Episode 11: When You Wish Upon A Grave

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace welcome Dan Miceli, their second ever guest and host of the forthcoming podcast, A Cynic’s Guide To Disney, to talk about that towering shadow of Walter Elias Disney.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

Season 1. Episode 11. When You Wish Upon A Grave.

Caitlin: Hello, and welcome to Grave Escapes, the podcast helps those who've died tell their stories once again.

INTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Hey, Frances.

Frances: Heeey.

Caitlin: I've been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of…fandoms? We'll go with fandoms, as a word.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: So think think about this: Let's go back to elementary school here. Do you remember what a Venn diagram is?

Frances: I do. The circles that intersect, yeah?

Caitlin: The circles intersect. In the middle, it's supposed to be things that the two have in common.

Frances: Mmm.

Caitlin: So I found that with these specific fandoms, that I've been thinking about one, you have the circle that's like, death.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: And the other circle are Disney adults.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: And while there are two different fandoms there, there are some people…I think it's a large amount of them…who lived in the middle.

Frances: I mean, I definitely live in the middle.

Caitlin: I want to talk about this and I want to kind of parse this out. I was never a Disney adult. I actually hated Disney with a passion.

Frances: *Snort*

Caitlin: Yeah. Thanks for the judgment. Wow. Didn’t come here for that today.

Frances: Sorry.

Caitlin: But I actually went a couple of years ago to Disney World for the first time as an adult, and like, I still can't explain to you why I like it, but I do.

Frances: Because it's Disney.

Caitlin: But now that's not a good reason. Not a great company.

Frances: No, but also they’re Disney.

Caitlin: It's crazy, because you just stating the same point multiple times doesn't actually make it right.

Frances: But it means something different every time I say it.

Caitlin: That's fair. But so I was thinking about this. And I've actually met a lot of people who it seems like they love Disney, but they also love cemeteries and death and all this kind of morbid things. Am I just the only person who's observed that?

Frances: Um….Yeah, I actually hadn't noticed that. But now I'm intrigued to know how many of my friends are Disney Death Heads, I guess.

Caitlin: Fair…huh. Now, I want a t-shirt. But…so with that, I actually thought we would have a guest on today.

Frances: That sounds like fun.

Caitlin: It's the head of Walt Disney.

Frances: Oh my god.

Caitlin: Okay, so no, no. But yes, joining us this podcast, we’re bringing in our second guest ever. We're actually going to bring in a good friend of mine and I feel like by proxy Frances’s. This is Dan Micelli. He is an all around…I guess, Disney adult is the way to describe it, and a cohost of the forthcoming podcast, A Cynic’s Guide to Disney. So with that, Hi, Dan.

Dan: Hello, and hello to all my fellow Mousecadeads…dead fans.

Caitlin: Mousecadead fans! I like that. It’s…I mean, let's not…do…now that you're in on this conversation, let's talk about this. But have you noticed it too? It's like the subsection of Disney adults who only want to ride Haunted Mansion, who like other people who try to get their ashes spread on the ride when they're dead? Like it's a thing.

Frances: Ooooh.

Dan: Caitlin, are you sure you're not just projecting?

Caitlin: It's possible. I don't actually want one to be cremated and two I feel like I don't want to be on the Haunted Mansion for the rest of eternity. Just saying.

Frances: I feel like I'd want to…if I'm picking a ride, it'd be Tower of Terror. Like if there's a ride to ride for all eternity definitely be Tower of Terror.

Caitlin: Like solely for the Twilight Zone theming or…?

Frances: No, solely for the sheer like stomach-curdling drop. I love that ride.

Caitlin: I've actually never ridden that. But we're getting off on a tangent here. Come back to the death, Frances, dammit! This is what I've noticed is that there tends to be a darker subset of Disney adults. I would like to think that I'm in that subset. But with that, Dan is actually going to talk to us tonight about the man himself.

Frances: Ooh!

Caitlin: Walt Disney.

Frances: Excellent.

Caitlin: So I guess to quote, a very famous Disney line. Welcome. Foolish mortals.

Dan: Excellent. So, Walter Elias Disney. A lot of people when they hear the name, Disney, they just imagine…they just go right to the theme parks, they go to the movies, they don't really think about the man who created all of this. He passed away in 1965…I'm sorry. 1966. He was 65 when he passed.

Caitlin: Oh, that's kinda young.

Frances: Yeah.

Dan: Well, when you Smoke unfiltered cigarettes for your entire life that tends to change your life expectancy some.

Frances and Caitlin: Yeah.

Dan: So Walt, and I know this is at least half of the hosts believe in this very deeply…that Walt unfortunately is not cryogenically frozen and buried underneath the castle.

Caitlin: I personally do not feel like that can be proven.

Frances: Wait, sorry, what?

Caitlin: You're not know the story?

Frances: No. Why would he be cryogenically frozen? Is he? He’s…

Caitlin: Dan, have at it. I will step step back on this one.

Dan: So this is a fun conspiracy theory that had a lot to do with, you know, Walt's vision for the future. He was just very forward thinking with a lot of stuff. And he really just wanted to see kind of technology advance. So when he passed, everything happened so quick, he was cremated a couple days after he had passed, and he was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, which is where there's a memorial there for him. But what people just kind of ran with is that the reason that there was the two day gap between being cremated and him passing, was that he could be cryogenically frozen, so that when the cure for his type of cancer that ultimately killed him was found they could bring him back and Walt would basically walk the earth again—is what this conspiracy theory is. It's been around since he died. It’s…I mean, it was just a fantastical thing. And, you know, certain somebody here loves this one.

Frances: At least he's not hanging out at the 711 with Elvis and JFK, but that's a thing I gue—. Okay.

Dan: Everybody knows Elvis and JFK were hanging out in a retirement home.

Frances: Oh, fair. Okay, that's fair.

Caitlin: Okay, don't say that I believe it so much as I want to encourage other people to believe it.

Frances: I lurve conspiracy theories.

Caitlin: I love peddling conspiracy theories. It makes me laugh.

Frances: That's fair.

