American Experience (1988–…): Season 28, Episode 1 - Walt Disney - Part 1 - full transcript

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.

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

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 had to be worried.

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

One of the guys would say,
"Man is in the forest!"

And we'd all get ready for Walt.

MAN: When he walked through
the door, you know, pins would drop.

You couldn't hear anything.



His personal power
walked right with him.

There was no joking around.

He would sit down and he'd say,
"OK, guys. What you got?"

And I would say.
"I got a great idea!"

And Walt would say, "We'll tell you
if you have a great idea.

"You have an idea."

NARRATOR: Walt Disney
was an international celebrity

by the time he was 30,

hailed a genius before he was 40,

with honorary degrees
from Harvard and Yale.

He built a media
and entertainment company

that stands as one of
the most powerful on the planet...

This little fellow is Bashful.

..won more Academy Awards
than anybody in history,



created a cinematic art form...

(SNEEZES)

..and invented a new kind of
American vacation destination.

Disney's work counts adoring
fans on every continent,

and critics who decried its
smooth facade of sentimentality

and stubborn optimism,

its feelgood rewrite of
American history.

MAN: Disney's a Rorschach
in America.

The love and hate -
it's off the charts.

But, God, you have got to respect
the energy of this guy.

I mean, he is lunging
every day of his life.

Well, kids,
Babes in Toyland is finished

so now it's time to celebrate.

MAN: Nobody who does stuff
on the scale that he did

is a sweetheart of a guy.

I think he wanted to be
what his image was.

He wanted to be...

..thought of as 'hail fellow
well met', good-natured.

But he wasn't.

MAN: Walt Disney is in many ways
a very dark soul.

And one could say that
he fought that,

fought that darkness,
tried to find the light.

WOMAN: He is feeling so much inside

and he wants people to feel
what he feels is inside.

He could take those feelings that
were so central to who he was,

put them on screen

and allow other people to also
feel them along with him.

Most successful people,
they get one thing right,

and that's it.

But Walt Disney was a guy
who got a whole lot of things right.

What did this guy understand
about the human psyche?

MAN: Walt Disney was as driven a man
as I've ever met in my life.

What he really wanted to do...

..was as we used to say
in the Middle West,

make a name for himself.

He had a sort of
undifferentiated ambition.

He wanted to be somebody,
that's for sure.

Walt Disney was still a few months
shy of his 18th birthday

when he returned from France
after the First World War in 1919,

and he was already better off

than most of the two million other
American boys streaming back home.

Diz, as his friends called him,
had banked over $500

and had a place waiting for him
at a Chicago jelly factory

where his father was part owner.

The job offer was the best most
working-class boys could hope for,

but Walt Disney was not like
most working-class boys.

MAN: He's got all these ideas
and he starts acting on them.

And where most people are,
"Ready, aim, fire,"

he was like, "Ready, fire, aim."

You know, he's like, "Let's go!"

Walt loved attention.

He was an extrovert.

He loved to be
the centre of attention.

He wants to be an artist.

And I think
he discovered something early on -

that talent was
his way of getting attention.

He's a man of the times
and the times are exciting.

Walt was determined
to do work he loved

and he had been an enthusiastic
artist and cartoonist

from the time he was little.

He took a pass on factory work
in Chicago

and headed for Kansas City instead,

where he had spent much
of his boyhood.

He moved into a house
with two of his old brothers

and landed a job as a commercial
artist for a local ad company.

Soon he was making enough money
for fashionable clothes, fine cigars,

meals at nice restaurants,

and near nightly trips to the movie
houses springing up all over town.

Disney's evenings in these
new palaces of celluloid fantasy

included at least one feature film,
maybe a serial short,

a newsreel,
and an animated cartoon or two.

MAN: It was an exciting
and very dynamic medium.

The industry was very young.

There was no regulations,

there were no customs
or no conformity.

It was wide open
to what people wanted to make of it.

Disney was captivated.

His only formal training was a few
months at an art school in Chicago

and a course
at the Kansas City Art Institute.

But he was convinced he could make
better than what he was seeing.

He checked out
from the public library

Eadweard Muybridge's
Human Figures In Motion.

Then he borrowed a volume
that laid out the basics

of animation in filmmaking.

Disney read about roughing out
a storyline, creating characters,

and carefully drawing each individual
frame onto white linen paper.

By mounting each frame on pegs,
just as the book instructed,

and shooting them one at a time,

he began to create
the illusion of movement.

WOMAN: He was really into
modern culture.

The pleasure of somehow engaging
with the potential of cinema,

the potential of animation
was exciting to him,

and he had this
little ability to draw.

He had a knack.

Disney's first efforts
were short cartoons

he made on nights and weekends

with a film camera he borrowed from
his boss at the ad company.

"I gagged 'em up to beat hell,"
he would say,

and then sold them to a small
Kansas City-based theatre chain.

The fees didn't even cover his costs.

But Disney gained something
more important than money -

attention, excitement,

a whiff of destiny.

"My first bit of fame came there,"
he said.

"I got to be a little celebrity."

At age 20, Disney quit his day job
and started a company -

Laugh-o-grams Inc.

Walter Elias Disney, President.

He hired a salesman,
a business manager

and four young apprentice animators.

HAHN: I can imagine a young
Walt Disney just waking up at dawn

and going out with his friends

and saying, "Well, let's shoot this.
Let's film this."

And that kind of hunger for
not just expressing yourself,

but finding out who he was.

He couldn't do enough.

MAN: He had stars in his eyes.

He thinks he can do anything
and everything that he wants.

He has big plans.

He's going to conquer the world.

Just as he was beginning
to get some traction

in the modern movie industry,

Walt's parents arrive
from Chicago.

Elias and Flora Disney
moved in with their sons

because they had nowhere else
to turn.

The jelly factory had failed,

the latest in a long line
of Elias's business disasters.

While Disney's mother tried to be
supportive of Walt's new career,

his father took little joy in
his youngest son's minor celebrity.

He told Walt not to expect
his new success to last.

Walt began to worry

he was going to end up
once again in service to his father.

Disney lived a very, very difficult
existence in Missouri as a kid.

He works all the time.

His father is an imperious,
withholding,

kind of brutal character.

"You're here to work
and work to help me."

That's Dad.

GABLER: It's...hard to find
a father and son

who are more different than
Elias Disney and Walt Disney.

Walt Disney was fun-loving.

He loved practical jokes.

He was a kid who just loved people.

Walt was antithetical to Elias
not only by temperament,

but also by will.

He determined, "I'm gonna be
everything he isn't.

"I'm going to be
the antithesis of him.

"Look at his life.

"I don't want to live that life."

He survives a life of deprivation,
of have not,

of no time to do the things
that kids should do -

play, enjoy, laugh.

And the minute he gets into
full, upright adulthood,

whether he says it to himself
or not,

he's like, "I am going to make
amends for that in some way -

"I don't know how -

"but I yearn for the things
that I didn't get as a child."

Disney and his Laugh-O-grams crew
secured a contract

for six animated fairytale shorts.

But when they delivered the work,
the distributor stiffed them.

Walt could be longer make payroll,

or pay the rent on his office,
the phone bill, the electrical bill.

Creditors begin circling

while Walt insisted he had discovered
the means for a daring escape

which he explained in
a Hail Mary letter

to one of the best-known cartoon
distributors in New York.

"We have just discovered something
new and clever in animated cartoons,"

Disney wrote.

His big idea was to insert footage
of a real girl into animated scenes.

Alice in Cartoonland, he crowed,
was bound to be a winner.

He was always optimistic
about his ability

and about the value of his ideas,
Disney's business manager recalled.

He believed in himself

and he believed in what
he was trying to accomplish.

Walt was able to scrape together
just enough cash to complete Alice.

He finished his cartoon experiment
with little help

while sleeping at the office,
bathing at the train station,

subsisting on canned beans
and the charity of a Greek diner.

But by the time the cartoon short
was finished in the summer of 1923,

it was too late.

His company was
headed for bankruptcy court.

Alice in Cartoonland
would not save Laugh-O-grams Inc.

Walt Disney had suffered
his first real failure.

He packed his cardboard suitcase
with two spare shirts

and what was left of
his drawing supplies,

then headed for Union Station

where he treated himself to
a first-class ticket

on the Santa Fe California Limited,

straight through to Los Angeles.

WATTS: Hollywood in the 1920s
is a beacon of the future.

