by Bob Thomas
The company had to be run the Disney way, and Roy, who had been trying to retire, reluctantly took full charge at the age of seventy-three. He acquainted himself with the workings of WED and ordered the planning for Florida to continue without delay. Film production would be dealt with by a committee of those who had worked intimately with Walt—Card Walker, Ron Miller, Roy E. Disney, Bill Anderson, Bill Walsh, Winston Hibler, Jim Algar and Harry Tytle. Roy admitted that a committee was not the best way to run an organization, “but we will have to do it that way until the new leadership develops.”
In the spring of 1967, the Florida legislature passed the statutes that allowed Disney World to proceed. In the following years, Roy made frequent visits to Florida, watching the property change from brackish swamps to blue lakes with white-sand beaches. He was working harder than he ever had during Walt’s lifetime, and he promised Edna, “As soon as I finish Walt’s dream, I’ll quit and let the younger guys take over.” With all his work, Roy maintained the Disney humor. One day in Florida, after bouncing in a jeep over rutted roads and slogging through a muddy field, he gazed skyward and cried, “Walt, what have you gotten me into?”
Roy declared that the official name of the Florida Project would be Walt Disney World. He reasoned, “Everybody knows the Ford car, but not everybody knows it was Henry Ford who started it all. It’s going to be Walt Disney World, so people will always know that this was Walt’s dream.”
His associates were astonished by the ease and skill with which Roy accomplished the financing of Walt Disney World. They were also dismayed when in the midst of negotiations with the moneymen, Roy confided to his financial staff, “Wait a minute, let’s give them a better deal. They’ve been good to us, and we may have to go back to the well again. Besides, the offering will be oversubscribed.” His staff felt they had lost their negotiating power, but Roy’s strategy proved correct. He had made friends, as well as lenders, of the Eastern banks.
At last, in October 1971, Walt Disney World was opened to the public, and Roy felt he could slow down. He was seventy-eight, and he wanted to cut his duties in half. He and Edna were planning to take a long cruise to Australia, and she hoped the vacation would help improve Roy’s spirits. He had never quite recovered from the depression he felt over Walt’s death.
Roy was in a reflective mood when he finished his day’s work on a December Friday. As he sometimes did when his appointments were over, he poured himself a Scotch and water and came out to chat with Madeleine Wheeler, who had been his secretary for twenty-eight years. He talked for a long time about events of the past and remarked that he was scheduled for full retirement in a year, “But I might stay on another half-year; that would be my fiftieth year in the picture business,” Roy said. “Will you stick with me?” Madeleine, who herself had remained two years past retirement to assist Roy, said she would.
“I may see you at the Disneyland Christmas parade,” he said as he left the office.
Roy and Edna had planned to take three of their grandchildren to Disneyland on Sunday, but Roy wasn’t feeling well. He had been having examinations for new glasses and complained of a cloud over one of his eyes. Young Roy and his mother took the children to the Christmas parade. When they returned, they found Roy lying dazed on the floor beside his bed. An ambulance rushed him to St. Joseph’s Hospital. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage the following day.
The new leadership took over. Donn Tatum became chairman of the board, and Card Walker assumed the office of president; both had worked closely with Roy during the five years after Walt’s death. Ron Miller had become executive producer.
Roy had lived long enough to see most of Walt’s dreams fulfilled. Walt Disney World had been built. CalArts had become a reality on a sixty-acre site in Valencia, its handsome buildings financed largely by bequests in Walt Disney’s will. Mineral King was stalled because of legal maneuvers by conservationists. And EPCOT awaited a practical approach to its complexities.
And yet the foundations of EPCOT, Walt’s vision of the City of Tomorrow, could be seen in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The noted designer James Rouse, in a commencement speech at the Harvard School of Design in 1963, observed: “I hold a view that may be somewhat shocking to an audience as sophisticated as this, and that is, that the greatest piece of design in the United States today is Disneyland. If you think about Disneyland and think of its performance in relationship to its purpose—its meaning to people more than its meaning to the process of development—you will find it the outstanding piece of urban design in the United States. It took an area of activity—the amusement park—and lifted it to a standard so high in its performance, in its respect for people, in its functioning for people, that it really became a brand-new thing. It fulfills the functions that it set out to accomplish unself-consciously, usefully and profitably. I find more to learn in the standards that have been set and the goals that have been achieved in the development of Disneyland than in any other single piece of physical development in the country.”