Caitlin: I will…for the sake of this and keeping our listeners out of this listening experience within an hour, I will concede that Disney is not buried…his head at least…under one of the castles. So Dan, first off, Elias, gonna have to move past that. But tell us about Mr. Disney.

Dan: So Mr. Disney, he was born 1901 in Chicago. From a very young age, he was very much an artist. He loved to draw love to do all of that type of stuff. Later on. In his childhood, his family wound up moving to Missouri, which would wind up really shaping who he was, and a lot of his visions for the future and the kind of nostalgia and the Americana that he felt just really embodied the country and represented the country.

As he grew up, he started taking just basically any art courses that he could take to the point where he was delivering newspapers, and trying to take some art classes, basically sleeping through his day school so that he can focus on his artwork.

Caitlin: I love that!

Dan: And so it's suffering for art. But for him, it's like, art in general was just a lifelong passion of his and that's ultimately how he became who he was. What he did early on, in the early 1920, the company that he had been drawing for…he was laid off with one of his good friends and they…so what they did is they set out and they started their own business. And they started doing just some animations, just some small type of stuff that they could do. And they wound up selling some cartoons, as they were sold as Newman's Laugh-o-grams.

They were…the first six of them were basically based on Aesop's Fables and that was kind of what they were modeled after. That…that was really the first start of what Walt was doing to kind of build where he was going. Ultimately, what he wound up doing. They've started bringing us more animators and the Laugh-o-grams. They weren't providing enough money to keep the company going. So Walt started producing an Alice in Wonderland based show. And what it was was a 12 minute short, essentially, is a one reel film. And what it was was basically a mixture of live action and animation that he was trying to do to kind of tell that story.

Frances: Cool.

Dan: He tried to sell that, but nobody was really picking it up. So it just that didn't go anywhere initially. Ultimately, in 1923, Walt wound up moving out to Hollywood and his brother had tuberculosis. He was, you know, in not great shape, so Walt went out there. And he was also trying to…he also wanted to become a live action film director. That's really where Walt's passion was. He wanted to get into that, ultimately, and that's where he wanted to go.

Caitlin: Why does everyone have tuberculosis?

Frances: Holy God…And my second question is that the money brother or a different brother?

Caitlin: The money brother?!

Frances: I couldn't remember his name but I know he did the finances for Disney for like…

Caitlin: So Roy doesn't die of tuberculosis. Cool. Spoiler, everyone.

Dan: Way to go, Caitlin, ruin the story.

Caitlin: Sorry!

Frances: I can't believe he had tuberculosis.

Caitlin: Now the question is did he know Emerson, 60 years before?

Frances: Clearly he got it from Emerson's great granddaughter.

Caitlin: Alright, so…sorry.

Dan: It’s the 20s. Didn't everybody have tuberculosis at that point?

Frances: I feel like every person we've covered in this podcast has either had or known someone who had tuberculosis.

Caitlin: Yeah, no, I actually…I mean, the percentage is at least I think 80% at this point. So thanks for keeping that going.

Frances: I was not expecting this. Okay, sorry.

Dan: It’s alright. So to pick up where we were, ultimately, film distributor in New York, Margaret Winkler, she was losing rights to a couple of the properties she had one of which was Felix The Cat, their cartoons, and she needed something new to work with. So what she did was she signed a contract with Walt and his company, for the Alice that he had, and wanted to make six episodes of it, and then to further the option to make two more series of it at six episodes a piece.

So at that point, that was the birth of the Disney Brothers Studio, which ultimately became the Walt Disney Company, they created their company so that they could make these episodes and produce the films that they needed. Walt was able to convince, I was able to convince a few people to move out to the West Coast to be with him. One of them was his old animation friend. And they all relocated out there.

And early in 1925, as part of this was all going on, he hired an inker named Lillian Bounds. And shortly after that, they were married. They were just…that’s how he met his wife was through through that whole process. When they got married, Lillian really wasn't somebody who wanted to be out in public. She really just liked to kind of be just a private person. She just wanted to be the mom at home. So they had their they had their two daughters. One, Diane was their natural born child. And then there was Sharon, who they adopted three years later. And that was not something that they ever shied away from. They talked about the fact that she was an adopted child. But they also at the same time, didn't like anybody else talking about the fact that she was an adopted child. So that was a very…thing for him. Or it's like, he's always just been people are family. And that's that and just don't move on. Just move on from it.

Frances: I'm getting a very ‘do as I say, not as I do’ vibe from him.

Dan: Yeah, Walt was an interesting person. And one thing that Walt was, and Lill at the same time…they were very, very careful and protective of their daughters. They didn't really want them being in the public eye whatsoever. There were really no pictures, nothing of them. And a lot of that had to do, because of the Lindbergh baby.

Frances: Oh, god, yeah.

Dan: Because of that, they were just so like, we don't want anything to happen to our kids. So our kids, basically, we have them but they don't exist to the outside world as far as the greater public is concerned, because they didn't want them to be anything. So little aside there.

Frances: That makes sense.

Dan: In 1926, the distribution of the Alice series that Walt have been working on, it was handed over to Charles Mintz, film producer. Walt and Charles did not have the greatest relationship, just in general. They work together, but they really didn't like each other a whole lot. Alice ran until 1927. And Disney was kind of…he was just getting bored with it. He was like, I'm done doing this, it's been a couple of years, I want to do something else. And he wanted to move away from that mix formatting, just to go pure animation, because he…so he's made that transition in his life at this point where it's like, you really want to do live action, but he's finding that he's really enjoying the art form of animation. And that's something that he really wanted to go into.

So as he went on, he kept trying to establish different stuff. He wanted to make a larger fee to kind of keep expanding the business to make it better. And part of doing that was he wanted to create Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and make stories based on Oswald. Walt really wanted to do something with him. Ultimately, he wasn't able to do it, just simply because universal have the rights to distribute any new material of that, and he just wasn't able to…he wasn't able to get (Oswald).

So he…and in doing so Mintz also took away a lot of the artists like hired from Disney. So he lost some of his people to Mintz. And Walt was had a lot of restrictions were gonna be thrown at him to do some other stuff. So at that point, Walt just kind of went off on his own a bit and tried to figure out what to do.

So this childhood friend, Iwerks, who he worked with…\the two of them created Mickey Mouse to replace Oswald. That was going to be their character and initially, it was something that…Walt had a bit of a different vision form, wanted name him Mortimer Mouse, really just, the design was a lot different than what he wound up being. But ultimately, his wife thought that Mortimer was just way too pompous, and just kind of like pretentious. So like, how about Mickey? Like Mickey Mouse is…it’s more of a snappy more of a fun name.

Caitlin: More of a like, you cross them, and you're gonna end up at the bottom of the ocean type thing.

Dan: Yeah, exactly.

Frances: An alligator in swamps.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Dan: And that really got things going. And ultimately, the promotional sketches that Iwerks was doing, because he basically was the one animating them and then Walt was the one who was voicing Mickey. So Walt was the one that basically gave him his soul. And, you know, Iwerks the one that gave him his physical appearance. So it's kind of the combination of the two of them. But when people think Mickey it really is Walt, because Walt is the one that voice him gave him that personality and that's what people know.

Frances: Wait, you mean that high pitched giggly voice that Mickey Mouse had is Walt Disney?

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: Holy God.

Caitlin: Fuuuck, I hate that voice.

Frances: I love it. I think it's adorable, but it sounds nothing like his speaking voice.

Dan: Until 1947, He did…Walt did make his voice.

Frances: Wow.

Caitlin: So I'm not gonna lie to you. If there is a hell, I'm obviously getting sent there. And Satan will sound like Mickey Mouse. That was horrible for me. Okay. Learning new things. Wow.

Frances: Mind blown.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, it’s not something people really think of. They think of a more as like an animator, the the mind behind everything. But he was very involved just to get it off the ground.

Frances: You have those iconic pictures of him, at the desk, the drawing desk with pictures of Mickey under his pen.

Dan: He did do some of the artwork, but a lot of it was more of his partner that was doing that type of stuff. I mean, I'm not going to diminish what Walt did, but as time went on, he did less and less of the actual artwork. And had other people do that for him.

Caitlin: Well, yeah, that's that's capitalism.

Dan: Exactly.

Frances: That makes sense. Wow.

Caitlin: So basically, Walt is Mickey.

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: So that picture…that iconic statue.

Caitlin: So I was thinking the statue.

Frances: Of them holding hands. It's like, oh, this is just two parts of the same person.

Dan: Basically. And that's the whole point of the statue.

Frances: I didn't know that. I love that. Ahhh!

Dan: Partners. There's really just two parts of the same person.

Frances: I love that.

Caitlin: What would my statue be? Winston, my dog, my pug. It would be like me and him touching all like the Sistine Chapel.

Frances: *laughter* That would be hilarious.

Caitlin: Sorry. Anyway. Dan, talk to us more about Walt Disney aka Mickey Mouse.

Frances: *whispers* Wild.

Dan: So Walty Mouse…

Caitlin: Oh yeah! That’s the thing. We’re…Yep. Forever.

Frances: Seriously, this episode is producing so much merch. We need a t-shirt that says Walty Mouse.

Caitlin: Hashtag dead in Disney.

Frances: That's on the back.

Caitlin: Yeah, right. With our names. Anyway. Sorry, Dan. Continue.

Dan: Okay. Now Mickey's first appearance, which everybody thinks, with Steamboat Willie being the first actual thing…He first actually appeared in a single test screening It was a short called Plane Crazy. And it was the second little thing called The Galloping Gaucho, but those failed to find a distributor. So those weren't released out to the mainstream. It was kind of like a one off showing that they had. Ultimately, after…basically, there was a musical, The Jazz Singer, or the music that was part of that movie, it really inspired Walt to try to, you know, add more audio elements into his his work. So he used synchronized sound for the first time on his third short, which was Steamboat Willie. And that was actually the first post produced sound cartoon.

So the way that they had done that, and it was just a brand new way to do it. And as soon as that went out that really set things off. And Disney signed a contract with a former executive Pat Powers of universal and he wound up signing a deal to use the Powers Cinephone Recording System, and Cinephone actually became the new distributor for Disney's early cartoons, which became immediately popular, and just very strong.

And Walt was very focused not only on the animation, but the sound, and part of that was he actually hired hired a professional composer, and arranger Carl Starling, who wanted to continue doing stuff and build it. So he built a lot of…he really just kept building the sound and really trying to do things like Silly Symphonies. And that was something that he really wanted to bring in and just use music, use the animation as a way to really tell the story.

Ultimately, the series was incredibly powerful. But Walt and Roy felt they weren't receiving the rightful share of the profits from there. So in 1930, Walt tried to trim some of the costs of the process by urging Iwerks to stop with some of the practices of animating every single cell and going to the more the more widely used animation style, where you draw the the important pieces like the key poses, and then you let just some lower paid assistance just kind of do the in between poses, and just kind of sketch them out. So it was really kind of a mix of two different artists or multiple artists to come up with the whole thing.

Walt really wasn’t…that really didn't go over overly well. So what Walt did was he tried to get more money from Powers and Powers said no, and then just basically stole Walt animator, Iwerks to work for him directly and just cut wealth out of it.

Caitlin: So I'm noticing another pattern in his life.

Frances: Mmm.

Caitlin: And that is that he kind of keeps getting taken advantage of?

Frances: Yeah.

Dan: Yep, he's trying to do something different. And he keeps trying to get more and people just like, No, we're just going to do this without you and cut you out. And that was a lot of what happened to him early on.

Caitlin: I mean, I would just say that if the same problem continues happening repeatedly in your life, a little bit of introspection is required.

Dan: Yep.

Frances: Well, clearly, he introspected his way out of this because Disney.

Caitlin: Yeah, no, like…I get that but whoooh.

Dan: And to add insult to injury, once Iwerks, was signed away, Starling, just resigned immediately. And because he thought without I worked that Disney was just done like the studio was going to close. So he thought he thought was a sinking ship and just jumped in wanted out. That triggered Walt to just outright have a nervous breakdown, late in ’31. And he just like, shut down. He blamed Powers for it. And you know, just overworking. So he and his wife…they just took off to Cuba and Panama for a while and just said, Hell with this we're going out and we'll be back.

