evening line-up
and stayed on as host.
In a few moments,
we'll go over to stage two
for the filming of the final
scene of Babes in Toyland.
SCHICKEL:
He liked his fame.
He was comfortable with it.
He liked introducing
the TV show.
He liked the character
he created
of the avuncular Uncle Walt.
The motion picture set
is probably the most expendable
part of filmmaking.
CRUMP:
They would write scripts
and have a monitor
for him to read
when he was on TV,
and then he'd just forget it,
he just would wing it.
So he loved winging it on TV.
Time to shoot
the final scene ♪
All the cast
and all the crew ♪
Are on stage two. ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
There is something very affable
about Walt Disney the host.
♪♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He's there every week.
He's a regular part
of your living room experience.
Well, this is how
a busy movie set looks
to the man behind the man
behind the camera.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He speaks to you
as if you mattered to him.
It's actually a well-organized
and efficient operation.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
Is it really him?
I don't know.
I want to believe it's him.
I hope it's him.
And I think audiences
hope it's him as well.
NARRATOR:
Walt was aware
of the gap between himself
and the persona he had created
for public consumption.
"I'm not Walt Disney,"
he once told a friend.
"I do a lot of things
Walt Disney wouldn't do.
"Walt Disney doesn't smoke.
"I smoke.
"Walt Disney doesn't drink.
I drink."
He told himself he was the same
regular guy he had always been.
He got his haircuts
at the company barbershop,
drove himself to the office
every day,
and carried cans
of his favorite chili and beans
on trips to London,
or the French Riviera.
But he was not like everybody
else, and he knew it.
FLOYD NORMAN:
Every time Walt
walked down a hallway,
he would give a loud cough.
Naturally,
you'd think Walt's coughing
because he was a smoker.
But his cough was not
necessarily due to smoking.
It was a warning sign
so we would know that the boss
was in the area.
RICHARD SHERMAN:
In Bambi, there's a line:
"When man is in the forest,"
you know, there was danger.
You have to be worried.
We'd hear Walt coughing,
coming down the hall,
and one of the guys would say,
"Man is in the forest,"
and we'd all get ready for Walt.
He walked through the door
and pins would drop.
You couldn't hear anything.
His personal power
walked right with him.
You knew you were sitting
with Walt Disney.
And there was no joking around.
He would sit down and say,
"Okay, guys, what you got?"
NARRATOR:
Disney's company
was bigger than ever
in the early 1960s,
with money to burn.
But Walt was as restless
and driven as always,
and still difficult when things
were going against him.
He quit speaking
to his brother Roy for months
during a contentious
contract negotiation.
He still chain-smoked
through every story meeting,
always aware
that the clock was running.
MILLER:
For the most part,
he was patient,
but when somebody
was really off-base,
his eyebrow would go up
and his fingers
would start tapping.
That was a sign.
NORMAN:
Walt was not generous
with praise.
If he was pleased
with something,
he would simply say,
"That'll work."
If you could get "That'll work"
from Walt Disney,
you knew you had done your job.
That was a good day,
that was a good meeting.
SHERMAN:
Walt Disney could be
very hard on someone
if they weren't cooperating
in his way.
He'd jump on them
really very badly
because if somebody's,
"Nah, just doesn't hit me,
I just don't like it,"
he'd say, "If you can't think
of a way to improve it
or try to,
then keep your mouth shut."
Oh, he got very upset with them.
I only saw him
In the seven years
that I knew him,
I only saw him unload twice.
And I thought, "God,
I'll never reach that point
to where he unloads on me."
But the people that
he unloaded on deserved it.
I was there.
Once he's made a decision,
you abide by it, you know?
Whether you agree
with it or not,
he's the boss, for God's sake.
SCHICKEL:
I don't think he was
totally grounded.
I think he wanted to be
what his image was.
I think he wanted
to be thought of
as "hail fellow well met,"
good-natured, but he wasn't.
Nobody does stuff
on the scale that he did
as a good-natured
sweetheart of a guy.
