American Experience (1988–…): Season 27, Episode 9 - Walt Disney - Part 2 - full transcript

MAN: Walt Disney could deal with
anything creatively.

He could yell and scream.

That's where he wanted
his energies to be devoted.

But he didn't want to be
devoted to this,

and he couldn't understand it!

NARRATOR: Employees
at the Walt Disney studios

had been begging for better wages,

extra pay for overtime

and a uniform system for determining
job titles and screen credits

for months.

Walt had waved this off



as the hobby-horse of a few hotheads
and union agitators,

right up to May 29th, 1941,

the day nearly half of
his art department walked out

to take up positions
on the picket line.

The strike demonstrations got bigger
in the first weeks, and louder,

and so did the threat
to the already shaky studio.

Disney's last two feature films -
Pinocchio and Fantasia -

had both lost money

and investors were fleeing.

The company stock had dropped
from $25 dollars a share to $4.

Walt Disney needed
a box office hit soon,

and his own workers seemed intent on

derailing the studio's
only two hopes -

Dumbo and Bambi.



MAN: As the strike lingered
and kept going,

the mood of everybody
started to get ugly,

and people started to get angrier,
and then Walt was getting angrier.

A month into the strike,

Disney refused to recognise
the union representing his workers,

the Screen Cartoonist Guild.

He refused to negotiate with
the guild's representative,

Herbert Sorrell.

And he refused to make apologies

to the man whose firing
had prompted the strike,

long-time Disney animator
Art Babbitt.

MAN: There was one day
where Art Babbitt

noticed Disney driving to the gate.

And Babbitt just kind of blew
his stack and just jumped over

and grabbed the bullhorn and shouted
out loud so everybody could hear,

"There he goes, the great man,"

and basically
just heaped abuse on Disney.

"Shame on you, Walt Disney."

As the crowd cheered,
Disney jumped out of his car

and charged at Babbitt.

The two men had to be pulled apart.

Walt Disney could not believe
that so many of his workers

had actually taken sides
with the union and against him.

Disney sniffed conspiracy,
and a big one.

He went public with
his pet theory

in a full-page advertisement in
a Hollywood trade paper, Variety.

WOMAN: He needed to have a bad guy.

He needs to blame it all
on a villain.

And in this case, the new flavour
of the month in Hollywood

at that time and later,

would be the shadow or spectre
of Communism.

MAN: He becomes, then,
like a typical industrial boss.

Most American executives at the time
blame unionisation on Communists.

So, in this way, Disney becomes
completely conventional.

(SHOUTING)

Walt Disney is being bombarded
by all of this negativity.

And it's just not something
he was accustomed to.

"The entire situation is
a catastrophe," he wrote to a friend.

"The spirit that played
such an important part

"in the building of
the cartoon medium

"has been destroyed.

"I have a case of the D.D.'s -
disillusionment and discouragement."

(AEROPLANE ENGINE ROARS)

The next day, Disney skipped town

for a 10-week working tour
of South America,

and left the headaches to his brother
and long-time business partner, Roy.

MAN: What Walt Disney was doing
was getting away, period.

He just was sick and tired
of the whole business,

and he wanted to go away
and do something else.

GABLER: South America
is a real relief for Walt Disney.

Wherever his plane lands,
people are there to greet him.

Dignitaries invite him to dinners.

Everybody loves him.

And I think the contrast

between the affection with which
he's greeted in South America

and the kind of hostility with which
he'd been greeted in Los Angeles

isn't lost on him.

Disney was still on the road
in South America

when his father, Elias,
died unexpectedly.

Walt declined to cut his trip short
and return home

for the funeral of the man with whom
he had clashed much of his life.

This was just fine with Roy.

He was happy to have Walt
and his explosive temper

remain at a safe remove

while he tried to make peace
with the Screen Cartoonists Guild.

WATTS: Roy Disney sees
the writing on the wall.

He sees that unionisation
is coming into the studios,

whether we like it or not,

and he wants to settle this.

He wants to get things
up and running.

By the time Walt did finally return
at the end of October,

Roy had resolved the strike.

The workers had been granted almost
everything they had asked for.

The Disney art department
was back on track.

But the studio would never again
feel like family to Walt.

The gal I married
was a secretary in personnel.

She was called up to Walt's office
to help on the files.

And she would go through and
find people that were out on strike.

And they were moved from here
to this file.

Walt came in and said,
"How's it going?"

She just said,
"What are we doing this for?"

And he said, "Well, these are
the people that are true to Disney.

"These are the people who, at one
time or one day, will not be here."

SITO: After the strike,
Walt distrusted everybody.

One of the great animators
who worked on Snow White

said, "Walt Disney was a great man.
Walt Disney was a genius.

"If you were his friend,
he was a warm friend.

"If you crossed him,
he was a mean SOB."

(MAN CHANTS MARCHING INSTRUCTIONS)

Just a few months after
the bruising strike,

World War II arrived
at the Disney Studios,

much of which was commandeered
as a base for anti-aircraft troops.

Walt kept up a happy front,
especially for his two daughters,

but things were not great
on the Disney lot.

Funding for feature film production
had dried up by the summer of 1942.

The company was limping along
on revenue

generated by government contracts
for propaganda and training films.

(SIGHS)

Winter sure is long, isn't it?

It seems long.

But it won't last forever.

Walt was counting on
a big box-office hit

to revive his faltering studio,

and he believed that Bambi
could fill that bill.

He had nurtured the film
for nearly five years,

kept the project alive through
the worst of the strike.

Bambi?

Bambi, come here.

Look.

New spring grass.

When it was finally released
in August of 1942,

Bambi stood out as the most ambitious
feature-length film

in the history of the studio.

An artist's rendering of the natural
world in all its beauty and peril.

(SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS)

Bambi...

Quick! The thicket!

(GUNSHOTS)

Faster! Faster, Bambi!

Don't look back!

Keep running! Keep running!

(LOUD GUNSHOT)

We made it!

We made it, Mother!

We...

Mother?

Mother!

Mother, where are you?

Mother!

MAN: A generation was, and still is,
traumatised by that moment in Bambi.

Mother!

Mother!

And it's done almost in pantomime,
with the snow falling.

Fearless filmmaking.

Absolute fearlessness.

Mother!

(SOBS)

(GASPS)

Your mother can't
be with you anymore.

Come...

..my son.

GABLER:
Bambi is a triumph for Disney

in the sense that it probably
extends realistic animation

as far as it had gone,
up to that point.

But by the time the film came out,

it was almost as if Disney,
in the course of a couple of years,

had become passe.

Bambi did not make back its costs
in its initial run.

Disney could tell his investors,
as he could tell himself,

that the war was to blame
for the deficit.

But that failure, coming so close
on the heels of the strike,

made it impossible for him
to deny the obvious.

He had invested too much
in animated features -

money, energy, effort,
his own heart -

and what did he have to show for it?

A crippled company filled with
people who had turned on him.

A mountain of debt.

Scorchings from the political press,
the art world, film critics.

SITO: One of the things
that was lost

was the great period of
Disney experimentation.

The first five Disney features

is known in the business
as "The Big Five."

# Hi-ho! Hi-ho! #

And The Big Five
is Snow White, Pinocchio,

Fantasia, Bambi and Dumbo.

# Hi-ho! Hi-ho! #

Now, if you look at
those films individually,

they don't look
anything like one another.

When you talk about
the Disney style,

there was no Disney style back then.

Pinocchio looks nothing like Bambi.

Bambi looks nothing like Dumbo.

GABLER: The paradise
that Disney had at Hyperion

and into the early days of
the Burbank studio

is gone.

And with that paradise lost,
the sense of the animations

and the greatness
of the animations

is also lost.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

It's never going to be the same.

MAN: Walt, how did you happen to
choose the tales of Uncle Remus

as the story for Song of the South?

WALT DISNEY: Well, Johnny, I first
heard the stories of Uncle Remus

when I was a boy down in Missouri.

And since then,
they've been one of my favourites.

Your favourites,
and a million others'.

WOMAN: The Uncle Remus stories
are a piece of American folklore,

and that is the kind of story Walt
is interested after World War II.

It's a way for him to start to break
away from the European fairytale

as the foundation of his narratives.

He sees it as being very personal

and speaking to
his own sense of boyhood.

Disney took a cost-conscious
approach on Song of the South,

mixing cheaper live-action sequences
with animation,

and for good reason.

His bankers were no longer
willing to risk their money

on the Disney studio's
full-length animated features,

even after the war was over.

Many of the first generation of
Disney animators had left Burbank,

and his once cutting-edge equipment

was rusting like a junk-heap
in a back lot.

By Walt's reckoning,

the studio had only one reliable
and undiminished asset

from its pre-war glory days -

his own instincts about what story
to choose and how to tell it.