Frances: I mean…

Caitlin: Can I get a prescription for that?

Frances: Yeah, you had a nervous breakdown here your prescription is to go to Panama.

Caitlin: I'm not gonna lie. Like I…my mental health would be so much better. People just kept being like, well remove yourself from the situation here. Fuck off to this random place.

Frances: Travel internationally. I gotta say, though, like, worst decision that guy made in his life was to quit Disney Studios and be like, This is gonna close.

Dan: Yes, I'm the composer and all this but you know what I'm out?

Frances: I’m out. Sorry.

Dan: You look at it from Walt's perspective. He lost his animator and his music guy all at once. And it's like, that's just a major hit.

Frances: This is the…what does it call that the alchemy? The thing that like boils down to like the purest form like…this is the crucible that created Disney.

Dan: Ultimately, it worked out for Walt as obviously we all know.

Caitlin: I mean…Did it? Did it? He’s dead.

Dan: Fun fact, everybody who's lived has died, Caitlin.

Caitlin: What!

Dan: It’s crazy.

Caitlin: Oh Shit!!

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: Except who's the guy who did have his head frozen? Was that Ted Williams?

Caitlin: Okay, but like…you guys could have told me that everyone dies before 11 episodes into this podcast, I'm just saying…

Frances: Clearly I dropped the ball.

Dan: It’s a shocker, but we just figured rip that band aid off and really just try to help.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Alright, so Walt gets screwed over yet again.

Dan: And when it comes back, he was actually able to sign a contract with Columbia Pictures to pick up… so they were going to distribute the Mickey Mouse cartoon because they were still doing really well. They were doing great internationally. So he still had distribution for him. So he was still had momentum with that with Mickey so that was helping.

Walt always…as we know, he loves new technologies and trying to do new things. So he was actually…he filmed Flowers and Trees in 1932. And he filmed it on three strip Technicolor,

Caitlin: Oh!

Dan: Which at the time was huge. And what he did was he actually was able to negotiate a deal giving him the sole right to use the three step process that…three strip process from ’32 all the way to August 31 of 1935.

Caitlin: So he was really covered his ass.

Dan: He did. And he learned his lessons from things that had happened. So basically all the Silly Symphonies that he made from that point on, they were all in color, which was a huge jump for him because he had the ability to do that. And it did great. And Flowers and Trees was so popular, he actually won the inaugural Academy Award for the best short subject cartoon after 1932 awards.

Frances: Hey.

Caitlin: Wow.

Dan: And he also was nominated for another film in that category, Mickey's Orphans and he got an honorary award for creating Mickey Mouse as a result of it.

Frances: Everyone was like, This guy's the coolest here have some stuff.

Caitlin: He got an award for creating himself.

Dan: Yeah, basically.

Caitlin: I would like that award.

Frances: Talk about self-actualization. Like, wow, cool.

Dan: And as a producer, I mean, he ultimately over the course of his career, he won 22 Oscars out of 59 nominations. So I mean, he was prolific when it came to that.

Frances: I know that sounds like it…Obviously, that's a crap ton. But like, somehow it feels like he should have won more?

Dan: But you think about a lot of like big Disney things that you think of was more of the Disney Renaissance from the 80s on.

Frances: That's true.

Dan: What a lot of people think of which was well after his passing, but I mean, he was obviously incredibly influential to get there. But while you know, early on was just the driving force behind everything.

Frances: Yeah, that's fair.

Dan: So as things were going on, it just started going great for him. Then in ‘33, he produced The Three Little Pigs. It was basically described that one as the most successful short animation of all time, in one another Academy Award for the short subject cartoon. And because he was starting to so well, the staff kept growing, and his studio staff was actually close to 200 by the end of 1933. Wow. So he went from losing everything for a while there, having a break down, to just two years later, basically rebounding, and just his company is going full tilt again, as far as the animation went.  And a lot of it had to do with he really, he realized how important telling stories was like just gripping stories that would hold interest, not just an animation like, hey, look, this is cute. And here's formulaic thing. He actually wanted to tell stories through it that would make you continue to watch.

So at that point, he invested in a story department that was completely separate from the animators. That story department had their own storyboard artists that would basically set up everything in the plan. And then he had the animators that once the storyboard was set up, the animators would come in, and they would do their thing. So he really had this whole process to get as many people involved to really get input in and to get the stories going really well. And that's really what kicked off…ultimately, what it was referred to as the golden age of animation, which was from ’34 to ’41, which is where Walt really just started going.

That was…Walt thought that longer cartoons, like a feature length, would…could be more popular it could make could make more money. So if the studio actually worked for four years on making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,

Caitlin: That movie took four years?

Dan: It did.

Caitlin: I hate that movie.

Frances: My grandmother saw that in theaters, I think, when it was released? She was a child.

Caitlin: Wow.

Dan: And that film was…a lot of people in the industry at the time…They were basically saying that this was dumb, it was going to bankrupt the company, it was actually nicknamed Disney's Folly, because it was just, they thought it was just such a terrible idea to make a full length cartoon. Nobody's gonna watch this, you're gonna lose all kinds of money.

Frances: That's why I feel like this exact thing is why Disney’s…the best moniker I think to apply to him is futurist.

Dan: Absolutely.

Frances: Yeah, he's an animator. Yeah, he's an innovator, but he's a futurist…like he could…like he knew what was up.

Caitlin: He should have cured TB.

Dan: If he was really a futurist, he would have known he was gonna get cancer and solve that first.

Caitlin: But yeah, what the hell, man?

Frances: Priorities, man.

Caitlin: So I mean, Snow White is a rousing success.

Frances: Oof.

Dan: It was, but the thing that people don't really know and you think about the time so…

Caitlin: This is that she was like, 14

Frances: It's a fairy tale.

Dan: It was a different time, Caitlin, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff.

Frances: But it's a fairy tale, like everything's weird in fairy tales.

Caitlin: Yeah, like kissing women without their consent. Yeah, whatever.

Dan: A 14 year old living with seven short men. I mean, it's fine.

Frances: And a lady with poisoned apples trying to kill children like whatever.

Dan: So ultimately, when it was all said and done, it went three times over budget to create Snow White.

