Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  The illnesses seemed to reinforce the old premonition that he would die before finishing his work. Late one evening at Disneyland, Walt walked with three of his longtime associates to his parking space in the service area behind the firehouse apartment. They had been to a dinner party attended by the key figures who had helped Walt build the park, and Walt commented warmly, “I really enjoyed that. It was one of the nicest evenings I’ve spent.”

  His companions agreed, and one of them said, “It was a good time. We’ll have to arrange more just like it.”

  “No,” Walt said, “there won’t be any more.”

  “Sure, there will,” the man insisted.

  “No. I’m sixty-four now, and I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

  His companions predicted many more years for Walt and more parties. “No, I won’t live forever,” he said quietly. The others fell silent, and he said with a smile, “Let’s just say this was a wonderful evening and I won’t forget it.” He climbed into his car and drove off.

  Walt grew closer to his family. He delighted in his grandchildren, and by early 1966 he had seven. Diane and Ron Miller now had six children—Christopher, Joanna, Tamara, Jennifer, Walter and Ronald; in January 1966, a daughter, Victoria, was born to Sharon and Bob Brown. Walt was pleased with the way both his sons-in-law were progressing in the company. Ron had demonstrated his talent and leadership as a producer, and Bob proved a creative force at WED.

  A deeper bond seemed to develop between Walt and Lilly. Studio workers noted how they strolled hand in hand as he showed off a new movie set or demonstrated the latest Audio-Animatronic marvel. Walt took pride in her sense of style and commented to Diane, who was inclined to casualness in her attire: “Kid, why don’t you let your mother show you how to dress?” Walt admired Lilly’s taste in antiques and never complained about her shopping expeditions during their trips.

  Lilly continued to express concern over Walt’s grandiose schemes, but she was immensely proud when they succeeded. She was pleased with the homage Walt received. After she and Walt had attended a New York dinner for America’s astronauts, she telephoned Diane in California to report that Walt received the most attention. “Everyone seems to think that your father is the most important man in the world,” Lilly said.

  Walt enjoyed teasing Lilly. She disapproved of his taking over the controls of the company plane on their cross-country flights, but he continued to do so. During a flight to Orlando, Walt went forward to the cabin and told the pilot, Jim Stevenson, “Hand me the mike.” Walt announced over the loudspeaker: “This is your captain speaking.” As he had expected, Lilly leaped up and started toward the cabin. Walt boomed over the loudspeaker: “No, not the captain. This is the commander-in-chief of the whole damned outfit!”

  Walt also seemed closer to Roy, and they worked together in greater harmony than ever before. Roy was wholeheartedly in favor of the Florida Project, and he plotted the means to finance it. Still, Roy kept mentioning his wish to retire from active participation in the company. That was something that Walt could not countenance. He actively plotted against Roy, telephoning Edna to remark, “You don’t want Roy hanging around the house all day, do you?” In conversations with Roy, Walt argued that it would be unthinkable for him to attempt the huge Florida undertaking without the daily support of Roy. As usual, Walt won. Roy postponed his plans for retirement.

  In frequent pain and impatient to get things done, Walt became more short-tempered at the studio. Spotting a man from the business department at a WED meeting, Walt snapped, “What the hell are you doing here?” He wanted only his creative people present during planning sessions.

  When Walt was conferring with Joe Potter on the contour of a bay area at the Florida Project, Potter remarked, “Now the bay could be extended, but that would cost a million and a half dollars.” Walt exploded. “Dammit, Potter, why do you waste my time talking about unimportant matters?” he muttered. For ten days Walt passed Potter in the hall without speaking. Then Potter received a call from Tommie Wilck: “Walt would like to have you come over at four to chat a while.” The retired general reported to the office and for an hour Walt discussed people in the organization, how he had met them and what they contributed. On the following Monday, Walt’s secretary called again, and Potter appeared for another conversation. Finally he remarked, “Walt, you know me. But I’m still the same guy I was before, and you’ll have to accept me as I am.” Walt replied, “I couldn’t sleep Friday night. I kept asking myself, ‘Why the hell do I kick Potter around like that.’”

