Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  The Shaggy Dog proved a surprising success, earning more than $9,500,000 in the United States and Canada. It was an important film for the studio’s history, proving that Disney could be as effective in live-action comedy as in cartoons. Fred MacMurray’s career was re-established, and he served as star of a succession of Disney comedies. Walt was already planning another one during the filming of The Shaggy Dog. He visited the set one day and told MacMurray about a demonstration he had seen at the Brussels World’s Fair; a science professor from an Eastern U.S. college had used puffs of carbon-dioxide gas and other dramatic devices to illustrate the interaction of elements. That was the inspiration for MacMurray’s second Disney film, The Absent-Minded Professor.

  Sleeping Beauty was put into production at a time when Walt was thoroughly engrossed in Disneyland, television and the live-action films. He kept an eye on the cartoon’s progress, but he lacked time to lavish on its preparation, as he had done on all the previous features. As a result, the characters lacked the human touches that Walt always endowed; they also lacked his humor. The emphasis was on visual beauty and spectacular effects.

  Sleeping Beauty continued in production for three years, and its cost mounted to an alarming $6,000,000. “I sorta got trapped,” Walt admitted later. “I had passed the point of no return and I had to go forward with it.” Sleeping Beauty lost money in its first release, and other Disney features—Darby O’Gill and the Little People, Third Man on the Mountain, Toby Tyler, Kidnapped—performed disappointingly at the box office. Another disappointment was Pollyanna. It was a beautifully wrought film, written and directed by David Swift with warm sentiment, and starring a brilliant young actress, Hayley Mills, daughter of the British star John Mills. Despite its excellence, Pollyanna earned less than a $1,000,000. Walt theorized that he should have changed the title; the male segment of the film audience apparently balked at seeing a movie called Pollyanna.

  Walt Disney Productions, which had a record profit of $3,400,000 for the fiscal year 1958–59, suffered a loss of $1,300,000 the following year, largely because of the cost of Sleeping Beauty. It was the first time in a decade that the company had lost money, and Walt found that he had to boost studio morale. He told his staff, “Look, we’ve been through this before. Why, we were just one step ahead of foreclosure when we lost our foreign market before the war. We might have gone under after the war if the bank hadn’t agreed to carry us. We’ll get out of this slump, too.”

  The reverse came soon. Walt authorized his biggest budget for a live-action feature—$4,500,000 for Swiss Family Robinson. He put $3,600,000 into his first cartoon feature with a contemporary story, 101 Dalmatians. Fred MacMurray starred in The Absent-Minded Professor, Hayley Mills in a second film written and directed by David Swift, The Parent Trap. The four films produced a total profit of $19,000,000.

  On April 25, 1961, Walt and Roy Disney marked a historic occasion in the history of their company: the loan from the Bank of America was finally paid off. For the first time in twenty-two years, revenue from the motion pictures would go directly to Walt Disney Productions instead of to the bank.

  HE seemed more than ever to be conscious of the passing of time. As he approached his sixtieth birthday in December of 1961, he became crotchety about it. His secretary, Dolores Scott, and the studio nurse, Hazel George, realized what was bothering him and they prepared a special gift: photographs of themselves twenty-five years before. Walt recognized the message: that he wasn’t the only one who had aged. He was delighted with the gift.

  He had long passed the age when the fortuneteller had predicted his early death, but he worked ever harder, fearful that he would die with things undone or in disarray. He once remarked to Hazel, “After I die, I would hate to look down at this studio and find everything in a mess.” “What makes you think you won’t be using a periscope?” she asked. “Smartass,” he muttered.

  His impatience to get things done contributed to his crankiness. He snapped at those who asked superfluous questions or failed to carry out his concepts. Executives and producers called Dolores or Tommie Blount, a new secretary in Walt’s office, to inquire, “Is he in a good mood?” The studio password for a bad mood became: “Watch out—Walt’s got his wounded-bear suit on.”

  Tommie Blount had to learn to deal with Walt’s wounded-bear periods. During a two-day disgruntlement, he chided her for not reminding him of something he needed to do. “As I told you this morning—” she began, and he retorted, “You don’t need to be so damned sassy about it.” He stormed out of the office, and she went to her desk. Before walking out the door, he turned and grumbled, “You don’t have to work here. There are other places where you can go.”

