a few hours and feel better for the visitation.58
The acclaim that Disney received during his life was far-reaching. As reported in one of many biographies of Walt on the company’s website:
A pioneer and innovator and the possessor of one of the most fertile imaginations the world has ever known, Walt Disney, along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from every nation in the world, including 48 Academy Awards and seven Emmys in his lifetime. Walt Disney’s personal awards included honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California, and UCLA; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France’s Legion of Honor and Officer d’Académie decorations; Thailand’s Order of the Crown; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners.59
However, certain aspects of Disney’s life have been consistently underemphasized or simply left out of most accounts. As Bryman suggests, there was some “ambiguity about Walt’s status as a businessman”; for instance, in most accounts, the company’s extensive merchandising activities are neglected.60 Yet there is considerable evidence that Walt Disney was interested and involved in the business side of the company, not merely in artistic or other kinds of success. Disney once advised: “Don’t create potboilers. Create masterpieces. There’s such a big market for masterpieces.”61 In 1953, over the objections of his brother Roy, he set up a company to control the rights to his name. Retlaw – Walter spelled backwards – received 5 percent of the income received by the company from merchandising and, by the 1960s, was drawing about $500,000 each year.62 Disney died a rich man.
Jackson writes: “Walt Disney, the man, may be gone. However, the myth he created remains very much alive.” As noted at the beginning of this chapter, many of the myths have been perpetuated through biographies that accept the Disney legacy without question. Given the ongoing predilection for “great-man history,” as well as the growing fascination with celebrity biographies, the pseudo-religious profiles of Walt Disney will probably continue.
As Bryman observes, “‘Walt Disney’ is also in a sense a social construction – a product of his own and others’ efforts at creating a public face and a personal biography that would serve his business’s aims.”63 In other words, the myths associated with Walt Disney benefit the company and will continue to be promoted as such. Previously, the Disney company’s website included the “Walt Disney Family Museum,” with “Walt’s Story,” “Walt’s Thoughts,” a “Family Album,” film clips, a “Walt Disney Dictionary,” more detailed biographical material by historians Katherine and Richard Greene, and other special features (such as a gift shop).
The promotion of the Walt Disney legacy has shifted from this digital version to an actual “Walt Disney Family Museum,” which opened in 2009 in the Presidio area of San Francisco. The museum was created by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that was incorporated as a private operating foundation in 1997, “to assemble material, study, teach and preserve, and publish and display material appropriate to communicate the vision and legacy of Walt Disney within a historical context.”64
There has been a fairly widespread rumor that Walt’s body is on ice somewhere, waiting to be revived cryogenically when medical science becomes capable of healing his fatal affliction.65 However, the company and the Disney family report that his ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. With the 1,700 robots at the theme parks, one might wonder why there are not Audio-Animatronic versions of Walt Disney, strategically placed at each theme park to greet guests and tell them his version of Disney history.
The Disney corporate legacy
Of course, even without Audio-Animatronic Walts, the Disney legacy, as well as the Disney corporation, lives on. Even though the years immediately following Walt’s death may have been uninspired, the corporation survived. By the late 1960s, the company had established a strong diversified base, distributing its own films and television programming and generating revenues from merchandising and theme parks. By 1965, the company reported profits of $11 million.
However, around this time, only 45 percent of the company’s revenues were from film rentals. By the mid-1970s, the company had become even more reliant on park revenues and was proving to be rather sluggish, both in moving into newly developing distribution technologies (such as cable and home video) and in producing a wider range of media products. Perhaps Walt would have inspired the company to adjust to these changes. Perhaps not.
The aim of this chapter has been to sort out the background of the Disney company that emerges from the inflated and mythical depictions of its namesake. Accordingly, Douglas Gomery’s summary of the Disney company provides fitting closure:
The Disney company has not been a success story from the beginning. Like other capitalist operations it has had its ups and downs, heavily influenced by the uncontrollable factors of technical change, the business cycle, and war.
In the end we need to abandon the “great man” version of history. Walt was no genius, nor is Michael Eisner. We are the fools if we ascribe all the actions and strategies of a company to one man or woman. The Disney company is simply another capitalist enterprise with a history best understood within the changing conditions of twentieth-century America.66
The next chapter discusses how the company established an expanded Disney empire through the end of the twentieth century and adapted and adjusted to the entertainment world in the twenty-first century.
Notes
1 “Walt Disney Issue,” Wisdom 32 (1959): 46; cited in Steven Watts, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 58. 2 William Irvin McReynolds, “Walt Disney in the American Grain” (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1971). 3 One of the most commonly cited sources in Disney biographies is Diane Daisy Miller, The Story of Walt Disney (New York: Dell, 1956), written by Disney’s daughter. Watts, The Magic Kingdom, reports that close acquaintances said that Disney was “preoccupied” by his own history, and that it is clear that “Disney mythologized his past and presented it to the public” (p. 7). 4 See Brad J. Aldridge, “The Walt Disney Family Museum,” JustDisney.com. http://www.justdisney.com/Features/walt_disney_family_museum/index.html 5 Blair Kamin, “The Wonderful World of Disney,” Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2003. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-10-26/news/0310260067_1_disney-hall-lillian-disney-frank-gehry 6 Richard Schickel, The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968, repr. 1985). 7 Joel Taxel, “A Literature Review of the Impact of Walt Disney Productions Inc. on American Popular Culture and Children’s Literature,” in University of Georgia, Department of Language Education, 1982 (ERIC Document Reproduction Service no. ED 213648). 8 Bob Thomas, Walt Disney: An American Original (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976). See also Leonard Mosley, Disney’s World (Briarcliff, NY: Stein and Day, 1985), Katherine Greene and Richard Greene, The Man Behind the Magic: The Story of Walt Disney (New York: Viking, 1991), and Marc Eliot, Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993). Watts, The Magic Kingdom, presents a discussion of Disney, relying on primary sources from the Disney Archives. Kathy Merlock Jackson includes a biography, a biographical essay, and “Key Disney Sources.” She notes that “an exhaustive treatment of Disney resources is not possible nor even desirable by virtue of the fact that much of it is inaccurate.” Jackson lists the most important biographical articles,
