by Bob Thomas
Walt delighted in donning his coveralls and engineer’s cap and transporting his daughters’ friends or guests at cocktail parties around the route of the Carolwood-Pacific. On weekends he spent hours alone with the train, making engine adjustments and keeping the cars in repair. One day he was experimenting with remote controls, sitting in the first car instead of the tender, and operating the throttle with wires. As he rounded a curve, the front wheel hit a rock and the jolt uncoupled the engine from the tender. Walt fell backward, pulling the wires and putting the engine in full throttle. It speeded off down the track alone.
Walt jumped off the car and raced after the engine, which was spewing steam high into the air. He couldn’t catch it, so he ran to the spot where the engine would emerge from the tunnel. It came out, hit a curve, and tumbled off the track, breaking off the stack and cowcatcher. It lay on its side, hissing and belching steam like a dying dragon. Walt yelled to Lilly: “Come on out if you want to see a terrible sight.” She hurried outside to find the broken locomotive and its crestfallen engineer. “Oh, Walt, that’s too bad!” she said.
Walt later admitted that the train wreck had a good side. It was the first time that Lilly had ever expressed any sympathy for the Carolwood-Pacific Railroad.
None of Walt Disney’s endeavors, not even his hobbies, was without a purpose, and the Carolwood-Pacific formed part of his growing plan for a new kind of enterprise for Walt Disney Productions.
The idea had its inception, he later said, on the Sunday mornings when he took Diane and Sharon to amusement parks after Sunday school. As his daughters went on the rides, Walt studied the boredom of other parents, and he noted the squalor of the parks—paint cracking on carousel horses, the grounds dirty and littered, the ride operators cheerless and unfriendly.
Another element contributed to his thinking. He mentioned it in a remark to Ward Kimball: “You know, it’s a shame people come to Hollywood and find there’s nothing to see. They expect to see glamour and movie stars, and they go away disappointed. Even the people who come to this studio. What can they see? A bunch of guys bending over drawings. Wouldn’t it be nice if people could come to Hollywood and see something?”
Walt began talking about building an amusement park on an eleven-acre triangle the studio owned across the street on Riverside Drive. He started formulating his plans for the amusement area, which he intended to call Mickey Mouse Park. He outlined his ideas in a memo on August 31, 1948:
The Main Village, which includes the Railroad Station, is built around a village green or informal park. In the park will be benches, a bandstand, drinking fountain, trees and shrubs. It will be a place for people to sit and rest; mothers and grandmothers can watch over small children at play. I want it to be very relaxing, cool and inviting.
Around the park will be built the town. At one end will be the Railroad Station; at the other end, the Town Hall. The Hall will be built to represent a Town Hall, but actually we will use it as our administration building. It will be the headquarters of the entire project.
Adjoining the Town Hall will be the Fire and Police Stations. The Fire Station will contain practical fire apparatus, scaled down. The Police Station will also be put to practical use. Here the visitors will report all violations, lost articles, lost kids, etc. In it we could have a little jail where the kids could look in. We might even have some characters in it.
The memo listed other attractions: a drugstore with soda fountain; an opera house and movie theater, which could also be used for radio and television broadcasts; toy, doll, hobby and book shops; a toy repair shop and doll hospital; a candy store and factory that would sell old-fashioned candy; a magic shop and store for dollhouse furniture; a shop where Disney artists could sell their works; a music store and shop for children’s clothing; a colorful hot dog and ice cream stand; a restaurant with rooms for birthday parties; a functioning post office.
Walt planned a horse-drawn streetcar that would take guests from the main entrance to the Western Village. The Village would have a general store selling cowboy items; a pony ring; a stagecoach; a donkey pack train; and perhaps a Western movie theater and a frontier museum. Surreys and buckboards would be available to take people through an old-fashioned farm and into the Carnival Section. “This will be attached off the village and will be the regular concession type which will appeal to adults and kids alike. There will be roller coasters, merry-go-rounds…typical Midway stuff. (This will be worked out later.)”