  Tearfully, she began cleaning out her desk. “It’s all right,” counseled Dolores, who had long experience with the Disney temper. “Don’t go; he doesn’t mean it.” Tommie was convinced she had been dismissed, and she gathered up her belongings. When Walt returned to his office, he rang for her. “I didn’t really mean that you had to go look for another job,” he told her. “But you did sass me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she replied.

  “Yes, you did. Anyway, go buy yourself some flowers.” He handed her a twenty-dollar bill. She refused it, but he insisted. She used the money to buy dinner with her favorite date, Thomas Wilck, who worked in the studio’s public relations office. They were married in 1962, and Walt gave the bride away and paid for the reception. As he walked Tommie down the aisle of the church, Walt whispered to her, “I didn’t tell Tom how sassy you are.”

  With the retirement of Dolores Scott, Tommie Wilck became Walt’s number-one secretary, and she learned to understand her boss’s moods and methods. Each evening she prepared a calendar of the following day’s appointments for him. She tried to keep him on schedule, and one day when he continued talking with visitors past the twelve-thirty lunchtime, she rang a ship’s bell, a gift from the Coast Guard. He was amused, and he instructed her to sound the bell every day at lunchtime. Tommie learned that the best way to get his attention for pending matters was to type the message in all capitals on three-by-five-inch note paper. He then wrote his terse decision on the paper in colored pencil.

  Like Hazel George, Tommie Wilck was able to kid the boss and get away with it. Once she reported to Walt that a group of Marceline residents was visiting the studio. “Well, if I’m in the office when they finish the tour, show them in,” Walt remarked. “After all, to the people in Marceline, I’m like God.” Tommie replied, “We sometimes use that word in reference to you around here, too.”

  At five p.m., Walt was usually back in his office for Hazel’s heat treatment and the Scotch mist that Tommie prepared for him (one day he changed his order without explanation to Scotch and soda, and that remained his evening drink). During one period, Walt, his secretary and the studio nurse used the treatment time to engage in a word game, selecting a new word each day and tracing its origin and meaning. Walt’s use of words was sometimes curious. At a time when he was planning a Flying Saucer ride for Disneyland, he described how the saucer “hoovers” over jets of forced air. Tommie suggested that he meant “hovers.” When he said “hoover” again, she remarked, “It really is ‘hover.’” He continued, “And so this thing hoovers…” One day he caught her in a mispronunciation of “emeritus.” He pounced on the error, declaring, “I pay you to be smarter than I am.”

  Hazel George’s therapy at the end of each work day became more welcome to Walt; the pain of the old polo injury worsened with the years, causing almost unbearable agony. His constitution seemed strong, but he was subject to repeated colds and sinus infections. At times he developed a facial pain that was excruciating. Few people knew about it, but those who did could recognize when it occurred; Walt’s complexion went pale and he began poking at his face. It happened during a press conference in Canada when Walt had been selected Grand Marshal of the Calgary Stampede; he continued answering questions despite the secret pain. He once suffered an attack during
the night when he was sharing a stateroom on a Coast Guard cruise with a studio artist, Peter Ellenshaw. Walt tried to avoid disturbing Ellenshaw while running hot water for compresses to comfort his aching face.

  Walt’s fondness for chili and beans, hamburgers, potatoes and pie sometimes drove his weight to 185 pounds, and he forced himself to the discipline of diet. But he still resisted all warnings that he should give up cigarettes. They had become too much a part of his life, too great a necessity for his restless hands. He smoked them until they were almost too short to hold, sometimes longer. When the Surgeon General of the United States announced that cigarettes were a cause of cancer, he tried switching to low-nicotine cigarettes. He couldn’t stand them. Someone told him that brown French cigarettes were safe to smoke, and he tried them. He realized that they were no better for him, and he returned to his American brand. His wife, his doctors, Hazel and others urged him to give up cigarettes. He still smoked.

