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"walt: The man behind the myth" will premiere on february 3rd on cnbc
- Thread starter WDWVito
- Start date
MKCP 1985
Well-Known Member
Gabler told a shockingly different story regarding Walt Disney's reason for giving up polo, as compared to the reason given in the CNBC documentary.
I wonder which is true. Given some reports I've been able to find on the internet, I would lean toward Gabler's story of the accidental death of the MGM studio contract actor over the reason given in the documentary. But credit the documentary for covering Walt's short term interest in polo. They didn't have to talk about it at all. :shrug:
SMRT-1
Active Member
good question.
ChrisFL
Premium Member
I actually decided to send an email to the Walt Disney Family Museum to ask about it...maybe I'll get a reply.
Computer Magic
Well-Known Member
Very good show that portrayed Walt as the man and not a brand. Something I think got lost by Disney Co over the years. He was a family man. Thus the reason Walt Disney Family Museum was created and this show based on.
I loved the story of the play house and Walt asked Diane to lean further out the window and she feel. She wasn't hurt and told a good story.
It was sad to see Walt in his last months of being alive. How he stated he was turning over the film and focus on EPCOT, where he said he needed 15 years. My heart sunk knowing he didn't have that time. He was so frail and I have never seen film of before Thursday. The video of him at the signing of the ski mountain which never happended.
I recall Diane selling all her Disney stock in the 80's.
I loved the story of the play house and Walt asked Diane to lean further out the window and she feel. She wasn't hurt and told a good story.
It was sad to see Walt in his last months of being alive. How he stated he was turning over the film and focus on EPCOT, where he said he needed 15 years. My heart sunk knowing he didn't have that time. He was so frail and I have never seen film of before Thursday. The video of him at the signing of the ski mountain which never happended.
I recall Diane selling all her Disney stock in the 80's.
Clever Name
Well-Known Member
This show tells the same old stories about Walt Disney. They didn’t bother to mention that he used very deceptive business practices and defrauded stockholders out of a lot of money with his creation of WED and using it as an exclusive (non bid) contractor to build Disneyland.
MUTZIE77
Well-Known Member
Why would a film made by the Walt Disney company, about one of the greatest minds in our countries history, tell a story like that? Also, who cares?, I would never remember him for anything like that anyway, I will always remember him for the amazing things he gave us. Where did you get that info from by the way?
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
That's exactly how I feel. Walt lived the very values that he built into his films, TV shows, and parks. He was the real deal. God, how he's missed...
Clever Name
Well-Known Member
The company naturally wants to perpetuate the myth that Walt was a very honest and good man. In reality, Walt was a ruthless business man (as were most of the studio heads back in those days) and he cut a lot of dishonest deals. The creation of WED was done without the knowledge of the shareholders. The Disney board of directors approved of the deal in a secret meeting. Walt’s brother Roy knew that the WED dealings from 1952 until the early 1960’s were directly defrauding the shareholders.
Roy feared that if the shareholders found out about the crooked dealings with WED that the shareholders would sue the studio. Roy finally convinced Walt to stop the fraud and Walt agreed to sell WED to the studio. Walt was a great con artist.
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
I'm sure Walt didn't intend to "defraud" anyone by his actions. No doubt his motive was to keep the creation of Disneyland under his strict control. And he never did anything to please stockholders anyway. His brother Roy was always trying to get him to attend stockholder meetings, which Walt resisted for a long time. When he finally gave in and appeared at one of them, he read his fellow attendees a letter he'd gotten from a stockholder. The letter went something like this: "Dear Mr. Disney, I love your movies, and I don't care if I ever make a dime out of the Disney stock I own. You just keep up the good work and keep making good movies." When Walt finished reading, he looked around the room and said, "I wish this company had more stockholders like that one. He understands what Disney is all about. Now, it's been very nice to see you all, but if you'll excuse me, I have a studio to run." And he left, and, not surprisingly, Roy never asked Walt to attend another meeting. :lol:
Here's the link to the page I got that story from. It's an excerpt from Pat William's excellent book "How To Be Like Walt".
http://books.google.com/books?id=lS...&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
Uh huh. Source?
