"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 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."