He was a hard-driving guy,
and I don't think he ever
resolved those conflicts.
(honking)
NARRATOR:
Walt Disney
had no real intimates
outside his own family,
and made little room in his life
for friends.
But he wanted acceptance
and love and acclaim
with a greediness that
would have looked pathetic
in a less successful man.
At age 61, he had won
more Academy Awards
than any other film producer
in history,
but it irked him that he had
never even won a nomination
for the most coveted prize:
the Oscar for best picture.
The boss's increasing engagement
in one particular film
in the Disney pipeline
started to create buzz
around Burbank in 1963.
Mary Poppins was based
on a favorite children's novel
of Disney's daughters,
and a project Walt had started
thinking about 20 years earlier,
back in that long-vanished era
of limitless possibility
after the worldwide success
of Snow White.
And memories
of that formative era
seemed to be tugging at Walt.
MILLER:
There was no animation
in Mary Poppins.
I'll never forget, one time
we were going over a scene
and Walt said, "By the way, Ron,
"would you look up
Song of the South,
"reel two, 100 feet into it?
"Put it in a projection room.
I would like to run it
for the guys."
We looked at each other, "What
the hell is this all about?"
And we went into the room,
and it was live action
and animation.
And he got up and left.
Didn't say a word.
And about three weeks later,
the same thing happened.
"Ron, will you put
that reel up again?"
And the lights came on,
and that's when
he told the boys,
"I have an idea
for animation in this."
♪♪
SHERMAN:
He's basically a story man.
He wanted the song moving story,
developing story, pushing story.
And that was very,
very important to him.
The children must be molded,
shaped and taught ♪
That life's a looming battle
to be faced and fought ♪
SHERMAN:
Mary Poppins is not
a children's story.
It's a story
about a dysfunctional family
that was not paying attention
to the most important thing
they had,
and that was their children.
And Walt knew that,
and that's what the story was.
It's time they learned
to walk in your footsteps ♪
My footsteps.
To tread your straight
and narrow path with pride ♪
With pride.
Tomorrow,
just as you suggest ♪
Pressed and dressed ♪
Jane and Michael
will be at your side. ♪
Splendid!
You've hit the nail
right on the
At my side?
Where are we going?
To the bank, of course,
exactly as you proposed.
I proposed?
Of course.
Now, if you'll excuse me.
Tomorrow's an important day
for the children.
I shall see they have
a proper night's sleep.
NARRATOR:
Mary Poppins debuted
in the summer of 1964
and became a box-office smash.
It was also Walt Disney's
most deliberate refashioning
of the hard-hearted
father story
A miraculous parental
transformation.
With tuppence
for paper and strings ♪
You can have
your own set of wings ♪
With your feet on the ground,
you're a bird in flight ♪
With your fist holding tight
to the string of your kite ♪
Oh ♪
Let's go fly a kite ♪
Up to the highest height ♪
NARRATOR:
"You have made
a great many pictures
that have touched the hearts
of the world,"
wrote legendary producer
Samuel Goldwyn.
"But you have never made one
so completely the fulfillment
of everything a great
motion picture should be."
Oh, let's go ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He is able to produce a film
on his terms
that has a narrative
that is very much about family.
Let's go fly a kite ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
About the healing of the family.
Up to the highest height,
let's go ♪
HIGGINBOTHAM:
So he's staying true
to what he believes personally
that has woven itself
into all of his films.
NARRATOR:
Mary Poppins was nominated
for 13 Oscars,
including Walt Disney's
first and only nomination
for Best Picture.
Mary Poppins is validation
for Walt Disney.
He's finally being embraced
by those whose validation
he has always sought.
Oh, let's go fly a kite! ♪
(cheering)
NARRATOR:
Mary Poppins premiered
into a different America
than had Mickey Mouse,
Snow White and Pinocchio.
American teenagers
were discovering the Beatles
and Bob Dylan and James Brown,
and beginning to worry
about a growing war
in a place called Vietnam.
(siren wailing)
The entire country, meanwhile,
was convulsed by momentous new
civil rights laws.
Riots in New York
and Los Angeles
and segregationist intimidation
in the Deep South
were beamed into television sets
in living rooms
across the country.
DOUGLAS:
The gap is growing
wider and wider
between Disney's version
of America
and what's really going on
in the country,
which is all of these fissures
being exposed.
O beautiful,
for spacious skies ♪
NARRATOR:
Walt's defenders
pointed to his movies
as "sanctuaries
of decency and health
in the jungle of sex and sadism
created by Hollywood producers."
How lovely it is!
Makes you feel proud,
doesn't it?
Hi, down there!
Oh Ned, look out!
NARRATOR:
Critics slammed him.
"Genuine feeling is ignored,"
said one,
"the imagination of children
bludgeoned with mediocrity."
Let's get together,
yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
Think of all
that we could share ♪
NILSEN:
Watered down, no edge,
devoid of any kind
of distinctive ethnicity,
any kind of diversity,
this white, middle class,
Protestant value system
is what he really gets
identified with.
Many of those people
that celebrated the '30s Disney
as this visionary
are now saying,
"You're conservative.
"The values you're selling
are conservative.
"We no longer agree with them.
Those are not our values."
The next number will be
a ladies' tag dance.
NARRATOR:
The truth was,
Disney's commercial success
depended on a certain set
of traditional values,
which were sometimes racist
and sexist.
DOUGLAS:
There were a lot of ways
Disney ignored major differences
in our society,
sought to erase them,
or sought to keep marginalized
people in their place.
I didn't say I was going
to take the position.
All I said was
Betsy, no wife of mine
is going to work.
Not as long as I have
a spark of life left in my body.
NARRATOR:
Disney was aware
of the knocks against him,
but he wasn't going to let
the critics change his work.
Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage ♪
Have a gay holiday ♪
MILLER:
There was a film critic
for the New York Times,
Bosley Crowther,
there was this film,
and Bosley was criticizing
the film for corn.
"Too much corn.
Just corny."
Kiss me
on the Eiffel Tower ♪
Walt and I happened
to have lunch that day,
and I said, "Did you happen
to see the review?"
And he said, "Yeah."
He said, "He's got to realize,
I like corn.
I love corn,
that's what I'm all about."
Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage ♪
Have a gay holiday,
and don't forget to write ♪
Bon Voyage ♪
NARRATOR:
Word started to get around
in 1965
that Walt Disney was buying up
enormous tracts of land
in central Florida.
By the time Disney
was ready to go public,
the company already owned
27,000 acres,
giving him a building lot
bigger than the island
of Manhattan.
HAYDON BURNS:
Walt Disney, who will bring
a new world of entertainment,
pleasure, and economic
development
to the state of Florida.
Walt Disney.
Thank you, Governor.
(applause)
What type of attraction
and what type of usage
will be made
of this great location?
We have many things in mind
that could make this unique
and different than Disneyland.
Will it be a Disneyland?
Well, I've always said
there will never be
another Disneyland, Governor.
NARRATOR:
Walt remained cagey
about the scope and outlines
of what he called
Project Future.
We know the basic things
that have this what I call
"family appeal."
NARRATOR:
Only a handful
of company insiders
knew what he was planning:
the Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow,
or EPCOT.
HAHN:
It's like, "I did the mouse,
that was great.
"Yeah, I affected
popular culture.
"I made movies and things.
"But is that
a real contribution,
"or is that just popcorn?
"Am I just this fugitive guy
"that is doling out popular
culture for people to consume
"and it's here today
and gone tomorrow?
Is it fast food?"
And I think that turns
to thoughts of,
"Well, if it is,
then what is my legacy?"
KOEHN:
What can you leave the world?
What can you create for the
world that will outlast you?
Well, the city of the future,
a city where there is prosperity
and possibility and hope.
GURR:
A lot of people
had talked about it,
nobody'd really done anything
about it,
and I got the impression
Walt felt that,
well, by golly,
he could do this.
NORMAN:
He was now being a futurist,
a visionary,
and building a functioning,
working city of tomorrow,
a city that would be a model
for the United States
and perhaps even
for the rest of the world.
CRUMP:
He used to get so goddamn
excited about EPCOT.
When he'd talk about it,
it was like he'd just come back
from the moon yesterday.
He was just so thrilled.
ANNOUNCER:
No city of today
will serve as the guide
for the city of tomorrow.
EPCOT will be
a planned environment,
demonstrating to the world
what American communities
can accomplish
through proper control
of planning and design.
NARRATOR:
Disney's design called
for a high-density town center
with hotels
and corporate offices,
a greenbelt for recreation
and entertainment,
and a low-density
residential area
with schools and parks
and playgrounds.
It would all be knit together
by the most efficient
and convenient
public transportation,
and by a common purpose:
progress, Disney-style.
CRUMP:
He wanted all the major
companies in the United States
to have research and development
organizations
as part of EPCO
right next door to each other.
So GE would be right next door
to Ford.
Ford would be right next door
to General Motors.
All these research divisions
for all these big companies
would become close.
ANNOUNCER:
But most important,
this entire 50 acres
of city streets and buildings
will be completely enclosed.
In this climate-controlled
environment,
shoppers and theater-goers
and people just out for a stroll
will enjoy ideal
weather conditions.
GURR:
Walt's got these drawings
of EPCO
laid out on the table,
and we're all talking
about everything,
and he was pointing out
what's going to go here
and what's going to go there.
And he kind of tapped
the drawing kind of funny
and he said,
"Well, I'm going to put
"this little park bench
right here,
"and Lilly and I
are going to sit here
and we're going
to watch people."
He's seeing it
as a giant project,
but he's seeing it as a place
where he knows he's going to put
his own park bench.
NARRATOR:
Disney allowed himself a rare
treat in the summer of 1966:
he left his studio
for a two-week vacation
with his wife,
daughters Diane and Sharon,
and their growing families.
MILLER:
This gentleman
offered Walt his yacht
to tour the coastline of Canada
and up into Alaska.
We had Sharon and Bob
and her child,
and then we had all our kids.
His room was right next
to our room,
and he was coughing
an awful lot, all night long.
Diane was very concerned.
But he had fun.
He said, "We're going to have
to do this more often."
Welcome to a little bit
of Florida here in California.
This is where the early planning
is taking place
for our so-called
Disney World Project.
NARRATOR:
On October 27, 1966,
Walt Disney spent the day
on the studio soundstage
shooting his part
in a promotional film
about his new pet project.
The most exciting,
by far the most important part
of our Florida project,
in fact the heart of everything
we'll be doing in Disney World,
will be our Experimental
Prototype City of Tomorrow.
We call it EPCOT.
NARRATOR:
The effort winded
the 64-year-old so badly
he needed oxygen between takes.
DISNEY:
Community of Tomorrow.
GURR:
He didn't look good.
He didn't feel good.
He just seemed to be
almost permanently grumpy.
The word around the lot was,
"Well, he's not feeling
too well."
NARRATOR:
Disney's old polo injury
was giving him trouble.
His neck hurt,
his shoulder hurt,
he was having trouble
with his hip
and sometimes dragged his leg
when he walked.
"My nerves are shot to hell,"
he admitted to Hazel George.
"And the pain
is driving me nuts."
He finally gave in
and scheduled spinal surgery,
but in the pre-operative exam
at a hospital across the street
from the studio,
doctors discovered something
else to be worried about:
a mass on one of his lungs.
The diagnosis was cancer.
The prognosis was bad.
Doctors told him
he had two years at most.
MILLER:
Walt, the optimist that he was,
felt he was going to lick it.
He said, "You know,
it's one of these things.
"I've smoked all my life
"and I've seen people
who have smoked all their life
"and they didn't have
lung cancer.
I thought it would
never happen to me."
And it happened.
Nobody let us in on it.
Maybe some of the inner circle
might have known
it was more serious,
but I didn't.
And one day, we were looking
at a rough cut of this film,
and Walt was there in the hall.
And as he passed us in the hall,
we were standing there,
he looked at us and he said,
"Keep up the good work, fellas."
It's the first time
and the only time
he ever complimented our work,
and he winked at us
and walked down the hall.
NARRATOR:
Walt did not return to the
studio as usual the next day.
He checked himself
back into the hospital instead.
Roy would get up
very early in the morning
and go to see Walt.
And Walt always complained
about his feet being cold,
so Roy would stand there
and rub his feet
and get them warm.
NARRATOR:
On the night
of December 14, 1966,
Walt sent Lillian home
from his bedside
to get some rest.
He promised her
he was feeling stronger.
Roy stayed behind
and sat at the bedside
while his kid brother,
flat on his back,
pointed up to the ceiling tiles,
trying to explain the vision
of Disney World and EPCO
that shimmered before him,
trying to make Roy see it
as he did.
"Now there is where the highway
will run," he explained.
"And there is the route
for the monorail."
I went down to get my haircut,
and it was a gal
in the barbershop,
and she was cutting my hair
and she says,
"Too bad about Walt."
And I said,
"Oh, he's going to be okay.
He'll be back next week."
"No, he died."
Well, I couldn't get out of that
chair quicker to get home.
And my mother, my cousin
are just like this.
They wouldn't even talk to me.
Well, that was a bad day.
I was next door at the studio.
And I rushed over,
and he was gone.
SHERMAN:
I heard somebody shrieking
and running down the hall.
It was one of the secretaries.
And I opened the door,
and everybody was rushing
into the hallway.
"Walt died."
Nobody could believe it.
And we all gathered
in Bill Anderson's office,
a whole bunch of us,
and they were crying.
Men were crying, I was crying.
It was terrible,
it was horrible.
It was just horrible.
CRUMP:
I was in my office
in the model shop,
and John Hench came out
and told me Walt passed.
And everybody was just,
you know
It was just like it'd taken
the breath out of us.
It was like
the end of the world.
Like the end of the world.
TV ANNOUNCERS:
Walt Disney is dead tonight
at the age of 65
had undergone surgery last month
for removal of part
of his left lung
He won 29 Oscars, four Emmys,
the Irving Thalberg Award
Walt Disney,
Hollywood's prince of fantasy.
NARRATOR:
Walt Disney's death was
front-page news the next day,
across the country
and around the world.
TV ANNOUNCER:
Of his success, Disney has said,
"There's no magic formula.
"Children all over the world
have one thing in common:
love of laughter."
NARRATOR:
In the year after he died,
nearly seven million people
visited Disneyland;
tens of millions
around the world
listened to a Disney record
or bought Disney-licensed
merchandise
or tuned into Walt's
television show;
hundreds of millions saw
one of Disney's movies.
HIGGINBOTHAM:
That sense of happiness,
that sense of American identity,
those are things
that you want to achieve,
and Disney offers that to you.
GABLER:
He's either the man
who ruined American culture
and brought all of this fakeness
into our lives,
or he's the man who inspired us
and gave us hours and hours
of entertainment.
HAHN:
Walt Disney represented
more than just a guy.
He was an ethos.
He was a way
of approaching life.
And whether you hated him
or loved him,
there was no one that
could argue with his effect
on 20th century culture.
I can move!
I can talk!
NILSEN:
How do we deal with growing up?
I can walk!
Bambi!
NILSEN:
What does it mean
when we leave childhood behind?
How do we deal with death?
They're questions
all humans deal with
no matter what period,
no matter what culture.
SUSKIND:
Disney goes back and taps
old myths and old narrative arcs
that are deeply rooted
in all of us.
What is the meaning of my life?
What is my journey
really born of?
How can I discover who I am?
HIGGINBOTHAM:
He affects all of us.
No one is untouched
by Walt Disney.
GABLER:
There aren't that many figures
in American culture
who cover as many bases,
who do as many things
as Walt Disney.
Disney was somebody who
understood the American psyche.
He was also someone
who anticipated the future
of the American psyche.
He understood
a whole lot about us.