Walt Disney on Business Philosophy

Walter Elias Disney, born in Chicago on December 5, 1901, and raised largely in Missouri, became the pioneer of the American animation industry and, with his brother Roy, built what grew into one of the world's largest mass media and entertainment conglomerates. He took a job as a commercial illustrator at eighteen, moved to California in the early 1920s, and established the Disney Brothers Studio with Roy in 1923. With Ub Iwerks he developed Mickey Mouse in 1928 and provided the character's voice in the early years. As a producer he holds the record for Academy Awards won by an individual, twenty-two, from fifty-nine nominations. He introduced synchronized sound, full-color three-strip Technicolor, feature-length animation, and major camera innovations, then expanded into television and theme parks, opening Disneyland in July 1955 and planning the Florida Project and its experimental city of tomorrow until his death from lung cancer on December 15, 1966.

Disney was shy, self-deprecating, and insecure in private while adopting a warm, outgoing public persona; biographer Richard Schickel argued he hid his diffidence behind the role of Walt Disney, and Disney himself acknowledged the gap to a friend, noting that the public figure did not smoke or drink while he did both. Colleagues described exceptionally high expectations and little direct encouragement: animator Norman recalled that Disney's phrase that'll work signaled high praise, and that instead of verbal approval he gave financial bonuses or recommended people to others, expecting praise to reach them secondhand. He ran the studio on relentless quality escalation and standards that no one could permanently satisfy. Accusations of racism and antisemitism have been contradicted by many who knew him, including Jewish colleagues in influential positions, while historians still argue over whether he was a purveyor of homely patriotic values or a representative of American cultural imperialism, proof of how completely the man dissolved into the brand.

In 1966, the year he died, some 240 million people watched a Disney movie, 100 million followed a Disney television program, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, and nearly seven million passed through Disneyland's gates, a reach few creative figures before or since have matched. The PBS American Experience documentary frames his achievement as the creation of one of history's most beloved cartoon characters, the conception of the first feature-length animated film, the pioneering integration of media and marketing through thousands of branded products, and Disneyland itself, the first theme park anywhere, built as a walkable, three-dimensional version of his own utopia. The portrait is not hagiography: a driven, restless perfectionist whose attention to detail and quest for innovation meant constant delays and cost overruns, Disney felt unappreciated by the movie industry, was stung when critics panned his productions, and after his employees organized and went on strike, felt betrayed enough to call them communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee.