With my father visiting for the Christmas holiday, it was a great opportunity to visit one of the most interesting attractions in the Bay Area, the Walt Disney Family Museum.
You may be wondering, “What was Walt’s connection to the Bay Area?” There isn’t one. The Walt Disney Family Museum was created by Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, to honor her father, emphasize that the Walt Disney Company wasn’t his only work or legacy, and combat some of the crazier and/or unflattering conspiracy theories that had sprung up around him. Diane and her husband, former Disney CEO Ron Miller, had moved to Napa Valley after his ouster, and established Silverado Vineyards, so establishing the museum in San Francisco was a convenient way to keep her family legacy close by.
Even though I’ve visited the museum multiple times, I always find it fascinating. The main collection is divided into 10 galleries, each packed with photographs, artifacts, and other memorabilia from Walt and his family’s life. The effect is to feel like you’re walking through an entire lifetime in a single morning or afternoon. Old letters and telegrams give you a view into Walt’s mind, and of course there are numerous video screens throughout showing off the famous shorts, movies, and television programs, along with an ample helping of footage of Walt himself, and his iconic voice. (Even though Walt died nearly a decade before I was born, reruns of “The Wonderful World of Disney” made “Uncle Walt” an integral part of my childhood. My late mother was fond of recounting how when I was a toddler, I loved watching “The Mickey Mouse Club” and shouting “Donald Duck!” at the appropriate time during its theme song.)
One of the funny things about history is that so many elements of our world seem inevitable in hindsight. But walking through Walt’s life and focusing on being present in each moment helps me realize how wrong this impression is.
Today, Disney is an omni-media juggernaut, but the company’s survival was often in doubt. Walt’s first animation studio failed. When he moved to Hollywood, he figured he was too late to profit from the animation boom because he didn’t think he could ever catch up with iconic hits like Felix the Cat. Fortunately, he decided to try anyway.
His second animation studio created one of the country’s most popular characters, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, only to lose that character to his scheming distributor. (In a twist that reflects the way society functioned in that era, Walt signed a distribution deal with Margaret J. Winkler, who began her career as Harry Warner’s secretary before founding Winkler Pictures and becoming the most influential distributor of cartoons such as Felix the Cat. She was the first female member of the Motion Picture Producer’s Guild–now known as the Producer’s Guild of America. However, in 1924, Winkler married one of her employees, Charles Mintz, and retired when their first child was born. Her husband promptly renamed the company “Mintz Productions,” cheated Walt Disney out of his rightful royalties, and stole the character of Oswald.)
Walt and his team rebounded by creating Mickey Mouse, who became huge success after Walt bet the company on the new technology of “talking” pictures with sound. But like many a restless entrepreneur, Walt wasn’t satisfied with simply cranking out more of the same. He bet his company again on producing “Snow White,” the first full-length animated feature film. Both his wife Lillian and his brother and business partner Roy tried to talk Walt out of pursuing the project, which became known as “Disney’s Folly” duriong its long production period. When “Snow White” was released, it became the top-grossing movie of 1938; in inflation-adjusted terms, “Snow White” has grossed about $2.3 billion and counting.
He bet the company yet again in the 1950s when he build Disneyland. In fact, he even sold his vacation house in Palm Springs and cashed in a life insurance policy to help fund the project. He also agreed to produce and star in a Disney television show in exchange for ABC investing $500,000 in Disneyland and guaranteeing an additional $4.5 million in loans.
Disneyland, of course, was another massive and unprecedented success, and Walt was hard at work at building an even bigger attraction in Florida when he passed away unexpectedly (in November 1966, an X-ray to prepare for a routine surgery revealed metastatic lung cancer; Disney passed away on December 15 of that year).
The story of Walt Disney as an artist and entrepreneur is amazing. But the museum is careful to show Disney as a person as well, with family photos, old letters to friends and favorite teachers, and an amazing collection of artifacts. These range from some of the trinkets he collected as a 16-year-old ambulance driver in France during World War 1 (he forged an earlier birth year to enlist), to the beloved 1/8th scale model train, with working coal-powered engine, that he and his friends built by hand, and ran at one of his homes.
For me, the overall effect is both inspirational and moving. Walt Disney’s greatness wasn’t pre-ordained. His family wasn’t wealthy or well-educated. But the people around him encouraged his talents and supported him whenever they could. The Walt Disney Company’s first “studio” was his Uncle Robert‘s garage.
Meanwhile, despite his success and fame, Walt showed a similar approach to his own family. During the time his daughters were in school, he drove them to school each day before heading over the studio for his work.
Completeness compels me to mention that the museum is intended as hagiography, not as a balanced portrait. Walt was a demanding boss who wasn’t lavish with his praise. The museum offers quotes from employees who acknowledge his high expectations, but note that he helped them do more than they ever thought possible. In one video, the legendary Imagineer Herb Ryman tells the story of how Walt came to him on Saturday (September 26, 1953) asking him to work the entire weekend to create an illustration of the new theme park Disney had been planning so that Roy Disney could have it before he departed that coming Monday to present the concept to investors in New York. Ryman correctly pointed out, “Hey Walt, you’ve been working on this for weeks, why did you wait until today?” But Disney persuaded Ryman to help him, and the two of them spent the entire weekend together and completed the illustration on time. Was this bad management and inappropriate pressure? Or was it the creative process that allowed two geniuses to create one of their masterworks? The answer, of course, is that it was both.
If you want an experience that can help you grapple with the concepts of entrepreneurship, innovation, art, family, and legacy, I recommend you visit the museum.