It's this golden city
on West Coast.

Hollywood, Los Angeles.

That's where the action is at.

And I think Disney senses that,
and that's where he wants to be.

GABLER: He's not thinking about
animation now.

He's already failed with animation.

So the next step is,
"I'm gonna go out here

"and I'm going to become
a movie director.

"That's what I'm going to do."

The wannabe movie man
walked past Charlie Chaplin's studio

along La Brea Avenue...

..rode the trolley to Culver City
to see the set used in Ben-Hur...

..and talked his way onto
the Universal lot

where he wandered around
late into the night.

But after weeks of effort,

Walt had not been able
to talk his way into a job.

His older brother Roy,

who had moved to Los Angeles
for health reasons,

had little patience for Walt's
insistence on finding a place

in the movie business.

Roy hadn't been starstruck
on arrival.

He sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door
when he first got to town,

and he admonished his brother
to find a similar job.

One that paid.

Walt was considering this advice

when a cartoon distributor
from New York got in touch.

Margaret Winkler,
the only woman in the business,

had remembered Walt's
Alice in Cartoonland pitch

and wanted to see how the young
animator's big idea had turned out.

Soon after Disney shipped his Alice
reel to Winkler's office in New York,

the distributor wired back an offer.

She wanted Walt
to make 12 Alice shorts

and was willing to
pay $1,500 per episode.

GABLER: When he gets that telegram,

the first thing he does is
he goes to visit his brother Roy

and Walt is waving this telegram
saying, "Look!

"We've got a chance here."

Now, his brother
is not enthusiastic.

His brother has no entertainment
ambitions whatsoever.

His brother is the pragmatist.

But Walt says, you know,
"We can do this.

"I need you for this."

Roy, as much as he was a naysayer,
he loved the enthusiasm of Walt

and I think he thrived on it.

He got joy from participating

in the kind of wild schemes
of his brother

that he himself
would never have concocted.

Roy got release
and Walt got protection.

The two brothers scraped up a little
cash from friends and relatives

and set up a two-man operation in
the back of the real estate office.

Walt was the artist and idea man,

Roy was the fundraiser,
the bookkeeper

and the all-around utility man.

But Walt recognised that he needed
the kind of help

Roy could not provide.

So he convinced an old friend
and collaborator, Ub Iwerks,

to relocate from Kansas City
to Los Angeles.

HAHN: Walt loves to draw
and he can draw

and he gets attention by drawing.

But, uh...
How do I put this discreetly?

Walt Disney wasn't
the best artist in the world.

He grew up in an era of
an age of illustrators.

He was surrounded by great art.

Um...he wasn't that.

And I think he saw that
pretty early on.

MAN: Iwerks is incredible
and can work fast,

so it's an early sign

that Disney always wants to
work with the very best

and isn't afraid of
working with someone

who's better than he is
at many things.

Iwerks began restyling
the Alice's Wonderland shorts

as soon as he arrived,

creating films with
less emphasis on the girl

and more on the cartoon characters.

The Disneys' distributor
loved the new look.

They wanted more and faster

and were willing to pay
good money to get them.

Walt recruited more of his old gang
from Missouri and hired some locals

and the number of employees at
the Disney studio swelled to a dozen.

WATTS: The difference between
Laugh-O-grams and Disney Brothers

is Roy.

Roy was in the latter
and he was not in the former

and from the very beginning,

I think Roy helped put a financial
and business structure in place

that grounded the enterprise.

The brothers enjoyed their early
success and expected it to continue.

Roy bought a stolid new sedan,

Walt, a snazzy Moon Roadster.

They purchased adjoining lots

and built new houses
next door to each other.

In the spring of 1925,
Roy married Edna Francis,

his long-time sweetheart
from Kansas City.

Walt, sporting a rakish pencil
moustache, acted as best man,

while escorting his girlfriend,
Lillian Bounds.

The couple had met in the office

when Lillian was working as an inker
at the Disney Brothers studio.

"He just had no inhibitions",
Lillian said of Walt.

"He was completely natural.

"He was fun."

Three months after
Roy and Edna's wedding,

Walt and Lillian tied the knot.

The Disney Brothers studio
was churning out a new Alice short

every 16 days
at the beginning of 1926,

and Walt and Roy
were ready to hang their shingle

on a more spacious building

in the Silver Lake neighbourhood of
Los Angeles.

When they moved from
the Disney Brothers studio

to the Hyperion Avenue facility,

a very striking and
a very revealing thing happens.

Walt goes to Roy and he says,

"I've made a decision
and that decision is from hence,

"this will be called
the Walt Disney Studio,

"not the Disney Brothers Studio."

Walt Disney believed
that it was his vision

of creativity and entertainment

that was the engine
of this enterprise

and that's what was being sold.

Disney was understandably obsessed

with his rivals in the cartoon
industry by the end of 1926.

He could tell his Alice pictures
were running out of steam

and spent much of his free time
in darkened theatres,

assessing the work of the top
New York-based animators,

the Fleischer Brothers
and Pat Sullivan.

He was taking aim at
the industry's gold standard,

Sullivan's Felix the Cat.

If you look at animation
at that period,

it's extremely crude,
it's really violent,

it's really gag-driven
and it's very urban.

These are older men making
kind of crude, hard animation.

And Disney steps in
as this young guy

and he's like, "OK, well,
I see what you're doing.

"I'll try this out and then
I'll figure out my own voice

"and my other influences
around me to transform it."

The key to challenging the supremacy
of Felix the Cat, Walt believed,

was creating his own compelling
and likeable character.

Disney's distributor
suggested he try a rabbit.

Too many cats on the market.

Iwerks took charge of
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's look

while Disney wrote the storylines
and the gags.

The bosses at Universal Pictures

were so taken with
the first sketches of Oswald

they offered a contract
for 26 episodes.

Walt Disney Studios
seemed to be riding high.

But by the time the team
put the finishing touches

on the first order of Oswald shorts,

the animators were increasingly
frustrated with the boss.

The old Kansas City hands would help
Disney get started in the business

and, often without pay,

were working into the night
and through the weekends

while Walt was taking much of
the money and most of the credit.

WATTS: I think the two sides
of Disney emerged.

You have on the one hand,
Walt the inspirer.

The other side of Disney
was Disney the driver

who demanded work, who demanded
creativity, demanded productivity.

And if people
didn't meet his standards,

he could come down on you
like a tonne of bricks.

Charles Mintz, Margaret Winkler's
new husband and business partner,

saw an opportunity,

emboldened by the knowledge
that he owned the rights to Oswald

and the Disney Brothers did not.

GABLER: Ub Iwerks
comes to Walt Disney

and says "Walt, I've been approached
by Charles Mintz

"to essentially leave you
and to go to work for Mintz.

"And I'm not the only one.
All of the animators have.

"But they haven't told you."

WATTS: Disney doesn't believe it.

He just sort of pooh-poohs
the whole thing

and doesn't really believe Ub Iwerks

who says, you know,
there's a problem brewing here.

Walt went to New York
in February of 1928

with big hopes for a new contract
from Mintz.

But it only took a few days
for Disney to realise

that Iwerks had been right.

Mintz has already poached almost all
of Disney's artists, except for Ub.

And the distributor told Walt

he was going to go on making
the Oswald cartoons without him.

NILSEN: Things are unfolding that
most people would understand

and Disney comes into it
shockingly naive.

It was pretty clear that people
were unhappy around him,

that he was pretty oblivious
to that.

He's very driven by his vision

and when these kind of business
failings occur,

he is completely caught off-guard.

When Disney boarded the train
for the trip back to Los Angeles,

he was despondent.

Almost all of his team
had abandoned him.

He had no distributor, no Oswald,
and very little money in the bank.

HAHN: Oswald the Rabbit
gets taken away from him

like a kid taking your lunch money.

They were looking the other
direction and Oswald was gone.

It was a long
cross-country ride for Disney.

The train made stops at most
of the big cities along the way

and blew through countless
other small towns on the line.

One of them was Marceline, Missouri.

Disney had first seen Marceline
at the age of four,

when his father had fled
the big city of Chicago

and moved him, his mother, his three
older brothers, and his baby sister

to a little farmstead there.

It was a place Disney never forgot.

WATTS: Walt was living in the
country, on the edge of this town,

and he was surrounded by nature.

He could romp through the woods
and run through the fields.

There were farm animals around,
and he loved animals.

Had a pet dog, pigs, cows, horses.