WATTS: It's the story of outsiders.

A young white boy
who's dreadfully unhappy,

a young black boy
who is his good friend,

Uncle Remus,
the wise old black storyteller,

and, in the animated sections,
Br'er Rabbit himself.

And in all of these things,

what you get is a typical
Disney populist story

of the triumph of the underdog,

outwitting your powerful opponents,
manoeuvring,

doing what you had to do to triumph.

Disney had been thinking about
the Joel Chandler Harris stories

for years.

He had optioned them during his 1939
spending spree following Snow White.

The Uncle Remus stories
were uncomplicated.

The politics were not.

Harris had set the action
on a plantation in the Deep South

just after the Civil War,

which meant Disney's adaptation

would have to negotiate the questions
of slavery and race in America -

a dicey proposition
after World War II,

when white supremacists
in the South

were fighting tooth and nail
to maintain racial segregation.

HAHN: The core issue is,
is it OK to be an African American

and have this kind of joyous sense
of storytelling about you,

knowing that you went through

the most horrific chapter of
American history?

Civil rights was not in full bloom,

but certainly the NAACP
and men coming back from war

were saying, "I fought for an
America that was...that was equal.

"And this is a part of our history
that we have to deal with.

"A very profound social
pain that we all share.

"And we don't want to whitewash it

"into something that is
this jolly story."

HIGGINBOTHAM: Walt Disney
has never been, up until this point,

really concerned about
social issues.

And to present the black body
in the South the way he wanted to,

through a folktale which was going
to rely very heavily on stereotype,

he was going to need to vet that
from some source.

Disney solicited notes

from well-known African American
intellectuals and activists,

including the head of the NAACP.

One scholar told Disney,

"He could do wonders
in transforming public opinion,"

but only if he avoided
the most hurtful stereotypes,

like scenes of former slaves
belting out happy songs

on Southern plantations.

Disney took the notes,
and then trusted his own instincts.

As usual, when Disney got advice,

he often didn't
pay much attention to it,

and he just sort of went ahead
with how he envisioned things.

Disney chose to celebrate
opening night of Song of the South

in Atlanta, Georgia,

where the celebrated epic of the
Civil War South, Gone with the Wind,

had premiered seven years earlier.

The actors who played the major
white roles in Song of the South

were all there.

But not James Baskett,
who played Uncle Remus.

Georgia law barred the movie's star
from entering the segregated theatre.

# Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

# Zip-a-Dee-Ay!

# My, oh, my, what a wonderful day

# Plenty of sunshine headin' my way

# Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

# Zip-a-Dee-Ay! #

It is as if Walt has divorced
himself from social context.

It's sort of stunning.

# It's the same ol' thing

# Want to get a bag of something
for the hungry lord

# Look up! #

Critics were split.

"The whole film
is beautifully produced," wrote one.

"The plantation
is traditional Deep South -

"a dream place of magnolia blossoms
and darkies singin' all day long."

"Don't let the children miss it."

# Go fly away!
# Had the trouble with the weaver! #

I sure is sorry, Miss Sally.

No, it's my fault.

I should have known you couldn't
stop telling your stories.

I don't like to say this
Uncle Remus,

but from now on, I want you
to stay away from Johnny.

Others, like the usually friendly
New York Times, hit Disney hard.

Yes.

"The master-and-slave relation
is so lovingly regarded in your yarn

"that one might almost imagine

"that you figure Abe Lincoln
made a mistake."

The NAACP decried Song of the South

as a "dangerously glorified
picture of slavery,"

and many of its local chapters
called for a boycott.

HIGGINBOTHAM:
Disney was utterly dismayed

by the negative reaction
to Song of the South.

He very much believed in
the narratives that it was offering.

He believed that these
were American stories

finally getting an opportunity

to be on the big screen
and in a feature film.

And so Walt is sort of shocked
and disheartened

by the responses that he's getting.

Disney decided the attacks were
being engineered

by his old foes, Communists,

who had been waiting for another
chance to take a whack at him

since the strike.

"Hollywood was loaded with 'em,"
Walt would say.

"I had a lot of people
just hoping it was the end."

(CHEERFUL MUSIC PLAYS)

There was a hot new animation
studio in town by 1947 -

United Productions of America.

UPA and its founders had very
different ideas from Walt Disney's,

and it looked like they were leading
a creative revolution

against everything
Disney had stood for.

SITO: Who says the natural goal
of animation is realism?

Why can't we use the trends
that are entering into modern art?

Why can't we do cartoons like this

instead of trying to make everything
so damn realistic all the time?

And UPA was the place

where, suddenly, people
were free to experiment.

MAN: We had a whole new approach,
which was nothing like Disney's.

We looked at the great guys -
Picasso and Miro and those.

So, we invented a whole new
way of doing it.

It was now West Bank animation.
Modern art, really.

Disney was keeping an eye on UPA.

He wasn't so much
threatened by its work

as he was galled by
its principal talent.

Art Babbitt was on the UPA payroll,

along with a number of other artists
and animators

who had fled the Disney studios
or been ushered out after the strike.

The Burbank River
goes past the Disney Studio

and then it goes a mile or two
down by where the UPA studio was.

And Disney used to call UPA
"those damn Commies down river."

Walt was curious because
he'd send his spies over there

to see what us Communists over
by the river were doing, you know.

He called us the Communists.

REPORTER: Labor strife
on the movie front.

California studios picketed
in a dispute between rival unions.

Hollywood had been hit by
another wave of strikes

in the first few years after the war,

and studio bosses were determined
to blunt the unions.

Walt Disney was among them.

He was a founding officer

of the Motion Picture Alliance

for the Preservation
of American Ideals -

an organisation sworn to protect
the movie industry

from what the alliance called
"communists, radicals and crackpots."

In October 1947,

Walt was offered a chance to
hit back at his imagined antagonists.

He was invited to Washington

to testify before the House
Un-American Activities Committee

on the subject of
"Reds in the Movies,"

and what might be behind
the new wave of labor strikes

against the Hollywood studios.

Disney, along with a dozen other
high-profile Hollywood executives
and celebrities,

was deemed
one of the "friendly witnesses."

MAN: And at the present time,
you own and operate

the Walt Disney Studio
at Burbank, California?

The first thing Disney did

was reassure the committee that he
was running a clean shop in Burbank,

free of any Communist taint.

WALT DISNEY: They bought
The Three Little Pigs

and used it through Russia.

But then he started to name names,

among them one of the leaders
who had organised the 1941 strike

against the Walt Disney Studios.

I believed at that time
that Mr Sorrell was a Communist

because of all the things
that I had heard and, uh...

..and had seen his name appearing
on many of Commie front things.

And when he pulled the strike,

the first people to put me...

..to smear me
and put me on the unfair list

were all of the Commie front
organisations.

Some of my boys, my artists,
came to me

and told me that Mr Sorrell,
Herbert Sorrell, was...

Is that Herbert K. Sorrell?
Herbert K. Sorrell.

He laughed at me and told me
that I was naive, I was foolish.

He said, "You can't stand a strike,"
that "I'll smear you

"and I'll make a dust bowl
out of your place if I choose to."

SITO: All his testimony
was focused on the union leaders.

It wasn't just politically
who's a Commie or who's...

..politically who's left
or who's right.

It was all the union leaders.

GABLER: The HUAC testimony is 1947.
The strike is 1941.

So, we're talking a six-year period.

But I think it goes to show

just how long Walt holds a grudge,

which is forever.

He basically had
this narrative in his mind

of how he saw
the way things happened.

And that's when he decried
that Sorrell was a Communist.

..called them all a bunch of
Communists, and I believe they are.

He couldn't actually prove
he was a Communist.

He just said, "I don't know
if he's a Communist or not
but he probably is."

"You think I'm a communist,
don't you?"

And I told him, that "All I knew is
what I'd heard and what I'd seen."

That's not enough for a trial.

Disney and other friendly witnesses,

like Ronald Reagan
and Gary Cooper,

won plaudits for their performance

and provided cover for
the studio bosses' next move,

which was intended to crush
labour union activists.

MAN: The black list is designed to
rid the industry of leftists.

And, in fact, it says that
the studios would themselves agree

not to hire anyone

who was understood to be,
alleged to be, a Communist.

So, Disney is not
responsible for this

but he's part of a movement
that produces it.

It means that any number of people
lose their means of making a living.

And, so it, in effect,
ruins careers.

Walt Disney beat a hasty retreat
from the political battlefield

after his public testimony.

He had no stomach for
an ongoing fight over ideology,

and no interest.

He just wanted to get back to work.

MAN: Mr Disney, give me some more
details of your leprechaun hunt.

I just hope that I can find that
leprechaun with the pot of gold,

because I could really
use that in Hollywood

with the cost of production
going up the way it is.

Disney was producing
more than ever by 1948,

but he was all over the map,

in search of the studio's
next big thing.

He travelled to England to launch
a series of live-action films,

starting with the pirate story
Treasure Island.

He made others in the US,
including So Dear to My Heart,

a nostalgic look at

turn-of-the-century
small town America.

He spent a week holed up
in a hotel room in New York

watching television,

to see if there was anything
to be done in the new medium.

He took his daughter Sharon
on a trip to Alaska,

scene of his first attempt at making
a nature documentary, Seal Island.

HAHN: If Disney's
going to make nature movies,

he has to do what he does naturally.

Walt Disney tells stories.

So he looks at this thousand feet
of footage for seals,

and to him, he's looking for,
"Oh, well, that's the mom seal,

"and that's the daughter seal
and that's the bad guy seal,

"and they fight later on -
they should fight.

"If you don't have that footage,
go out and shoot it."

And he turns it into a narrative.

(PLAYFUL MUSIC)

'SEAL ISLAND' NARRATOR:
Since no-one else will nurse him,
let's hope Mother comes home soon,

for if anything has happened to her,
this pup will surely die.

(BLEATS)

There are no orphans on Seal Island.

HAHN: So, to him it's a way of
getting an animated film,

but out of live footage.

(BLEATS)

'SEAL ISLAND' NARRATOR: Yes, here
they are at last, right on schedule,

swimming and diving playfully, as
though glad their journey is over.

But they don't seem in
any great hurry to go ashore.

HAHN: He has to diversify.
He has no money.

They're really cheap to shoot.

I mean, the seals
don't go on strike.

..having a final fling of
single blessedness.

Seal Island won an Academy Award,

and launched Disney's new
and profitable line

of nature documentaries -

True Life Adventures.

But Walt missed the excitement
of feature animation,

and by 1949,
he was ready to start anew.

Roy baulked -
too expensive, too risky, he said -

and the brothers fought
an epic, screaming battle.

Walt gave Roy an ultimatum -

find the money for animated features,
or sell off the business.

Roy walked out on him.

"You're letting this place drive
you nuts," he said on his way out.

"That's one place
I'm not going with you."

Roy did eventually relent
to Walt's desire, as always,

and agreed to raise
the $2 million they needed

for a new animated feature -
Cinderella.

But once production on the new film
was up and running,

Disney was uncharacteristically
distant

from his studio's
signature undertaking.

That old Snow White feeling

of excitement
and new possibilities

eluded Walt.

He seemed wary of fully
investing himself in the film,

and left most of the hard work
to his staff.

Nearing 50, Disney was also
beginning to wear down,

and so precipitously

that he made sure to keep a trained
nurse on the studio payroll.

Hazel George came to Walt's office
every afternoon at 5:00

to give him heat treatment
for his back, a Scotch mist or two

and a friendly ear.

MAN: She was a very pleasant lady.

Walt, because he had hurt himself
playing polo,

almost every night or every other
night, he would go to Hazel

and she would...she'd massage
his back and his hips

because he was in great pain.

GABLER: Hazel George becomes

one of those very few figures
in his entire life

to whom he can talk.

It wasn't a sexual relationship,
it wasn't anything like that,

but she was someone to whom he could
say anything and everything,

and he could say it in confidence.

WATTS: He's very famous.
He's very powerful.

He absolutely runs the show.

But it's difficult to say, if Walt
Disney had any close, close friends,

bosom companions
that he could really talk to

and share things with.

GABLER: Walt Disney is at low ebb.

He said, "I realise
that I'm never going to make

"anything as good as Snow White."

When you think of Walt Disney

as the guy who's always
looking at the next horizon,

the guy who's always
trying to break a new path,

the guy who's lived
for excellence...

..and then he can say,
not only to himself but publicly,

"I'm never going to make
anything as good as Snow White..."

You want to hear a man in crisis?

That's a man in crisis.

In the fall of 1948, as he had done
nearly two decades earlier,

Walt followed doctor's orders
and departed on a vacation.

Hazel George, who had seen
the enormous new toy train layout

Walt had installed
in his private office,

had suggested he take a trip to
a railroad convention in Illinois.

Walt had invited a fellow
train enthusiast to travel with him.

"Goddammit, you have more fun
than anybody I know,"

Disney told animator Ward Kimball.

As the two men rode the rails
drinking Scotch mists,

Walt regaled Ward
with his life story,

from Marceline to Hollywood.

(RAILWAY CROSSING BELL RINGS)

(TRAIN HORN BLARES)

By the time they arrived
in Chicago, Disney was giddy.

WATTS: It's Disney
returning to his roots.

The train is something that
he associates with his childhood,

with growing up where the railroad
ran next to his house,

right through the centre
of Marceline.

The train is something
he associates with

that vanished age of his childhood.

Disney arrived home
with a new obsession -

having his own large-scale
model train -

and he ordered one built
at the studio in Burbank.

He made it his business to stop by
the studio machine shop most days,

just to check in on the progress.

He was soon spending three or
four hours at a time in the shop,

and then more hours in the evening,
and then all day on Saturday.

The head machinist

had assigned Disney his own bench
and toolset by then,

and put him to work.

Walt Disney was building
these trains with his own hands.

Manual labour.

The great Walt Disney was now
devoting his energies to toy trains.

When a film critic
from the New York Times

visited during production
on Cinderella,

he found Disney, as he wrote,
"Wholly, almost weirdly, concerned

"with the miniature railroad engine
and his cars.

"All of his zest for invention,
for creating fantasies,

"seemed to go into this plaything."

When Walt's oft-neglected progeny,
Cinderella,

finally premiered
at the beginning of 1950,

critics hailed it as the long-awaited
return of the classic Disney form

and a must-see.

Now, let's see dear.

Your size and shade of your eyes.

Mm-hm.

Something simple,
but daring too!

Just leave it to me!

What a gown this will be!

Bippity-boppity, bippity-boppity,
bippity-boppity-boo!

Oh! It's a beautiful dress!

Roy optimistically told Walt

that Cinderella would gross
$5 million or $6 million

after those first reviews.

It made nearly $8 million.

It's like a dream.

A wonderful dream come true!

Yes, my child.

Walt was happy to have
the financial cushion

the film provided his studio,

and happy to have the good reviews.

But he saw
all the movie's imperfections

and every corner cut.

It was no Snow White,
as far as he was concerned.

His interest remained elsewhere.

WATTS: He builds a scale model
of the old Marceline barn

out behind his house,
in the middle of Holmby Hills.

And he's out there in overalls
and a flannel shirt

and a train engineer hat,

just monkeying around for hours

with designing the track
and building the engine.

It was funny, you know.

You would see those pictures of him
with his train, you know -

ch-ch-ch-ch - the train
that went around his house,

and I think there was pleasure
in that for him.

It was the toy
he never had as a little kid.

It was something that was just
pure fun and pleasure for him to do.

There was more in that train
than just fun and games for Walt.

When Salvador Dali
made a visit to Walt's house,

the famous painter understood
what Walt was up to.

Disney was seeking an ideal,

and Dali was taken aback
at the ambition of it.

"Such perfection,"
the surrealist told Walt,

"did not belong to models!"

KOEHN: It's comfort and salvation

and a working surface
for the disappointments

and confusion that comes to him
in that period of his life.

"I can't control my workers,
it turns out.

"I can't control
the larger stage right now.

"I can't even completely
control my company.

"So here's a world I can re-create,
down to the smallest detail,

"down to tunnels
under my wife's flowerbed...

"..that is mine and perfect
and brought to life and safe."

Hey, Agnes!

That's our train!

Lillian Disney could sense
something big brewing in early 1952.

"It was one of those moments,"
she would say,

"when Walt's imagination

"was going to take off
into the wild blue yonder,

"and everything will explode."

Walt, Lillian noted, was liquidating
long-held family assets.

Her husband sold their Palm Springs
vacation home

and borrowed $100,000
against his life insurance policy.

He even sold rights to his own name,
to Walt Disney Productions.

Then he started
an entirely new company,

for an entirely new
enterprise.

GABLER: He gets a little building,
the back part of the studio lot,

and he creates this organisation
called WED,

which were his initials -
Walter Elias Disney.

"I'll get a few guys,

"just like we did
when we were making Mickey Mouse,

"and we'll come up with some ideas."

So that's what WED is.
WED is the old days.

Walt Disney had
one very specific vision in mind,

and he had already drawn up plans
for building this new project

on a vacant lot
he owned next to his studio.

Disney had actually been
kicking around the idea for years.

WOMAN: When he had his girls
and they were very young,

he wanted to take them
to places they would have fun,

but every time he'd go to see
a carnival or something else,

the men were all
filthy, dirty-looking,

and the place was filthy.

And he said, "I want a place
where people can take a family

"and have a good time."

