
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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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