NILSEN: Marceline represents really
the one moment in his childhood

where he was a child,

the place where he really was
allowed to be free,

where he wasn't being told
what to do by his dad.

SUSKIND: Marceline was
this seemingly idyllic place

hitting Disney at a certain age.

You know, the rhythm and the beat
of the place

is just right for a kid.

It's like the last breath
of something

that seems to resemble
a traditional childhood.

The Disney family business
was a tough go.

The margins were always slim,
and Elias wasn't much of a farmer.

Just five years after they arrived,

Disney's father announced that
the family was pulling up stakes

and heading back to the city.

WALT DISNEY: My dad sold the farm,

but then he had to auction
all the stock and things.

And it was
in the cold of the winter,

and I remember Roy and myself
going out

and going all around to the
different little towns and places,

tacking up these
posters of the auction.

GABLER: Walt Disney once said

that he'll never forget
his days in Marceline

and almost everything important
that happened to him

happened in Marceline.

But I think that has to include also
the losing of Marceline.

When Walt and Lillian arrived
at Union Station in Los Angeles

in mid-March 1928,

Ub Iwerks detected none of
his friend's trademark good cheer

and enthusiasm.

"He looked like he'd just run into
a stone wall," Ub would say.

GABLER: Coming from
the Disney family,

where his father had suffered
so many successive failures,

I think you can only imagine
the impact that had on Walt Disney.

Failure was a big thing
in the Disney family.

NILSEN: Where his dad
just continually gets
more and more depressed,

quits basically,

Walt steps up - boom.

"You think Oswald was good?
I can do much better than that.

"I'll show you
what I'm capable of doing."

Disney held daily brainstorming
sessions with Roy and Ub

and a few other loyalists
who had not signed with Mintz.

Intent on dreaming up a bankable new
character, and one they would own,

Disney's skeleton team scoured
popular magazines for inspiration,

bounced ideas off one another,

and drew figures
on their sketchpads

until something began to emerge.

"Pear-shaped body, ball on top,
a couple of thin legs,"

Iwerks later explained.

"You gave it long ears,
and it was a rabbit.

"Short ears, it was a cat.

"With an elongated nose,
it became a mouse."

Walt suggested
they name him Mortimer.

Lillian thought that was terrible
and came up with Mickey.

As with Oswald,
Ub took charge of the mouse's look.

Walt gave him his personality.

He doesn't have
the financial backing

to support what it is he's doing.

He wants to be
a bigger voice than he is.

And it's a perfect metaphor,
him being this small mouse,

this seemingly insignificant
figure or individual

within this big industry
that he wants to break into.

Disney was unable to
find a distributor

willing to take a chance
on his first two Mickey shorts,

but Walt refused
to give up on his mouse.

At a meeting with Roy one day,
as the tiny staff worked up a third,

and still unsold,
Mickey Mouse cartoon,

Walt suddenly blurted out,
"We'll make them over with sound!"

NILSEN: "How can I do something
better with animation

"than what everybody else is doing?"

He's always the person
looking for new technology.

He's always the person trying to
find the newest invention

to make animation better.

At the time,
producing a soundtrack in sync with

and music that makes sense with the
action on screen is very difficult.

This was a very precise
and intricate process

that Disney had to think through.

And also, it's unclear that the
money it costs to make a sound film

can possibly pay off
with tickets sold.

Disney saw no good option
but to take the chance.

He headed back to New York

and signed a quick deal
with the licensor

of one of the most advanced
sound systems in town.

Walt didn't have
enough money in the bank

to pay for the recording sessions,

so he wired Roy to do
whatever he had to, to get the cash.

He told his brother to sell
his beloved Moon Roadster if needed.

Stuck in New York
to oversee the sound work,

Walt trolled
desperately for a distributor.

He carried his reels from one office
to another for three long months

and came up empty.

He did manage to secure a two-week
run at the Colony Theater,

Broadway and 53rd.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS)

Steamboat Willie
premiered on November 18, 1928.

(WHISTLES TOOT)

(WHISTLES TO MUSIC)

The crowd at the Colony Theater
was in thrall.

People had heard sound in pictures
before, but never like this.

(WHISTLES TOOT)

The music and sound effects
were part of the gags.

(TOOT! TOOT!)

"It knocked me out of my seat,"
one New York reporter wrote.

(CRANKING, MUSIC PLAYS)

A few audiences begged
the projectionist

to delay the start of the feature
and re-run Steamboat Willie.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS)

(DRUMS)

SITO: Steamboat Willie
was such a huge hit,

and it gave Disney Studio
a really sort of a pre-eminence,

where suddenly this company

is now, like, taking a step
to the front ranks.

This upstart from the West Coast

just erupts in
the middle of everybody

with this amazing character.

(SINGS)

Mickey was a multi-talented charmer -
a dancer, a comedian, a singer -

and within months,
never mind he was just a cartoon,

Mickey Mouse was the newest
Hollywood celebrity.

(SINGS) Ha!

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

While the country slid toward
economic disaster in 1930,

the fame of the Disney mouse
just kept growing,

as did Mickey's standing

as the archetype of
the American can-do spirit.

(ROARS)

(LAUGHS)

Mickey Mouse is scrappy.

Mickey Mouse is a survivor.

Mickey Mouse is somebody
during the years of the Depression

who takes a limited number of skills
and a limited number of resources

and he always ends up on top.

SUSKIND: Mickey's a little bit
in your face.

Howdy-do!

Mickey's like, "Hey. I'm smart.

"I can do anything.

"I get into trouble
but I get out of it.

"I'm sort of rebellious."

You know, "I live by my own rules."

He's an adolescent dream
is what he is.

Rebelling and making it work.

That's Mickey.

(LAUGHS)
(SCREAMS)

WATTS: Walt Disney was certainly
not a social theorist.

He certainly didn't think through
the problems of the Depression.

But what Disney did do

was to have a kind of instinctive,
impulsive feel for the problems

and the hopes of ordinary people.

There's always mishap.

There's always sort of
the slapstick-y bit

that interferes with his success.

And then he triumphs
and he wins at the end.

And he usually gets the girl, too.

Let's all sing the chorus, again!

# Oh, the old... #

Mickey Mouse Clubs began
sprouting up at local movie theatres.

More than a million children
signed up.

Roy encouraged the clubs,

and saw in Mickey's
growing popularity

another possible stream of revenue -
licensing.

The Disneys had made
a few haphazard deals

to allow Mickey's likeness on
children's toys

following the example of other
popular characters

like Felix the Cat.

But the Walt Disney Studio got less
than 5% of the take,

and saw little revenue,
until they brought in Kay Kamen.

WATTS: He was an ad man.
He was a marketer.

He had a very keen sense of
what we would call branding.

Kamen is a genius for doing these
licensing agreements

with companies all over
the United States

who want to associate their products

with the success of
the Disney studio.

The Disney brothers gave Kamen
the exclusive rights

to license Mickey Mouse,

along with his girlfriend Minnie,
his dog Pluto, and later Donald Duck.

The studio kept a tight rein
on how their products,

especially their mouse,
could be used,

and they demanded a big cut
of the profits,

but they had plenty of
willing partners

because Mickey Mouse moved product.

By the early 1930s,

fans could buy Mickey-adorned
merchandise by the scores.

The Mickey Mouse watch became the
most popular timepiece in America.

Fan mail for Mickey Mouse poured
into the studio on Hyperion Avenue,

with postmarks from across
the United States,

from England, Spain, the Philippines.

Some were addressed to Mickey,
some to Walt.

SMOODIN: Mickey is understood
as being the creation of Disney.

And Disney is understood
as being the father of Mickey.

And combined, that makes for
a kind of international stardom

that we really hadn't seen before.

HAHN: When everybody else
is suffering,

Walt Disney is selling
consumer products,

and making millions of dollars
out of Mickey Mouse.

And that's a huge story,
that this little mouse

turns into the future of
the Walt Disney Company.

Walt Disney always talked about
Mickey Mouse as being his alter ego.

He would say that,

"You know, I'm closer to Mickey
Mouse than I am to anyone else."

(MICKEY VOICE) Hey, Pluto!
Here she comes!

SUSKIND: Mickey and Walt
are talking to each other...

Hey, Pluto! Here she comes!

..so he's got to do Mickey's voice.

Someone's got to do it,
so of course Walt does it

because it's him talking to himself.

"So, Mickey,
how're you feeling today?"

