Walt Disney, every mention
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Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 3:24 Ben Gilbert Today, listeners, we tell the story of how Disney went from Walt's tidy, neat idea
- ▶ 5:20 David Rosenthal In the 18 or so years since Walt died, Disney's star has faded so badly that it looks like no wish can save it.
- ▶ 5:50 David Rosenthal Epcot has just launched in Florida, not as Walt Disney's utopian dream of a city of the future, but as a massively over budget and underwhelming World's Fair knockoff that the company has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars deep into debt…
- ▶ 6:11 David Rosenthal Disney, has resigned from the company and is scheming to launch a boardroom attack on Walt's once beloved son-in-law, Ron Miller, who is currently the CEO running the company.
- ▶ 9:15 David Rosenthal All of the following people are being taught the craft of Disney animation in a small basement room just a half hour's drive north of the Disney Burbank lot in another institution that Walt Disney himself had created, set up, and endowed…
- ▶ 10:17 David Rosenthal That was why Walt created CalArts.
- ▶ 10:20 David Rosenthal He wanted it to be this institution that would keep the pipeline of new animation talent flowing into Disney long after he was gone, and Walt left like half of his estate
- ▶ 11:52 David Rosenthal As CEO, who again is Roy's cousin by marriage, married to Walt's daughter, and they do this via dramatic boardroom coup that happens on September seventh, 1984.
- ▶ 16:31 David Rosenthal And yes, Walt had a very different way of doing this.
- ▶ 20:06 Ben Gilbert If you're one of these animators who is looking at it from the perspective of what makes this place special, and the very first thing, let's, let's say you were optimistic about change, that happens is they kick the animators out of the…
- ▶ 20:53 David Rosenthal Ticket prices at the Disney parks have basically been flat since Walt died.
- ▶ 20:57 David Rosenthal Like the spirit around the company and the ethos of management is like, well, Walt wanted this to be accessible to everybody and he set these prices.
- ▶ 23:48 Ben Gilbert Roy views his job as the keeper of Walt's vision and the keeper of the thing that made the company special, and the thing that made the company special was this ridiculous flywheel, for lack of a better term, that they had where you make…
- ▶ 34:57 Ben Gilbert Disney, who felt this was a big part of his Uncle Walt's legacy, kind of pushing the frontier of technology and how investing in new technology can push the state of the art in storytelling.
- ▶ 36:10 Ben Gilbert And on top of that, what CAPS was, was a super duper multi-plane camera that could do an unlimited number of planes, not just limited to whatever you could actually do in, in Walt's era.
- ▶ 37:43 David Rosenthal I mean, really for the first time since Walt died, the core animated IP at the center of the company is back.
- ▶ 40:54 David Rosenthal This is the core philosophy behind how Walt Disney's flywheel business strategy
- ▶ 44:12 David Rosenthal And on the weekends, these American families, they go to the mall, they go to the Disney store, they buy the merch, they revel in all this Disney, like, it is back to the peak of Disney under Walt, where it just takes over America,…
- ▶ 45:48 David Rosenthal It's back to Walt Disney.
- ▶ 48:21 David Rosenthal The parks were obviously Walt's genius and part of the original Walt vision and business model for what Disney would become, but
- ▶ 51:35 David Rosenthal Made Disney flourish in a way that Walt only could have dreamed of.
- ▶ 1:14:36 Ben Gilbert Walt did this.
- ▶ 1:32:02 Ben Gilbert Michael sort of famously had an eye for making the theme parks great, the sort of second only since Walt.
- ▶ 1:37:50 Ben Gilbert Walt Disney's chart, the famous flywheel one, may have been a very satisfying business model, but the reality of Disney's TV business is that it was scalable in a way that the Disney chart could never be.
- ▶ 1:38:19 Ben Gilbert In that world, Walt Disney's model was a nice side business to the real moneymaker.
- ▶ 1:44:52 Ben Gilbert Both to produce fresh new cutting edge content the way that Walt did, but also embrace technology as a distribution medium.
- ▶ 1:45:21 David Rosenthal Unlike Walt's era, at this point, something like a third of the global population lives in those two countries, and Disney is all about scale economies, make the deepest, best, highest quality content and characters and stories possible,…
- ▶ 1:52:44 David Rosenthal Pixar is the spiritual successor of Walt Disney's vision for Disney animation.
- ▶ 1:53:12 Ben Gilbert Classes are taught by Disney's legendary animators who worked with Walt, the Nine Old Men, as they are affectionately referred to.
- ▶ 2:13:16 David Rosenthal And where it really, really does have the same spirit as Walt and Disney is that every single one of those steps is also a story step.
- ▶ 2:16:00 Ben Gilbert They don't want it to harken back to sort of the classic Walt's tales, either.
- ▶ 2:39:59 David Rosenthal Pixar is what Walt wanted the Burbank Animation Campus to be when he built it in.