Frances: Yowza.

Caitlin: Do you know how much?

Dan: Oh, I do. We're getting to that.

Caitlin: Oh no…

Dan: This number in early 1930s…it cost 1.5 in.

Caitlin: OH no!

Frances: Oh my god!

Dan: Now, if you just think about the economics of that time, that is just an absolutely mind blowing insane number.

*much hubbub*

Frances: That’s astronomical!

Caitlin: What year was this?

Dan: Well, it took it was over a four year period. So in '34 is really when he was starting to go with that and it premiered 1937.

Caitlin: I'm gonna do the math, I gotta figure out the inflation on that. That's insane.

Frances: That’s astronomical.

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: People were making like, a couple bucks a week.

Dan: Yeah, it was nothing like he was paying some people, you know, decent wages, like 100 bucks a week for stuff. So it's like, you think about that, and 1.5 million to make this.

Frances:…Holy God.

Dan: mean, ultimately, it worked out because Snow White made six and a half million. So it was the most successful sound film that had ever been made up to that point.

Caitlin: So I can tell you that inflation, if we started 1933, and put it to today, that would have been $33,726,461.

Dan: That's crazy…to produce an animated film.

Caitlin: However, if you do the profits, if you want to change that up, it would have been the equivalent of making 146 million in today's world.

Dan: I mean, it definitely made money and it ultimately…It paid for itself and a lot of other stuff. So it really…that’s really what kicked off a golden age. Because after that, that's when you got…after Snow White was done. You had Pinocchio, you had Fantasia, neither of which were really great at the box office. But part of that actually got hurt because World War Two had started in ’39. So the international market for these movies, which he relied pretty heavily on for a lot of his stuff, it just wasn't there because of the war.

So he moved on to some other stuff. And they were starting to…it took a loss on both pictures. So the studio was actually in a lot of debt at that point. So to do that, to try to get around that or try to save themselves, they did the first public stock offering in ’40. Walt was sometimes not the best with dealing with a staff…bit of kind of a insensitive person at times. Can't figure that out from some of the stuff that went on. His staff actually went on strike for about a month in 1941.

Frances: Oh.

Dan: So there was just nothing going on. And this was during the production of Dumbo. So Dumbo actually got held up because of that. Ultimately, Dumbo wound up being, you know, a good movie for him because it was produced inexpensively. So it got a positive reaction and did well financially. But, you know, there was…the National Labor Relations Board had to get involved to end the negotiation. It was kind of ugly between him and his animators. Ultimately, it worked out the strike was over. Because of the strike and the financial situation of the company, a bunch of animators left the studio and his relationship a lot of the staff was pretty strained as well. So that caused a couple of problems later on for him.

Caitlin: If only he had just like let them date each other.

Dan: Yeah, pretty much just fish off the company pier, it's fine, nothing, nothing can go wrong there.

Caitlin: Everything's fine. Everything's totally fine.

Dan: So with the financial issues and the war going on, part of what they did just try to keep the Disney name out there and try to promote a little bit to try to get some money was that's where they started making the Donald Duck cartoons to promote war bonds and that's where you had all of those fun little videos from Walt Disney World

Frances: Yikes.

Dan: Of the War of World War Two when you know, we see Donald's having all of his little visions and they had the one that involved Hitler in it. That was kind of

Caitlin: I'm sorry, what?

Dan: Oh, yeah, no, there's a Donald Duck and Hitler animation out there.

Frances: There’s some real racist videos from World War One…World War Two, sorry.

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: Yikes.

Dan: Yeah.

Caitlin: Wow.

Dan: Yeah, go find this after we're done recording here and go watch it.

Frances: I would be willing to bet money. You won't find it on Disney plus.

Caitlin: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess that's the one good thing about Disney. I mean, talking about as a corporation, when they do mess up. They do try to cover their tracks.

Frances: Yeah, they're like, Let's bury this real deep.

Dan: Or they build a right after something that they decide to bury, and then wonder why people get upset about it.

Caitlin: Cough Splash Mountain.

Frances: And they redesign it, which is better.

Dan: Yes, absolutely.

Caitlin: All right. So we're like so the wars happened. Disney has saved himself what's next?

Dan: So after the earnings, they were in debt for about $4 million overall, which…crazy. But Bank of America executives actually were trying to figure out what to do because they were watching them. And they kept lending money even knowing that it was just a complete financial risk. But the executives, they were like, no, no, this is good. This is going to work out, trust them, give them time. And ultimately, that worked out. Disney stopped in the late 40s, producing a lot of the short films and started working…because they were getting more more competition from Warner Brothers and MGM. So what Roy suggested was they go more to animated and live action productions and kind of get away from those shorts and go into more long form stuff.

In ’48, they started making series of live action nature films, titled True Life Adventures, and Seal Island was the first one, and that actually won an Academy Award for the best short subject into real category.

Frances: Was that because he was like, when he went to Panama and Cuba and stuff got obsessed with like, nature, and jungles and things?

Dan: That did have a pretty big impact in his life. As he got older, you know…we’re now you know, the ‘40s, late ‘40s.

Caitlin: How was he not dead by this point?

Dan: Cancer hadn't gotten him yet.

Caitlin: No, I'm just saying like, he lived past 40. That's crazy.

Frances: He didn't get TB.

Dan: There You go.

Caitlin: There's only Roy and they send him away.

Dan: So he became incredibly conservative as he got older. To the point where he wound up being a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

*universal groaning*

Caitlin: Oh, you know what he would have been besties with, Frances? Lovecraft.

Frances: Oh, God. Awwhh.

Dan: And then during the second Red Scare, in ’47 was actually testified before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee, where he branded certain people or former animators of his labor union organizers as communist agitators.

Frances: He would have been very good friends with Lovecraft. Terrible.

Caitlin: Wow. So maybe the shirts that we should get also have hashtag communist agitator on the back.

Frances: Cool. Oh, that's really sad.

Dan: All we need is a hammer and sickle button shape of mouse ears.

Caitlin: There you go! Okay, so he turns his back on every one.

Dan: He does. He actually blames the ’41 strike by his animators that it was an organized communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.