Whenever he thought of something,

it kept getting bigger
and bigger and bigger.

Disney first dubbed the park
'Mickey Mouse Village',

but then hit on 'Disneyland'.

By the end of 1952,
the plans for Disneyland

had outgrown the little eight-acre
lot next to his studio.

He started culling talent
from the Disney production team

and sending them to WED.

"I want you to work on Disneyland,"

he told one slightly confused
layout artist,

"and you're going to like it."

Roy thinks it's a nutty idea.

"An amusement park? No.

"An amusement park that's going to
cost tens of millions of dollars..."

And, you know,
"It's not gonna work."

WOMAN: Amusement parks
were carnival-esque places.

These were places where you went

to have your sensations stimulated
by very, very fast rides...

..by carnival barkers
inviting you in

to see Tom Thumb or the Giant Lady.

These were places where you went
to have the rules not apply.

When Walt told Mrs Disney
that he was going to start a park...

..she said, "Why would you
want to do that? They're not safe.

"The people in them are not
people you want to be around."

And Walt said,
"Mine's not going to be like that."

Disney's newest notion

was not unlike his very first
commercially successful idea.

Just as he had inserted
the real Alice into a cartoon world,

Walt thought he could put real
people inside a new adventure -

live and three-dimensional.

He would construct
the make-believe world for them,

just as he had constructed
his railroad.

This is a leap-from-the-tub, eureka,
run-down-the-street moment here.

I mean, just think about that.

"I am going to take
what these movies have done,

"these landscapes
that we've invented

"that are just drawings on paper
and coloured pencils -

"I'm going to create a place where
you can actually walk within it."

This is kicking down many walls of
perspective and reality.

Disney has this great idea
for building Disneyland.

Now, one problem -
where's the money gonna come from?

So, you see, this is the result
of being a good boy for 30 years.

Santa finally came across.

See the little traveller in there?
See that thing, right?

And this up here, this is the, uh...

(TOOT!)
..whistle.

Mr Disney!

Disney had been looking for

the best way to exploit
the new medium of television

since the late 1940s.

He had even taken it
for a test drive in 1950,

hosting a one-off Christmas special,
One Hour in Wonderland,

to promote one of his films.

The Disney program drew 90%
of the viewing audience

and gushing reviews.

"Walt Disney can take over television
any time he likes,"

The New York Times suggested.

You kids help me
with the magic words.

Bippity-boppity...

ALL: Boo!

The three major networks

had been asking Disney for more shows
ever since,

and by the summer of 1953,
Walt was hot to make a deal.

Roy travelled to New York

to make an offer to each of
the major television networks.

The Disneys were willing to produce
a weekly show, but for a price -

the network that got the show

would have to provide much of
the $5 million the brothers needed

for the construction of Disneyland.

Just two days before
the pitch meetings, on a Saturday,

Roy decided he needed a sales tool
that didn't yet exist -

a drawing of the entire park.

Disneyland, at that point,
was still largely in Walt's head,

and his head alone.

Roy called Walt, and Walt called
an old Disney art director

and begged him to help.

"Like a little boy with tears
in his eyes," Herb Ryman recalled.

Walt stayed at Ryman's side
for more than 42 hours straight,

delivering him sandwiches
and milkshakes,

and describing what he wanted
through billows of cigarette smoke.

So, Walt can stand there
and direct him around

and say,
"No, make the castle bigger,

"and let's put
a Frontierland over here,

"and maybe this could be
an Indian village,"

and direct the orchestra.

It's like Walt can stand there and
go, "A little more viola, please,"

and have Herb Ryman
lay out this whole plan.

The two men put the drawing
on a plane that Monday,

but Roy still had a hard time
sealing the deal.

NBC and CBS had no interest
in putting up the money

for something called Disneyland.

It took Roy months to convince the
perennial third-place network, ABC,

to take the bait.

Walt later joked,

"ABC needed the television show
so damn bad

"that they bought
the amusement park."

SCHICKEL: That was a probably
pretty dangerous moment for him,

corporately-speaking.

Will it be a success?
Will it be a failure?

If it's a failure, you know,

the whole company
is kind of on the line.

HIGGINBOTHAM: He saw this as his
personal statement about who he was,

who the Walt Disney company was
and who he thought America was.

He believed in this so strongly.

Disney's plans for the 160-acre
building site in Anaheim, California,

called for 5,000 cubic yards
of concrete,

a million square feet
of asphalt pathways

and acres of flowers and greenery.

The designs included
a three-quarters scale replica

of an 1890s Main Street,

suspiciously similar to
Walt's memories of Marceline,

man-made riverbeds for the steamboat
in Frontierland

and the Jungle Cruise
in Adventureland,

and a Bavarian-style castle
towering 80 feet above Fantasyland.

There were also plans

for more than a mile of narrow-gauge
railroad track ringing the park,

and beyond that, a 20-foot high berm,

so that the real world
could not intrude.

MAN: The first time
I ever saw Disneyland,

it was a great big dusty place
full of bulldozers

and orange trees being knocked down

and concrete forms being built.

And when I first saw it, I thought,
"We're gonna open in six months?

"How in the world
are they ever gonna do this?"

The desire for escape and amusement
was growing in mid-'50s America,

and more and more people
had the means of pursuit.

Americans were fanning out
into the suburbs.

More families than ever before had
a television set in the living room

and extra cash
in the family pay cheque

for entertainment, travel, toys.

The biggest generation America
had ever seen, the Baby Boomers,

had reached school age.

These children were not yet
old enough to drive the family car,

but they were old enough
to drive family spending.

DOUGLAS: These kids are eight
and nine years old.

And they're looking for
a kind of set of cultural values

that are a bit different

from the privations of
the Depression and the war.

TV ANNOUNCER: American Motors,
builders of Nash Automobiles,

Kelvinator home appliances
and Hudson Motor Cars...

..present Walt Disney's Disneyland!

# When you wish upon a star

# Makes no difference who you are. #

Each week,
as you enter this timeless land,

one of these many worlds
will open to you.

Here now to tell you about it
is Walt Disney.

Welcome.

I guess you all know
this little fellow here.

It's an old partnership.

SKLAR: I think he was one of
the great salesmen of our time

because he never
tried to sell something

he didn't personally believe in.

Now we want you to share with us
our latest and greatest dream.

That's it, right here.

Disneyland!

Seen from about 2,000 feet
in the air and 10 months away.

GABLER: Now, Walt Disney is creating
anticipation for Disneyland.

And he's making people feel -
particularly children -

"This is the most magical place.
You have to come here."

He makes it a destination.

We hope that
through our television show

that you will join us and take part
in the building of Disneyland,

and that you will find here

a place of knowledge and happiness.

He was very humble and open,
and seemed very accessible.

At the same time,
he'd never condescend.

He always talked to children
as peers, as equals.

But this year...

HIGGINBOTHAM: Walt becomes
the master of dreams and hopes.

Not in a...off-putting way,

not in a way
that feels unrelateable.

Now, at the foot of Main Street,
about where you're sitting,

is the plaza.

He's actually an individual who
could make your dreams come true.

Shooting out from here,
like the four cardinal points...

The Disneyland TV show

featured a different
hour-long offering every week,

each show mapped onto
one of the four realms

at the theme park Walt was building.

They are Adventureland...

..Tomorrowland...

..Fantasyland...

..and Frontierland.

It was a Frontierland offering -

"tall tales and true
from the legendary past" -

that became the talk of
the schoolyard.

Now, in our TV series
from Frontierland,

we're going to tell about these
real people who became legend,

like Davy Crockett.

Davy Crockett aired on
three separate Wednesdays

from December of 1954
to February of 1955.

ANNOUNCER: Davy Crockett,
Indian Fighter.

Children across the country
fell hard

for the larger-than-life
frontiersman.

DOUGLAS: Davy Crockett was homespun,
plain-spoken, tough, enterprising.

He was the rugged individual
who triumphed over everything.

He really embodied a nostalgic,
idealised view

of American male values.

MAN: Davy Crockett is incredibly
anti-authoritarian

in a way no other western hero
for kids were at that time.

When Davy Crockett arrives
at Andrew Jackson's camp,

the first thing he does
is disobey orders.

Excuse me, General.

Well, what do YOU want?!

Nothing much.
Dropped in to say goodbye.

Goodbye?
Where do you think you're going?

Home.

You're going after Red Stick
with the rest of my command.

This war isn't over yet.

I ain't quitting the war. Me and
my neighbours will be back directly.

You see General,
we only volunteered for 60 days

and that's long since up.

Catching Red Stick's liable
to take up the rest of the year.

We've gotta see our families
is took care of

before we start out
on anything like that.

Well, Major?

Desertion is a serious crime
in the army, Crockett!

We ain't quitting the war.
I told you we's coming back.