  Honors continued to pour in, and none pleased him more than having schools named after him. The first was in Tullytown, Pennsylvania. When his train arrived at the station, Walt waved to the crowd from the locomotive cab. He also arrived by train for the dedication of an elementary school in Marceline. It was a double occasion: an honor for the famous home-town boy; and the first time the Santa Fe Super Chief had ever stopped at Marceline.

  The third Walt Disney school was at Anaheim. At the ceremonies, Walt responded by inviting all the children in the school to be his guests for a day at Disneyland. “Of course, it wouldn’t be a real celebration unless you could come to Disneyland on a school day,” said Walt, astonishing the school officials by declaring a school holiday.

  Despite his slackening energies, Walt seemed to accomplish more than ever before. He visited WED daily, overseeing the planning for the Florida Project, as well as new developments for Disneyland. He prepared The Happiest Millionaire and viewed rushes on films in production. He continued planning Cal Arts. He appeared in television lead-ins, and he found time for a variety of charities and to serve on the boards of the Performing Arts Council of the Los Angeles Music Center and the California Angels baseball team.

  He devoted more time to animation. Starting with Sleeping Beauty, his supervision of the cartoon features had necessarily been curtailed, and the studio’s animators felt neglected. The Jungle Book changed that. Walt had long considered a feature based on the Rudyard Kipling stories, but the project was abandoned again and again for lack of a plot line. Bill Peet, with whom Walt had known a stormy but productive association, worked on a treatment, but his temper clashed with Walt’s for the last time. In a quarrel with Walt over the story, Peet announced: “It’s going to be done my way!” Only one person made final judgments at the Disney studio. Bill Peet left.

  Another writer assigned to The Jungle Book was Larry Clemmons, a former gag writer for Jack Benny and Bing Crosby. Walt handed him a book with the remark, “Here is the original by Rudyard Kipling. The first thing I want you to do is not to read it.”

  With Woolie Reitherman as director and the veteran crew of reliables doing the animation, the early sequences developed satisfactorily. The voices of Phil Harris, George Sanders, Louis Prima, Sebastian Cabot and others who were new to Disney cartoons brought freshness and inspiration to the animators. Walt himself had suggested Harris. “I heard him at a benefit in Palm Springs; he’s great,” Walt said.

  Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas animated the boy Mowgli and Bagheera the Panther, John Lounsbery developed the elephants, and Ollie Johnston drew Baloo the Bear. While the animators were pleased with the individual sequences, they worried about the storyline. They still had painful memories of Pinocchio, which was half completed when Walt recognized its deficiencies and ordered a costly overhaul. At the end of a story meeting, Milt Kahl expressed the general concern: “Walt, don’t you think we should get some kind of overall storyline, so we can know where we’re going?”

  “No,” Walt replied. “You can get all bogged down with these stories.” He slapped Kahl on the leg and said, “It will be all right.” His instinct proved correct; the richness of the characters carried The Jungle Book from one sequence to another, and a strong storyline wasn’t needed. Walt made contributions to the storyboard sessions with the zest of the Mickey Mouse days. After an exhilarating meeting he commented to the animators, “You guys ought to have me down more often.
I’m the least-paid gag man in the studio.”

  Walt continued his travels in the company plane through most of 1966. He flew to Pittsburgh and spent three days at the Westinghouse Research Center, inspecting the company’s rapid-transit system and other developments for the future. He surveyed new shopping centers, visiting Rochester, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Dallas. He strolled through the clusters of stores, observing the flow of traffic, whether people seemed stimulated by the surroundings, whether they came as families. He was disappointed in most of the centers; they seemed cheerlessly functional. Only in Dallas did he find one that impressed him; he admired the use of a glassed ceiling to admit natural light.

