Welcome back to the second summarization of Founder’s Podcast! Please feel free to give me any feedback on length, content, or anything else that you think could improve this newsletter. I hope you enjoy it!
Walt Disney revolutionized the art world by creating a new art form - animated films - that provided strength during World War II and an escape during the Great Depression. He built the most powerful entertainment empires, becoming a master of order and creativity. This article explores key events that shaped Walt Disney’s life and legacy.
Walt Disney discovered his passion for drawing at a young age. Despite having only a 9th-grade education, he pursued his dream of becoming a cartoonist. At 19, he started his first business creating cartoons for marketing companies. Although the business failed, his determination led him to LA, where he began to build a successful studio.
In 1928, just as everything seemed to be going well, came one of the most devastating episodes of Walt’s life. With Oswald’s success(one of Walt’s cartoons), Mintz, his partner and distributor who would sell and get Walt paid for the productions, was tired of Walt’s financial haggling and his need for control especially because Walt didn’t draw any of the drawings anymore. Mintz gathered all of Walt’s employees to create a plan to have Walt relieved of his duties.
Iwerks, who was asked to join the group that planned to conspire against Walt, warned Walt of what was happening behind his back. Walt choosing to be oblivious, could not believe his staff would conspire against him because they disliked him. This ends up being his first major mistake.
Meanwhile, in February 1928, Mintz as expected, signed a new 3-year agreement with Universal to provide Oswald’s. The Oswalds had been one of the best sellers in the short subject program. Still refusing to believe Mintz’s betrayal and full of confidence, Walt went to New York to negotiate his new contract with Mintz and planned on asking for an increase from $2250/film to $2500/film. He was so certain of a favorable outcome even if it wasn’t with Mintz, that he and Lillian(his wife), went on what they called a second honeymoon.
Mintz not only didn’t offer to increase Walt’s cut of the profits, he was now offering a 50/50 split to make it $1400/film and a substantial salary which would suggest that Walt would not be a studio owner but be a sub-contractor for Mintz.
Walt aggrieved by the terms, contacted his brother Roy to get get contracts signed by the staff immediately before Mintz could get them to sign a contract for the new plan. When Roy told Walt that no one on the staff signed the contract, Walt
finally realized that Mintz did work behind his back and got all his employees to betray him.
Walt came to 2 terrible realizations, he had become expendable at his own company and his employees had betrayed him. In concluding his deal with the distributor, Mintz had concluded that Walt would have no rights to the character Walt had created, leaving him with no resources. Mintz’s final offer to Walt was to give Walt $1800/film + 50% of the profits from Universal but he presented a new stipulation, Mintz would take over the Disney organization paying Walt an additional $200/week as his employee. Mintz has essentially stripped Walt of any control by making him an employee.
Walt wasn’t all about making money. He wanted to make sure whatever he was working on was the best thing out there; for that to happen, he needed control.
Angered and distraught, he refused the offer. He returned to his hotel, fuming that he was out of a job, but at the same time, he was glad of it because he would never work for anyone ever again.
When Walt left to go back to LA, he had nothing. No character, no term, no staff, no plan, and no cartoon land. All he left with were the lessons he learned from this betrayal: be careful with who you trust, you have to control what you have or else it will be taken from you, and the business world can be very duplicitous.
On the train ride back from being betrayed by Mintz, he makes drawings and he comes up with Mickey Mouse. By the time he gets to LA, he has the beginning of Mickey Mouse.
We’re going to fast forward in Walt’s life.
Once Walt masters something he quickly loses interest and moves onto something new. He spent the previous 3 years working 7 days a week developing the first feature cartoon - Snow White. Everyone is telling him it’s not going to work because cartoons were 5-8 minutes long and no one is going to watch an hour-and-a-half feature.
Walt Disney proves everyone wrong. We’re now going to jump into the triumph of Snow White.
The 9 months after Snow White's debut may have been the best months of Walt’s adult life. In its first week, it grossed $19k, second week it did $20k, and in 10 weeks it grossed a total of $180k. Today that would be over $3 million!
Snow White generated more revenue than any other movie, film, feature, or cartoon out there. By the time it finished its run in 1939, there were over 2 thousand Snow White products, 16 million drinking glasses were sold, and another $4 million worth of toys and handkerchiefs were sold.
Although Snow White had been a great success, it had taken a toll on Lillian because Walt was consumed by his work and was working 24/7. It got to a point where they thought about getting a divorce. They pushed through and ended up adopting their 6-week-old daughter, Sharon Mae.
His family became more important to him as his social events began to diminish. He gave up his hobbies and other interests to spend more time with Lillian and his kids because he was already spending so much time at the studio.
The next 2 events will have a drastic effect on Walt’s life just as the betrayal of Mintz did.
As the studio continued to create famous features, there came an event in the world that Walt would never recover from.
Disney’s parents lived in Poland and were starting to feel lonely. Now that Walt had money, he bought them a house near them with a very nice heater inside the house (you’ll see why the heater is important). The heater broke one day so Walt had a crew from the studio come out to fix it before night so his parents wouldn’t freeze.