You're confined to this camp.
That's an order!

My missus would worry about me.

Sorry, General.

BRODE: Disney films told children
to emulate Davy Crockett

and that means listen to
your own inner self.

Do not do what authoritarian
figures tell you to do

if you believe they're wrong.

Pa! Pa! Pa's back!

Pa's back!

Oh, Davy, you're back!

Hi, Pa!
Hi, Pa!

WATTS: The ratings just
went through the roof,

and as the serialised segments
came on,

they got bigger
and bigger and bigger.

By the time the third and final
episode of Davy Crockett aired,

a quarter of the entire American
population was tuned in.

# Born on a mountain top
in Tennessee... #

The show's theme song
became a number one hit record.

Boys and girls across America
were sporting coonskin caps,

just like the one their hero wore.

# Davy!

# Davy Crockett

# King of the Wild Frontier... #

GABLER: The Davy Crockett series
was one of those things

that hits American culture in a way

that only a handful of things
ever hits American culture.

Elvis Presley, the Beatles.

You know, Davy Crockett
was kind of like that.

It was a sensation.

Davy Crockett even proved
a powerful pop culture symbol

in the Cold War between the
United States and the Soviet Union,

a battle of ideologies

fought with words
and pictures and stories.

Davy Crockett's famous saying was,
"Be sure you're right,

"and then go ahead."

And I think that's what Americans
wanted to think about themselves

in the Cold War.

"We're sure we're right
and, by God, we're gonna go ahead."

GABLER: His animations created
a perfect and artificial world.

And what he was really doing

is he was making that material
in Disneyland.

He always thought of Disneyland as
a living animation, a living movie.

And he thought people would love to
enter a film, not just watch it.

SKLAR: You're walking into
the story.

And the things that we worked
so hard...and this was Walt -

..that we worked so hard to avoid

is letting people out of the story
with discordant details -

something out of the time period
that doesn't work.

Even the trash cans in the park
are for that particular story,

that theme.

Walt was down in Anaheim
almost every day.

He would walk every inch of the
construction site, barking orders.

"Move that gazebo! It's blocking
the view of the castle.

"Can we make that lake bigger?
Move the train wreck 50 feet!

"That tree's too close to
the walkway! How about moving it?"

Never mind it weighed 15 tons.

GURR: Walt was literally down there
every day, watching everything...

..but never distraught,
never negative.

Just urging everybody on,

exploring all the ways
how to fix stuff.

GABLER: Walt is interested
in every blade of grass.

He's interested
in every leaf on a tree.

He's interested
in where everything is placed.

There's not an attraction that Walt
Disney isn't deeply involved in.

Disney's constant demands

put the entire operation
behind the eight-ball,

as did his stubborn insistence to get
Disneyland up and running in a hurry.

Six weeks from his announced opening
date, panic was starting to set in.

The entrance plaza
was not yet landscaped,

Main Street was unpaved,

the castle unfinished.

The Jungle Cruise boats were moving,

but the robotic animals
had yet to be installed.

As opening day approached,

less than half of
the planned attractions

were ready to receive visitors,

and members of the WED staff were
lobbying to push back the opening.

Walt was uninterested
in the naysayers.

He just kept pushing harder.

The construction crew tripled
in the final weeks, to 2,500 men,

many of whom were
working 16 hours a day.

Costs climbed
to more than $17 million,

more than three times the estimate
made when construction began.

SKLAR: So many things were
finished at the last minute.

There was a plumbers' strike
in Orange County,

which was settled about a day
before Disneyland opened.

So, Walt had the choice

of finishing the bathrooms
or the drinking fountains.

And, of course,
he chose the bathrooms.

"People can buy Pepsi-Cola,"
Disney explained,

"but they can't pee in the street."

GURR: Well, the interesting
thing about Walt,

just before the park was getting
ready to open, he was so excited.

Like a proud father.
Look what he's got now!

That was Walt at his best.

His enthusiasm of pursuing
where he wanted to go,

and everybody was just going to
follow him right along.

The park was a-bustle
the day before the opening.

ABC was setting its cameras

and running rehearsals
for the next day's broadcast,

which was planned as the biggest and
most ambitious live telecast ever.

One work crew was frantically
trying to dig out

the 900-pound mechanical elephant

that was sinking into
the Jungle River.

Another was adding lead weights
to the front of the train engine

to make sure it didn't tip backward.

Painters were settling in
for an all-nighter.

Walt himself put on a mask
and helped spray-paint backdrops

for the 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea exhibit.

He was still at Disneyland
at three o'clock in the morning,

walking the grounds, barking orders.

"We need new murals for the trains!
Get me an artist!"

July 17th, 1955, dawned unusually
hot in Anaheim, California.

The temperature was already
nearing 100 degrees

when word came that traffic
into the park

was backed up for seven miles
on Harbour Boulevard.

When the gates opened that afternoon
people flooded in,

many of them
waving counterfeit tickets.

You are now in the press room
of Disneyland,

which is equipped to service over
1,000 members of the worldwide press

here to cover this
truly great event.

And to start the proceedings,

we take you to the entrance
of Disneyland

and your host, Art Linkletter.

Well, this job in the next hour
and a half is going to be a delight.

I feel like...

Well, I feel like Santa Claus

with a $17 million bundle of gift
packages, all wrapped in whimsy

and sent your way over television

with the help of 29 cameras,
dozens of crews

and literally miles and miles
of cable.

Now, of course, this is not so much
a show as it is a special event.

Hello, Walt!

Hello, Governor!

Hi! Hi, Art!
Hi!

How'd the run go?
Oh, fine, fine!

The Governor had her round
through Frontierland

and then Fred Gurley there,
he took her round.

I picked her up and brought her in.
High-ballin' in, boys!

WATTS: They have dozens of cameras
all through the park.

And the hope is that they will
go from this scene to that,

and here to there,
and show all parts of the park.

And about half of it worked
and half of it didn't.

Technology, of course, in the TV age
in that period was very crude.

It was live TV
and there were a lot of screw-ups.

Sure. Bob Cummings up at the
pirate ship. We're back to you, boy!

(QUIET CHATTER)

Oh! You're waiting for me?
Oh, thank you!

Everybody is waving at Bob Cummings
over here, so I guess I'm back on.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's
Bob Cummings again, back with you.

And like the Peter Pan
Fly-Through...

I'd like to read these
few words of dedication.

"A vista into a world of
wondrous ideas

"signifying man's achievements..."

I thought I got a signal?

The audience for the live broadcast
that Sunday

was double Disney's normal number.

Nearly half of the American
population took in Disneyland

from the comfort of
their own living rooms,

which had its advantages.

Fantasyland was closed
by a nearby gas leak.

Mr Toad's Wild Ride succumbed to
an overload of the park's power grid.

GURR: It was so hot!

It was just not a day
you want to have that much heat.

The asphalt was still soft.

And the gals with the high heels
were going down in the asphalt.

The lines were so packed, we didn't
try to eat because it was...

The lines to get food
was ridiculous.

The whole thing
was a bit of a nightmare.

SKLAR: Oh, it was awful.
It was terrible.

There were rumours that some of
the Hollywood personalities

were using language
that shouldn't be heard by children.

(LAUGHS)

Newspaper reporters were crawling
all over the park that day,

filling their notebooks with mishaps
and misadventures

for their next day's stories.

Walt didn't care.

His daughter Diane
said she had never seen him happier.

Walt, you've made a bum out
of Barnum today, but we've gotta go.

I know, but I just want to say
a word of thanks to all the artists,

the workers, and everybody that
helped make this dream come true.

Let's go into Fantasyland
and have some fun.

Have some fun! Let's go.
Goodbye, folks!

Disneyland was thrown open
to the public

the day after the gala opening,

and people began lining up
at two o'clock that morning

for the chance to be the first ones
through the gate.

The park drew a million visitors
in its first 10 weeks alone,

Pretty soon, there were
five million per year,

and Walt's paradise
had become a must-see

for foreign dignitaries
on tour in the US.

Prime Minister Nehru of India
touched down in the park,

as did the King and Queen of Nepal,
the Shah of Iran,

political leaders from Europe,
Africa and South America.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
threw a fit

when the US State Department,
citing security concerns,

quashed his planned visit
to Disneyland.

These world leaders
saw Disneyland

as a quick and easy window
into the US psyche.

The Cliff Notes version
of American history and culture.

Walt's countrymen, meanwhile,

were enticed to this new vacation
destination by a simple promise -

a day's escape from the cares
and concerns of everyday life.

WATTS: What introduces all of it,

that you have to go through
when you come into the park,

is this idealised rendering
of small-town America.

The values, the feel,
the ethics, all of that.

What Disney's trying to do
at some level of awareness

is to create an image of America

that people would
like to think exists.