Walt Disney World carried the EPCOT vision one step forward. The monorail whisks visitors noiselessly from parking lots to the theme park and right into the lobby of the Contemporary Resort Hotel. Utilities and service facilities are in underground corridors, so there is never a need for the street excavation that plagues modern cities. Garbage and trash disappear into pneumatic tubes and are speeded a mile a minute to a compacting plant. The waste is burned in incinerators so filtered and water-scrubbed that only steam escapes from the smoke stack. A plant removes nearly all the suspended solids from sewage, chlorinates the water and pours it into the swamps. A hundred-acre Living Farm uses part of the water for a laboratory for the growth of trees and plants. The many other innovations have brought planners and conservationists to Walt Disney World to study ways to make cities more livable.
Futurist Ray Bradbury once predicted that the influence of Walt Disney would be felt for centuries to come. Certainly in the years following his death, Disney remained a presence to the world’s millions. The classic films were being seen by greater audiences than ever before. Even the early Mickey Mouse cartoons were being rediscovered and cherished, and such features as Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland, commercial failures in their first releases, had been vindicated by a new generation. If Walt Disney had only made film entertainment, his place in American history would be assured.
But he did more. He created Disneyland, and he laid the foundations for Walt Disney World and EPCOT, with their limitless potential for bettering the human condition.
It had been a long distance from Laugh-O-grams to Walt Disney World. Walt did not complete the journey; he had died as he feared he would, with his work undone. But those he had trained completed it, and the result of their labors was seen by the public for the first time on October 23, 1971. Beneath the spires of Cinderella’s Castle, Arthur Fiedler conducted the World Symphony with 145 musicians representing sixty-six countries. The family was all there—Lilly, Roy and Edna; Diane and Ron Miller and their seven children; Sharon and her husband, William Lund (Bob Brown had died of cancer a year after Walt’s death), and her three children; Roy Edward Disney and his wife Patricia and their four children.
Roy Disney stepped to the microphone and gazed beyond the festive crowd, past the brightly painted buildings of the theme park and to the vista beyond—the massive Contemporary Resort Hotel, the deep-blue lakes and green forests. Roy expressed gratitude to the thousands who had helped build Walt Disney World, and then he reminisced:
“My brother Walt and I first went into business together almost a half-century ago. And he was really, in my opinion, truly a genius—creative, with great determination, singleness of purpose and drive; and through his entire life he was never pushed off his course or diverted to other things. Walt probably had fewer secrets than any man, because he was always talking to whoever would listen. Talking of story ideas or entertainment projects. My banker one day said, ‘How is such-and-such a picture progressing?’ A
nd I said, ‘Joe, I don’t think we have a picture of that name in work.’ He repeated the name and said he saw little sketches of the story. I said, ‘Joe, Walt was just using you as a good guinea pig to see how you would react to the story. We don’t have any picture like that in work.’ And that was the way Walt went through his life.”
Roy then spoke of the woman who “was with him at all times, cheering him on, giving him an argument when she thought he was wrong.” As the castle’s carillon played “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Lilly walked down a ramp accompanied by Mickey Mouse. She stood in the spotlight beside Roy, and he said to her, “Lilly, you knew all of Walt’s ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it?”
“I think,” Lilly replied, “Walt would have approved.”
