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Spotlight On: Walt and History

 

"I've always been interested in the past and history and I think it's vital. I think this world we're living in today and this new era we're going in, we can't forget the things that happened such as the founding fathers and that darn Constitution, which is such a vital thing to what we're doing today. That's what I believe in there, you see." Click to hear Walt.

Throughout his career, Walt showed a long-standing fascination with the American past and the colorful characters who orate, create, and fight their way through the pages of history. Films like "Johnny Tremain," "Westward Ho the Wagons," "The Great Locomotive Chase," and "Old Yeller" all provided audiences with a heavy dose of nostalgia for days long gone by. His television programs -- notably "Zorro" (set in Los Angeles, during the days of Spanish rule) and "Davy Crockett" -- did the same. And, of course, guests in Disneyland find their way to various enchanted kingdoms via a pathway dominated by images of turn-of-the-century America -- Main Street, USA.

Walt and daughter Sharon on the set of 'Johnny Tremain'

Walt always loved history. Here he is shown on the set of "Johnny Tremain," his family feature set in the time of the American Revolution, with daughter Sharon, who had a bit part.

Once, in fact, when Walt was working on the 1964 World's Fair, a corporate executive for General Electric challenged Walt's vision of the GE exhibit: a Carousel of Progress that would use Audio-Animatronics to show guests the history of electricity in the American home. Marty Sklar, a long-time Disney executive, tells the story: "Walt went through the whole presentation of the show and when it was over, the GE executive said, 'Well, very interesting, Mr. Disney. But we don't make any of those old products. Why would we want to show them in the World's Fair? What do we want to have to do with nostalgia?'

"And Walt just bristled at that point. And he said, 'So much of my career has been based on nostalgia and bringing things from the past and keeping them alive and bringing them to life again.' And he said, 'You're really questioning my whole career.'"

Recalls actor Kevin Corcoran ("Moochie"), "I remember one time he was excited because we were going to make a [television show] about the Civil War and it was about a young boy called Johnny Shiloh, who had been a real figure in American history. He was the drummer boy of Shiloh and so on. I remember [Walt] telling me about it and how excited he was. And I remember him talking about the battle that took place in the peach orchard ... he was so excited about it."

Walt's interest in history began when he was a young boy, living in Marceline, Missouri. There he encountered a good deal of living history, as he happily listened to the tales of the town's elder statesmen. Erastus Taylor, for example, owned a nearby farm, and enchanted young Walt with stories of Civil War battles. Walt knew that some of Taylor's stories may have existed more in imagination than fact -- "I don't think he was ever in one battle of the Civil War, but he was in all of them," Walt later said -- but that didn't matter.

Several years later, when Walt's family lived in Kansas City, he showed his great affection for history by showing up for school one day dressed as Abraham Lincoln -- prepared to recite the Gettysburg address. As his childhood friend Walt Pfeiffer recalled in an interview with author Bob Thomas, "He'd made this stovepipe hat out of cardboard and put shoe polish on it ... And he walked in and he had this shawl that he probably got from his dad and he had a beard on him and the wart. He was Lincoln. He walked to school that way. So, he walked in the class there and the teacher said, 'Oh, how nice Walter. You look like Mr. Lincoln.' So, this was on Lincoln's birthday ... So, he got up in front of the class and did it and the kids thought it was great ... But [the teacher] thought it was so good she called the principal down, Mr. Cottingham. So, he came down and he took Walt into every class in that school [to perform]."

Many decades later, of course, Walt created a Lincoln show again; only this time, instead of Walt donning the black hat and beard, it was a mechanical figure in the World's Fair. His reverence for Lincoln had only grown over the course of time. He insisted on getting the speech and the voice just right, and when the exhibit wasn't ready on time, Walt delayed its premier until it was functioning as well as possible. As Walt's younger daughter, Sharon, recalled, "When they were doing the Lincoln show in New York for the World's Fair, I think my dad cried every time he sat through it. Lincoln's speech was so good and my father never felt there was anything wrong with crying."

Not only was Walt captivated by American history generally, he also retained an abiding interest in his own family's history. Often, when traveling, he'd seek out his family's roots. In 1965, just a year before he died, Walt wrote to his younger sister Ruth about a couple of memorable trips, one to Florida and the other to England.

"We found out that the first governor of Florida was the older brother of our Grandfather Call," he wrote. "And that the former Governor Collins of Florida, the one just before Governor Burns, now in office, is married into the Call family. Seems like everywhere we go in the world, we find bits of our family and its history.

"That reminds me of a thing that happened recently when Lilly and I were in England," he went on. "For years, I had been hearing about a Disney Street and a Disney Place in London. On this last trip, we had a little extra time, and I decided one morning to go find them. Lilly went along reluctantly, pooh-poohing the idea of looking up ancestors. We found the streets all right and out of curiosity, I called our London office to see if they could find out how they came to be named Disney. The report came back that night that the streets were named Disney in 1860 or thereabouts after a philanthropic gentleman of that surname.

"However, Lilly got a good laugh out of that report. It went on to say that before they acquired the name of Disney, they had been known as Harrow's Dunghill."

 

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