(BOAT'S WHISTLE TOOTS)

ANNOUNCER: On Tom Sawyer's Island,
you see Old Fort Wilderness.

Shelter and protection
for the hearty pioneers,

pushing ahead
into unsettled territory.

Off the port bow,
a friendly Indian village

where members of
many tribes gather

to perform
ancient ceremonial dances.

HIGGINBOTHAM: Disneyland is a space

in which American ideals
are celebrated.

So, you have Frontierland and you
have gestures to America's past,

and not the complicated moments,

not the moments
that are about pain and suffering.

If there's a Native American
presence at Frontierland,

it's not about the contest.

It's about resolution.

Frontierland and Adventureland
pointed back,

Fantasyland inward.

Tomorrowland compassed
advances in science and technology

that assured better days to come,

and all under the guidance of
corporate America.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Monsanto's
Plastics Home of the Future.

As you entered
this experimental model home,

perhaps you noticed
that the house itself

is constructed entirely of plastics.

HIGGINBOTHAM: Disneyland is
the idealisation of the past

and the hopeful regard
for the future.

It is not about now.

It is a complete release
from all of those burdens.

GABLER: What people find there

is a perfection that
you can't find in real life.

It's odd to say that
something's better than real,

because after all,
what's better than real?

But Walt Disney was the man
who helped discover

things that are better than real.

"Disneyland materialises bigger
than life and twice as real,"

one magazine writer gushed.

Another praised Disney for
tending his creation

"with the sureness of a mature master

"who can still retain
the vision of a child."

There were a handful of
early critics.

"The whole world, the universe,

"and all man's striving for dominion
over self and nature,"

wrote a journalist,

"have been reduced
to a sickening blend

"of cheap formulas packaged to sell.

"Life is bright-coloured, clean,
safe, mediocre, inoffensive."

Walt Disney wanted
bright and clean and safe.

He loved the place.

GURR: Walt treated that park
as his personal toy.

Over the firehouse there,
next to the City Hall,

they had a little apartment.

He and Lilly would go down there
on a Friday or Saturday night.

He'd get up early in the morning
before anybody showed up,

and he'd go over to a little store

where they had orange juice
being freshly squeezed,

and he'd go out there
in his bathrobe and get it

and come back up
to his little apartment.

MAN: It was a good place for Walt
to relax, get away from the crowd.

But it was adjacent to
the jungle ride.

All night long, you would hear...

(CHANTS) "Ha-ya-ya-ya! Ha-ya..."
(LAUGHS)

All night long.

CRUMP: If you saw him in person,

you'd never recognise him
from the man that was on TV.

Walt was really quite bent over.

With his little sweater that
he wore, his little golf sweater,

and he never combed his hair,

he'd wander around Disneyland
and nobody knew who he was.

He used to get in line

and stand in line for as long as it
took to see the attraction,

and just listen to
what people had to say

because there might be something
that he would hear

that would spark him into some of
the attractions that he was doing.

At a dinner party one evening,
a friend suggested to Disney

that he was popular enough
to be elected President.

Walt fixed him
with an incredulous stare.

"Why would I want to be
President of the United States?

"I'm the King of Disneyland."

In July 1956, the summer
after his theme park opened,

Walt Disney
alighted in Marceline, Missouri,

the town where he had briefly lived
a half-century earlier.

He had been asked back to dedicate
a park named in his honour,

and surprised the town fathers
by accepting the invitation.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Marceline accorded Walt and
his brother, Roy, a hero's welcome,

and Disney luxuriated in the glow
of the town's adoration.

The reception seemed to confirm Walt
Disney's fondest idea of himself.

He was the exemplar of

the simple and steadfast virtues
of middle America -

a small-town boy made good.

It didn't matter that Walt had spent
nearly his entire childhood

in Kansas City and Chicago,

and his entire adult life
in Los Angeles.

He was reclaiming Marceline as home.

This was classic Disney -
an act of will and of imagination.

He was rewriting his own childhood
with a happy ending.

HAHN: Mark Twain had his Hannibal,

Walt Disney was going to
have his Marceline.

He could go out and just play.

And sit in his wishing tree.

And hear the trains
go by at night-time,

trains that could take him
anywhere in the world.

NILSEN: For him, everything
springs out of Marceline.

"This is the place you need to
represent and signify

"as the one where I came from."

HIGGINBOTHAM: It almost feels like
it's locked in time. It's frozen.

And he can relive it over
and over and over again.

I think that is the appeal of it.

It's a romanticised period
of his youth.

And he accesses it.

He can go back to it
and use it as a touchstone

for his understanding of
what an ideal childhood should be.

By 1960, Walt Disney stood atop

one of the world's most profitable
entertainment enterprises.

The steady stream of revenue
from Disneyland

meant Walt was free from
interference from his bankers

for the first time
in his 40-year career.

But whether he was making
improvements on his theme park

or overseeing his TV shows

and the half-dozen movies his studio
was producing every year,

he was always thinking about
protecting his legacy.

"Disney is something we've built up
in the public over the years,"

he explained to one young writer.

Disney "stands for something."

SUSKIND: Brand wasn't used
back then,

but, you know, "I now am a symbol,"
is what he's saying.

And I think what he's trying
to wrestle with

is how does it feel to be a symbol?

How does it feel to be, essentially,

a one-word representation
of a lot of stuff?

ANNOUNCER: Walt Disney and Mickey
Mouse present the Mickey Mouse Club!

# M-I-C-K-E-Y

# M-O-U-S-E,

# Mickey Mouse!
# Donald Duck!

# Mickey Mouse!
# Donald Duck!

# Forever let us hold our banner
high, high, high, high! #

HIGGINBOTHAM: He starts to
internalise that sense of

he's standing for something more.

And it's not shareholders.

Those are not
who he feels responsible to.

KIDS: Yay, Mickey!
Yay, Mickey Mouse!

As he solidifies as a brand,

you don't have that risk-taking

that you felt in
the early years of his career.

MILLER: He invited Diane and I over
to watch a film.

The film was To Kill a Mockingbird.

He said, "Boy, that was
a hell of a picture.

"I wish I could make
a picture like that."

And you could feel that he felt
restricted in what he...

..how far he could go.

And one more thing
we want you to always remember...

# M-I-C...

See you real soon!

# K-E-Y... #

Why? Because we like ya!

HAHN: It is entertainment

that is bounded by Walt's ethics

and his aesthetics

and his perception of what
a family audience wanted and needed.

You're going to see
the happy ending.

You're going to see a film
or a theme park or a place to go

where it shows the hope
of the human spirit

excelling and winning
at the end of the day.

'Cause that's who he was.

SONG: # Colour... #

Disney made no apologies
for his work,

whatever his private misgivings.

He would sometimes say, with more
than a little revisionist history,

that he had never thought of his
movies as art, but as show business,

and could point to

his huge box-office take

as proof that he was serving

an appreciative public.

WALT DISNEY: Hello!

I'm sorry you got lost.

When ABC expressed frustration

over the falling ratings
of his television show,

Disney simply moved it
to NBC's Sunday evening line-up

and stayed on as host.

Now, in a few moments,
we'll go over to Stage Two

for the filming of
the final scene of Babes in Toyland.

SCHICKEL: He liked his fame.

He was comfortable with it.

He liked introducing the TV show.

He liked the character he created
of the avuncular Uncle Walt.

The motion picture set

is probably the most expendable
part of filmmaking.

CRUMP: They would write scripts

and have a monitor for him to read
when he was on TV,

and then he'd just forget it,
he just would wing it.

So, he loved winging it on TV.

Time to shoot the final scene.

All the cast and all the crew
are on Stage Two.

HIGGINBOTHAM: There's something very
affable about Walt Disney, the host.

He's there every week.

He's a regular part of
your living room experience.

Well, this is how
a busy movie set looks

to the man behind
the man behind the camera.

HIGGINBOTHAM: He speaks to you
as if you mattered to him.

But it's actually a well-organised
and efficient operation.

HIGGINBOTHAM: Is it really him?
I don't know.

I want to believe it's him.
I hope it's him.

And I think audiences
hope it's him as well.

Walt was aware of the gap
between himself

and the persona he had created
for public consumption.

"I'm not Walt Disney,"
he once told a friend.

"I do a lot of things
Walt Disney wouldn't do.

"Walt Disney doesn't smoke. I smoke.

"Walt Disney doesn't drink.
I drink."

He told himself he was the same
regular guy he had always been.

He got his haircuts
at the company barbershop,

drove himself to the office
every day,

and carried cans of his favourite
chilli-and-beans

on trips to London
or the French Riviera.

But he was not like everybody else,
and he knew it.

MAN: Every time Walt walked down a
hallway, he would give a loud cough.

Naturally, you'd think Walt's
coughing because he was a smoker.

But his cough was not necessarily
due to smoking.