Whenever Walt mentioned Mickey Mouse Park to Roy, Roy reminded his brother of the immense debt to the Bank of America and the continuing failure of the Disney postwar films to produce profits. Roy believed he had convinced Walt that undertaking an amusement park would be financial folly. In reply to an inquiry from a business friend, Roy wrote: “Walt does a lot of talking about the amusement park idea, but truthfully, I don’t know how deep his interest really is. He is more interested, I think, in ideas that would be good in an amusement park than in running one himself, and because of the tax situation Walt doesn’t have money of his own to put into these things.”
THE Disney fortunes began to turn in 1950. The long hungry years ended with public acceptance of Cinderella, the first unqualified hit for the studio since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Treasure Island was also well received, and the second of the True-Life Adventures, Beaver Valley, proved even more popular than Seal Island. By the end of 1950, the debt to the Bank of America had been reduced to $1,700,000.
The new, unaccustomed prosperity relieved Walt of the anxiety he had felt in the floundering postwar years. The worried scowl that studio workers had grown accustomed to now appeared less often. In April 1951, he wrote to his producer in England, Perce Pearce: “Everything is looking swell here at the plant. Alice is just about ready to be wrapped up and I think it is about as good as can be done with it. I think it is going to be an exciting show. While it does have the tempo of a three-ring circus, it still has plenty of entertainment and it should satisfy everyone except a certain handful who can never be satisfied.”
He revealed his reservations about Alice in Wonderland. He had wrestled with the subject since 1933, when he contemplated a version with Mary Pickford as a live-action Alice. Years later he planned to put Ginger Rogers in a cartoon Wonderland. Aldous Huxley at one time worked on a script. Walt abandoned Alice in Wonderland again and again until finally he scheduled it to follow Cinderella. He dropped the idea of a live-action Alice. “Practically everyone who has read and loved the book of necessity sees the Tenniel Alice,” he explained in a letter to a New Jersey fan, “and no matter how closely we approximate her with a living Alice, I feel the result would be a disappointment.” Walt tried to alter the storyline to fit the cartoon needs, at one time expanding the role of the White Knight as hero-rescuer. But he was intimidated by the threats of Lewis Carroll purists, and he returned to the original story. During storyboard sessions, Walt tried to maintain his normal enthusiasm, but it was difficult.
Animation was as tedious as the story development. Walt kept asking his animators why the drawing was taking so much time. The unspoken answer was that the animators weren’t enjoying it. The animators sometimes arrived at brilliant invention, but it was punishing work. Everyone felt relief when Alice in Wonderland was finished. Especially Walt. He vowed never again to undertake a tamperproof classic.
He had hoped to keep faith with the traditionalists while trying to please the millions who expected an entertaining show from Walt Disney. He satisfied neither. Alice in Wonderland had its premiere in Lewis Carroll’s home country, and London critics belabored Disney for the liberties he took. American audiences were also disappointed, and the film lost $1,000,000, erasing the glow of prosperity that Cinderella had brought to Walt Disney Productions. “Some day,” Walt sighed, “I would like to reach the position where this company doesn’t have to live from one picture to the next.”
Peter Pan was the next cartoon. Walt had bought the rights to the James M. Barrie pla
y in 1939 and had spent years trying to fashion a cartoon story. As with Alice in Wonderland, he found it difficult to bring warmth to the characters, and Peter Pan was set aside from time to time. Then in 1951 Walt put it into production. With the studio expanding into new fields, he could no longer lavish time on all aspects of the film. His comments in storyboard sessions seem more succinct, though no less incisive:
We don’t have the right crocodile yet….It’s out of character….Watch so as not to get Hook’s teeth too big….Rebuild the Tick Tock scene of Hook. Get expression of fear in his eyes. I don’t like the hair raising….Smee cries too much….We want to make the music a little more important. I think music will tie it together….Don’t hesitate to reshoot anything you need. Anything you don’t need, don’t hesitate to throw it away after you have looked at it….An overlap is never good. Cut close. On the last “See!” you need room for Smee to compose himself before he sticks out his tongue. Then, “Woom!”…I like the business of Hook getting all dolled up. It’s good business….You hear the creaking of the ship and the “Tick tock.” Have a ray of light streaming out from the porthole and the crocodile would be swimming around in the water in the stream of light, and at a certain point we would see his eyes….When we get the fight going on the ship and the croc finally comes in, it should be a nice surprise….I was thinking of the fight—the tempo would pick up and the croc’s tail would wave faster. Perhaps arrange a few places where Peter Pan might have Hook out over the water, and the croc is waiting—but don’t slow it up.
