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Interview with Ron Miller


Most of the men and women who knew Walt during his lifetime fall into one of two groups: Those who knew him as a friend or a relative and those who knew him as a boss or collaborator. Very few people knew him in both ways; one of them is his son-in-law Ron Miller.

Ron Miller

A towering man with a powerful presence, Ron married Walt's daughter Diane in 1954. In 1957 he went to work for his famous father-in-law. He was associate producer of films including "Bon Voyage." Later, he co-produced a number of films with Walt including "That Darn Cat." In addition to his contributions to films, he worked with Walt on many of his television shows and the early plans for Walt Disney World. Several of the older people who worked with Walt have spoken to the faith and respect Walt had for his son-in-law.

After Walt's death, Ron served for a dozen years as executive producer of motion pictures and television for the company, and he served as president of Walt Disney Productions from 1980 to 1984.

During the production of the recently aired documentary, "Walt; The Man Behind the Myth," Ron generously shared a number of memories about Walt and insights into his work and success. Following are some excerpts:

 

Q. What were your first impressions of Walt?

A. Obviously I was awed by the man. I mean, he had accomplished so much at that time. But I found him very warm, very hospitable, very comfortable to be around, and he was just a good human being.

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Q. What was your first job at the studio?

A. Walt arranged for the studio to sponsor me and get me into the screen director's guild and I worked as a second assistant. My first film was "Old Yeller."

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Q. Was Walt a presence on the set?

A. Walt always came down on the set. Always. He was congenial with the actors and actresses, knew most of the crew by their first names, he just was a very pleasant man to be around, in those conditions.

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Q. Was there a change on the set when he was there?

A. Definitely. I think the crew sped up a little bit when Walt came on the set, didn't take quite as long to get a set-up.

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Q. Can you give us an example of Walt's attention to detail on his films?

A. Bill Walsh and I were associate producers on "That Darn Cat." There was a scene in which the young boyfriend of Hayley Mills gets up after eating a lot of potato chips and he goes over to a curtain and he wipes his greasy hands on the curtain and leaves. I was saying to Bill when we were working on the film, "It's distasteful what that guy did." And Bill said, "What do you want to do about it?" And I said, "Why don't we just edit it out?" So we cut it out. So, after a screening, we all went out of the theater and sat in the hall and talked about how the film was received and everything else. And lo and behold, Walt says, "What ever happened to the scene where the kid goes over to the drape and wipes his hands off?" And at that point Bill Walsh, who was a wonderful guy and a dear friend of mine, he said, "Ron had it cut out. It was his decision." So I sat there with egg on my face. We put it back in. Walt said, "You're going too far in cutting these things, let me make some of the decisions."

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Q. You directed Walt on many of the lead-ins for his television show. What was that like?

A. Yeah, that's about as nervous as you can get, when you went through directing Walt on his lead-ins. After awhile his voice would get dry. So you'd just pour water down it, you'd keep pouring water, clearing his voice.

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Q. How did you direct Walt?

A. Very carefully. And obviously he called most of the shots. You just saw that everything was in place. Every once in awhile he would get hung up on certain words, and you'd try to help him with that. But, you know, the most difficult thing was when he had to go all day. Because he would really get tired of the hot lights and everything else.

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Q. Was watching the dailies a tense time too?

A. Oh, yeah. You just hope everything works out. For example, I was doing a two part television show and he was in on the casting and we tested this one girl and she came out all right, this 10, 11 year old girl, but she wasn't the actress we thought she was. And every time dailies came on I would either sit in front of Walt or on the side of Walt so that I was close by if he wanted to say anything. But this poor little girl just wasn't an actress. And the first day was all right. The second day he started tapping his fingers, and I just wanted to hide under the seat. The minute she would come on, he would start tapping, I could hear those fingers tapping. And then the lights would come on and he would raise that one eyebrow and he would look at me. And finally when it was all over he said, "You know, you're going to have to do some really judicious and creative editing on this show." But it did come out all right. We did cut around her a lot. In fact, he admitted it was a fairly good show.

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Q. Those drumming fingers were a real signal, weren't they?

A. The drumming of the fingers was a case of the first sign of something's wrong. That's when you got nervous. You got nervous, not him.

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Q. You had a brief opportunity at becoming an actor, didn't you? Tell us about that.

A. One day I got a call and it was Bill Orr who was into television at the time, and also I think Jack Warner's son-in-law. He said, "Ron, we'd like you to come over. We'd be interested in seeing if you might work out as Clint Walker's replacement on the television show, Cheyenne." Well, I was sort of intrigued by it, but not really excited by it because I'm not an actor, never was, never will be.

And so I went over there and I read 3 pages of a script and surprisingly they were sort of half-way pleased and they wanted to shoot a screen test. And Walt called me at the end of the day and he said, "Now, wait a minute. What are you doing going over to Warner Brothers? You know, you have a chance to really be an important factor at this studio. I want to make you a producer some day, I want to give you a lot of responsibility. So why don't you just give up the idea of being an actor?" And I gave it up real fast. That was it.

