The Animated Man

by Michael Barrier

  He knew that his name alone could open doors. His awards had piled up steadily; he was, as Peter Bart wrote in the New York Times, a man “revered and honored almost to the point of absurdity.”28 In September 1964, he received the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor a president can bestow, from President Lyndon Johnson, sharing the moment with former secretary of state Dean Acheson, the composer Aaron Copland, Helen Keller, and two dozen other familiar names. After the world’s fair, he hired a chief aide of Robert Moses, retired General William E. “Joe” Potter, to help find sponsors for EPCOT. “When I first started out,” Potter told an interviewer a few years after Disney’s death, “I said, Walt, how am I going to get in? And he said—Tell them I sent you! And I wrote to all these industries saying what we were going to do, and I would like to come and talk to them . . . and I never got turned down once.”29

  Disney’s celebrity by the early 1960s was such that it colored his dealings with the heads of corporations much larger than Walt Disney Productions. Said Bob Gurr: “When Don Burnham, the [president and chief executive officer] of Westinghouse, got close to Walt, his bottom lip would start quivering and it was hard for him to speak. When some people got too close to Walt, they got spooked because they idolized Walt Disney. Walt was aware of this and he would deliberately dress down by undoing a button or slopping up his tie so it was askew. He tried to send a signal, ‘I’m okay.’ . . . He knew he scared the daylights out of people and didn’t want to let that get in the way of being able to work with him. Otherwise all he’d have is a bunch of people agreeing with him and their expertise wouldn’t show.”30

  For the most part, Disney used a company plane not to sell his ideas to industry but for visits to shopping centers, hotels, and schools while he trawled for ideas he could put to use at EPCOT and CalArts. As Disney’s ideas for EPCOT took shape, he determined that the hub-and-spoke plan he had adopted for Disneyland would be the central element of EPCOT, too. As Disneyland’s planner Marvin Davis said, Disney “wanted to solve everything with the radial idea.”31

  He turned for ideas to two books on city planning, both then recently published. Victor Gruen’s The Heart of Our Cities (1964) was a persuasive diagnosis of city ills, which Gruen traced to a never-ending, ultimately futile catering to the automobile. Gruen’s own career was a bundle of contradictions, however. This severe critic of an auto-centered society was also the foremost designer of enclosed suburban malls, those magnets for auto traffic, and his solutions for inner-city ills amounted to little more than transplanting suburban features—including enclosed malls—to downtowns. For some cities he proposed a ring road around downtown that was inevitably reminiscent of Gruen’s native Vienna and its Ringstrasse (although in Gruen’s new version the road was more an expressway than a broad avenue).32

  Gruen was also an advocate of “the radial idea,” and he admired Ebenezer Howard, whose 1902 book Garden Cities of To-morrow, reissued in 1965, was the earliest and most forceful statement of that idea. Howard’s book was probably the strongest single influence on Walt Disney’s thinking. Howard, an Englishman, was a city planner who did not care for cities—he called them “ulcers on the very face of our beautiful island”33—and there was a similar strain in Disney’s thinking. Although he spent months at a time in New York in the late 1920s, he never warmed to that city, referring to it in his letters as “this DAMN TOWN,”34 grumbling about having to walk so much, complaining about the weather and how bored he was, and wishing aloud that he was back home in Los Angeles. He mentioned in one 1928 letter seeing a Broadway show, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but he seems never to have made much effort to enjoy what was then America’s most dynamic and exciting city. Europe was another matter—Disney liked London a lot more than Howard did—but his plans for EPCOT owed little or nothing to European models.

  Planning for Disney World, and for EPCOT in particular, took place in a “war room” at WED Enterprises’ offices in Glendale. On October 27, 1966, when Disney went before the cameras for segments of a twenty-four-minute film promoting EPCOT, it was not in the actual war room, with what Anthony Haden-Guest called its “urgent display of maps, blueprints, aerial photographs and projection screens,” but in a re-creation of that room on a studio sound stage.35 Disney rehearsed his pitch for EPCOT before select groups of friends—the actor Walter Pidgeon, the television personality Art Link-letter, Welton Becket and his two young sons.36

  The film was completed in two slightly different versions, one aimed at the Florida legislature and the other at the large corporations Disney hoped would sponsor much of EPCOT. The film, known as Walt Disney’s EPCOT ’66, was to be the most important tool in Disney’s effort to recruit corporate sponsors. It is the fullest expression of Disney’s vision—for once the word, applied so often to Disney’s ideas, is appropriate—for his utopian city.