Walt was planning a second English-made live-action feature, The Story of Robin Hood, for filming in the summer of 1951. His pre-production memos to his aides in England, Perce Pearce and Fred Leahy, indicate his concentration on details:
The final tests arrived the first part of the week and we looked at them. I think [Richard] Todd is wonderful, and I feel he will project a great deal of personality and do a lot for the role.
Joan Rice is beautiful and charming. I think, however, she will need some help on her dialogue. I thought, at times, she lacked sincerity, although one of her close-ups was very cute. I do not care much about her costumes in the first scenes. It seems that women of that period always have scarves up around their chins, but I think it does something to a woman’s face. I’d like to see us avoid it, if possible, or get around it in some way or other—maybe use it in fewer scenes.
When we see Miss Rice disguised as a page, this costume seemed bulky and heavy. The blouse or tunic was too long and hung too far down over her hips—it didn’t show enough of her and I thought distracted from her femininity. I do not believe the costume did much to set off her femininity. I think a slight showing of the hips would help a lot.
I liked Elton Hayes as Allan-a-Dale. He has a good voice with quite an appeal.
The last word I had from Larry [Watkin] was to the effect that he would be sending in a new and completed script very soon. I have been following his changes and the little thoughts I have are close to “lint-picking,” which I feel he is smoothing out in his final script, so I won’t bother about passing on my thoughts until I get his so-called final script….
Television was also occupying Walt’s thinking. The networks had been importuning him to provide entertainment for the new medium, and in 1950 Walt agreed to produce a Christmas show for the National Broadcasting Company. As producer he assigned Bill Walsh, a onetime publicist who began at the studio as a gag writer for the Mickey Mouse comic strips in 1943. Walt acted as guide to the studio for ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummies, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, and the Disney daughters also appeared on the show. It attracted a huge audience, impressing Walt with the value of television as a signboard for the studio’s theatrical product. Another Christmas special was produced in 1951. Walt foresaw a future for educational films on television, and he reactivated the studio’s educational division.
With his work at the studio intensifying, Walt found relaxation in his hobby of miniatures. He began by making his own small objects for the caboose of the Carolwood-Pacific train; he spent hours nightly fashioning tiny replicas of furniture in the red barn he used for a workshop. His long, slender, dextrous fingers allowed him to manipulate small objects with inordinate skill.
He was fascinated with small objects, and he collected them during his travels to Europe. When Lilly, Diane and Sharon returned from a shopping tour of Paris, they found Walt on the floor of their hotel suite, surrounded by small animated animals. He was particularly impressed with a caged bird which moved its tail and beak and issued an intermittent song. He brought the bird to the studio and instructed one of his technicians, Wathel Rogers: “Take this apart and find out how it works.” Rogers performed an autopsy on the bird and discovered that it was operated by clockworks and a double bellows.
One day Walt said to Ken Anderson: “I’m tired of having everybody else around here do the drawing and painting; I’m going to do something creative myself. I’m going to put you on my personal payroll, and I want you to draw twenty-four scenes of life in an old Western town. Then I’ll carve the figures and make the scenes in miniature. When we get enough of them made, we’ll send them out as a traveling exhibit. We’ll get an office here at the studio, and you and I will be the only ones who’ll have keys.” While Anderson started work on the sketches, Walt placed advertisements in newspapers and hobby magazines seeking vintage miniatures of all kinds.