It was a warning sign so we would
know that the boss was in the area.

MAN: In Bambi, there's a line -

when "Man is in the forest,"
there was danger.

You have to be worried.

We'd hear Walt coughing,
coming down the hall.

And one of the guys would say,
"Man is in the forest."

And we'd all get ready for Walt.

He walked through the door
and, you know, pins would drop.

You couldn't hear anything.

His personal power
walked right with him.

You knew you were sitting
with Walt Disney.

And there was no joking around.

He would sit down, he'd say,
"OK, guys, what you got?"

Disney's company was
bigger than ever in the early 1960s,

with money to burn.

But Walt was as restless
and driven as always,

and still difficult
when things were going against him.

He quit speaking to
his brother Roy for months

during a contentious
contract negotiation.

He still chain-smoked
through every story meeting,

always aware
that the clock was running.

MILLER: For the most part
he was patient,

but when somebody
was really off base,

his eyebrow would go up and...

..his fingers would start tapping.

That was the sign.

NORMAN: Walt was not generous
with praise.

If he was pleased with something,
he would simply say, "That'll work."

If you could get
"That'll work" from Walt Disney,

you knew you had done your job.

That was a good day.
That was a good meeting.

SHERMAN: Walt Disney
could be very hard on someone

if they weren't
cooperating in his way.

He'd jump on them really very badly.

Because if somebody's,
"Nah, just doesn't hit me.

"I just don't like it,"

he'd say, "If you can't think of
a way to improve it, or try to,

"then keep your mouth shut."

Oh, he got very upset with them.

I only saw him...
in the seven years that I knew him,

I only saw him unload twice.

And I thought,

"God, I'll never reach that point
to where he unloads on me."

But the people that he unloaded on
deserved it.

I was there.

Once he's made a decision,
you abide by it.

Whether you agree with it or not,
he's the boss, for godsakes.

SCHICKEL: I don't think
he was totally grounded.

I think he wanted to be
what his image was.

I think he wanted to be thought of
as "hail-fellow-well-met,"

good-natured.

But he wasn't.

Nobody who does stuff
on the scale that he did

is a good-natured,
sweetheart of a guy.

He was a hard-driving guy.

And I don't think
he ever resolved those conflicts.

(HORN HONKS)

Walt Disney had no real intimates
outside his own family

and made little room in his life
for friends.

But he wanted acceptance
and love and acclaim

with a greediness
that would have looked pathetic

in a less successful man.

At age 61,

he had won more Academy Awards than
any other film producer in history,

but it irked him that he had never
even won a nomination

for the most coveted prize -

the Oscar for Best Picture.

The boss's increasing engagement

in one particular film
in the Disney pipeline

started to create buzz
around Burbank in 1963.

Mary Poppins was based on

a favourite children's novel
of Disney's daughters,

and a project Walt had started
thinking about 20 years earlier,

back in that long-vanished era
of limitless possibility

after the worldwide success of
Snow White.

And memories of that formative era
seemed to be tugging at Walt.

MILLER: There was no animation
in Mary Poppins.

I'll never forget, one time,
we're going over a scene

and Walt said, "By the way, Ron,
would you look up Song of the South,

"and reel two,
a hundred feet into it?

"Put it in a projection room.

"I would like to run it
for the guys."

They looked at each other.
"What the hell is this all about?"

And we went into the room, and
it was live action and animation.

And he got up and left.
Didn't say a word.

And about three weeks later,
the same thing happened.

"Ron, will you put
that reel up again?"

And the lights came on,
and that's when he told the boys,

"I have an idea
for animation in this."

(CHEERFUL MUSIC PLAYS)

SHERMAN: He's basically a story man.

He wanted the song moving story,
developing story, pushing story.

And that was very,
very important to him.

# The children must be moulded

# Shaped and taught

# That life's a looming battle
to be faced and fought! #

Mary Poppins is not
a children's story.

It's a story about
a dysfunctional family

that was not paying attention to
the most important thing they had,

and that was their children.

And Walt knew that,
and that's what the story was.

# It's time they learned
to walk in your footsteps

# My footsteps

# To tread your straight
and narrow path with pride

# With pride

# Tomorrow just as you suggest,
pressed and dressed

# Jane and Michael
will be at your side.

Splendid! You've hit the nail
right on the....

At my side? Where are we going?

To the bank, of course,
exactly as you proposed.

I proposed?
Of course! Now, if you'll excuse me.

Tomorrow's an important day
for the children.

I shall see they have
a proper night's sleep.

Mary Poppins debuted
in the summer of 1964

and became a box-office smash.

It was also Walt Disney's
most deliberate refashioning

of the hard-hearted father story -

a miraculous
parental transformation.

# With tuppence
for paper and strings

# You can have
your own set of wings

# With your feet on the ground

# You're a bird in flight

# With your fist holding tight

# To the string of your kite.

# Oh, oh, oh!

# Let's go fly a kite!

# Up to the highest height! #

"You have made a great many pictures

"that have touched
the hearts of the world,"

wrote legendary producer
Samuel Goldwyn.

"But you have never made one
so completely the fulfilment

"of everything
a great motion picture should be."

# Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go...#

He is able to produce a film
on his terms

that has a narrative
that is very much about family.

# Let's go fly a kite! #

About the healing of the family.

# Up to the highest height! #

So, he's staying true to
what he believes personally

that has woven itself
into all of his films.

# Up to the atmosphere... #

Mary Poppins was nominated
for 13 Oscars,

including Walt Disney's first and
only nomination for Best Picture.

Mary Poppins is validation
for Walt Disney.

# Up to the atmosphere! #

He's finally being embraced

by those whose validation
he has always sought.

# Oh, let's go

# Fly a kite! #

(SCREAMING)

Mary Poppins premiered
into a different America

than had Mickey Mouse,
Snow White and Pinocchio.

American teenagers were discovering
The Beatles and Bob Dylan...

..and James Brown...

..and beginning to worry
about a growing war

in a place called Vietnam.

(SIREN WAILS, SHOUTING)

The entire country, meanwhile,

was convulsed by momentous
new civil rights laws.

Riots in New York and Los Angeles

and segregationist intimidation
in the Deep South

were beamed into television sets
in living rooms across the country.

DOUGLAS: The gap
is growing wider and wider

between Disney's version of America,

and what's really going on
in the country,

which is all of these fissures
being exposed.

# O beautiful,
for spacious skies... #

Walt's defenders
pointed to his movies

as "sanctuaries of decency and health

"in the jungle of sex and sadism
created by Hollywood producers."

How lovely it is!

Makes you feel proud, doesn't it?

Hi down there!

Oh, Ned, look out!

Critics slammed him.

"Genuine feeling is ignored,"
said one,

"the imagination of children
bludgeoned with mediocrity."

# Let's get together
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

# Think of all
that we could share! #

NILSEN: Watered down, no edge,

devoid of any kind of
distinctive ethnicity,

any kind of diversity.

This white, middle-class,
Protestant value system

is what he really
gets identified with.

Many of those people that celebrated
the '30s Disney as this visionary

are now saying,
"You're conservative.

"The values you're selling
are conservative.

"We no longer agree with them.
Those are not our values."

The next number will be
a ladies' tag dance.

The truth was,
Disney's commercial success

depended on a certain set
of traditional values,

which were sometimes
racist and sexist.

DOUGLAS: There were a lot of ways
Disney ignored

major differences in our society,

sought to erase them,

or sought to keep marginalised
people in their place.

I didn't say
I was going to take the position.

All I said was...

Betsy, no wife of mine
is going to work.

Not as long as I have
a spark of life left in my body.

Disney was aware of
the knocks against him,

but he wasn't going to
let the critics change his work.

# Bon Voyage!
Bon Voyage!

# Have a gay holiday! #

MILLER: There was a film critic for
the New York Times, Bosley Crowther.

There was this film, and Bosley
was criticising the film for corn.

Too much corn. Just corny.

# Kiss me on the Eiffel tower. #

Walt and I happened to
have lunch that day,

and I said, "Did you happen
to see the review?"

and he said, "Yeah."

He said, "He's got to realise,
I like corn. I love corn.

"That's what I'm all about."

# Bon Voyage!
Bon Voyage!

# Have a gay holiday
and don't forget to write

# Bon Voyage! #

Word started to get around in 1965

that Walt Disney was buying up
enormous tracts of land

in central Florida.

By the time Disney
was ready to go public,

the company already
owned 27,000 acres,

giving him a building lot bigger
than the island of Manhattan.

Walt Disney, who will bring a new
world of entertainment, pleasure,

and economic development
to the state of Florida.

Walt Disney.
(APPLAUSE)

Thank you, Governor.

What type of attraction

or what type of usage will be made
at this great location?

We have many things in mind

that could make this unique
and different than Disneyland.