  He worked constantly. He brought home stacks of scripts and read them by the hour in the living room or on the porch; because it pained him to sit up straight, he put the scripts in his lap and leaned over to read. Often in the middle of the night Lilly awoke to see Walt standing at his dresser, studying a script or making sketches, or talking to himself about a project.

  Lilly found it exciting to receive a telephone call from Walt with the message: “Pack your things; we’re going to Europe.” Their travels were never aimless; Walt always had a mission in mind. When he was planning the Submarine ride, the Disneys flew to Switzerland to see a wave-making machine. Walt heard about a big coffee shop in a park in Milan, so they went there to study how the Italians made espresso. Then to Munich to see a new treadway for transporting people.

  Often the Disneys journeyed to foreign countries to visit the company’s film locations. One of Walt’s favorite trips was for the film Bon Voyage, because it took him to Paris. He enjoyed visiting the places he had seen as a boy in 1918, and he grew impatient with taxi drivers. “He’s going the wrong way,” Walt complained. “I know, because I drove this route a hundred times when I was a driver for the Red Cross.” Walt didn’t like to have his sightseeing interrupted, and he grumbled when the studio publicist, Tom Jones, tried to arrange interviews. Finally Walt agreed to do them—“if you lump them all in two days.” Walt endured two days of answering reporters’ questions, charming all of them with his enthusiastic talk of future plans. He flagged only at the final interview, with a lady from Radio Luxembourg. He answered all her queries; then she asked if he would say a few words to the listeners in French. Walt thought for a moment, then said, “Où est la toilette?”

  Walt and Lilly took trips to the West Indies with Welton Becket, architect, and his wife. They were supposed to be on vacation, but after two or three days Walt could not resist expounding about projects for the future. Inevitably, the trips were productive. The Disneys and the Beckets explored a volcanic island near Cuba where pirates were said to have made their home; this contributed to a future Disneyland attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean. Lilly liked to browse in antique shops, and in Puerto Rico, Walt bought a large cage with a mechanical bird; a later Disneyland attraction was the Tiki Room, with a chorus of singing birds.

  The Disney family was growing; Diane and Ron Miller had four children in six years. After Ron left the Army, the Millers lived with the Disneys, but the house was not big enough for two families. There was too much clamor for Walt, and he became upset when Diane or Lilly rose from the dinner table to rock a squalling baby. He believed babies should not be coddled. He told Diane about an experiment in which a baby monkey grew to accept a stick tied with a rag as its mother. “See—you are expendable!” he cried.

  After his Army service, Ron played a season as offensive end with the Los Angeles Rams professional football team, and it proved a punishing experience for both him and his father-in-law. Walt attended two games at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. In one, Ron was smashed from the side and knocked unconscious. In the other, he was kicked in the ribs. Ron hinted to Walt that he was bad luck, and Walt attended no more games. The road schedule required Ron to be away three weeks at a time, and Walt grumbled that he would like to see his son-in-law more often. Finally he told Ron, “You know, our studio is expanding, and there are a lot of opportunities for a young guy to learn the business. Why don’t you take a job there?” After a battering season on the gridiron, the proposal sounded attractive to Ron.

  Ron Miller worked as second assistant director on features and television shows, and his commanding presence helped make him effective in his job. Walt was pleased with Ron’s progress and promoted him to associate producer. Walt had definite ideas about his son-in-law’s future, as Ron discovered when he was working on Moon Pilot. Bill Walsh, who was producing, and James Neilson, the director, suggested that Ron direct the second unit—action scenes in which the principal actors were not used. Ron agreed.

  Late one afternoon Ron was summoned to Walt’s office. Usually Walt was in a pleasant mood after his traction and Scotch, but this time he was not. “What the hell is this about you directing a second unit?” he demanded. “Do you want to be a second-unit director or a producer?” Ron learned Walt’s reasoning. At other studios, the director, who rehearsed the actors and supervised the day-to-day filming, was more important than the producer, who assembled all the elements and oversaw costs. At the Disney studio, where preparation meant more than the execution of a movie, the producer was pre-eminent. Walt could always hire a director to make his films; it was more important for him to train producers to prepare the Disney kind of picture. Any ambitions that Ron had for directing were soon forgotten.