He began work on the first of the scenes, which he called Granny Kincaid’s cabin, based on a set of So Dear to My Heart. Everything was depicted in scale—the spinning wheel, rag rug on the plank floor, flintlock rifle on the wall, guitar, washbowl and pitcher, family Bible on the center table. In the bedroom beyond the living room could be seen the feather-bed four-poster with crazy quilt. The kitchen was equipped with wood-burning stove and tiny pots and utensils. Walt attended to every detail. For the chimney he picked up pebbles at his vacation home in Palm Springs. To bend wood into the contour of chairs, he borrowed the pressure cooker from the family kitchen. He planned Granny Kincaid’s cabin without human figures; viewers would hear the voice of Granny describing the scene, and Walt recorded a narration by Beulah Bondi, who had played Granny in So Dear to My Heart.
Even before he finished Granny Kincaid’s cabin, Walt was planning a more ambitious scene. He wanted movement in the miniatures, and he devised a frontier music hall with an entertainer performing a dance. To provide a model for the figure, he hired Buddy Ebsen to demonstrate an old-time dance before the camera. Then Walt asked his machine-shop crew to analyze the action, frame by frame, and try to devise a way to animate a nine-inch figure with the same movements. Roger Broggie and the shop technicians invented a system of cables and cams to make the figure dance.
“That’s good,” said Walt as he watched the antic dance of the little man. “Now let’s try something different.” His new project was a miniature barbershop quartet that would not only move but sing “Sweet Adeline.” The machine shop improved on the dancing-man mechanism and routined the quartet to a minute and a half of singing.
Walt began dropping by the shop every day to observe the progress on the models. Often he lost track of time and his secretary called frantically to inquire, “Is Walt still there? He’s an hour late on his appointments.” Walt’s scheme for the traveling exhibit was to depict a series of interconnected small-town scenes—the general-store window could be seen from the barbershop, etc. But the project never got beyond early stages of the singing quartet. Walt realized that the small size of the exhibit would not allow enough volume of viewers to make it profitable. Besides, he wanted his craftsmen to devote their efforts to the amusement park he wanted to build.
Roy Disney continued his opposition to the park. He argued that with the failure of Alice in Wonderland, the company had fallen deeper into debt, and a venture as risky as an amusement park simply couldn’t be financed. Walt responded by citing an incident of their childhood. It had happened in April 1906, when
the Disney family was en route from Chicago to Marceline. During the visit to Flora’s sister in Fort Madison, Walt had found a pocketknife in the street. “Give it to me; you’ll cut yourself,” said his older brother, appropriating the knife.
Forty-five years later, Walt taunted Roy, “Yeah, it’s just like the time you took that knife away from me in Fort Madison. You’ve been taking things away from me all my life!”
When Walt Disney was a young man, a fortuneteller had predicted that he would die at the time of his birthday before he reached the age of thirty-five. Although he was not superstitious, the prediction had a profound effect on him, and he continued to brood about it long after it had been proved false. The sense of mortality weighed on him, and he seemed to be in a race against time to accomplish all the work he wanted to do. “I hate to see the weekend come,” he remarked, complaining of the break in his usual pace. Similarly, he resented holidays. He enjoyed taking Lilly and their daughters to Europe and delighted in showing them the places he had known in the First World War. But while he was away, he instructed his secretary to send him daily reports of studio activities. “You don’t know how homesick I am when I’m away,” he said.
Walt’s devotion to work limited his social life. He liked to watch the Hollywood Stars baseball team at Gilmore Stadium and occasionally attended the horse races at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. On warm summer evenings he and Lilly listened to the Symphonies Under the Stars at the Hollywood Bowl. They dined out at Chasen’s, Romanoff’s or Trader Vic’s, but most of the time they ate at home. Their entertaining was generally with small dinner parties, and they were strictly social, not business.