- ▶ 2:41:40 Ben Gilbert The Walt era of animation had a spiritual successor, which was the Disney Renaissance, which had a spiritual successor that was Pixar.
- ▶ 2:48:53 David Rosenthal Walt had to go borrow more money, which created the cascading set of events that we talked about in the rest of the episode.
- ▶ 4:31:42 Ben Gilbert If you like this episode, go check out Disney Part One on Walt's life.
The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 0:18 David Rosenthal You sound like Walt himself doing Mickey.
- ▶ 0:21 Ben Gilbert Didn't he do Mickey for, like, 20 years?
- ▶ 0:25 David Rosenthal He didn't at the very first, and then one of the animators convinced him to do it, and then, yeah, he did it for 20 years.
- ▶ 1:28 Ben Gilbert Unbelievably, in 11 years of doing Acquired, we have never told Walt's story, and it's been a glaring omission.
- ▶ 2:11 Ben Gilbert Listeners, since there are tons of biographies and documentaries and places analyzing Walt's psyche, we're gonna focus today on acquired sweet spot, which is the business.
- ▶ 2:21 Ben Gilbert What is it that Walt's merry band did from the 19 twenties onward that made them succeed uniquely well in Hollywood?
- ▶ 4:13 Ben Gilbert So today, listeners, is the Walt Disney Company, part one, Walt's era.
- ▶ 5:44 David Rosenthal Well, first, a thank you to my main source for facts and Walt quotes on this episode, Neil Gabler's biography, Walt Disney, The Triumph of the American Imagination.
- ▶ 6:06 David Rosenthal In Chicago, in December, 19 oh one, where Walter Elias Disney is born.
- ▶ 6:36 David Rosenthal So Walt's father, Elias, was sort of a frustrated entrepreneur.
- ▶ 6:54 David Rosenthal But Elias's younger brother, Robert, Walt's uncle Robert, was the successful one in the family.
- ▶ 7:15 David Rosenthal Now, when Walt is four, Elias moves the family out of Chicago to an idyllic farm town, also in the Midwest, where Robert had just purchased another tract of real estate
- ▶ 7:30 David Rosenthal And Lillian Disney, Walt's future wife, would say about Marceline, it was the most important part of Walt's life.
- ▶ 8:35 David Rosenthal So while the family's living there, Uncle Robert's wife, Walt's Aunt Maggie, every time that they would come visit Marceline to check up on their real estate investments, she would bring Walt gifts.
- ▶ 8:48 David Rosenthal When Walt is probably six or seven years old, Aunt Maggie brings him a big chief drawing tablet and pencil set, and Walt is enraptured.
- ▶ 8:58 David Rosenthal He starts sketching all the time, drawing, sketching everything he can see, and as the legend goes, one day, Walt's retired neighbor asked the young boy to draw him a picture of his favorite horse, and the neighbor loves what Walt draws so…
- ▶ 9:20 David Rosenthal And Walt, his mind is blown, young Walt, he's like, my, my hobby, my, my art, it can make me money.
- ▶ 9:30 David Rosenthal Now, whatever the exact truth of that story is, there is no doubt that somewhere in Marceline, in prepubescent Walt's mind, a connection is forged between these two great forces, art
- ▶ 10:28 David Rosenthal Yes, and I think it's because of the age Walt was when he was there.
- ▶ 10:51 David Rosenthal So Elias adds farming to his list of entrepreneurial failures, and when Walt is nine years old, they have to move the family again out of Marceline to Kansas City, where Elias decides he's gonna purchase a paper delivery route for the…
- ▶ 11:20 David Rosenthal I was gonna say, just like Jack Bogle from Vanguard, delivering papers in his youth and having to get up at four in the morning and falling asleep at school because he has to work so hard, like, this is quite the reversal here for Walt…
- ▶ 11:47 David Rosenthal And that would be Walt spending money growing up that he would earn from his art.
- ▶ 11:51 David Rosenthal So later when Walt enters high school, Elias moves the family back to Chicago again, this time for the jelly factory, which ends up failing where Walt becomes the cartoonist for his high school newspaper, but he's not there long before he…
- ▶ 12:39 David Rosenthal And Walt has a plan that he's gonna seek his fortune finally as a true professional cartoonist.
- ▶ 12:55 David Rosenthal And Walt works there for six weeks through Christmas time.
- ▶ 13:31 David Rosenthal Walt is like the original Steve Jobs, and I think you can definitely make the case that Ub is the Steve Wozniak.
- ▶ 13:38 Ben Gilbert Although I think Walt was more hands-on.
- ▶ 13:42 Ben Gilbert Walt was also an animator, Ub was just a better animator, and Walt was a camera operator, and Walt was building stuff, doing things with his hand, and he was in the primary technology and
- ▶ 13:57 David Rosenthal So after the two of them get laid off, Walt suggests that rather than go look for jobs again, they should just start their own studio together.