  As the Miller family grew, Walt became more upset with Diane. Finally he blurted out the reason: “You know, you’re very selfish. You’ve named your children after everyone else, but you haven’t named a single one after your father or your mother.” That was remedied on November 14, 1961, when the fifth child was born to Diane and Ron Miller. His name: Walter Elias Disney Miller. On the evening of the day Walter was born, Diane heard her father’s cough down the hospital corridor. He appeared at the door, and his face was beaming. “Well, finally!” he said. At the studio he passed out cigars with bands that read: “It’s a grandson—Walter Elias Disney Miller.”

  Sharon Disney did some modeling and played a small role in Johnny Tremain. Friends arranged a blind date with Robert Borgfeldt Brown, a designer with the Charles Luckman architectural firm, and a romance began. It proved to be a long courtship, Brown having been reared in a staid, conservative Kansas City family. He was awed by Sharon’s father, and, on one occasion, astounded by him. Brown and Sharon dined one evening with Walt and Lilly at the Carolwood house. It happened to be Walt’s fifty-seventh birthday, and he steadfastly ignored the fact. Lilly and Sharon, who knew Walt’s dislike of his birthdays, made little mention of it. But Thelma, the Disney cook, hoped to please him by preparing the only cake he enjoyed—banana cream. Thelma piled whipped cream atop the cake and carried it into the dining room.

  “Who said I wanted a birthday cake?” Walt grumbled. Lilly responded by scooping up a handful of whipped cream and tossing it in his face. He countered with a handful aimed at her. Whipped cream was flying through the dining room, splattering against the new wallpaper. Sharon thought the scene was hilarious. Bob Brown could only stare in astonishment.

  Brown became accustomed to the Disney’s unorthodox ways, and after a year and a half of dating, he proposed to Sharon. “Well, she’s your problem now, Bob,” Walt told the bridegroom. Bob and Sharon were married in a Presbyterian ceremony in Pacific Palisades on May 10, 1959. To no one’s surprise, Walt cried.

  Walt immediately began trying to convince Bob Brown to join the Disney organization. Brown was determined to remain independent. Finally in 1963 he agreed to become a planner in WED, and he proved to be a valuable member of the organization.

  Another member of the Disney family was working at the studio, Roy Edward Disney, so
n of Roy. Young Roy had started in 1953 as an apprentice film editor for outside producers who rented space at the studio. When Roy was leaving for a location on a nature film, Perri, Walt suggested, “Why don’t you take along a camera and shoot some behind-the-scenes stuff for the television show?” Roy did, and Walt was pleased with the results.

  Roy worked for four years as assistant to Winston Hibler in the production of television shows. Then one day he walked into Walt’s office and said, “I’d like to produce some of these TV shows myself.” “Do you think you can handle it?” Walt asked. “Yes,” Roy replied. “Okay, go ahead,” said Walt.

  Walt could be as tough with his nephew as with any of his producers. Roy produced a film about a white stallion, The Legend of El Blanco, and Walt’s response was negative. “I hate that song,” Walt began as he heard the theme music. He disliked other things about the film and kept saying, “I hate that song.” Roy remarked, “Gee, I like it.”

  “Do you want to work on this show or not?” Walt snapped.

  “I do,” Roy said.

  “Okay.” Walt began suggesting how to convert the serious story into a more whimsical approach. “And for God’s sake,” Walt added, “change the music.”

  Roy reworked The Legend of El Blanco with a lighter touch and hired a Mexican quartet to record new music. He induced his uncle to appear on the lead-in with the quartet, and Walt wore six-shooters and a big sombrero. He liked the show so much that he chose it as the second film for the new television season.

  Unless he had an eight-o’clock appointment in his office, Walt usually stopped by WED when he arrived at the studio in the morning. He once remarked to Marc Davis, “Dammit, I love it here, Marc. WED is just like the Hyperion studio used to be in the years when we were always working on something new.” He spent hours in the model shop, peering from all angles at three-dimensional replicas of future projects. Walt insisted that all additions to Disneyland be constructed in model form before being placed in production. He didn’t trust blueprints; he wanted to see the height and scale of each new project and its relationship to the rest of Disneyland.