  In the film, a narrator describes EPCOT’s “dynamic urban center,” home to a “cosmopolitan hotel and convention center towering thirty or more stories,” as well as “shopping areas where stores and whole streets re-create the character and adventure of places ’round the world,” restaurants, theaters, and, of course, “office buildings . . . most of them designed especially to suit local and regional needs of major corporations.”37 Most remarkably, “this entire fifty acres of city streets and buildings will be completely enclosed,” the narration continues. “In this climate-controlled environment, shoppers, theatergoers, and people just out for a stroll will enjoy ideal weather conditions, protected day and night from rain, heat and cold, and humidity.”

  This plan was an extreme expression of the idea advocated most eloquently in Gruen’s book, that the cure for the ills of city centers was to increase their resemblance to suburban malls. (Enclosed shopping malls were still a recent phenomenon in 1966—the first one, Southdale, designed by Gruen, had opened outside Minneapolis in October 1956, a little over a year after Disneyland’s opening and exactly ten years before Disney’s EPCOT filming.) Raising such a huge dome would have been technologically difficult, if not impossible, and wildly expensive.

  Moving out from the domed downtown, Disney’s EPCOT, as visualized in the film, was very much in the Ebenezer Howard vein. High-density apartments were to be succeeded by a “greenbelt” and then by “radial neighborhoods” of single-family homes. Residences were to be rigidly separated from commercial uses (and, for that matter, from churches and schools, which would be confined to the “greenbelt”). Since the idea was that EPCOT would be “a working community with employment for all,” one inevitable effect of such segregation would have been to leave vast stretches of the new city dull and empty throughout the day—making EPCOT indistinguishable from many existing suburbs, except in the greater tidiness and regularity of its design

  Disney, the man who commuted to work on an increasingly crowded California freeway, was most concerned with taming auto traffic, and his plan for EPCOT entailed an elaborate transportation system with only a subordinate role for the private auto. Two electrically powered systems—the monorail and, in modified form, the PeopleMover already in use in Disneyland—were to be what the narration called the “transportation heartbeat of EPCOT,” while residents typically drove their cars “only on weekend pleasure trips.” The film showed most employees commuting to jobs not in EPCOT’s city center, but at the new version of Disneyland or in a thousand-acre industrial park that would be “a showcase of industry at work.” It also showed most of them making two transfers, from a PeopleMover to the monorail, and from the monorail to another PeopleMover—exactly the sort of inconvenience, however minor, that motorists have always used to justify driving rather than using public transportation.

  This was the canker at the heart of Disney’s vision of EPCOT: his failure to enter as imaginatively into the minds of suburban motorists as he had into the minds of his guests at Disneyland. He wanted people to drive when he wanted them to—he said in the EPCOT film that he had chosen the Florida site “because it’s so easy for to
urists and Florida residents to get here by automobile”—and to use his mass transit system when he wanted them to. Day visitors at Disneyland might accept such direction willingly, but there was no reason to believe that long-term residents of EPCOT would be so accommodating. It is all too easy to imagine Disney’s commuters finding ways to drive to their jobs in air-conditioned cars on humid summer mornings, rather than walk from home to a PeopleMover station, make two transfers, and walk from another station to work.

  Disney’s narrator spoke of the radial plan as “an idea new among cities built since the birth of the automobile,” even though Ebenezer Howard’s book, first published under a different title in 1895, predated automobile traffic and held no solutions to the problems such traffic created. The radial plan offered only the promise of a superficial order. It did not address the bundle of hopes and fears—racial fears, especially—that had put so many Americans behind the wheels of cars and had encouraged them to leave the central city behind in favor of single-family homes on large suburban lots.