- ▶ 14:21 Ben Gilbert Iwerks and Disney partnership and Walt Disney's first business.
- ▶ 15:19 David Rosenthal So Walton Ubb's first entrepreneurial venture quickly comes to an end and they go join the slide company.
- ▶ 15:27 David Rosenthal Now, the reason that they specifically wanted Walt and Ubb is that they have a relatively new business line at the slide co, which is producing animated commercials.
- ▶ 15:43 David Rosenthal And this is what Walt and Ub end up getting put to work doing.
- ▶ 15:53 David Rosenthal It's like everything that Walt and Ub too loves about drawing, but it's more than just art.
- ▶ 17:16 David Rosenthal And in Walt's mind, who really is always thinking about how can I make a business out, a career out of this, this is also what makes it super attractive to him.
- ▶ 17:34 David Rosenthal Unlike if he's gonna try and be the best commercial artist in the world, you know, good luck young Walt Disney in Kansas City, Missouri.
- ▶ 17:49 David Rosenthal So, Walt and Ub start experimenting on nights and weekends with their own work, just trying out, creating their own animations using the SlideCo equipment and cameras.
- ▶ 18:00 David Rosenthal And Walt puts together a few short cartoons that he creates all himself.
- ▶ 19:58 David Rosenthal Ah, so in May of 1922, at 20 years old, Walt decides that these Laugh-O-Grams that he's making are having enough success that he's ready to leave the Slide Company, go out on his own again, and he founds Laugh-O-Gram Films, Inc.
- ▶ 22:20 David Rosenthal And Walt is now this sort of 1.5 times disgraced entrepreneur here in Kansas City.
- ▶ 22:39 David Rosenthal So Walt goes to rich uncle Robert for advice on what to do given his failure.
- ▶ 23:19 David Rosenthal So Walt packs his belongings, which is basically nothing at this point in time, hops aboard the Santa Fe train bound for LA and joins them in Hollywood.
- ▶ 23:42 David Rosenthal Wall at first thinks that he's come to Hollywood.
- ▶ 24:17 David Rosenthal That is Walt for you.
- ▶ 25:46 David Rosenthal So Walt has one thing, one asset left over from his failed Laugh-O-Gram days, which is a reel of a hybrid live action cartoon short
- ▶ 27:16 David Rosenthal So Walt sends Alice's Wonderland off to Winkler, and she likes it.
- ▶ 27:21 David Rosenthal So she commissions Walt to create 12 more Alice comedies for like 15 to 1800 dollars each.
- ▶ 27:50 Ben Gilbert Agreement entered into the 16th day of October, 1923 between Walt Disney of 44 or six Kingswell Avenue, Hollywood, California, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- ▶ 28:31 David Rosenthal Walt is in business.
- ▶ 28:37 Ben Gilbert And I think when Walt sort of gets word from Margaret, he runs into his brother's room.
- ▶ 29:17 David Rosenthal Walt manages the creative and they get to work.
- ▶ 29:22 David Rosenthal So Walt, of course,
- ▶ 29:49 Ben Gilbert And a whole bunch of Kansas City guys that moved out to join Walt to start cranking away.
- ▶ 31:06 David Rosenthal Uh, and so he turns around and taps Disney.
- ▶ 31:12 David Rosenthal Says, hey, Walt, can you make us a new series and a new character?
- ▶ 31:27 David Rosenthal So Walt and Ub cast about, what can we come up with?
- ▶ 32:03 Ben Gilbert And it's not surprising because if you give the creative brief to Walt and Ub, take something that's kind of working, but apply your style.
- ▶ 32:16 Ben Gilbert There's a great quote in the book, Walt Disney, an American Original, by Bob Thomas, that says, before Disney, cartoons were slapdash.
- ▶ 32:28 Ben Gilbert Disney insisted on rounded, humanized figures.
- ▶ 32:46 David Rosenthal I think iWorks had, like, immense artistic talent as an animator and was able to do that, and Walt had taste.
- ▶ 33:24 David Rosenthal They move into a real studio building on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, and when they move there, Walt and Roy decide at, uh, uh, unclear which brother's instigation that they need to rename
- ▶ 34:11 David Rosenthal The other story is that Walt's always had a dream since he got to Hollywood of having his name up on a neon sign.
- ▶ 34:38 David Rosenthal Now that the studio has become a real operation, Walt moves from actually doing a lot of the animation and camera work mostly to overseeing the studio, which you have to with an operation of 25 artists and creative people and camera folks.
- ▶ 35:04 David Rosenthal As Walt is transitioning from, you know, sort of doer to really studio head.
- ▶ 35:11 Ben Gilbert And worth knowing, the ownership of Walt Disney Studios that would become Walt Disney Productions, that would become the Walt Disney Company, was at this .60% owned by Walt and his wife, and 40% owned by Roy and his wife.
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