In the middle of the night, Walt’s mother went to use the bathroom and when she didn’t come back for a while, Elias(Walt’s dad) went to check on her. He found her lying on the floor of their bedroom. He went to call for help but before he could go downstairs, he fainted. Downstairs in the courtyard, their housekeeper was sweeping up something she spilled and started to feel dizzy herself and felt something was amiss.
She rushed into the house to find both of Walt’s parents passed out lying on the floor. She called a neighbor and phoned Roy. She and the neighbor dragged Walt’s parents down the stairs and outside. Elias revived, but Walt’s mom did not. She died of carbon monoxide from the defective heater. A lid on the air intake had slipped which recirculated the exhaust into the house.
It was the most shattering moment in Walt’s life. He couldn’t stand to think that his mother died in the house that he had given her by the culpability of his workman.
He goes from the most successful part of his life(snow white), and then a few years later, the most tragic event in his life - his mother’s death.
After Snow White, his studio continued to create films. Walt was able to create and work on the things that he liked for about 4-5 years. That all changed during WWII. The U.S. Government had Disney’s studio create cartoons to support the U.S. during these hard times. By this time, the studio is still running, but his heart just isn’t in it anymore. So his employees start to complain that he’s never around, that he used to be involved and now they can’t even get him to sign off on new ideas. His animators go on strike and turn his only happy place - the studio - into a bitter and unbearable place.
As we’ve discussed before, Walt has an obsessive nature. He either 0 or 100. Either he is completely obsessed or he can’t even give something his attention.
Walt during this time, became obsessed with trains. He focused 2-3 years on just trains and not his studio. He built them in his backyard and built many more that were 1/10 the size of a real one.
During this odd time of obsession, Walt has the idea to create an amusement park. As we all know, this today is Disney Land.
This becomes for the rest of his life - his main obsession.
It was the park that Walt cared about and what he dreamed about. Walt couldn’t even focus on his studio he was so consumed with this new endeavor he wanted to take on.
Walt would sit in on the story meetings, but not like he once had, and everyone knew that Walt on the weekends and at night, wasn’t thinking about the pictures or the stories, he was thinking about Disney Land. He was always thinking about Disney Land.
While he was working on Disney Land, every amusement park operator had said it would fail. This made Walt very happy. Remember, during Snow White, everyone said it was going to fail, no one wants to watch a 2-hour movie, and it ended up being the most successful film of all time.
He loved all the negative comments and people not believing in him because he had something to fight for and something to prove.
Walt didn’t want anyone on the staff who had any experience in the amusement park world because Disney Land was not going to be any ordinary amusement park. He only wanted young people to work for him who wanted to learn and were willing to make mistakes.
Walt walked over every inch of Disney Land telling the workers where everything would be going. One example, he told them to move a fence they just spent all day putting in a foot to the left because they wouldn’t be able to see the boat coming around the corner. He thought of everything.
Walt wanted perfection. Having come to dread the studio, he loved the park. He would even eat hot dogs under a tent with the workers at the park. Still, he was impatient with the pace of construction and nervous that guests might not see where the money and investment had gone.
As the July 1959 opening neared, national anticipation grew. For 9 months Walt has been promoting the park on his TV channel.
Despite some of the park’s shortcomings, he seemed rejuvenated. He was the first one to go on the rides. He was like a little kid
Some of the workers called the park “the world’s biggest toy for the world’s biggest boy”.
On the day of opening, everyone was nervous except Walt. He loved all the excitement and attraction the park had gained. This was because Walt was back in his element and he knew he was back.
After all the doubts his staff, brother, wife, and experienced amusement park workers had harbored about Disney Land, Walt had been vindicated. The opening day of Disney Land, the park was an instant triumph. The first week, the park had 161,000 visitors and at the end of the month, it was attracting over 20,000 each day, over half a million visitors in all after 4 weeks of operation.
In August, nearly half of southern California tourists had visited Disney Land. By the end of September, the park had welcomed its 1 millionth guest. In its first year, it attracted 3.6 million visitors. In the second year, it doubled. And the park received its 10 millionth visitor just 2.5 years after opening day.
Disney Land was Walt’s proudest moment. He would have continued to improve on it if he had more time on the earth.
Walt had shortness of breath and some excess weight so he now looked ill. This is 8 years after Disney Land opens. In doing a diagnostic workup before he was supposed to have a routine surgery, the doctors found lumps on Walt’s left lung and immediately ordered him into the hospital for surgery. Walt had lung cancer. Sharon once asked Walt not to attend one of her plays because if she heard him cough she would forget her lines.
Walt who was a confident man, knew his condition was serious.
The doctors gave Walt 6 months to 2 years to live. Lillian was in denial. Roy too. No one at the studio knew. Not even everyone in Walt’s family knew of his condition. His family had to find out through the papers.
Even as his condition worsened, the family was in denial that he would succumb.
Walt had died at 9:35 am on December 15th, 1966 of cardiac arrest due to lung cancer.
Thanks for reading! See you next week when I’ll summarize “#3: The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Edison Invented the Modern World”!