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Walt Disney -- 12/04/01
Today we were supposed to go "a-haunting" and visit the Haunted Mansion, but as tomorrow is December 5th, Walt's actual hundredth birthday, today's essay will be dedicated to the Man and his Magic.
First, I want to say that in preparing for this essay, I did the usual research and read several biographical pages on the internet. I must say I read about things I knew and a few things I didn't. I also learned that you can't or shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet, though if it WAS all true, it makes Mr. Disney's accomplishments all the more remarkable. In any case, I highly recommend that you all do what I did and read the available material, it's quite interesting.
This amazing man was born in Chicago. His parents, Elias and Flora had a construction business there. According to Walt himself (at the Walt Disney- the Man and His Magic display in the Disney MGM Studios), his father was fairly successful as a contractor but really wanted to be a farmer. So he sold the business and bought a farm in Marceline, Missouri- the inspiration for Mainstreet, USA . The elder Mr. Disney was not a successful farmer and the family eventually sold out and moved to Kansas City where he bought into a newspaper called the Kansas City Star. Walt had a paper route with them at age 9. He was no more successful as a newspaperman, and went back to Marcelline just before WWI.
Walt was already an established cartoonist, having been drawing and selling his work to neighbors since he was about 7. Surprisingly, even though he was so passionate about art that he would draw on toilet paper with coal if nothing else was available, his father didn't support him in his efforts. In fact, one account says that his father was ill tempered and beat Walt daily. If that is true (and the website where I read this has no documentation listed) one can see where as an adult Walt would retain a passion for fantasy and childish pleasures. It may be, however, that he was treated no differently from other children of the era, corporal punishment being only fairly recently seen as cruel, so take that with a grain of salt.
Even so, Walt drew on everything he could get his hands on. When the war broke out and his best friend-brother Roy- joined the Navy, Walt wanted to go with him. He was a year too young. Undaunted, he and a friend found that they could join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps and they did. Walt spent most of WWI driving an ambulance around Paris, France. Oh yes- and drawing cartoons...all over his ambulance!
When Walt returned to the states, he went to the Academy for Fine Arts in Chicago. He told his father he wanted to make a living drawing, but his father thought that was a bad idea, so Walt just politely picked up and left home. He went back to Kansas City where a friend of his told him about a little production company that was looking for cartoonists. Walt took over a portfolio of drawings he had done while in France- mostly political commentary- and was hired on the spot. He also did political cartoons for the Star and other papers.
In 1923, he and his brother Roy, picked up and moved to California. They wanted to do more with the cartoon production and felt California was the place to do it. Unemployed and with no real prospects, they decided to cure that ill by going into business for themselves. They started their own cartoon production company. Their first commercial success, Oswald the Lucky rabbit, was stolen from them, along with many of their staff, by an unscrupulous distributor in New York. Lesson learned. Never again would Walt and Roy let a creation of theirs get away.
Now the myth of the creation of Mickey Mouse has many versions but the gist is essentially the same. Walt drew him on a train trip, named him Mortimer, and his wife told him to change it to Mickey. That Lillian Bounds was one smart cookie. During my research, I found a version that says the whole thing was done on the train while Walt was suffering from a deep depression over the loss of Oswald. Another says he trapped a mouse in a waste paper basket to keep as a pet, named HIM Mortimer, and the drawing was of him. Yet another says the drawing was done on the train but the name change happened a few weeks or months later. Which ever is true, Lillian named him and that was the piece of magic that did the trick. Mickey has been making money for Walt and his family hand over fist for a good long time now and will for years to come.
Over the course of his ensuing career, Walt and Roy were responsible for a good many innovations in the world of animated entertainment. They invented or perfected the multiplane camera, which gave the drawings a 3d effect before the advent of computer enhanced animation. With Steamboat Willie, they made history for having the first cartoon with sound. The Alice stories had the first combination of live action with animation interacting together, a technique both invented and perfected by Walt and his Imagineers. He introduced animation to the film industry by producing the first full length animated film- Snow White. Hollywood was so impressed they gave him an Oscar, with 7 little Oscars attached. Presented to him by Shirley Temple, it's the only one of it's kind.
In 1955, Walt opened Disneyland in Anaheim, so there would be a place for "parents and kids to have fun together". Boy did they! Not long after, Walt scouted out property in Florida and bought up some orange groves between Orlando and Kissimmee. He single handedly tripled the tourist income for the state of Florida and made those sleepy little central Florida towns THE place to be on vacation. Walt had already passed on when his dream for Walt Disney World opened in 1971, but it continues to change and grow and bring delight to young and old, just as he intended. Today, there are Disney parks not only on both American coasts, but in Japan and France as well. Walt would be proud.
He passed away from us in 1966. I was 6, but I remember crying because I thought there would be no more Mickey Mouse. No more True Life Adventures. No more Daniel Boone. No more magic. I couldn't have been more wrong. Eric Severeid, in his eulogy, said it best:
"He was an original. Not just an American original, but an original. Period. He was a happy accident, one of the happiest this century has experienced. And judging by the way it’s behaving, in spite of all Disney tried to tell it about laughter, love, children, puppies, and sunrises, the century hardly deserved him. He probably did more to heal - or at least soothe - troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world. There can’t be many adults in the allegedly civilized parts of the globe who did not inhabit Disney’s mind and imagination for at least for a few hours and feel better for the visitation.
"It may be true, as somebody said, that while there is no highbrow in a lowbrow, there is some lowbrow in every highbrow. But what Disney seemed to know was that while there is very little grown-up in every child, there is a lot of child in every grown-up. To a child, this weary world is brand-new, gift wrapped. Disney tried to keep it that way for adults.
"By the conventional wisdom, mighty mice, flying elephants, Snow White and Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy and Doc - all these were fantasy, escapism from reality. It’s a question of whether they are any less real, any more fantastic than intercontinental missiles, poisoned air, defoliated forests, and scrap iron on the moon. This is the age of fantasy, however you look at it, but Disney’s fantasy wasn’t lethal."
Thankyou, Walt Disney. Thankyou.
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