Caitlin: This is feeling real capitalist.

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: Maybe he did have TB and it affected his brain.

Caitlin: Maybe he was just a white dude.

Dan: And this…the New York Times reported this in the early ‘90s. But it was not it hasn't been confirmed. But it is heavily believed and seems mostly factual at this point, that Walt was actually passing information to the FBI from the early 40s until he died in the six—in ’66.

Caitlin: What the fuck!?!

Frances: God.

Dan: In return for the information, Hoover actually allowed him to film in the Facebook—Facebook!? The FBI headquarters in Washington. And Disney was also made a fool Special Agent in Charge contact in 1954.

Caitlin: What the fuck does that mean?

Frances: That's disgusting.

Dan: Yeah. So that…So that's the side of Walt that nobody really knows about. But it is part of his story. And I feel it's important that it is out there.

Frances: That's really upsetting.

Dan: It is. But it also ties into a lot of what ultimately went into to Disneyland. Part of the inspiration before he worked before we started working on Disneyland. In his home, in 1949, he had moved to his home in LA. And what do you do with a couple of his friends? He built blueprints and actually went to create a mini steam engine railroad for his backyard.

Frances: I think I knew that. That's very cool.

Dan: Yeah. And it was the Carrollwood Pacific Railroad, because his home’s location was on Carrollwood Drive. And he and he worked with one of his engineers from Disney Studios and actually created the first mini steam engine that he had there. Eventually, after three years, there were a bunch of accidents involving people in his house and guests. So it basically got shuttered…like we're done with this.

Caitlin: Accidents?

Frances: Wait. Like adults or children?

Dan: It's just referred to as guests. Oh, is that detail? I don't know. I've never been able to find that. But that's always one tidbit that I've always found interesting is that, you know, he had his little railroad which was the inspiration for the railroad at his parks. But yeah, a lot of people got hurt. Apparently. There were lots of accidents.

Frances: You find out that like he would invite people over specifically so you could get on the train and like run them down.

Dan: What this isn't telling us is it used to tie him down to the tracks, handlebar mustache and would laugh maniacally and twirl it as the train was coming.

Frances: Snidely Whiplash.

Dan: Exactly.

Frances: I'll save you, Nell!

Dan: So after all of that, in 1950, he had produced Cinderella, which was the first like full length animated feature they had made in eight years. It was a hit, it cost 2.2 million to make. But it made 8 million just in its first year alone. So that was also just a huge hit. He was actually less involved in that movie than he had been with a lot of the other ones, because he was actually working on his first completely live action movie, Treasure Island, which was actually released in 1950, as well. And also the Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, which was released in ’52.

And then all those other live action features after that are not all of them, but most of them were very patriotic in theming going forward. And he also continued to produce a lot of the full length movies, you know, things that people know, like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan… But as time went on, he started paying less and less attention to the animation department and let it do its own thing. Let the animators take care of it. The group of the nine old men, which is commonly referred to as the group of men that basically handle all his animation decisions for him. He was present at story meetings, but for the most part, he just started looking at other things.

One of those other things he wanted was actually to build a theme park. He had visited Griffith Park in LA with his daughters, and he just wanted something that was going to be completely clean. There's this beautiful place that he could take his kids to, and wanted other people to be able to do that as well. He…on a visit to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, he was actually…that really hit him in a way like he was heavily influenced by that park, and the whole layout. So in ’52, he actually got permission to build a park, a theme park in Burbank, which was near the Disney Studios. Ultimately, that site was too small. So he wasn't able to work with what was there.

At that point, that’s when he was able to get the land in Anaheim, which was about 35ish miles away from the studio. And he was able to build that to build his park there. One of the things that he did because he was worried about getting criticism from shareholders, he actually created a company called WED Enterprises, which is now Walt Disney Imagineering. This is actually the birth of the Imagineers. He used his own money out of pocket to fund this group of designers and animators to work on the plans to become…to create his park and to create his vision.

Frances: Cool.

Dan:  In mid 1954, he sent his his Imagineers out all around the country to go look at all the museum parks that were around. He wanted to know what works, what doesn't work, what can we improve on great ideas, and he really wanted to make the best of what could be done. As going through all of that, he was able to create the blueprint for what he made with all the different lands that were there and was all tied together by Main Street USA. And this goes back to his childhood where his hometown in Marceline, Missouri. He modeled Main Street after his hometown, because it was just kind of that nostalgia, Americana feel that he was looking for.

From there, the opening day, in July 1955, there was an opening ceremony that was broadcast on ABC. That reached 70 million viewers, which when you think about that number is just insane, especially nowadays where everything is so fragmented. But just to think that 70 million people sat and watched just…this park that I mean, while Disneyland was just a nothing name was like, yeah, it's Walt Disney. He makes movies and he's opening up a theme park. The fact that 70 million people watch that just shows the influence and the draw that Walt had himself…about, you know, people were really interested in what he had done.

Frances: And there were only like, what, four TV stations or something.

Caitlin: So I get the feeling that the thesis of his life is like, jazz hands! America!

Dan: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, or nowadays, it would just be ‘Merica.

Caitlin: Alright, so Disneyland. When does this land open?

Dan: It opened in ’55.

Caitlin: All right, so.

Dan: And in after just a month of being open, it was already getting 20,000 visitors a day. And by the end of the first year, it had pulled in 3.6 million people

Caitlin: Wait, isn’t he about to die?

Frances: No in the 60s.

Caitlin: It's 55 now

Dan: He has 11 years left.

Caitlin: Okay, I was freaking out. I was like he built Disney and then just died.

Dan: No, he had eleven years after that.

Frances: I mean, he didn’t…isn't that kind of what happened with Florida like he built Disney and just kicked it.

Dan: He actually didn't even build Disney.

Frances: But he was like in on the planning, right? And then was like…

Dan: Initially, yeah.

Frances: Okay, so sorry, definitely jumped ahead a decade.

