Understanding Disney. Janet Wasko
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Walt Disney, the man
Once upon a time . . .
Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago in 1901, the fourth son in a family of five children.12 Struggling to gain financial security, his father moved the family from Chicago to a farm in Missouri (1906), to Kansas City (1910), and then back to Chicago (1917). Later in his life, Disney often referred to his memories of the farm and rural life in Marceline, Missouri. But the irony, pointed out by some biographers, is that the family lived in Marceline only a few years; thus Disney’s rural roots were relatively shallow. Nevertheless, Disney “idealized and romanticized” these memories, which provided the basis for his attachment to small-town America and its values.
When the family moved to Kansas City, Walt and his older brother, Roy, apparently suffered from long hours of hard work delivering newspapers for their father’s new business and were also reportedly subjected to some physical abuse from their straitlaced father. Roy served as an ally and protector of the younger Walt but, upon reaching maturity, left the family as two other older brothers had done previously. Thus, despite his fondness for warm, happy families, Walt Disney’s own family life lacked these qualities. His biographers note that he developed a “creative and lighthearted personality,” an inclination towards commercial activities, an intense desire to succeed, a strong rejection of organized religion, and a loathing of poverty, as well as faith in practical education and experience.13
Disney left home when he was 16 years old, falsifying his age so that he could join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. Even though World War I had virtually ended, he served as a driver and performed other duties in various locations in France. When he returned to the United States in 1919, he pursued his interest in drawing at a commercial art firm in Kansas City, rather than finishing high school. After dabbling with animation for a few years, he formed his own company, Laugh-O-Gram Films, in 1922, and started producing the Alice’s Wonderland series, which combined animation with live action. It was also the beginning of his collaboration with the talented artist Ub Iwerks, who joined the Disney enterprise and became an important part of Disney’s future success.
Walt joined his brother Roy in Los Angeles in 1923, as an official history distributed by the Disney company explains, “with a lot of hopes but little else.” After failing to gain employment with one of the film studios, Disney started where he had left off in Kansas City by reviving the Alice series. After a New York company agreed to distribute the cartoons, Walt convinced Roy to become his business manager, and the Disney company was officially formed on October 16, 1923. Although at first the company was called the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, it soon became the Walt Disney Studio, reflecting the roles that the two brothers would play throughout the history of the company – Walt as the primary, “creative” force, who received the public attention and acclaim, and Roy, who worked behind the scenes, handling finances and tending to the organization.14
While the studio produced 56 Alice shorts, another animated series based on a character called Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, was created in 1927 for Universal Pictures. However, after brief success with ten Oswald shorts in 1927 and 16 in 1928, the Disney brothers discovered that the rights to the character were actually owned by Universal. In addition, the majority of his animators had been lured away from the Disney company to work for the New York distributor. This story is an oft-repeated one in the Disney legend, as it was said to have taught Walt an important lesson: never lose control of your creations. Any number of events in Walt’s life and in the Disney histories are explained by this one story.
“It all started with a mouse”
What followed the loss of Oswald also became part of the Disney legend: the birth of Mickey Mouse. The most famous version of the story features Disney and his wife (whom he had first employed at his studio and then married in 1925) traveling by train from New York after learning that Oswald had been lost. Disney created Mickey, at first called Mortimer, and returned to Hollywood with the first cartoon in mind. It is amazing how often this story is repeated.
Another version is presented by one of the official histories distributed by the company: “It was at the Hyperion Studio, after the loss of Oswald, that Walt had to come up with a new character, and that character was Mickey Mouse. With his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, Walt designed the famous mouse.”15 The more careful biographies agree that the creation of The Mouse (as he is referred to around the Disney studio) was a collaboration between Disney and Iwerks; however, Disney took the credit in public. Iwerks animated two cartoons featuring the new character, Plane Crazy and Gallopin’ Gaucho. Yet the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released was actually the third film produced. Steamboat Willie appeared in November 1928 after synchronized sound had been added. Many of the Disney histories credit the addition of sound to Walt, after he viewed the first feature film with sound, The Jazz Singer, in 1927. However, another version of the story is that he was “unable to sell (the cartoons) because they were silent films, and sound was revolutionizing the movie industry.”16
What is indisputable is that Mickey Mouse was an instant success, not only with distributors and theater owners but also with the public. In his controversial biography of Disney, Marc Eliot notes that there were more sophisticated animated shorts being made at the time. “However, what set Disney’s films apart was his ability to produce cartoons that not only talked but made lots of money, and that combination made them highly desirable to the industry’s leading distributors.”17 The Disney company was able to secure a distribution contract with Columbia Pictures to produce additional Mickey Mouse cartoons, even though the amount received often did not cover the costs, which by late 1931 had increased from about $5,400 to $13,500 for each cartoon.18
Thus the Disney brothers found that they needed additional revenue to survive and turned to other sources, especially merchandising (Figure 2.2). The first arrangement to produce a Mickey Mouse product was a $300 offer to feature The Mouse on writing tablets in 1929, but it was quickly followed by many more. The first formal merchandising contract was with the George Borgfeldt Company in 1930, although apparently there was also a good deal of unlicensed merchandise, especially in Germany, France, England, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Spain.19 In 1932, the company hired a dynamic salesman and innovator, Herman “Kay” Kamen, to head the merchandising division, leading to a proliferation of Disney products. An indication of the growing importance of merchandising for the company was the reorganization in late 1929 into four divisions: production, film recording, real estate, and licensing and merchandising (later called Walt Disney Enterprises).20
Early Mickey Mouse products were mostly toys and dolls but subsequently expanded to every imaginable kind of product. Especially popular were watches and clocks produced by the Ingersoll–Waterbury Company. By January 1930, Mickey appeared in a comic strip distributed by King Features. Mickey and his friends were also featured in Mickey Mouse Magazine (from 1933 to 1940) and numerous books, as well as in a newspaper comic strip. Similar publications appeared in other countries, as Mickey was featured as Topolino in Italy and in Le Journal de Mickey in France.
Even before the merchandising efforts, Mickey Mouse Clubs had appeared around the country and the world, organized around Saturday movie matinees for children. The company distributed bulletins to theaters explaining how to start clubs in their towns. By 1932, there were a million members worldwide of the Mickey Mouse Clubs, which also served to promote the Disney cartoons and merchandise.21
Figure 2.2: Mickey Memorabilia displayed at D23 Expo 2011. Photo from Disney Treasury Archives by Doug Kline.
With the success of Mickey Mouse, the studio began production of the Silly Symphonies, a series of short films that experimented with sound, music, and images to create moods and emotions, rather than humor as in other Disney productions. The first of the Silly Symphonies was The Skeleton Dance in 1929, followed by Frolicking Fish, Monkey Melodies,