Walt Disney

Walt Disney was born in Chicago but the Disneys moved to Marceline, Missouri when he was age 4 where his father farmed with Walt’s uncle.  Two years after Walt started school, they moved again to Kansas City.  The family was poor.  He and brother Roy led a grueling life of paperboys both morning and evening distributing the Kansas City Star and KC Times. There was literally no time for play.  Many of the houses they delivered had rich residents, and one day another boy saw Walt throwing their paper.  He showed Walt his bicycle.  Walt’s eyes grew big and he could only dream of having toys and a bike. He was too painfully shy to talk. The other kid befriended him and began to put out toys near the door so that his chance friend, Walt, could pause for a few seconds and admire the forbidden toys, try one or two, and fantasize.

            Walt and Roy didn’t get very good grades in school because they were tired.  But Walt loved to draw, had a talent for it, and studied art in the upper grades. The family was strictly Protestant and patriotic.   He lied about his age in 1918 and got into the army but the war was over by the time he got to France.  He drove an ambulance. His hastily drawn cartoons were printed in “Stars and Stripes.”  Back home after the war, he got work at a commercial art studio, then at a film animation company.  He started his own studio which promptly went bankrupt like those prior companies.  But he had produced his first film, a 12 minute animation, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.  In 1923, He and Roy moved to Los Angeles, eventually opening up a studio for cartooning.  There they created Mickey Mouse.

            His humble character and unswerving Protestantism (We are Saints and Sinners: Walt chain-smoked and drank) led him to produce not only comedy but moral plays, rich with fantasy. As a child he loved Aesop’s Fables. As a filmmaker, he made delightful anthropomorphic animals.  Employing a separate script department they wrote family-oriented, optimistic screenplays with lessons of life.  And during the hard times of the 1930’s these were keenly accepted.  Mickey Mouse was introduced as Steamboat Willie, a character always getting into a scrape but escaping harm by doing right.  The Three Little Pigs depicted pigs who worked hard in defiance of adversity taunting a Big Bad Wolf (the Depression).  Snow White shows that a true princess’s character is her real beauty as she teams with little people who work diligently. Pinocchio illustrates that lies get you in trouble but truth wins. 

            When labor costs after WW II made cartoon animation expensive, Disney started doing nature documentaries and live action pictures.  Disney recognized the potential of television as well.  But deep down inside Walt was still the kid who’d had no toys but lots of fantasies.  So in 1951 he began plans for a grandiose toy explosion in Disneyland amusement park. Main Street was patterned after his memories of Marceline, Walt’s fascination with trains produced a train that ran through the park.  Disneyland soon became a mecca for tourists from all over the world.  And the lessons-on-life films continued. Lady and the Tramp (sowing your oats is fun but finding a partner, doing your duty bravely even when unappreciated, is the greater joy), Song of the South (even clever people do very stupid things and get stuck, but you can still win), and Bambi (growing up is scary and full of scars, but nobility awaits in real adulthood).  Critics have said that Walt Disney’s films indoctrinated the world with American Protestant values.  Perhaps, but Christianity seems to have a global resonance. Maybe it is an unusual way for Jesus Christ to get a foot in their door. Oh, and don’t forget to be the other kid who shared his toys with the paperboy.  You never know who he might grow up to be.