(MIMICS MICKEY) You know,
I feel great.

Do you know it wasn't an easy day?

You know, maybe tomorrow, who knows?

You know, let's get into
a little bit of trouble.

You and me.

Walt Disney was not yet 30,

and he had made himself the first
celebrity of animation -

a film cartoonist
the public could name.

His studio stood atop the industry,

and was growing to meet
the demand for new Mickey cartoons.

The success of Mickey lured
plenty of good talent to Hyperion,

some of the best in the business,

but Disney insisted on having
the final word

on every foot of finished film
that came out of his studio.

He spent long hours at the office -

often until one or two
o'clock in the morning -

and still had a hard time keeping up.

He was anxious and obsessive,
chain-smoking day and night,

drumming his thumbs impatiently
on the table in story meetings.

MAN: His role was changing
in the studio.

He was leaving behind the things
that were so familiar to him -

working with his hands, being
an active participant in the work -

becoming more and more a man
who was the intellectual overseer,

evaluating, criticising, editing.

And as he stepped back from
this more active participation,

he initially was, I think,
very distressed by it,

felt uncomfortable doing it.

Disney had talked of having
a big family of his own for years.

He wanted 10 children,
he would tell his sister,

and he would spoil them all.

Lillian had her doubts about
raising any number of children,

especially when she considered
the office hours Walt kept.

But he talked her into it.

Roy and Edna had
had their first child already,

and by the spring of 1931,
Lillian was pregnant.

Walt was giddy.

He was already making plans
for a bigger house

to accommodate the new addition.

Then Lillian miscarried.

Disney waved off the well-wishers
and sympathisers.

He threw himself back into his work.

He insisted he was fine.

He was not.

WALT DISNEY: In 1931,
I had a hell of a breakdown.

I went all to pieces.

It was just pound, pound, pound.

And it was costs.
My costs were going up.

I was always way over whatever they
figured the pictures would bring in.

And I cracked up.

I just got very irritable.

I got to the point that
I couldn't talk on the telephone.

I'd begin to cry...

..and the least little thing,
I'd just go that way.

In October 1931,
Walt Disney took his doctor's advice

and escaped on the first
real vacation of his life.

He and Lillian went across
the country to Washington, DC,

then to Key West,
and on to a week's stay in Cuba.

They rode a steamship
through the Panama Canal

on the way back to Los Angeles.

Once home, Disney told people that
the breakdown had been a godsend.

Life was sweet, he said,
and there was more to it than work.

He dove into a new exercise regimen.

Went with Lillian
on long horseback rides.

Learned to play polo,
and joined a league.

GABLER: Walt comes back from
his nervous breakdown

and he does change his lifestyle.

But does Walt Disney withdraw?
Does he delegate?

Does he do the things that
one might have expected him to do?

No, he does not.

(BIRD HOOTS LOUDLY)

Disney had never been shy
about spending money on his vision,

even when the studio was cash poor.

He had already used up

his earliest Mickey profits

in the creation of a new series
of cartoon shorts

called Silly Symphonies.

(HOWLS)

SMOODIN: The Silly Symphonies

were much more about
animation as art.

(MIAOW!)

So the skeleton dance
and others like them

were understood as these wonderful,
almost avant-garde films

that merged music and dance

and made characters out of nature

and also other kinds of
inanimate things

in ways that people
hadn't really seen before.

(HARP PLAYS)

Silly Symphonies raised Walt
to near mythic status

among cartoonists and animators.

Artists from all over the country
packed their bags

and headed for California,

just for the chance to work
with the great Walt Disney.

The Hyperion staff grew to
nearly 200.

(BIRDS TWEET MUSICALLY)

Men ruled the studio,
as they did all studios in the 1930s.

The women who came to work at Disney

were relegated to the low-wage
ink-and-paint department.

In the middle
of the Great Depression,

few complained about a steady job
with steady pay.

NILSEN: It becomes, like,
the studio to work at.

And all of those animators
just thrive

because Disney sets it up
as a legitimate profession.

"Here I step in. I will recognise
your talent. I will pay you well."

MAN: It was like a
renaissance to us, you know.

It was a flowering of
the animation industry.

It'd never been done before.

This was fine art, you know.
Not just dumb cartoons.

(BIRDS TWEET GENTLY)

Disney's new series was
the test ground for innovation,

with firsts in sound technique,
colour

and multiplane camera technology,

which produced a three-dimensional
depth never before seen in animation.

(PIGEONS COO GENTLY)

GABLER: Walt intended
the studio to be the place

where you created great art.

(TENSE, DARK MUSIC)

That was so instrumental to Walt's
understanding of the studio.

And that became, in many ways,

the most powerful element in
how he dealt with his workers.

They wanted to produce great things.

He made them want to produce
great things.

(BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!)

SITO: He was very jovial.
He was very informal.

He's the one who first insisted on

only being referred to
by his first name.

WOMAN: Boss?
He wasn't boss.

He was a friend.

And everybody called him Walt.

If they didn't call him Walt,
that was the end of that one.

GIVENS: We used to play
volleyball at noon,

over there across the street
in the annexe.

And Walt used to come over there
and watch us, you know.

He used to say,
"Don't play too rough," he'd say.

And he wanted us to be careful,
not hurt our hands -

our drawing hand, particularly.

And we loved to win,
because then he'd applaud.

But he was the big daddy there.
He didn't miss anything, you know?

Disney offered drawing classes
at the studio

and brought in professors
from the Chouinard Art Institute

to teach them.

He invited experts to lecture on
impressionism, expressionism, cubism,

the Mexican muralists.

HAHN: He was always very much
about not only hiring the artists,

but providing a safe place for them
to do their job.

And by 'safe' I mean a place
to make mistakes and a place to fail

and a place to take criticism

without the fear of being fired,

and a place to be able to learn.

(MEN SHOUT INDISTINCTLY)

(CHEERING)

SUSKIND: He wanted a family,
a community, a place.

"I can actually create
a little world.

"Bordered, mine.

"Just what I need it to be.

"Inhabited by all these people.

"A community marked 'Disney'."

Walt Disney, not yet 35, appeared to
be in possession of the magic beans.

His studio was a technicolour rainbow

in the middle of the pale, grey
Depression-era America.

His home life was thriving too.

Lillian had given birth to
a daughter, Diane,

and the Disneys would soon adopt
a second daughter, Sharon.

But Disney wasn't satisfied.

He needed a new adventure,
he would say.

"A kick in the pants to jar loose
some inspiration and enthusiasm."

Disney's employees were still
telling the story decades later.

One evening in 1934, Walt sent his
entire staff out for an early dinner,

but told them to hurry back
to the Hyperion sound stage

for an important company meeting.

The room was buzzing by the time
Walt took the stage.

GABLER: Disney is lit
on the sound stage,

and he then proceeds to act out -

alone, just him, a one-man show -

the story of Snow White.

WATTS: What he did was
to go through the whole movie

as he saw it,
acting out all of the parts,

impersonating all of the characters,

going through all the emotions,
all the ups and downs -

the queen, the princess,
the seven dwarfs, even the animals.

What Disney was proposing had never
been done, never even been tried -

a feature-length,
story-driven cartoon.

Roy Disney was pretty sceptical
about all of this.

And the more he thought about it,
actually,

the more convinced he became that

this could be a disaster
for the studio

because he was afraid that
it wouldn't sell,

that people wouldn't see it

and it would drag the studio down
into bankruptcy.

And Roy dug in his heels.

Walt would not let it go.

He was convinced this
century-old Brothers Grimm fairytale

about a virtuous princess
chased into a deep, dark forest

by her hateful stepmother

was a can't-miss proposition.

He must have told that story
after that first night,

you know, a thousand times.

People would always say
he'd collar them in the hallway

and tell the story of
Snow White again.

He'd have to repeat it again
and again and again,

to keep them energised,
to keep himself energised,

and to review the film in his head

so that it was always rolling.

This was obsession.

Walt's excitement was catching.

"We were just carried away,"
remembered one animator.

"I would've climbed a mountain
full of wildcats

"to do everything I could
to make Snow White."

Roy grudgingly came around

and managed to shake the money free
from their long-time lender,

Bank of America.

But he warned his brother the bankers
were very nervous about this gamble,

and they expected Walt to
stay on schedule

and within the agreed upon budget.

The schedule, the budget,
the company's debt

were secondary considerations
to Walt,

who was preoccupied with
a single overriding problem -

how to translate his idea
to the big screen.