  Only once did Disney flirt seriously with a possible inner-city project, a sort of pocket Disneyland covering two city blocks that would have been a key element in the planned revival of downtown Saint Louis. But after circling the idea for more than two years, from March 1963 to July 1965, he backed away from it, for reasons that appear to have been mostly if not entirely financial. Disney wanted the city of Saint Louis to pay the building costs and recoup its money from the project’s net profits—if there were any—while city officials had assumed that Walt Disney Productions would pick up the tab.38

  Disney said in the film, “I don’t believe there is a challenge anywhere in the world that’s more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities,” but he added that “the need is not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community.” The “need” involved, a need expressed so often, was Disney’s own need for control of whatever project commanded his attention. There would have been no way for him to exercise such control were he to try to cure “the old ills of old cities,” but “a special kind of new community” was another matter.

  As Disney’s ideas about EPCOT’s governance took shape in late 1966, he leaned more and more toward the sort of control he had exercised over Disneyland. Not only would everyone be employed, but, he said, no residents would own property. There would be no slums “because we won’t let them develop.”39 EPCOT’s value as a living laboratory—a place where ideas would be tried, to be adapted for other towns—would be reduced accordingly.

  An inherent conflict in Disney’s ideas—that EPCOT could be both “an experimental prototype” and a true “community”—had been resolved in favor of the “experimental prototype.” Marvin Davis told Anthony Haden-Guest: “Walt’s thought was that in order to maintain the original philosophy of keeping this an experimental prototype, it would have to be something that was pretty much controlled by the company. . . . This is something we never really discuss very much publicly. . . . In order to have the control that is necessary there, you would just about eliminate the possibility of having a voting community. Because the minute they start voting, then you lose control, and that’s the end of the possibility of experimental development!”40

  Disneyland was self-contained and centrally directed—and, above all, orderly—in a way no real city could be. However successful the park’s design, there was no reason to believe that its essential elements could be enlarged and applied to a whole city. Disneyland could be an exemplar only for self-contained developments of the same general kind. That was, increasingly, what Disney envisioned EPCOT as being.

  Disney was by the middle 1960s more than ever a conservative Republican. He and former president Eisenhower saw each other socially at Palm Springs, and they were photographed together at the 1964 Republican national convention in San Francisco. Also in 1964, Disney lent his name and picture to a campaign mailing and full-page newspaper advertisement in support of his friend George Murphy’s successful campaign for the United States Senate.41 But this conservative man had become an advocate for a city of the future that could function only as a totalitarian enterprise.

  EPCOT was not the only questionable project that absorbed Disney’s time in 1966. Another was the Mineral King ski development, which was, beneath the glitter, a highly dubious use of a fragile valley. Disney had said of Mineral King in 1965 that it was “a natural extension of what I’ve been doing all my life,” and “a recreation project, not an entertainment center,”42 but Peter Browning, writing a few years later, identified a fatal flaw:

  Disney estimates that 60 per cent of the visitors to Mineral King will come in the summer. Many of them will make the trip simply because it is there to be made; it will be a nice one-day jaunt. But many would not make the drive if there were nothing at the end of the road—such as an excursion train, cafeterias, shops, and an audio-visual presentation to provide entertainment. . . . The Disney development itself would be the major attraction at Mineral King. For all that some visitors might care about the surroundings, it could just as well be located in the Mojave Desert or Los Angeles.43

  In other words, the distinction between “entertainment” and “recreation” was much more significant than Disney thought, at least in this case. He understood entertainment—“That’s our business,” as he said at his 1965 Florida press conference—but recreation’s complexities had eluded him. Measured against the damage to the Mineral King Valley that would inevitably accompany growth to meet what Disney called “the ever-increasing public need,” his statement that “it won’t ever be finished” had a far more ominous coloration than when he made such a vow about Disneyland.

  Walt Disney had committed himself to two ambitious but badly flawed ideas. Perhaps he could have salvaged one or the other, with time, but as it happened, he had only a little time left for Mineral King, or EPCOT, or anything else.