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
The issues regarding the creation of WED Enterprises are well documented, but with the except of the Disney versions that gloss over the issue, it was Walt's doing and his alone. WED Enterprises, its ownership of the "Walt Disney" name that was then licensed to the studio, the removing of studio employees, and Walt's sole ownership were all issues that created one of the biggest rifts between Walt and his brother. Roy Disney was the cunning businessman (Walt went belly up each time he ran a company: Laugh-O-Gram, Iwerks-Disney, et al.) who realized that the only way to, once again, save his brother from ruin and the studio he had built from the disgruntled shareholders was for Walt Disney Productions to buy out WED Enterprises. But Walt did keep his name and a couple of the attractions at Disneyland (Disneyland Railroad, Enchanted Tiki Room and a few other things) and his apartment in a new company, Retlaw Enterprises. Retlaw remained in the hands of Walt's family, its remaining holdings in Disneyland (except the apartment furniture which is now on display at the Walt Disney Family Museum) being sold to the studio in the early 1980s, and finally being folded into the Walt Disney Family Foundation earlier this century.
For those looking for sources, it is found in a number of places. I know it is mentioned at least briefly in DisneyWar by James B. Stuart and I believe more details can also be found in Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler (which Diane does not like) and The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life by Steven Watts.
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
I remember reading about that rift between Roy and Walt in Bob Thomas' biography and Pat William's book. The point I was trying to make was that Walt was hardly a con artist. He was regrettably naive when it came to business dealings, and that indeed got him in trouble a number of times, especially when he dealt with people who really were con men, such as Charles Mintz (who took Oswald away from Walt) and Cinephone's Pat Powers. But calling him "ruthless" and "dishonest" is more than a bit over the top.
WED had one purpose - to build Disneyland. It was Walt's own company. According to Pat Williams' book: "Walt owned all of the stock and called all the shots. He enjoyed spending time at WED, huddling with his Imagineers. Harriet Burns recalls, 'I worked in the art department at WED. Walt would come down to work with us. He'd sit on a stool and relax with us because we were so informal. He was always up, always positive. How many CEOs would come down to work with his employees like that?'
The rift between Roy and Walt over WED is complex, and I'm not going to detail all of it here. The gist of it, as I understand it, is that at that point in time, Walt no longer ran Walt Disney Productions. He oversaw every project, but he didn't call the shots. Control over operations was in the hands of Roy and the board of directors, all of whom answered to the stockholders. That's why WED was so important to Walt; he got to control that and didn't have to answer to anybody. Things got tense between Roy and Walt, and at one point they wouldn't speak to each other. The rift finally broke when Roy sent a delegation of attorneys to Walt's office to meet with him and his agent. Things got very ugly. Walt talked about leaving his own company and working for a rival studio. The attorneys threatened to sue. Roy heard the whole thing from his office down the hall. He came charging into Walt's office and started shouting himself - but at the lawyers, not at Walt. He told them that none of them would be in the studio right now if it wasn't for Walt, that everything they had was because of Walt's sacrifices, that his brother deserved "a lot better treatment than he's been shown here today".
After that, according to Williams, " the atmosphere of the negotiations changed, and Walt got most of what he wanted. The studio bought WED Enterprises, and Walt retained ownership of Retlaw."
Williams goes on to recount the story of how Walt showed up in Roy's office on his brother's birthday with a real Indian peace pipe as a gift, and a note that read in part: "I think, between us over the years, we have accomplished something. There was a time when we couldn't borrow a thousand dollars and now I understand we owe twenty-four million! But in all sincerity, Happy Birthday and many more - and I love you."
Con man? Devious? I don't think so.
Walt Disney1955
Well-Known Member
Haha, amen brother!
I'd probably do the same thing. I don't deny that Walt could have been a tough guy to work for, but shouldn't we thank God that his movies and Disneyland were run by him and not some greedy stockholders? If that were the case would we even be talking about Disneyland or Disney World with such reverence? Would the parks be as great as they are if some faceless stockholders had a say in it?
The world is more than just money and I am pretty sure these guys still made money off the company in the long run. What is that famous Walt quote?
"I don't make movies to make money, I make movies to make money for more movies"
or something like that
Clever Name
Well-Known Member
Let’s start out with this item:
Originally Walt wanted to name the company Walt Disney Incorporated,but Roy Disney was concerned that the shareholders in Walt DisneyProductions (later The Walt Disney Company) would perceive a conflictof interest between the two organizations and persuaded Walt to changethe name. (Building a Company - Roy Disney and the Creation of anEntertainment Empire (c)1998 Bob Thomas p. 181)
This example is a clear case of deception. Both Roy and Walt used an internal “code” name “WED” to hide the creation and purpose of Walt’s private company from the studio shareholders. Walt then hired away the most talented artists and story men from the studio to work for WED.
Please note that Bob Thomas uses the phrase "...would perceive a conflict of interest...". He was trying to be nice.