Snow White would have to captivate
its audience

in a way no cartoon ever had before.

In the shorter cartoons,
you can make people laugh.

And the gag is the basic component
of these things.

You get people to laugh.

But Walt Disney now
is asking another question.

Can you make people cry?

Can you make people cry
over a drawing?

One key, Disney believed,

was to infuse his animated film
with a natural realism.

He brought live animals
into the studio

so his artists could
study their movement.

He had his animators throw heavy
objects through plate glass windows

just to analyse
the shattering effects.

Disney hired a teenage dancer
to act the part of Snow White

so his animators could study
how she looked when she leaned over

or laughed or smiled,

so they could see the movement
of her dress as she danced.

WATTS: They would bring in actors

and they would have them impersonate
these characters

in front of the animators,

who would try to capture certain
qualities of their movements.

They would even film them to try to
get a sense of personality,

of movement, of realism.

BARRIER: What he was after
was something different,

making thought and emotion visible
in a way that seems natural

and not artificial.

Disney really kind of took
the art of animation

and pushed it towards the animator
as an actor and about performance.

He wanted his animators
to take acting classes.

Studying their facial muscles,
how you say certain words, you know.

How is your lips shaped
when you say 'V'?

Or how is like 'O' or 'ooh'?
You know.

You know,
how does it affect your eyes?

There were no rules.

They hadn't been invented before.

So you're kind of free to do
anything you wanted to do.

Follow your instincts and do it.

Walt's stubborn insistence on getting
the story right, on innovation

and on attention to detail

meant the pace of production
at Hyperion was glacial.

GABLER: To draw
each of these characters,

to draw these backgrounds,

to do it in a way that transcends
anything that had been done before

is excruciating.

It's gruelling. It's painful.
It's tormenting.

GIVENS: We were the crew that
did most of the Snow White drawings.

And we'd sometimes take a whole day
for a close-up of Snow White.

That's how intricate
the drawing was.

It was so precise.

It was like making watches,
you know.

It was just such fine detail.

You know, one little line'd throw
the whole thing off.

The production process
did not change.

Key animators would draw the
main characters in Snow White.

In-betweeners would draw
the movements between the key frames.

The ink-and-paint artists
would add colour to the drawings

and transfer them to the transparent
sheets - or cels - to go to camera.

At 24 frames per second
and often multiple cels per frame,

Snow White would require more than
200,000 separate drawings.

SMOODIN: Making the film
required an army of people

and I'm not sure that Disney
thought of all of them as talent.

There are real workers here
who are doing the grunt work.

The Disneys had already built
a two-storey addition at Hyperion,

but it wasn't near enough.

Roy was forced to rent bungalows and
other buildings in the neighbourhood

just to accommodate their staff,

which grew to more than 600 people.

Poor Roy Disney.

You know, during this time there's
tremendous expansion and ideas

and excitement by everybody.

But Roy's the banker

and he's the guy
that has to keep it all together

and there's weekly discussions
about how to make payroll.

The feature was going over budget.

The bankers from Bank of America
were there frequently.

And Roy's job
was to keep everybody calm

and to keep it all together
financially.

Supper!

(DWARFS JOSTLE NOISILY)

As the production dragged into its
second and then its third year,

Walt's demands
began to look dangerous.

He repeatedly pushed deadlines,
and by the start of 1937,

with the premiere set for
that December,

the studio was behind.

Way behind.

Ten months to the premiere date

and not a single animation cel
had been shot on film.

But Walt insisted that Snow White
could not be rushed,

and could not be done on the cheap.

Walt kept upping the ante,

which meant Roy had to raise
Walt's original budget number

six times over.

The trade papers were beginning to
write stories about the delays.

People were calling Snow White
"Disney's Folly".

Roy was worried they might be right.

TOMPSON: I was working
the 12-hour deal

where you come in at eight
and go home at eight.

And we really were cleaning cels
and patching cels,

fixing mistakes and things
like that - there were a lot.

And the queen...the queen was...

She had the kind of paint
that was kind of sticky.

And so those things would
come back from camera,

and we'd have to clean them up
and patch them

and send them back to camera.

MAN: I worked my tail off.

I was put in charge of the clean-up
and in betweens.

That's where it was lagging.

We went in at seven
instead of at eight.

And we went to dinner
and we came back

and usually worked till almost 10.

GIVENS: The ink-and-paint
gals were...

Some of them were losing their
eyesight. It was a hell of a thing.

They were just slaves.

They were doing it, but they
believed in this thing so much,

they were going to drop dead
on the job.

The animators finished
in early November,

but the last cels weren't painted
until November 27.

Rumours were flying around Hollywood

that there would be no print
of the film ready

for the December 21 premiere.

NEWSREEL: Blase Hollywood,
accustomed to gala openings,

turns out for the most
spectacular of them all,

the world premiere of the
$1.5 million fairytale fantasy

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Replicas from the first feature
cartoon thrill thousands

who turn out for a glimpse
of lovely Marlene Dietrich

with Doug Fairbanks Jr

and a parade of stars.

Shirley Temple is just as enthralled

as are the grown-up stars
and movie-goers

with the seven fantastic dwarfs.

GABLER: Walt was in a state of
high anxiety.

He had no idea how the audience
was going to respond.

REPORTER: Well, Walt, I think you're
due to do all the talking tonight.

Tell us a little bit about
this picture, will you?

DISNEY: Well, it's been lot of fun
making it

and we're very happy that it's being
given this big premiere here tonight

and all these people are turning out
to take a look at it

and I hope they're not
too disappointed.

Well, I'm sure they won't be.
I've seen the picture, Walt...

He didn't know
if it would really work.

And one part of him was almost
agonising over,

"Well, if people don't buy this,
this will just fall flat,

"and then I will be done."

Audience members gasped at the
opening shots of the Queen's castle.

Slave in the magic mirror.

Come from the farthest space,

through wind and darkness
I summon thee.

Speak!

They howled in laughter
at the antic dwarfs.

(ALL SNIFF DEEPLY)

Ah, soup!

Hooray!

SNOW WHITE: Uh-uh-uh, just a minute!

The heart of a pig!

Then I've been tricked.

They hissed disapproval
at the Evil Queen.

And still, Walt was anxious.

Don't let the wish grow cold!

Oh, I feel strange...

He sat gripping Lillian's hand
for nearly 75 minutes,

nervously anticipating the scene

that would put the power of his
personal vision to the ultimate test.

(CACKLES)

Now I'll be fairest in the land!

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

When it arrived,
the apparent death of Snow White,

the theatre was hushed.

GABLER: The audience
started weeping.

And that's when Walt knew.
That's when they all knew.

The audience had suspended
its disbelief so thoroughly,

so believed in the reality
of the situation and of the dwarfs,

that they were crying.

That was really
the triumph of the film.

# One song, only for you

# One heart... #

SUSKIND: Clark Gable and
Carole Lombard are weeping!

They don't know what hit them.

You know, what hit them
is that they crossed a barrier,

from the life they live

to the internal world where
myth lives in all of us,

and Disney provides the passage.

And it ain't kids' stuff.

When the curtain came down,
the audience rose from their seats

and broke into a thunderous ovation.

"I could not help but feel,"
one rival movie producer gushed,

"that I was in the midst
of motion picture history."

SCHICKEL: I know
the first movie I saw

was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Now, I didn't know anything
but to be delighted with it.

It was wonderful. I mean,
I still think it's wonderful.

Snow White lies dead...

TOMPSON: I loved the Queen.
She was so awful.

But she was just beautiful.

Behold her heart.

She was so beautifully drawn
and everything.

Kids had to be carried screaming
out of Radio City Music Hall.

It was too frightening for them.
That's an important aspect.

Disney understood that kids
could take more scariness

than people thought they could take.

So they wet the pants and wet the
seat in Radio City Music Hall.

(SCREAMS)

But they'd had an experience.

You know? That what was important.

It was not just bland.

It was serious stuff
going on in their little heads.

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

SUSKIND: Think about what he does.
Well, he's like, ha!

These cartoons don't have to be
just slapstick.

They can carry everything,
all the biggest stuff.

They can carry ancient
and powerful mythologies.

They can carry everything.

Look! My hands!

That was a huge leap.
And that's an artistic leap.

He's creating a new art form.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

played at New York's Radio City Music
Hall for five straight weeks

at the beginning of 1938.