  On June 23, 1966, Disney wrote to his friend Eisenhower: “Grandma and Grandpa Disney and all of the Disney clan (including our seven grandchildren) have chartered a yacht out of Vancouver for two weeks to cruise the inlets of British Columbia. Our trip will end on the 13th of July which happens to be the 41st anniversary for Grandma and Grandpa.”44 As always, Disney took work along. “I don’t know how many things he took on the boat to Vancouver, read ’em all,” Ron Miller told Richard Hubler. “He even took one book on how to select faculty for colleges, because he had CalArts, which was of great interest to him.” At that time, Miller said, Disney was already scheduled to “go into the hospital and have his back looked into. I noticed he was having a helluva time with his leg. [The pain] came down and it bothered his hip. Whenever he would get in a rowboat or anything, he would have to literally do this to his leg [indicating “lifting” his leg, as though stepping over a low fence]. It was the damnedest thing. And that’s as far as the whole family, or anyone, knew was the extent of his illness.”45

  Later that month, Disney underwent hospital tests that indicated that surgery might relieve the nagging aftereffects of the polo injury to his neck almost thirty years before, but he held off scheduling any such operation. Over the next few weeks, other people were struck by the signs of his poor health.

  On September 19, 1966, Disney and Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown of California held a news conference at Mineral King so that the governor could declare publicly his commitment (backed by three million dollars in federal funds) to the new all-weather road that was one of the Forest Service’s conditions for letting Walt Disney Productions develop the valley. The press conference was scheduled for noon, but it was delayed when both Brown and the press buses ran late. It was unseasonably cold, with cloudy skies, intermittent rain, and a temperature around 20 degrees. Disney and the rest of his party flew into the Visalia airport in a company plane and then drove to Mineral King in a motorcade.

  Robert Jackson, a D
isney publicist, wrote later in a brief memoir of the occasion:

  By mid-September, it was known within and outside the organization that Walt would enter the hospital in November for “a check up and for therapeutic measures.” It was no surprise, then, that Walt’s appearance drew comment of concern from two members of the press, both of whom mentioned to me that he did not look well. I attributed his fatigue and pallor to the high altitude and cold.

  Following the official press conference, Walt excused himself and went into . . . a combination café and general store operated by . . . long-time residents of Mineral King. Walt was warming himself in front of a wood-burning stove when I entered to tell him that members of the press requested his return outside. They wanted photos with Governor Brown taken against the scenic beauty of Mineral King’s southern area.

  Walt’s complexion was ashen, and this is the first time that I became truly worried about his well-being. . . . In a very quiet manner, Walt asked me to delay the photos for a few minutes “until I catch my breath and can rest a while.” . . . Walt came out a few minutes later and posed with Governor Brown. The entire group then ate box lunches embellished by hot baked beans and plenty of coffee, which helped only temporarily to neutralize the cold.46

  On October 9, 1966, Mark Kausler, a freshman art student at the Kansas City Art Institute—the school whose classes Disney attended fifty years before—heard a rumor that “Walt Disney’s coming to visit the dean!” Disney had flown to Kansas City the day before to accept an award presented by Eisenhower at a People to People banquet (that international goodwill organization was headquartered in Kansas City). He had added a visit to the art institute, undoubtedly as part of his informal research for CalArts. Kausler was skeptical until “a car drove on to the campus, and from my dorm room I could see Walt Disney getting out of the passenger seat and walking into the main building on campus where the dean’s office was.” A crowd of autograph seekers gathered. “After what seemed like years, Walt, the dean and some staffers came out of the ivy covered building. Trembling like the true fan-boy I was, I stammered, ‘Mr. Disney, would you sign my book [Bob Thomas’s Walt Disney, the Art of Animation] for me, please?’ . . . He dutifully autographed the book and I managed to tell him that I ‘always wanted to get into the business.’ He said, ‘You want some advice from me, kid?’ Of course I said yes. Walt paused a second and then said quietly, ‘Learn to draw.’ Everybody cracked up laughing, but it was good advice.” What most stayed in Kausler’s mind, though, was “how drawn, tired and old he looked, compared with his TV image.”47