  The plane took Walt to film locations and to Denver, where the company had invested in the Celebrity Sports Center. He flew to St. Petersburg, Florida, to observe the functioning of a new composting system. He visited the site of Disney World, as the Florida Project was now called, and viewed it from a helicopter and from the ground, using gas-filled balloons to test elevations of future buildings. He delighted in the vastness of the property. “You know,” he reflected to Dick Nunis during a visit, “it’s like standing on the top of the Matterhorn and looking seven miles in one direction and eleven miles in another. It’s all ours. Why, we could not only have our own Disneyland, but our own Sea World, our own Knott’s Berry Farm, as well as a couple of cities. And we’ll run it all the way it should be run.”

  In July, Walt rented a 140-foot yacht for a cruise through British Columbia waters. Walt insisted that the entire family go along on the thirteen-day voyage—Lilly; Diane and Ron and their six children; Sharon and Bob and their six-month-old baby. All flew to Vancouver in the Disney plane, and Walt supervised the transfer of baggage and people by taxi to the yacht.

  The boat turned out to be less roomy than expected. At times thirteen persons crowded into the single living room, and wrangles resulted. Walt served as peacemaker, an unusual role for him. But he was determined that the trip would be a success, and he settled squabbles with a serenity that his family had never seen before. When things quieted down, he retired to the windy upper deck and hunched over his reading. He had brought a mound of things to read—scripts, mostly, but also books on city planning and one on how to select a college president.

  Walt’s physical condition worsened during the cruise. His voice grew huskier, and his leg stiffened. His family noticed he had great difficulty getting in and out of boats. By the end of the trip he was impatient to return, and he couldn’t understand why Ron and Bob had to stop at a cannery for the smoking of the salmon they had caught.

  Walt resumed his schedule at the studio, but the pain grew worse. After the dedication of the New Orleans Square at Disneyland on July 24, he entered the UCLA Medical Center for tests. X rays showed that calcification of the old neck injury had increased; an operation could help relieve the condition. Walt decided he would wait until after the end of the year.

  He had much to occupy him. A new project was the development of Mineral King Valley as a ski resort. Walt had become interested in skiing when he made Third Man on the Mountain in Switzerland in 1958. With his customary curiosity, he chatted with ski instructors, asked skiing tourists for their likes and dislikes, studied the traffic patterns up and down the slopes. In 1960, he commissioned Economics Research Associates to survey the ski potentials at San Gorgonio Mountain, in the San Bernardino range, and at Mineral King Valley, near the big-tree country of Sequoia National Park. Later, he ordered surveys of Aspen, Colorado, and Mammoth Mountain in California.

  When Walt was asked to stage the ceremonies at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley in 1960, he accepted. He sent three of his top aides—Ron Miller, Dick Nunis and Tommy Walker—to Squaw Valley two months before the opening to plan the festivities. The proposals included ice sculptures throughout the valley, a thousand-piece band for the opening ceremonies, entertainment nightly for the athletes, steel poles for the flags of all nations. When Olympic authorities started complaining about costs, Walt declared, “Either we’re going to do it, the right way, or Disney will pull out.” The officials acquiesced.

  At the Olympics, Walt met Willy Schaeffler, a Bavarian ski expert who had become a coach at Denver University. The two men sparked to each other, and Walt hired Schaeffler to help him scout a location and develop plans for a ski resort. Walt’s choice narrowed to Mineral King, and Schaeffler confirmed that it had an excellent potential. So did a survey by Economics Research Associates. It showed that Southern California facilities accommodated only one skier per day for each hundred citizens, compared to three for the San Francisco area and nine for New England. Obviously restless, athletic Southern Californians needed a ski resort within easy distance. Mineral King would be only four hours away by car, and it had a variety of skiing bowls with five-mile runs and four-thousand-foot drops, comparable to the best in Switzerland.

  In 1965, the United States Forest Service placed Mineral King on the market for bids from companies seeking to develop it for skiing. The Disney offer of $35,000,000 was accepted. The thirty-year lease was contingent on getting a commitment for a state highway for access to Mineral King and completing a master plan by January 1969.

  While Schaeffler plotted ski courses, Walt began his plans for the settlement in Mineral King Valley. They included an alpine village, skating rink, hotels, dormitories for young people, ten restaurants, etc. Automobiles would be banned from the valley; visitors would be brought in by train or other conveyances. California officials were impressed by the earning potential of the Mineral King project; Economics Research Associates estimated a $600,000,000 addition to the state’s economy in the first ten years of operation. Governor Edmund G. Brown assured his support of the highway, and the federal government offered $3,000,000 for road construction. Brown and Disney were scheduled to announce plans for the highway at a press conference at Mineral King on September 19, 1966.

  Fair weather had been predicted, but gray clouds rolled over the Sierra peaks, sending the temperature to twenty degrees. Walt flew from Burbank to Visalia in the Disney plane, then he and other executives motored to the valley for the noon conference. Governor Brown was late, and the press had been delayed in their climb up the mountain in a bus traveling narrow roads. Walt had worn wool pants and a heavy camping jacket, but he seemed affected by the cold. His face was drawn and deeply lined. When the press arrived, reporters remarked that Walt did not look well. Bob Jackson, who was handling public relations for the Mineral King project, explained that the altitude and cold had caused Walt’s pallor.

  Governor Brown made his appearance, and he and Walt delivered their statements at a makeshift table between two huge trees on the floor of the valley. Both expressed hopes for a successful conclusion of the project, and Walt answered questions about the nature and timing of his plans. Then Walt retired to the rustic general store to warm himself by the stove. Bob Jackson entered to ask if Walt could return outside to pose for some photographs with the Governor against the backdrop of mountains.

  “Could you wait a few minutes until I catch my breath and rest a while?” Walt asked wearily. When he emerged from the store, he was smiling again, and he stood with Brown for photographs. By two o’clock, the ceremonies were over, and Walt got into the car for the drive back to Visalia. It had been his last press conference.

  As work progressed on the master plan for Disney World, Walt expanded the original committee of himself, Joe Potter and Marv Davis. Regular meetings were held in the Disney World conference room, the biggest at WED. Walt often came to the sessions with a paper napkin stuffed in his coat pocket; on the napkin would be notes and diagrams he had made over breakfast at home. Marv Davis sometimes succeeded in preserving the napkins; usually Walt crumpled and discarded them.

  In early October, Walt came to the Disney World planning meeting with a sketch. It was an outline of the Florida property, and on it in the Disney script were marked such locations as “Park—Hotels,” “Lake,”
“Camps and Motels,” “Tourist Trailer Camp,” “Main Entrance,” “Air Port and Motels,” “Industrial Entrance.” Also the notation, “Truck route always under monorail.”

  “This is how we’ll do it,” Walt announced to the WED planners. His sketch, which was called the Seventh Preliminary Master Plot Plan, remained the basic pattern for developing the Florida Project.

  A plan for governing Disney World was needed for presentation to the Florida legislature. Obviously the territory, twice the size of Manhattan, needed some kind of governmental structure to provide services and fulfill the needs of its citizens. Research showed that the Florida statutes permitted special assessment districts to perform the proprietary functions of government: water, sewers, fire protection, etc. Bob Foster, who was in charge of preparing the plan, argued that a municipality was also required to protect civil rights. Walt resisted. Jules Stein, head of the Music Corporation of America, had advised him to avoid a municipality; Stein drew from his experience in the MCA-owned Universal City, a part of Los Angeles. At a meeting in the Disney World conference room, Foster made his presentation. He had printed all the governmental powers on foot-long cards: drainage, zoning, inspection, gas, water, power, roads, etc. As he defined each power, he placed the card under the improvement district. But then he had several cards, principally civil rights, which did not fit in the improvement district. “Dammit, you speak slowly, Bob,” Walt said finally. “Why don’t you put those in a city?” The governmental proposal, including a municipality, passed the Florida legislature with only minor changes.