No other film had ever run
more than three weeks there.

National and international releases
followed.

Lines wrapped around small town
theatres in New England, the South,

the Midwest, the Far West.

The film was a box office smash
in London, Paris and Sydney.

It grossed $8 million
in its first year -

the equivalent of over
$100 million today,

and more than any film before it.

Roy paid off the studio's
$2.3 million debt to Bank of America,

while the film was
still in its first run,

and helped oversee an unprecedented
merchandising campaign.

SMOODIN: There are Snow White jars
and Snow White jellies

and Snow White scarves.

There are Snow White shows going on

at department stores.

So the film and the space of
commerce are completely one.

It's a commercial triumph
for Disney,

not just because of the film itself,

but because of the way that
the merchandise is tied to it.

Walt Disney was celebrated
as a true American original -

a man capable of harnessing the power
of technology and storytelling,

a man adept at art and commerce.

Harvard University gave him
an honorary Master of Arts,

and so did Yale,

whose trustees called Disney "The
creator of a new language of art."

SUSKIND: He's hailed in Paris.
He's hailed in New York.

He's living a dream.

And that's a moment where
he starts to think very boldly.

He almost is
released from hesitations.

He's like, "I am that guy
that I dreamed of. I am him.

"So now what do we do?"

(GIRLS GIGGLE)

Disney cultivated the look
of the artist in public,

but at home, he was just plain Dad.

Walt made a point

to drive his two young daughters
to school every day...

..chased them around their house
cackling like the Wicked Witch,

and read them bedtime stories.

There's no question, he adored them.
Absolutely adored them.

He was a man who had
a lively sense of play

that he'd never lost
from the time he was a child.

WATTS: He was very domestic,
very nurturing

in a way that
usually in that day and age

was associated more with
mother's role.

Lillian was a bit aloof,
a bit reserved, a bit cool,

even with her children,
and Walt was just the opposite.

He was overflowing with enthusiasm.

I think, in a way, he was
reacting against his own childhood

and against Elias,

because Elias was so stern with him.

Disney often said, "I want to
spoil my children terribly.

"I just want to spoil them."

He had had only sporadic contact
with his own parents

since his move to California.

But the Disney studio's new
financial success afforded Walt

the chance to draw them closer.

Walt and Roy moved Elias and Flora
to Los Angeles,

and as a 50th wedding anniversary
present,

the brothers bought them a house.

In the middle
of the Snow White frenzy,

they also threw a golden wedding
anniversary party,

which they deemed worthy
of preserving for history.

WALT: Well, you know,
here it is. 1937.

And you folks are almost ready

to have your...celebrate your
50th wedding anniversary.

FLORA: But we're not
gonna celebrate.

Why not?
Oh, what's the use?

Well, Dad likes to celebrate.
He's always in for a good time.

We've been celebrating for 50 years.

Gettin' tired of it.
What about you, Dad?

Don't you want to make
a little whoopee

on your golden wedding anniversary?

ELIAS: Oh, we don't want to go to
any extremes with it at all.

Well, I expect you... I hoped
you wouldn't go to any extremes

if you're whoopeeing it up. (LAUGHS)

He don't know how to make whoopee.

Walt sometimes seemed compelled
to talk about the old days.

Even as his fame grew, his family's
early struggle remained a touchstone.

He held fast to the idea of himself
as a man formed in the crucible

of want and deprivation in the great
forgotten middle of the country.

HIGGINBOTHAM: He feels it
very important to identify

and to make note
of his Midwestern background

and to propagate that story.

He understood the value of labour,

and that that is not something
he learned about from somebody else.

Rather it's naturally who he is.

Walt Disney had been a player
in the movie business

for more than 15 years
and a celebrity for nearly 10,

but the acclaimed filmmaker
still did not think of himself

as a Hollywood insider.

He complained that
other major film producers

refused to acknowledge animation
as serious cinema.

And he wasn't wrong.

When the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences

announced the 10 nominees
for the Best Picture of 1938,

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
was not on the list.

Instead, Disney was given
a special Oscar

for his pioneering work
in feature-length cartoons.

I'm sure the boys and girls
in the whole world

are going to be very happy

when they find out the daddy of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,

Mickey Mouse, Ferdinand
and all the others

is going to get
this beautiful statue.

(GASPS) Isn't it bright and shiny?

Oh, it's beautiful.

Aren't you proud of it, Mr Disney?

Why, I'm so proud I think I'll bust.
(GIGGLES)

He got the...sort of
the honourable mention.

Which is...crap.
He doesn't want that.

He has created something
absolutely magnificent.

He knows it's magnificent. Audiences
have told him it's magnificent.

He believed in this so much,

he put himself personally
on the line for his films

and his products and for animation,

and the furthering of animation.

And Hollywood just didn't seem ready
to view animation as art

or as filmmaking.

It had to have smarted.

Disney had dreams of producing

a new feature-length animated film
every six months

and almost all from source material
that played to his strengths -

fairytales, folktales
or popular novels

already familiar to his audience.

His two projects following Snow White
were coming-of-age stories.

First up was Bambi, based on a novel
about a young dear becoming a stag.

And then Pinocchio, a popular
late 19th century Italian folktale

about a wooden puppet
who wants to be a real boy.

Disney hit snags right away on Bambi

and began to worry
the story was too complicated

and needed more time in development.

So he moved Pinocchio to the front
of the production line

and hit more snags.

GABLER: They struggled mightily
with the story of Pinocchio.

As Walt himself said,
he's not a very nice puppet

in the original story.

He's kind of a wiseacre.

So there was something
they had to tackle immediately

which is how do you make this puppet
into someone likeable?

Disney was still puzzling out the
Pinocchio story in the fall of 1938

when the phone call came.

His parents had suffered
carbon monoxide poisoning

caused by a malfunction
of the heating system

at the house
Walt and Roy had bought for them.

Elias had survived.

Flora had not.

Walt went to her funeral
and then he went back to work.

He never talked
of his mother's death again.

NILSEN: It was something he dealt
with within himself

as a private matter.

Even with his wife,

I don't think that relationship
he shared very much.

His emotions were internalised

and that's why cinema, I think,
offered this way to emote

in a way that he couldn't emote
in his own private life.

GABLER: Walt Disney once exploded
during a story session.

He pounded the table and he said,
"We're not making cartoons here!

"We're not making cartoons."

Walt Disney had made this separation

between Mickey Mouse and some
of the early Silly Symphonies.

They're cartoons
but now we're not making cartoons.

We're making art
and art has a higher standard

and the standard
is the emotional response

that we get from people.

Can you make them feel deeply?

SUSKIND: Art doesn't work
unless it gets to the big stuff.

Call it what you will.

Entertainment doesn't work
unless it gets at the core,

the stuff that
we really, really wrestle with.

Make you laugh, make you cry,
make you sing, make you sigh.

But you've got to get at it.

Disney wasn't thinking small
on Pinocchio.

Snow White had proved
that his animated films could tackle

the sweep of the human condition

with all the light and shadow
of real life.

Now he went deep inside himself
for inspiration

and emerged
with a magical story elixir

that became the Disney trademark -

outsiders struggling for acceptance,

coming-of-age heroes
bucking authority,

temptation, loss,
redemption, and survival.

So now Walt's wading
through the story

throwing things out left and right

and saying,
"What's the essence of it?

"What's this story about?
Who's it about? Why do I care?

"Why do I want to watch this?"

MAN: Pinocchio becomes
about what it means to be human,

about how you have
to achieve humanity.

You have to earn it.

HAHN: They take huge liberties.
Walt Disney doesn't care.

He says, you know,
"We're taking the title,

"we're taking the puppet thing,

"and we're going to make that
into our story."

Difficult as they were
and engaging as they were,

Pinocchio and Bambi did not capture
Walt's undivided attention.

There was an enticing new experiment
going on right down the hall.

(FAST-PACED SYMPHONIC MUSIC PLAYS)

The project had begun as a cartoon
short based on a symphony titled

The Sorcerer's Apprentice,
starring Mickey Mouse,

with the backing of an orchestra

conducted by the celebrated
Leopold Stokowski.

Disney was so taken
with the first results

that he decided to expand it into
a feature-length film - Fantasia.

He and Stokowski selected eight
separate classical symphonies,

and Walt and his team began
thinking about imagery to match.