These personnel agreed to work for WED because Walt paid them more money! They’d be foolish not switch over to WED. However, remember that all the work done at WED was charged back to the studio on a “cost plus” basis. The fraud in this case is obvious. After Walt was done with a particular project, he would send his WED people back to the studio payroll. As needed, he would switch personnel back and forth from the studio to WED to accomplish tasks including personal projects at the homes of friends and relatives. This work was also charged back to the studio on a “cost plus” basis.
Had the studio shareholders been aware of these deceptive practices, they surely would have sued (and won) for extensive monetary damages. Walt and Roy kept the WED arrangement tightly concealed for many years. Roy feared that the deception would be discovered and urged Walt to merge WED into the studio operations and stop bilking the shareholders.
Originally Walt wanted to name the company Walt Disney Incorporated,but Roy Disney was concerned that the shareholders in Walt DisneyProductions (later The Walt Disney Company) would perceive a conflictof interest between the two organizations and persuaded Walt to changethe name. (Building a Company - Roy Disney and the Creation of anEntertainment Empire (c)1998 Bob Thomas p. 181)
This example is a clear case of deception. Both Roy and Walt used an internal “code” name “WED” to hide the creation and purpose of Walt’s private company from the studio shareholders. Walt then hired away the most talented artists and story men from the studio to work for WED.
Please note that Bob Thomas uses the phrase "...would perceive a conflict of interest...". He was trying to be nice.
These personnel agreed to work for WED because Walt paid them more money! They’d be foolish not switch over to WED. However, remember that all the work done at WED was charged back to the studio on a “cost plus” basis. The fraud in this case is obvious. After Walt was done with a particular project, he would send his WED people back to the studio payroll. As needed, he would switch personnel back and forth from the studio to WED to accomplish tasks including personal projects at the homes of friends and relatives. This work was also charged back to the studio on a “cost plus” basis.
Had the studio shareholders been aware of these deceptive practices, they surely would have sued (and won) for extensive monetary damages. Walt and Roy kept the WED arrangement tightly concealed for many years. Roy feared that the deception would be discovered and urged Walt to merge WED into the studio operations and stop bilking the shareholders.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Walt Disney went to New York knowing that Oswald was all but lost and that he could not trust the animation staff. He, Roy, Ub, Lillian and Edna were secretly working on Mickey Mouse before he left for that trip. There was no time, money or intellectual property left to sustain the studio had Mickey not been in the background. It was kept a secret because one of the reasons that Mintz was offering less money is because he believed Walt was not an active part of making the Oswald shorts, and he would have argued that his and Universal's money, intended for making their product (the Oswald shorts), was going into a competing product (Mickey Mouse).
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
According to Bob Thomas' book, Walt didn't know Mintz had hired away his animators until Mintz told him during the meeting where Walt tried to get a bigger budget for his Oswald cartoons. Walt then told Mintz he had to think things over, went back to his hotel room and phoned Roy. Roy did an investigation and found that Mintz had indeed hired away virtually all of Walt's animators except Ub Iwerks. After hearing the news, Walt then worked like heck to hang onto Oswald. He contacted Fox and MGM, both of which turned him down. Mintz then told Walt that Oswald was owned by Universal and Walt actually had no real say as to what was to be done with the character. It was at that point that Walt vowed to his wife that he'd never work for someone else again as long as he lived. Still, he tried to talk to Universal execs, pleading with them to "give us a decent break", but they sided with Mintz.
Now, why would Walt work so hard to hang onto a character that YOU say he already knew "was all but lost"? As for the creation of Mickey, that didn't happen until after the loss of Oswald. Walt didn't even tell Roy the full story of what happened with Oswald until he got back from New York. "We haven't got a deal," he told Roy, then added,"We're going to start a new series." And then Mickey was brought into existence. Whether he was created by Walt on that train trip from New York, or whether he and Ub Iwerks collaborated more closely afterward and between them came up with the character, is shrouded in mystery. At any rate, after Mickey was created and the first short "Plane Crazy" was written, Walt and Iwerks kept the animation of the film under wraps, away from the animators who were still contracted to finish up the remaining Oswalds but who were then scheduled to leave Walt and work for Mintz. Much of the work was done in Walt's garage, and some of the inking and painting was done by Walt's wife Lillian, Roy's wife Edna, and Walt's sister-in-law Hazel Sewell. Now to make it clear: all this was done AFTER Mintz took Oswald away from Walt, not BEFORE, as you say. All the books on Walt I've read corroborate this. At the very least, I think you've got your timelines mixed up. And I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to portray Walt as deliberately dishonest and a crook. Naive, not a hardheaded businessman, sure. But a crook? Most definitely not.
WDW_Princess
New Member
I cry everytime I watch this. He was an amazing person.