WALT DISNEY, RULER OF THE MAGIC KINGDOM
The first multimedia empire was built on animation, but its happy toons
masked the founder’s darker soul
By RICHARD SCHICKEL
He created Mickey Mouse and produced the first full-length animated movie. He
invented the theme-park and originated the modern multimedia corporation. For better
or worse, his innovations have shaped our world and the way we experience it. But the
most significant thing Walt Disney made was a good name for himself.
It was, of course, long ago converted into a brand name, constantly fussed over,
ferociously defended, first by Disney, latterly by his hairs and assigns. Serving as a
beacon for parents seeking clean, decent entertainment for their children, the Disney
logo-a stylized version of the founder’s signature-more generally promises us that
anything appearing beneath it will not veer too far from safe, sound and above all
cheerful American main-stream, which it defines as much as serves.
That logo also now identifies an institution whose $22 billion in annual sales
make it the world´s largest media company. It purveys many products that would have
been unimaginable to its founder, a few of which (the old TV show, the occasional R
movie) might even have been anathemas to him. Not that one sees him pondering long
over such trifles, as his company fulfils the great commercial destiny this complex and
darkly driven man always dreamed for it.
The notion of Walt Disney as a less than cheerful soul will ring disturbingly in
the minds of older Americans taught by years of relentless publicity to think of Disney
as “a quiet pleasant man you might not look twice at on the street,” to quote an old
corporate promotional piece-a man whose modest mission was simply “to bring
happiness to the millions.” Going along with the gag, he implied that the task was easy
for him because he always whistled while he worked: “I don’t have depressed moods.
I’m happy, just very, very happy.”
Sure. You bet. It sounded plausible, for if anyone seemed entitled to late-in-life
contentment it was Walt Disney. Did not his success validate the most basic of
American dreams? Had he not built the better mouse and had the world not beaten a
path to his door, just as that cherished myth promised? Did he not deploy his fame and
fortune in exemplary fashion, playing the kindly, story-spinning, magic-making uncle to
the world? No entrepreneurial triumph of his days has ever been less resented or feared
by the public. Henry Ford should have been so lucky. Bill Gates should get so lucky.
The triumph about Disney, who was described by an observant writer as “a tall,
somber man who appeared to be under the hash of some private demon,” is slightly less
benign and a lot more interesting. Uncle Walt actually didn’t have an uvuncular in his
body. Though he could manage a sort of gruff amiability with strangers, his was, in fact,
a withdrawn, suspicious and, above all, controlling nature. And with good-or anyway
explicable-reason.
For he was born to a poverty even more dire emotionally than it was
economically. His father Elias was one of those feckless figures who wandered the
heartland at the turn of the century seeking success in many occupations but always
finding sour failure. He spared his children affection, but never the rod. They all fled
him at the earliest possible moment.
Before leaving home at 16 to join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during World
War I, Walt, the youngest son, had discovered he could escape dad´s-and life’s
