Walt Disney He never stood out as an animator, but he was a great storyteller. He showed this when he decided to quit newspaper distribution to start a company with his brother Roy, starting out by making advertisements in the form of small animated films. It will also show how to absorb European culture and increase its reputation and, over time, He transformed the famous film studio into one of the world’s most important entertainment empires.
Now, like most adults, Walt is surrounded by rumors, myths, and half-truths. “Walt Disney is involved in very different myths,” the historian once said. Steven Watts. “On the one hand, his students respect Saint Walt as a beloved person. Protector of innocent imagination as a defender of fantasy and moral education. On the other hand, his critics harshly condemn Walt: “artistic, imperialist fraud, cynical manipulator of commercial formulas and artificially sweetened sentimentality.”.
First of all, his high level of responsibility and perfectionism earned him the label of authoritarian leader. In this sense, animator Ward Kimball said: Walt’s employees respected and feared him at the same time.: “He ran the studio with a kind of benevolent and paternalistic dictatorship. He was such a boss. He could be tough or self-centered, but we all knew him as a genius whose tough ways encouraged us and brought out the best in us. “Even though he was willing to mock and intimidate us, we knew Walt was revolutionizing animated cartoons, and we were secretly proud to be a part of it.”
The author says when the factory started operating Jorge FonteAn expert in the Disney universe, Walt consisted of only a few employees, with Walt serving as manager, father, and colleague. “He was one of them,” he assures this newspaper. “Yes, he was the one who made the decisions, but there were constant meetings where the animators contributed their own ideas. When he wanted to add sound to his first Mickey Mouse short, he met with several of his employees to record it together.”
“In the early years, many of his animators were making more money than he was, and when the studio became a public limited company and went public, Disney distributed shares to all its employees.”
According to the Canary, he co-wrote the book ‘Walt Disney’ with Olga Mataix. Animated universe of feature films, when the boss realized it would be good for his animators attend art classes, he enrolled them at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles himself, paid their scholarships, and drove them there in his own car: “In the early years, many of his animators were making more money than he was, and when the studio was founded, Disney became publicly traded in a public limited liability company and took its shares there in his own car. distributed it to all its employees. “I believe this is not exactly the behavior of a ‘dictator in chief’.”
It is also true that the man who brings happiness to all parts of the world sometimes has bad consequences. For example, several employees who were dissatisfied with their working conditions decided to join the union and supported the famous union, which was prohibited by the company. 1941 Disney strike, an incident that the company boss experienced as a personal attack. This incident brought his work into disrepute and contributed to his becoming a staunch anti-communist. Taking advantage of the fact that he had been colluding as an FBI informant since 1940, Reported some of his former employees to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the infamous Witch Hunt He was supported by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Beyond his anti-communist psychosis, Walt tried to keep his theme parks and animated characters free of political overtones.”
But beyond his anti-communist psychosis, Walt sought to protect his amusement parks and animated characters. free from political connotations. “For most of his adult life, Walt was neither a conservative nor a Republican nor anything else,” the biographer said.Neal Gabler. The American had voted for President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, and in 1940 he became sympathetic to Republican Wendell Willkie, but also rejected the latter’s request to support his campaign. Walt wrote: “I discovered long ago that I knew nothing about the game of politics, and since then I have preferred to remain silent on the whole subject rather than have my name attached to any statement that is not my own.” He left for another neighborhood in December 1966, just a few weeks after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Shortly after this, Urban legend that a businessman was frozen before his death to resurrect him in the future (the truth was that his family had chosen to cremate the body).
The legend also states that Mickey Mouse’s father racist. And it is a proven fact that the racist stereotypes reflected in some of his films intensify criticism. There are black crows ‘Dumbo (1941) or Native American characters Peter Pan. I would not mind ‘song of the south (1946), where black slavery is glorified. “Walt Disney is often accused of everything without the slightest evidence,” says Fonte. “They accused him of being a racist because no African Americans worked in his studio. But that wasn’t because he didn’t want to, it was because there were actually no African American animators in Hollywood…animation studio! The first of these was Floyd Norman, who came to the Disney studio in the mid-1950s.”
In some places Walt also kind of misogynist. Kimball once explained that his boss distrusted “neither women nor cats” and cited a letter he wrote to a young artist who wanted to be part of the staff of animators at his studio as evidence of this. declared that women do not do “any creative work” in their companiesbecause this task corresponded to “entirely young men”. Although Disney employees are predominantly ink and paint departmentIt is also true that a few girls are also included in this group, which consists almost entirely of young people under the age of 25. scenario departmentdrawing concept art or creating storyboards.
One of them is Bianca Majoliewho went to high school with Walt and joined the company in 1934 as the studio was preparing to create its first feature film, ‘Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs’., It cost half a million dollars but, to the surprise of many, raised eight million. Majolie was working in the story development department, which at the time was full of men who (according to her own testimony) treated them with jokes and boos, not disdaining the arrival of their first female partners. Any weakness they can find. She also played an important role in the factory. Mary BlairA brilliant artist whom Walt personally hired in 1940. Among other roles, Blair was the art director of films such as ‘Cinderella’, ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and played a key role in the design of the iconic Disneyland. The attraction is It’s a Small World, which opened in 1966.
What escapes the world of rumors is that Walt’s death does not mean the disappearance of his company. Those who remained in charge knew how to adapt to what was to come, so Disney not only maintained its power in Hollywood but increased it enough to reach its centennial year before any other agent in the industry could compete for cultural hegemony. . “Disney’s ideology was ‘whatever fits the market,’ and that was something Walt always saw clearly,” the journalist replies. Alberto CoronaAuthor of ‘The Other Disney’, When asked what this tycoon would think today about his company’s development and its timid steps towards visibility. “I think he wouldn’t be too bothered by the fact that today there’s a commitment to a certain diversity or a certain progressive spirit. I think that’s what the market wants. But, If there’s one thing about market ideology, it’s that it will always be wrong.”.
A good example is the research published by Data for Progress in 2022: disneyadministrators criticized the passage of a law in Florida that prohibits education about sexual orientation and gender identity. LGTBI named on list of companies funding politicians who oppose rights. “This issue has caused them a very serious credibility crisis,” Corona adds. “That’s actually why Bob Chapek lost his job.” [como primer ejecutivo de Disney]. In fact, if Disney was still making money today, which it still is, Walt would be happy by now.”