Dan: At that date, he started…things are going well. So he did a lot of work with ABC. So they started making an anthology for creating animated cartoons live action features. And that wound up doing well and to the point where the shows that they were doing was earning like a 50% share of audiences. So Newsweek was calling what they were doing an American Institution. And ABC was so pleased with the ratings, they actually led to the first Disney's first daily television program, which was the Mickey Mouse Club, which was the variety show that he made for the…to be sent and directed towards the kids and all of that going on. It was just kind of building as things were going.

So Disney kept working on a lot of other projects to the point where he started working on, ironically enough, the American National Exhibition in Moscow to try to fight the communists.

Frances: Hahah…Okay.

Dan: What is the studio's their contribution to that was was a 19 minute 360 film called America the Beautiful, and it was the most popular attractions.

Frances: Okay.

Dan: You okay there, Caitlin?

Caitlin: I'm, I'm, I’ve…

Frances: Take the anti communist stuff to the communists.

Caitlin: No I get…I get it. I just like, how do I say this? I've never loved my country as intimately as it seems Disney did.

Frances: I mean, yeah, a he but he lived as an adult, he lived through World War Two. So that makes sense.

Caitlin: I have lived through so many crises.

Frances: But there's a difference between living through like the wars that we have lived through as adults and as even as kids with access to so much information that's unfiltered

Caitlin: Fair.

Frances: Versus living through a propaganda war, which is exactly what World War One and World War Two were. And he was alive for both of them.

Caitlin: So what you're saying is that Disney should have gone and gotten a master's degree in English.

Frances: Hahahah…uhhh…Yes.

Dan: So after he had done that, in ’59 and it was successful, he was actually in 1960…he was the chairman for the pageantry committee for the Winter Olympics in California. And he designed the opening and closing medal ceremonies and the metal ceremonies there. So he really started branching out to that type of stuff.

Frances: I would love to see those. I bet they were cool.

Dan: Later on, he saw pieces of Lady And The Tramp, which was the first animated film using cinemascope and in ’55 Sleeping Beauty, which was the first animated film in Technorama is 70 millimeter film, and then in ’59, 101 Dalmatians, which was the first thing they did film to use Xerox Cells. ’61 And then in ’63, Sword in The Stone, then came ’64 where he made he produced Mary Poppins.

Frances: Yes!!

Dan: PL Travers completely hated the movie.

Frances: Yes, she did.

Dan: Regretted selling the rights to Mary Poppins.

Frances: Oh, but that movie is so good.

Caitlin: I had a Mary Poppins phase as a child.

Frances: I wanted her bag real bad.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Dan: That same year, he also became involved in plans to help expand the California Institute of the Arts. He had an architect dropped blueprints for a new building for them. So he also helped kind of expand the campus there.

Caitlin: So he helped the CIA.

Dan: Yes.

Caitlin: Mhm.

Dan: In 64, Disney produced for exhibits for the World's Fair.

Frances: Yeah!

Dan: One of which would be the favorite of an unnamed producer of this podcast. It was It's A Small World. And that was the first time that it appeared. It was at the ’64 World's Fair, the audio animatronic dolls with children of the world. And they also had great moments with Mr. Lincoln, which was an animatronic animatronic of Abraham Lincoln reading excerpts of the speeches, Carousel of Progress.

Caitlin: I love Carousel of Progress.

Frances: Yass.

Dan: Then there was also Ford's Magic Skyway, which was, you know, to portray the progress of mankind. So all four of those exhibits, were ultimately reinstalled at Disneyland. But It's A Small World is really the only one of those that closely resembled what the original was. The others were just basically kind of picking up the concepts of those rides, but they were incorporated in.

Caitlin: Hm.

Dan: As things were going on, Walt kept trying to expand, expand the business and he had ideas for, you know…he had announced plans in 65, to develop another theme park called Disney World that was going to be in Orlando that his he had worked to purchase a lot of land down there through shell companies and very quietly acquire the land so that people didn't know what was going on, so that nobody could buy up land on him.

Frances: Yup.

Dan: And one of the biggest things he wanted to do there at Disney World was going to be the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. Now, that may sound somewhat familiar to some people, because that’s Epcot.

Caitlin: I feel like if you are not a slut for Epcot, you are wrong,

Frances: Epcot is my favorite amusement park in the entire world and my parents genuinely considered joining the community when it was still going to be a Disney community.

Dan: That whole community that he wanted to make was going to just be it was going to take all kinds of new technologies from all different sectors and just kind of make it a living, breathing, you know, just concept city to show what was possible with all these new technologies that were coming. He actually got some businesses that were willing to sponsor Epcot. And he was ready to…he was ready to move forward with it. And then ultimately, in 66, his health really started failing. And then ultimately, in early November ’66, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Later on, November 30, he wasn't feeling great. He was taken by ambulance, to the hospital. And on December 15, 10 days after he turned 65, he ultimately died of circulatory collapse that was caused by the cancer.

Caitlin: Jesus Christ.

Frances: Yikes.

Caitlin: So he had a real bad cancer.

Dan: He did. Roy at that point actually came out of retirement to…because Disney was going to get rid of Epcot. They were just going to do away with all of that kind of do away with Walt Disney World. And they were they weren't just going to go forward with it. Roy said, Nope, this is happening, we're going to honor his legacy. So as part of the legacy that he did, Roy built Disney World…the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. And part of that property, it was just going to be called Disney World. But Roy was very adamant that it needed to be called Walt Disney World so that people would remember the name Walt Disney and know that he was the one…the inspiration behind it, it was his vision.

So Magic Kingdom first opened in ’71. And then ultimately, the plans that Ron was able to get, you know, Walt’s vision of the functional city for Epcot in add to it, they went away from the prototype for the city. And they ultimately built something that was more reminiscent of a World's Fair, which Roy felt was more fitting for an amusement park and could just kind of be honoring Walt’s legacy for his work with with the World's Fair and things that he wanted to do. So that was really the inspiration behind you know…you had Futureworld in front of a lot of the future tech, you had all the countries that you could go visit and it was just kind of that whole world's fair feeling is what they were going for.

Frances: And it's got the kernel that was Epcot…it's got like the technological innovation and like, stuff in the land and sea rides and stuff, where it's talking about, like the the way that Disney's doing agricultural innovation and stuff. So…

Caitlin: So Walt's dead. And Walt Disney still becomes famous.

