I’d like to kick off a new semi-regular feature here at the Angry Men, a celebration of Americans of all different stripes and backgrounds who have all, in their way, made America and the world a better place. They will be politicians, generals, entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors; famous, and obscure; figures of history and thoroughly modern folks. But together they will remind us of the diversity and unity of the United States, of our greatest principles and of the great promise of America: you are free to pursue your dreams as best you can.
Without further ado, let’s raise a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday to our inaugural Great American: Walter Elias Disney:
The first few decades of Walt Disney’s life reads like an almost stereotypical American success story: born the son of an immigrant, growing up across the Midwest in big cities and small towns, sneaking off to World War I as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross, hustling to get started in his chosen career, getting breaks from his brother and returning the favor, and making and losing businesses and fortunes. All by the age of 33.
But in 1934, Disney did something destined to change American entertainment forever, and catapult him to new heights: he produced a full-length animated film featuring both realistic human characters and fantastic cartoon characters. This doesn’t sound like much these days, but back then it was “Disney’s Folly” because it had never been done, and conventional wisdom said it couldn’t be done. Disney bet the farm that conventional wisdom was wrong, and his competitors bet that he’d lose that farm.
Of course, as we know, Disney was right, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was wildly successful, playing to standing ovations and winning an Oscar (well, actually one large and seven small Oscars, in fact). More than a personal triumph, it ushered in the golden age of American animation, and set the stage for the staggering industry of animated features around the world. It also launched Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and bankrolled a skilled studio of master animators. Disney would go on to produce a whole cavalcade of classic animated films: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (which brought the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Wind in the Willows to many for the first time), Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Cinderella, and many, many more. Many did not make much money, some were quite successful, but all have endured the test of time surprisingly well and stand as a tribute to Walt Disney’s vision that rich, complex stories could be told through animation.
After the Second World War, Disney brought his vision for a child’s fantasy amusement park to life in Disneyland, setting it on a huge lot and surrounding it by one of his favorite things in the world: a train. Throughout the 1950s Disney Studios worked on Disneyland and released major live-action and animated features. Disney also turned his eyes towards the stars and worked with NASA (and Werner von Braun) to promote space travel through films.
The 1960s saw Disney at the peak of his success, with Mary Poppins sweeping box offices and Disney debuting his vision of the future at the 1964 Worlds Fair. Not content with a one-time display of that vision, he laid the plans for an expanded and enhanced Disneyland known in development as “Disney World” and sited on 27,000 acres in Florida. Although plans included an expanded amusement park (to be known as the “Magic Kingdom”), resorts, and hotels, the centerpiece was to be Disney’s vision of the perfect future community, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). In Disney’s expansive vision, EPCOT was to be a working future city, whose residents would focus on innovative science and advanced technology.
Sadly, Walt Disney would never live to see the fulfillment of this vision, as he died from lung cancer in 1966, just two years after beginning the new project. His brother Roy came out of retirement to manage the project (and company) and open the first stage of the new park, now formally called “Walt Disney World Resort” in October 1971. By December of that year, Roy too was dead.
EPCOT as envisioned by Disney never came to be, though the modern Epcot park does provide a showcase for future technologies, and embodies the spirit of international cooperation in its World Showcase. And Disney’s Celebration community, built by Disney Imagineering as a model planned community, comes closer to the original goal of EPCOT (though in a suburban rather than urban mode).
Of course, as we remember the man and his legacy we should not overlook the darker side. Walt Disney never trusted organized labor, and his prejudice led him to make unsubstantiated allegations during the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s. He spied on union activity for the FBI for years and may well have illegally intimidated union activists. He was, as many visionaries are, a notoriously difficult man to work with. In short, he was a man, with a full share of faults and limitations.
But he was also a visionary in the best American mode, with an optimistic and enthusiastic take on society, technology, science, and the future. He built places devoted to bringing joy to children and inspiring them to dream deeply. He gave the world the vast legacy of his dreams in film and concrete and has inspired millions around the world with a vision of pluralism, tolerance, kindness, optimism and joy. For all of these reasons, whatever his human faults and foibles, Walter Elias Disney is, indeed, one of the Best of Us.
UPDATE: Welcome Fark.com! After you read this, feel free to have a look around. You’ve probably already seen this and this, but check out this fine piece about the One Laptop per Child program, this one about that nutcase Chavez, and, of course, this classic challenge.
December 5, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I love how one of the tags is ‘tolerance’
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdisneyfascist.html
December 6, 2007 at 9:40 am
Bieds Says:
###I love how one of the tags is ‘tolerance’###
I will let AOC speak for himself, but you do realize we often pick the tags in a very scattershot fashion?