The Disney Studio was crawling
with musicians, dancers,

even famous scientists
like the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

HAHN: So here's Stravinsky,

and George Balanchine comes
by the studio,

"Well, let's choreograph
some dancing for us."

So these experts
are coming and going,

and there's a ballet company
in the next room dancing.

And here's Hubble talking
about theories of deep space,

and where the cosmos came from.

And there's a dinosaur expert.

And it is this cultural
kind of petri dish

of people together working
and collaborating creating Fantasia.

And he loves it because this is
a huge, fun sandbox.

GABLER: Well, he's dealt
with realism and realistic emotions,

but now he's trying to get
to emotion in a different way,

circumventing realism.

This is absolutely alien to the
Disney process, to try and see

if you can reach emotion
directly through abstraction.

He's saying, "I want
to try what heroes of art do.

"You know, I want the great artists
of the time to join in here.

"You know, I want to create art
that lasts centuries."

The Disney studio ran to the rhythms
of Walt's bursting energy,

which appeared to be spilling
beyond rational boundaries.

The boss had three major productions
spinning simultaneously

and had nearly doubled
the number of full-time employees.

The Disneys were
in dire need of space

to house their thousand-plus staff,

and another addition at Hyperion
was not going to cut it.

Without consulting with Roy,
who was in Europe at the time,

Walt selected a 51-acre building lot,
empty but for a polo field,

on the other side
of the Hollywood Hills, in Burbank.

Then he went to work
making his dream studio.

GABLER: It was designed
for absolute efficiency,

but also to engender
this wonderful sense of community.

In fact,
there was one point where he said,

"You know what'd be great,
is if we build an apartment complex

"here on the studio lot,
so no-one ever has to leave."

It's so that his employees
could become part

of this very insular community

where they would all work together
in this common mission

to make these great animations.

And that's what this new studio
was really all about.

It was really all about
creating a perfect place

to create perfect films.

NARRATOR:
The day after Christmas, 1939,

most of the Disney staff began
the move from Hyperion to Burbank.

The heart of the studio campus was
the three-storey animation building,

with Walt's office on the top floor.

Each animator had a single
big, airy, sunlit room to himself,

with an oversized work table,
a stylish area rug,

an easy chair to recline in,
and drapes.

The entire facility
was air-conditioned.

Landscaped pathways led to a theatre,
a restaurant, a soda fountain.

LUSK: It was wonderful.

We had things
that we'd never had before.

If you wanted a milkshake,

you'd call the little coffee shop
right in the middle of the place.

And then they had runners that
would run these things into us,

a sandwich, whatever we wanted.

It was just heaven.

SITO: It had a cafeteria.

It had a gymnasium with an ex-member
of the Swedish Olympic team

as a personal trainer.

The studio had its own gas station,
you know.

You could get your car repaired,
you know, while you're at work.

This is amazing.

JIMINY CRICKET: (SINGS)
# Like a bolt out of the blue

# Fate steps in
and sees you through... #

By the time the studio
was ready to launch Pinocchio

in New York City in February of 1940,
Walt Disney was selling hard.

# Your dreams come true! #

He was singing the praises
of Jiminy Cricket -

Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge
of Right and Wrong.

# Give a little whistle, yoo-hoo!

# Give a little whistle, whoo-hoo!

# And always let your conscience
be your guide

# And always let your conscience
be your guide. #

(CLANGING)

He was also talking up the studio's
breakthroughs in camera technology

and special effects.

BLUE FAIRY: Wake!

The gift of life is bound.

Father!

"For the first time
in the field of animation,"

Disney proclaimed,
"audiences will see, in Pinocchio,

"underwater effects that look like
super-special marine photography."

Can you tell me
where we can find Monstro?

Gee! They're scared!

You really have to stop yourself
and say, "This was all blank paper.

"This all began as blank paper.
It doesn't exist."

You know, we believe it's water,

and we believe those characters
are real,

and that's the summit
of the animator's art.

That's the pinnacle of what
we call personality animation,

which is creating a completely
artificial world that we accept.

Father!

Mm.

Pinocchio
has richness and dimensions

that other animated cartoons
don't have.

And when you are growing too old,
you will make good firewood!

I mean, he's swallowed by a whale,
for Christ's sake.

He is in peril throughout the movie.

Hey! Blubber mouth! Open up,
I got to get in there!

And at the same time
there's Jiminy Cricket,

you know,
who's delightful and charming

and takes some of the sting
off of this movie.

But that's a pretty dark movie.

Pinocchio is just a wooden boy
who's trying to be human.

One would think that
that means he can make mistakes,

that he would be allowed
to have the faults of being a boy.

Please! You've got to help me!

And instead any indiscretion
is met with the possible death

of his adopted father
or the transformation into a donkey.

The stakes are so very high.

Hee-haw! Hee-haw!

Oh! What's happened?!

I hope I'm not too late!

What'll I do!

Pinocchio is...is seeking a home.

He's seeking identity.

He's seeking place.
He wants to be real.

BLUE FAIRY: Prove yourself brave,
truthful and unselfish,

and some day you will be a real boy.

That's what the goal is.

I want to feel my life most fully.

And then once I feel my life,

I will have a chance to feel
the big truths,

the things that give us sustenance.

I'm alive, see!

And...and I'm...

I'm...I'm real.

I'm a real boy!

You're alive!
And...and you are a real boy!

Yay! Whoopee!

A real live boy!
This calls for a celebration!

Audiences across the country
walked away from Pinocchio

emotionally drained,
and enormously satisfied.

The critics raved.

"Walt Disney
has created something

"that will be counted in our favour -
in all our favour -

"when this generation is being
appraised by the generations

"of the future," the New York Times's
movie critic wrote.

Well, this is practically
where I came in.

"For it will be said that
no generation which produced

"a Snow White and a Pinocchio could
have been altogether bad."

The downside of Pinocchio
was apparent from the jump too.

Walt's insistence on innovation
had pushed production costs

to nearly twice that of Snow White,

and the picture was not going
to earn back the investment.

Ticket sales in the United States
were slow -

in Europe, now at war,
they were moribund.

The Disneys had burned through
more than $2 million

of the net profits from Snow White,

while borrowing heavily
from Bank of America

to fund the dream studio in Burbank.

Walt Disney
is kind of under the gun.

The costs of Fantasia and Pinocchio,
and even Bambi in its early stages,

are enormous.

And the war has cut off
the European market.

So Walt Disney has lost
a giant market,

and he is worrying about how
he can finance all of these films

under his new project to make
feature films constantly,

one every six months or so.

Roy Disney had a plan -

they would go public
and issue shares in the company.

His kid brother wasn't happy
at the thought of shareholders

sticking their noses in his creative
process, but he saw little choice.

In April of 1940,

as the last of the staff made
the transition to the Burbank Studio,

Walt Disney Productions issued
155,000 shares of preferred stock,

netting the company
nearly $4 million.

Roy and Walt had both signed
seven-year contracts

as part of the deal.

Roy was guaranteed a salary of $1,000
a week, and Walt, $2,000.

The company reassured investors

by taking out a $1.5 million life
insurance policy on its key asset -

Walt Disney.

(TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR
BY BACH PLAYS)

WATTS: Fantasia opens with the Bach
Fugue and Toccata in D Minor,

but it is pure abstraction,

no characters, no nothing that is
recognisable in the natural world,

which gets the movie off
in a very interesting vein.

HIGGINBOTHAM:
Fantasia is wildly ambitious.

You can feel it in every scene
but it's very uneven.

WATTS: When the movie worked,
it's spectacular.

When it didn't work,
it's sort of dumb.

The critical reaction
was extremely divided.

Some people thought Disney had
pulled off this alliance

of visual art and music, and created
something new and compelling.

Other critics thought
that it was a disaster.

And they slammed the movie
very, very hard

for dragging classical music
traditions down into the dust.

Walt Disney had made his reputation
in the intellectual community

as being unpretentious.

And when he makes Fantasia,
guess what?

He's pretentious.

Fantasia raises
a number of questions

as to if Walt
is stepping beyond himself,

if he's not appreciating his limits.

And Walt will take this personally.

He didn't handle criticism
very well, ever.

And the criticism over Fantasia,
I think, really rankled.

And what it did was to encourage

a kind of anti-intellectualism
that was always there with Disney,

but I think increasingly
he drifts in the direction of,

"These are eggheads, they don't know
anything about ordinary people

"and to hell with them."