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Q. Walt always thought in the long term, didn't he?

A. I believe that Walt's whole philosophy was long term. I mean, he knew that he was going to spend a lot more money than a lot of people were comfortable with when it came to Disneyland. In fact, that's why he got ABC to come in. I think they put up a million. And a year and a half or two years later, when Walt got uncomfortable with them, they walked away with seven and a half million. Hell of a profit. But even in films, when we started shooting the T.V. show for ABC, he shot all those two parters, "Davey Crockett" and everything else, in color. He knew that someday, in the very near future, that color was going to be the thing. I imagine he shot three years of two part television shows in color. And the ironic thing is that when he had the chance to shoot "Zorro" in color, he shot it in black and white because he felt that Zorro was a black and white figure. And they have since colorized "Zorro."

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Q. And his craving for quality could be pretty expensive, couldn't it?

A. Oh, yeah. Like with "Zorro" I believe we were getting from ABC about $42,000 an episode. And we were spending right around $105-$110,000 an episode. So we took a huge loss at the first release and even with the repeats. I'm sure that now they're very profitable.

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Q. But Roy and others must have been dismayed that he was losing money for the studio at the time. . .

A. I think that Walt probably said, "Yeah, we're losing $80,000 but let's think of it in long term. We're building a library, a library for this company is going to be very, very important some day." And it certainly has been. I mean, those films are run over and over and over again.

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Q. Some called him corny, but that wasn't insulting to him?

A. Oh, no. When it comes to the word corn I remember, I forget what picture it was but one of the big critics came out and gave him a real negative review and said, "It's just plain corn." And Walt said, "How can he say that? It just happens that I like corn. I love corn." And he did. I mean, look at those films. Sure, you could address them as corn, but when the audience starts laughing like they did with those films, people enjoy corn.

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Q. Still, he might have liked to break out of the traditional Disney fare, right?

A. Walt invited us to come up to the house, he had a theater, a projection room at his house. And it was about the time that "To Kill a Mockingbird" was just released. And everybody who has seen "To Kill a Mockingbird" I know will certainly agree that it's a splendid film. And when the lights went on, the first words Walt said was, "That's the kind of film I wish I could make." And he was frustrated because he was locked into a certain kind of film, into a family film, G-rated, and it limited what he could do. That's why, when I became CEO, that's why I established Touchstone Films, because it enabled us to do films for the broad audience.

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Q. You've mentioned Walt having a particularly close relationship with Bill Walsh. Tell us a little about that.

A. The two men had a great respect for each other. Bill started in publicity. I think Bill did a couple cartoon strips. Then he got an opportunity to get involved in the Mickey Mouse Club, which I worked on as an assistant director. And of course it was really because of Bill that the show became such a huge success. He knew how to get warmth, he knew how to get humor out of the kids. He went way beyond what anybody else would have done, with the dance numbers and musical numbers. A number of those kids became very, very popular.

And, Walt saw that, saw his tremendous ability. And that's when he gave Bill an opportunity to do features. They almost were on the same wavelength. They seemed to enjoy the same things. Bill could write a warm scene as well as a humorous scene. Bill liked gags just as much as Walt. So there was a mutual feeling there that ran very, very deep.

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Q. Can you contrast Walt's behavior at home and at work?

A. Yeah, it's sort of a scary situation, isn't it? Having him as a father-in-law and also a boss. But at home he was wonderful, he was a great grandfather to our children. He was warm, always welcomed us. He would be reading a script out on the lawn, like on a Saturday or Sunday, and we would walk in and he would put his script down and start playing with the kids.

And we traveled with him. We had a marvelous trip up in Canada in 1966. Diane's brother-in-law Bob Brown and her sister Sharon were there with their baby, as were Diane and our children. We had a nice big yacht that went up the western coast of British Columbia. It was a wonderful trip. Walt was coughing really badly on that trip, but he was rather serene. And it was interesting because he had brought a number of books on institutions such as colleges and all that, like "How to Pick a College President." And what he was doing, he was getting ready to develop Cal Arts and build a campus out in Newhall.

And it was a beautiful trip. But, God, did it rain all the time. Every time we would drop anchor, Bob Brown and I would get one of the crew members and we'd lower a little dinghy with the motor in it and we'd go salmon fishing. And I remember he kept wondering what we saw in going salmon fishing every darned time we dropped anchor. But it was just good sport, good sporting. He was not a fisherman, as you can well imagine.

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Q. What was he like to travel with?

A. Walt was a very curious man. He was curious about everything. Whenever he saw something that he would like to know a little bit more about, he would pursue it. He would seek people out and ask them questions and all that. He was a great traveler, he loved seeing the country. He loved seeing history. He was a joy to travel with.

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