Nevertheless, Disney seemed to engage in a lot of the casual racism of his day. My aunt (who is 68) who grew up in Chicago told me about beaches on South Shore of Lake Michigan that, back in the 1930s and ’40s, had signs saying “No dogs, blacks or Jews.” Excuses none of it, of course. As to playing a little footsie with the Nazi party pre-WWII, that net’s going to catch a lot of figures, which should not be taken to imply that it means nothing. But it does demand a foresight about the future that’s uncanny.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030214.html is a nice discussion of this with reference to Prescott Bush.
In any event, any celebration of Disney that glosses over the wretched ’50s live action stuff I was forced to watch in as a child in the 1970s with the line “Throughout the 1950s Disney Studios worked on Disneyland and released major live-action and animated features.” Well?
My other big beef: Walt Disney’s birthday is going to be important for years, due to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html
December 6, 2007 at 10:28 am
I love how one of the tags is ‘tolerance’
Whatever Disney’s personal failings in this matter (and as the article points out he was probably in the “more tolerant” percentile of his day) the empire he built today celebrates tolerance as a core virtue.
To reflect upon this consider the oddity of a major family-themed amusement park, catering to middle America, and built by a proud Midwesterner which openly supports a day dedicated to homosexual visitors:
http://www.gaydays.com/about/history.html
And that’s only to take the most controversial aspect of Disney tolerance. Walt Disney World, and Epcot in particular, are dedicated to a multicultural vision of the human family. Sure, it’s a “Disneyfied” version glossing over the nastier side of our fractious species, but for all that…
In other words, tolerance is relative, Disney remains one of the most tolerant bunches you’re going to find on the planet, and that tolerance is inherited directly from the vision of its founder of a world coming together to build a glorious future.
Hey, perfect Walt was not, not by a long shot. But if perfection’s your standard, enjoy your lonely reign on the moral mountaintop!
December 6, 2007 at 10:32 am
As for your complaints, MPA, well, I have to agree about the MMPA! In fact, it’s particularly ironic because Disney made so much money off public domain works! Most of the early Disney blockbusters were adaptations of works in the public domain. Yet Disney now wants to ensure that none of its own work enriches that same public domain.
And as for the wretched drek of the 1950s. Well, compared to much of the other children’s fare from that period, is it really so awful? You did watch it, after all, and I suspect not at gunpoint. 🙂
December 6, 2007 at 2:01 pm
AOC wrote:
###As for your complaints, MPA, well, I have to agree about the MMPA!###
Yeah, well, the real test of one’s integrity is acting against one’s own interest, though of course this isn’t a test of Walt’s integrity ’cause he’s dead.
Actually I’m really surprised my homeboy Hugo Chavez accepted his rebuke. It’s probably some mix of
(1) His former supporters telling him he was way out of line and that they were lining up a bullet with his name on it.
(2) He really does have some democratic bones in his body.
(3) He’s got an *angle*….
###And as for the wretched drek of the 1950s. Well, compared to much of the other children’s fare from that period, is it really so awful? You did watch it, after all, and I suspect not at gunpoint.###
It was elementary school. Gunpoint is relative.
December 6, 2007 at 2:41 pm
there’s no such thing as a great american.
check out my blog at http://www.extrapreneur.wordpress.com
December 6, 2007 at 4:25 pm
mildlypiquedacademician– I have a son who turned 14 yesterday. I didn’t even realize at the time that was also Walt Disney’s birthday as well until someone pointed it out to me when Marc was about 5.
Love your name, BTW.
December 6, 2007 at 7:30 pm
wow…great place you have here. Nice post as well! Just found you via the main wordpress page.
December 7, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Having been born many years after Walt passed away, I suddenly feel gyped for not being more familiar with the man behind the magic. Love the blog by the way.
December 7, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Stef wrote:
###mildlypiquedacademician– I have a son who turned 14 yesterday. I didn’t even realize at the time that was also Walt Disney’s birthday as well until someone pointed it out to me when Marc was about 5.###
Well I certainly didn’t know, that was AOC’s post. I usually write nasty stuff about Hugo Chavez.
###Love your name, BTW.###
Thanks. Mom always said I just had to stick out as a kid.
rebelleink Says:
###Having been born many years after Walt passed away, I suddenly feel gyped for not being more familiar with the man behind the magic. Love the blog by the way.###
Thanks. I think we plan on short little bios of various people, as much as we plan anything here, which is to say, “not much.” 😉
MPA
January 6, 2008 at 4:29 pm
[…] course, as with our other Great Americans Walt Disney and George Marshall, there are detractors. Some point to the sheer impossibility of curing […]
February 18, 2008 at 1:15 pm
[…] Washington seems a strange choice for this series, which is (after all) about those forgotten greats. How can we include a figure so well known, so […]
November 14, 2010 at 11:43 am
all of my kids enjoy the park and rides in Disney World, disney really knows how to please kids *”-
January 27, 2015 at 1:51 pm
how did you managed to get all this together, have been looking for this all time, thanks