Will it be a Disneyland?

Well, I've always said

there will never be another
Disneyland, Governor.

Walt remained cagey about
the scope and outlines

of what he called Project Future.

We know the basic things that have
this what I call "family appeal".

Only a handful of company insiders
knew what he was planning -

the Experimental Prototype Community
of Tomorrow, or EPCOT.

HAHN: It's like, "I did the mouse.
That was great.

"Yeah, I affected popular culture.
I made movies and things.

"But is that a real contribution
or is that just popcorn?

"Am I just this fugitive guy

"that is doling out popular culture
for people to consume

"and it's here today
and gone tomorrow?

"Is it fast food?"

And I think that turns
to thoughts of,

"Well, if it is,
then what is my legacy?"

KOEHN: What can you leave the world?

What can you create for the world
that will outlast you?

Well, the city of the future.

A city where there is prosperity
and possibility and hope.

GURR: A lot of people
had talked about it,

nobody had really
done anything about it,

and I got the impression
Walt felt that,

well, by golly,
he could do this.

NORMAN: He was now being a futurist,
a visionary,

and building a functioning,
working city of tomorrow,

a city that would be a model
for the United States

and perhaps even for
the rest of the world.

CRUMP: He used to get
so goddamn excited about EPCOT.

When he'd talk about it,

it was like he'd just come back
from the moon yesterday.

He was just so thrilled.

ANNOUNCER: No city of today

will serve as the guide
for the city of tomorrow.

EPCOT will be a planned environment,

demonstrating to the world what
American communities can accomplish

through proper control of
planning and design

in the area of business
and commerce.

Disney's design called for
a high-density town centre

with hotels and corporate offices,

a greenbelt for recreation
and entertainment,

and a low-density residential area

with schools and parks
and playgrounds.

It would all be knit together

by the most efficient and convenient
public transportation,

and by a common purpose -
progress, Disney-style.

CRUMP: He wanted all the major
companies in the United States

to have research and development
organisations as part of EPCOT

right next door to each other.

So GE would be
right next door to Ford.

Ford would be right next door
to General Motors.

All these research divisions
for all these big companies

would become close.

ANNOUNCER: But most important,

this entire 50 acres of
city streets and buildings

will be completely enclosed.

In this climate-controlled
environment,

shoppers and theatre-goers
and people just out for a stroll

will enjoy ideal weather conditions.

Walt's got these drawings of EPCOT
laid out on the table,

and we're all talking
about everything,

and he was pointing out
what's going to go here

and what's going to go there.

And he kind of tapped the drawing
kind of funny, and, uh, he said,

"Well, I'm going to put
this little park bench right here,

"and Lilly and I are going to sit
here we're going to watch people."

He's seeing it as a giant project,

but he's seeing it as a place

where he knows he's going to
put his own park bench.

Disney allowed himself a rare treat
in the summer of 1966.

He left his studio for a two-week
vacation with his wife,

daughters, Diane and Sharon,
and their growing families.

MILLER: This gentleman
offered Walt his yacht

to tour the coastline of Canada
and up into Alaska.

We had Sharon and Bob and her child,

and then we had all our kids.

His room was right next to our room,

and he was coughing an awful lot,
all night long.

Diane was very concerned.

But he had fun.

He said, "We're gonna have to
do this more often."

Welcome to a little bit of Florida,
here in California.

This is where the early planning
is taking place

for our so-called, uh,
"Disney World Project."

On October 27, 1966,

Walt Disney spent the day
on the studio soundstage

shooting his part in a promotional
film about his new pet project.

The most exciting,

by far the most important part
of our Florida project -

in fact, the heart of everything
we'll be doing in Disney World -

will be our Experimental
Prototype City of Tomorrow.

We call it EPCOT.

The effort winded the 64-year-old
so badly,

he needed oxygen between takes.

..Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

GURR: He didn't look good.
He didn't feel good.

He just seemed to be
almost permanently grumpy.

The word around the lot was,
"Well, he's not feeling too well."

Disney's old polo injury
was giving him trouble.

His neck hurt, his shoulder hurt,
he was having trouble with his hip

and sometimes dragged his leg
when he walked.

"My nerves are shot to hell,"
he admitted to Hazel George,

"and the pain is driving me nuts."

He finally gave in
and scheduled spinal surgery,

but in the pre-operative exam

at a hospital across the street
from the studio,

doctors discovered
something else to be worried about -

a mass on one of his lungs.

The diagnosis was cancer.

The prognosis was bad.

Doctors told him
he had two years at most.

MILLER: Walt, the optimist that he
was, felt he was gonna lick it.

He said, "You know,
it's one of these things.

"I've smoked all my life,

"and I've seen people
who have smoked all their life

"and they didn't have lung cancer.

"I thought it would never
happen to me.

"And it happened."

Nobody let us in on it.

Maybe some of the inner circle might
have known it was more serious.

But I didn't.

And one day, we were looking at
a rough cut of this film,

and Walt was there in the hall.

And as he passed us, in the hall,
we were standing there,

he looked at us and he said,
"Keep up the good work, fellas."

It's the first time, and the only
time, he ever complimented our work.

And he winked at us
and walked down the hall.

Walt did not return to the studio
as usual the next day.

He checked himself
back into the hospital instead.

Roy would get up very early
in the morning and go to see Walt.

And Walt always complained
about his feet being cold,

so Roy would stand there
and rub his feet and get them warm.

On the night of December 14th, 1966,

Walt sent Lillian home
from his bedside to get some rest.

He promised her
he was feeling stronger.

Roy stayed behind
and sat at the bedside

while his kid brother,
flat on his back,

pointed up to the ceiling tiles,

trying to explain
the vision of Disney World and EPCOT

that shimmered before him,

trying to make Roy see it as he did.

"Now there is where the highway
will run," he explained.

"And there is the route
for the monorail."

I went down to get my hair cut.

And it was a gal in the barbershop,
and she was cutting my hair

and she says, "Too bad about Walt."

And I said,
"Oh, he's going to be OK.

"He'll be back next week."

"No. He died."

Well, I couldn't get out of
that chair quicker to get home.

And my mother, my cousin,
are just like this.

They wouldn't even talk to me.

Well, that was a bad day.

I was next door at the studio.

And, uh, I rushed over and...

..he was gone.

SHERMAN: I heard somebody shrieking
and running down the hall.

It was one of the secretaries.

And I opened the door, and everybody
was rushing into the hallway.

"Walt died."

Nobody could believe it.

And we all gathered
in Bill Anderson's office,

a whole bunch of us.

And they were crying.
Men were crying. I was crying.

It was terrible. It was horrible.

It was just horrible.

CRUMP: I was in my office
in the model shop

and John Hench came out
and told me, "Walt passed."

And everybody was just, you know...

It was just like it'd taken
the breath out of us.

It was like the end of the world.

Like the end of the world.

REPORTER: Walt Disney
is dead tonight, at the age of 65.

..undergone surgery last month for
removal of part of his left lung...

..he won 29 Oscars, 4 Emmys,
the Irving Thalberg Award...

Walt Disney,
Hollywood's Prince of Fantasy.

Walt Disney's death
was front-page news the next day,

across the country
and around the world.

REPORTER: Of his success, Disney
has said, "There's no magic formula.

"Children all over the world
have one thing in common -

"love of laughter."

In the year after he died,

nearly seven million people
visited Disneyland.

Tens of millions around the world
listened to a Disney record

or bought Disney-licensed
merchandise

or tuned in to
Walt's television show.

Hundreds of millions
saw one of Disney's movies.

HIGGINBOTHAM:
That sense of happiness,

that sense of American identity -

those are things
that you want to achieve

and Disney offers that to you.

GABLER: He's either the man
who ruined American culture

and brought all of this fakeness
into our lives,

or he's the man who inspired us

and gave us hours
and hours of entertainment.

HAHN: Walt Disney represented
more than just a guy.

He was an ethos.
He was a way of approaching life.

And whether you hated him
or loved him,

there was no-one that could argue

with his effect
on 20th-century culture.

I can move!

I can talk!

NILSEN: How do we deal with
growing up?

I can walk!

Bambi!

What does it mean
when we leave childhood behind?

How do we deal with death?

They're questions
all humans deal with,

no matter what period,
no matter what culture.

SUSKIND: Disney goes back
and taps old myths

and old narrative arcs

that are deeply rooted in all of us.

What is the meaning of my life?

What is my journey really born of?

How can I discover who I am?

HIGGINBOTHAM: He affects all of us.

No-one is untouched by Walt Disney.

GABLER: There aren't that many
figures in American culture

who cover as many bases,
who do as many things,

as Walt Disney.

Disney was somebody
who understood the American psyche.

He was also someone who anticipated
the future of the American psyche.

He understood a whole lot about us.

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