Ruth and Walt, 1913
Flora and Elias Disney in Kansas City, 1913
Teen-age Walt in Kansas City
In France, 1919
Laugh-O-Gram studio, 1922
Walt in back seat, 1922
Walt in Hollywood, 1923
Lilly, Walt, Ruth, Roy, and Edna Disney in front of the first studio, 1925
Ub Iwerks, 1929
Walt in front of Hyperion studio, 1931
Walt with Mickey Mouse merchandise, 1931
Walt and his brother Roy Disney pose with Mickey Mouse and Oscar (Special Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the creation of Mickey Mouse), 1932
Walt in his office at Hyperion studio
Walt with Leslie Howard
Walt receiving honorary Oscar from Shirley Temple, February 23, 1939
The elder Disneys’ 50th wedding anniversary: (seated) Herb, Flora, Elias, Walt; (standing) Ray, Roy
George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky and Walt with model for Fantasia, December 1939
Disney art class studies a deer for Bambi
The picket line, 1941
In South America, 1941
Seversky and Walt studying storyboard for Victory Through Air Power, July 1942
Walt and daughter Diane
Sharon, Lilly, Diane and Walt en route to England, 1949
Testing the Carolwood Pacific at the studio
Walt on the set of Treasure Island with Robert Newton
At the Academy Awards, 1954
Escorting Diane to the church; Sharon at rear
Herb Ryman’s sketch for Disneyland
The September 12, 1953, plan for Disneyland drawn by Marvin A. Davis
Greeting the first children to enter Disneyland
On the set of Mickey Mouse Club with director Sidney Miller (left) and producer Bill Walsh (right)
Under the sign with his father’s name, Disneyland
Lilly and Walt in London
Former President Eisenhower presents Walt with Freedom Foundation Award, 1965
The Grauman’s Chinese premiere of Mary Poppins Julie Andrews, Walt, Dick Van Dyke
The Millers, Disneys and Browns, 1961
President Johnson presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Walt, 1964
On the site of the Florida project with Roy, Card Walker and Joe Fowler
A LARGE PART of this book was drawn from interviews with relatives and co-workers of Walt Disney, and the author is grateful for their help. They include:
James Algar, Ken Anderson, Bill Anderson, George L. Bagnall, Ruth Disney Beecher, Roger Broggie, George Bruns, Harriet Burns, Candy Candido, Les Clark, Larry Clemmons, William H. D. Cottrell, Jack Cutting, Marc Davis, Marvin Aubrey Davis, Edna Francis Disney, Roy E. Disney, Ron Dominguez, Buddy Ebsen, Tim Elbourne, Peter Ellenshaw, Bill Evans, Richard Fleischer, Robert P. Foster, Joseph W. Fowler, Hazel George, Gerry Geronimi, Harper Goff, Floyd Gottfredson, John Hench, Winston Hibler, Al Howe, Dick Huemer, Richard F. Irvine, David Iwerks, Wilfred Jackson, Robert F. Jani, Fred Joerger, James A. Johnson, Ollie Johnston, Tom Jones, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Irving Ludwig, Sharon Disney Lund, Jim Macdonald, Fred MacMurray, Chuck Malone, C. G. Maxwell, Mel Melton, Diane Disney Miller, Ron Miller, Margaret Winkler Mintz, Tom Nabbe, Richard A. Nunis, Ken Peterson, Walt Pfeiffer, Dolly Pope, Owen Pope, William E. Potter, Harrison Price, Sandy Quinn, Woolie Reitherman, Wathel Rogers, Herbert Ryman, Dolores Scott, Robert Sewell, Leonard Shannon, Ben Sharpsteen, Sal Silvestri, Martin A. Sklar, Paul Smith, Jack Speirs, Robert Stevenson, James L. Stewart, William Sullivan, Donn Tatum, Herb Taylor, Frank Thomas, Norman Tokar, Lillian Disney Truyens, Lawrence E. Tryon, Card Walker, Tommy Walker, Bill Walsh, Bud Washo, Madeleine Wheeler, Thomas Wilck, Tommie Blount Wilck, Roy Williams, John Wise.
The Archives of Walt Disney Productions, directed by David R. Smith, provided invaluable material. Both Walt and Roy Disney seem to have possessed a sense of history, and their care in preserving their own and the company records proved helpful to the biographer. I have used Walt Disney’s words wherever possible; hence the original copies of his New York letters to Roy, the transcriptions of story meetings, Walt’s annual letters to his sister, etc., were of great value. In 1956 Walt recorded a series of long interviews about his past history for the book Diane Disney Miller wrote with Pete Martin. Roy Disney also reminisced in three lengthy interviews shortly before his death.
As a news reporter, the author interviewed Walt Disney scores of times over a twenty-five-year period and consulted with him on two previous books about the studio and his life. I have drawn from that material, as well as from the hundreds of magazine and newspaper interviews given by Walt. I also viewed home movies and Disney films dating back to the Alice Comedies and Oswald. Special thanks are due to Card Walker, Vincent Jefferds, James Stewart and the Disney family.
Books by Bob Thomas
NONFICTION: If I Knew Then (with Debbie Reynolds), The Art of Animation, The Massie Case (with Peter Packer), King Cohn, Thalberg, Selznick, The Secret Boss of California (with Arthur H. Samish), The Heart of Hollywood, Winchell, Howard, the Amazing Mr. Hughes (with Noah Dietrich), Marlon: Portrait of the Rebel as an Artist.
FICTION: The Flesh Merchants, Weekend 33.
FOB CHILDREN: Walt Disney: Magician of the Movies, Donna DeVarona, Gold Medal Winner.
ANTHOLOGY: Directors in Action.