Dan: Yeah. And actually, his vision for Walt Disney World was ultimately fulfilled by his brother. And that's where thing, things just kind of went from there. And they've expanded the parks from there. And ultimately, there's the…there is a museum all about Walt Disney that is in Presidio, San Francesco. So there's a whole museum to Walt that's dedicated out there.

Caitlin: I didn't know that!

Frances: Yeah, the Walt Disney World museum you can get on their mailing list.

Caitlin: You know this cuz you’re on their mailing list.

Frances: I am 100% on their mailing list.

Dan: And one of the things after Walt had passed, the Disney Animation, for the most part went away, they really stopped making things after Walt was gone. And that wasn't until the Disney Renaissance that really started with the Little Mermaid in ’89 where Disney came back with a vengeance and started making a lot of just those movies that resonate more with people our age, you know, just because we, we grew up with those movies. And but there was just a big gap there probably a 20 year gap where they really weren't churning out anything in terms of animation. It was really the parks that were doing their thing.

Frances: The Little Mermaid was my absolute favorite Disney animated film until Moana came out.

Dan: Yeah.

Frances: I love that movie.

Dan: It was a very good one.

Frances: Yes. And I'm so excited for the Lin Manuel Miranda live action on.

Caitlin: I feel like we should give a bit of a spoiler here. And that's that the three of us have actually not been to Walt Disney's grave.

Frances: Yes.

Caitlin: We actually had a listener submit his grave photo and kind of propose the idea of talking about him. For instance, what was that where our listeners name?

Frances: It was a girl named Gillian Wing

Caitlin: That’s was a great name. So Dan, what can you tell us about Walt Disney's burial apart from the fact it's not under a castle.

Frances: Sorry, can we rewind that? One sec. It was a woman named Gillian Wang. I said, girl. She's 32.

Caitlin: I can say that Dan and I are actually planning a pilgrimage to California next year. But Dan, what does Walt Disney's grave looks like is it like? Is it just a giant bust off his head?

Frances: That would be so good.

Dan: Because they cut his head off to freeze. And so they just put a mold around it. And then they just kind of went from there. So they just lifted it off his head and filled it up.

Caitlin: Yeah, that's like ala Karl Karl Marx. It's just like a giant…Now, what is his grave look like?

Dan: It's just very understated. It's just a…because he's not actually buried there. It's just his ashes are interred there at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park. So it's just this normal little, you know, memorial that you would see for anybody else. There's nothing really super crazy or special about his sight.

Caitlin: All right. So I guess this is an interesting one for us. Because basically, we have a person whose life I feel like was bigger and grander than their death. Like they continue to live on, they continue to be known for more things I feel after their death than they were before. I would make that argument.

Dan: Yeah, most people at this point, would not necessarily associate the animation piece as being the big part of Walt Disney, but it's the…it's all the parks and the entertainment and the travel and all that type of stuff, as opposed to…like, that's really what the company has become focused on. That's what keeps the company going. The movies and other stuff are part of the portfolio, but not the main part anymore.

Caitlin: I feel like this is an interesting one. Because we do, like I said, have this intersection of Disney adults and weird kids. And I'm excited to go actually visit Disney's grave, even if it is small, since it's just his ashes. But, I mean, the thing is, we talk a lot about this podcast about people who've been forgotten, and this is someone who I feel like didn't actually die.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Like they cease to exist.

Dan: Walt has been forgotten.

Frances: Yeah.

Dan: Because for the most part, it’s…when people think of Disney World, they don't think of the man they think of Mickey Mouse, they think of the parks, they think of the character interactions. You're not thinking about Walt, I mean, Walt has his statue with Mickey. But aside from that, I mean, it’s…I mean, not a lot of people know about, that the light left on on Main Street, you know, for Walt, his apartment, essentially that's an homage to him and things like that, where it's like, while just, he exists. He's the reason all of this exists. But people don't really associate him or think of him directly when they think of the parks.

Frances: He was also a Catholic, which I didn't realize until today. Yeah, he's been erased. Or overlaid.

Caitlin: I think overlay does a good word. I hadn't actually thought of that. To be honest with you both. Because Disney like Disney, Disney, Disney, you say it all the time. And I guess you're a probably, what? Like 90% of people would actually associate it with Walt.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: If you just went up and asked somebody who's Walt Disney? They're probably like you mean the parks?

Dan: Like the guy who created the parks or whatever. Like, would they really know who the Walt Disney person was?

Frances: Yeah, I feel like most people wouldn't be able to tell you a single fact about him except he's the guy who founded Disney.

Caitlin: I actually believed until a few years ago that he had like built Disney World I didn't really see he died before. So it's interesting to me that like all these little facts are coming out. So I guess in a way, we got to kind of tell another side of the Disney…compound.

Dan: But it's also…we told the good and the bad. Yeah, because there's there are a lot of aspects of Walt's life, which are not great. And I don't think that those should be glossed over or hidden. It’s…to get a full measure of the man that's that's who he was. And that was part of who he was.

Caitlin: I think when I do see his grave in person, and I'm gonna like lay down some flowers and just whisper really softly, I voted for Bernie Sanders.

Frances: Hahaha.

Caitlin: But to finish this episode. First off, I want to thank you, Dan, so much for coming to chat with us about this. I actually learned a lot and I didn't expect to just because I've been on a deep Disney dive before, but I learned a lot. How about you, Frances?

Frances: Yeah, absolutely. It was. It was really, really good. So thanks for coming.

Dan: Glad to be here and to help educate in Disney. I mean, you've done your Disney dives. Caitlin, but you haven't done Walt Disney dives.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Apparently not apparently. I think that's what I learned today is that Disney and Walt Disney are going to be two different things and  it's up to you to kind of figure it out and fill in rhe holes. But with that, I just want to take a moment to end this podcast with a quote. And this quote is from Richard and Robert Sherman. And it is simply: “it is a world of laughter, a world of tears. It is a world of hopes, and a world of fears. There's so much that we share. That's time we're aware. It's a small world after all.”

Frances: Oh god.

Caitlin: We’ll see you in the cemetery.

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai Engel. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that we recorded this podcast on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added a link in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.