Fantasia's financial losses were
far greater than Pinocchio's,

largely because so few theatres had
the expensive new sound system

Disney required
to show his film symphony.

The deficits left the company unable

to pay its guaranteed quarterly
dividend to preferred shareholders.

And the expensive new studio was
already starting to feel more like

a dropped anchor than a sail spread
wide to catch the creative winds.

WATTS: The new Burbank studio
was a kind of a case study in

"Be careful what you ask for."

It was so nice
that it was almost sterile.

It was all rationalised.
It was all organised.

And something, the quality
of the creative experience,

was almost designed
out of the operation.

There was something
unmistakably mechanical

at the heart
of Walt's workplace utopia.

People were segregated by task,
as at an industrial plant.

Company hierarchy was more rigid,
more obvious,

and more carefully policed
by Disney administrators.

The tonier perks accrued

to the highest links
of the corporate pay chain.

Membership in the Penthouse Club,

with its gymnasium,
steam room and restaurant,

was reserved for top writers
and animators - all men still.

So were office niceties

like area rugs, drapes,
easy chairs and armoires.

When animator Don Lusk started doing
friends a favour

by picking up the slack
on lower-level jobs

like clean-up and in-between,
somebody above took note.

I came into the room
on a Monday morning

and all that was
in there was a desk.

The rug was gone.

The coat closet was gone.

My easy, fold-out chair was gone.

Everything was gone
excepting my desk and a chair.

I called up and I said,
"What the hell is going on?"

And, they said,
well, I'm not animating

so you don't get a rug
on your floor.

GIVENS: I missed
the old Hyperion place.

It was beginning to feel
like corporate America, you know?

It was just getting too big
and losing the family touch.

The studio had grown so rapidly

that there were all of these folks
in the animation process -

you know, the assistant animators,
the in-betweeners.

They didn't know Walt Disney.

And they weren't well paid
by Walt Disney,

as the master animators were.

I think Walt Disney's attitude was,
"Look, anybody can do that stuff.

"The master animators,
that's one thing.

"But doing in-between work, why am
I going to pay them top dollar?

"They're not artists."

SITO: Some of the people who told me
about the cafeteria,

they said the cafeteria
was wonderful,

but most of the rank-and-file
artists

couldn't afford to eat there.

They still had to go out to
the sandwich wagon out on the street

'cause the salaries were
all over the place.

You know, I mean, there were people
making $200 and $300 a week

and people making $12 a week.

Workers at the bottom
of the Disney ladder

were starting to grumble in 1940.

Now that the company's finances
were public,

everybody knew the boss was making
five or 10 times more

than the highest paid members
of his creative team,

and more than 100 times that of
the women working in ink and paint.

Disney, who still insisted that
all his employees call him "Walt,"

was oblivious to the complaints
at his new studio.

It was no longer common
to see him wandering the halls,

engaging in idle chatter,
batting around story ideas.

He spent most of his time
in his own suite of offices,

with its private bath and bedroom,

and a team of secretaries
standing guard at his door.

Hollywood was famous for its
glamorous movie stars and directors,

but it would not have functioned

without the men and women working
behind the scenes -

building sets, adjusting lights,
drawing animation.

When federal legislation
had passed in 1935

allowing collective bargaining,

Hollywood's backstage hands
began to organise.

More than a half-dozen Hollywood
unions and guilds emerged

in the late 1930s

to bargain for better working
conditions and better pay.

Among them
was the Screen Cartoonists Guild,

which offered representation for the
animators, assistants, in-betweeners,

and ink-and-paint artists
working across the industry.

By 1940, the cartoonists guild had
organised the animation departments

at all of the major studios,
except Disney's,

which employed more
than half the men and women

working in the field of animation.

SITO: Even after organising MGM
and Warner Brothers,

and Screen Gems, and George Pal,
and Walter Lantz,

it only came to maybe about 150
people while Disney's was like 600.

If unionism was to work
in Hollywood,

Disney's was the ultimate battle.

Walt Disney saw
little reason to be worried.

He was not like those other fat-cat
studio heads, he told himself.

He and his "boys,"
as he called his animators,

were in this thing together.

HIGGINBOTHAM: Walt sees himself
as the father of this company

and that everyone who works for him
believes in what they are doing,

the enterprise of being animators,
of being artists,

and being part of a business,
and part of the studio.

GABLER: "Why in the world
would anyone need a union,

"when I'm giving you everything
you could possibly want?"

He didn't see paternalism in this.

He saw kindness
and generosity in it.

There were plenty of people
at Burbank

who did not see the labour situation
as Walt Disney did,

and among them was one of
his best animators, Art Babbitt.

Babbitt had been with Disney
for nearly a decade,

contributing to every major film,

and almost single-handedly creating
the popular character Goofy.

He was one of the highest salaried
animators on the Burbank lot,

but made little effort to hide
his sympathies for other animators

who had been denied
on-screen credits,

or for the hundreds
of assistants and inkers

who were barely eking out a living.

GABLER: He was rather a large
personality.

He wasn't subservient to Walt.

He didn't have that kind
of relationship to him.

He was his own man,

he was independent,
and Walt didn't like it.

SITO: Babbitt used to tell
the story about a young painter

who was making $16 a week

whose husband had run off
because of the Great Depression.

And what she was doing
is that she was skipping lunches

because she wanted
to keep feeding her family.

And one day she actually fainted
from malnutrition.

Disney didn't see the problem,

and certainly didn't want
to hear about it.

He was incensed when he learned
that the Screen Cartoonists Guild

was trying to organise his shop.

He was certain he had the right to
run his own company as he saw fit.

In February of 1941, Walt decided
to make his case, personally,

to the men and women working for him.

He gathered the staff
in the only auditorium at the studio

big enough to hold
all 1,200 of his employees.

DISNEY: In the 20 years
I have spent in this business,

I have weathered many storms.

It's been far from easy sailing,

which required a great deal of hard
work, struggle, determination,

confidence, faith,
and above all, unselfishness.

Some people think that we have
class distinction in this place.

They wonder why some get better
seats in the theatre than others.

They wonder why some men get spaces
in the parking lot and others don't.

I have always felt,
and always will feel,

that the men who contribute
the most to the organisation should,

out of respect alone,
enjoy some privileges.

My first recommendation
to the lot of you is this -

put your own house in order.

You can't accomplish a damn thing

by sitting around and waiting
to be told everything.

If you're not progressing
as you should,

instead of grumbling and growling,
do something about it.

Much of the staff left
the auditorium infuriated.

"This speech recruited more members
for the Screen Cartoonists' Guild

"than a year of campaigning,"
reported one left-wing magazine.

Babbitt was now convinced Disney
workers needed a real union

and signed his Screen Cartoonist
Guild membership card,

which made him
the highest-ranking Disney employee

to openly challenge the boss.

Walt Disney saw Babbitt's move
as a personal betrayal.

"I don't care if you keep
your goddamn nose

"glued to the board all day
or how much work you turn out,"

he told Babbitt in the hallway
one day.

"If you don't stop organising
my employees,

"I'm going to throw you right
the hell out of the front gate."

At the end of May 1941, Disney sent
a letter of termination to Babbitt

citing as cause "union activities."

Word of Babbitt's firing shot through
the studio in Burbank.

Disney employees who supported
the guild

met after work the following evening,

and by a vote of 315 to 4,

determined to take a stand
against their boss.

(APPLAUSE)

When he drove up to his studio gate
on May 29, 1941,

the picketers
were already on the march.

Walt Disney was forced
to wend his way

through more than 200
of his striking workers.

Nearly half of the studio's
art department had walked out,

and it wasn't
just the low-wage workers.

Some of Disney's
most trusted animators

were also on the picket line.

HAHN: The street's full of strikers,
not only from Disney

but from other studios,
parading back and forth with signs

and this wonderful, idyllic,
utopian place is in shambles.

All of a sudden,
the moment of the shared,

that "we are in this together, the
victories are all of our victories,"

that spell gets broken.

NILSEN: He poured his passion,

everything he believed in
into his studio.

It was the studio that
went against him at this point.

It was his own creation
that went against him.

BRODE: A certain light,
if not had gone out,

at least dimmed inside Walt Disney.

There is before the strike
and there's after,

and he was two different people.

Another man might have walked away
from his shattered utopia

and called it a day.

But Disney still had work to do,

and woe be to the forces
that stood in his path.

Supertext Captions by Ericsson
(c) SBS Australia 2015

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.