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Page 1 of 28 Early Exploits: Chicago
One year old Walt

Walt Disney as a 1-year old baby
 

As a child, Walt may have seemed unremarkable.  Occasional flashes of brilliance aside, for the most part his surroundings were little different from other  Midwestern children. His school experience was not exceptional -- in fact, he only completed one year of high school.  Yet, a mysterious combination of events and personalities with whom he was involved turned him into one of the most successfully creative men of the twentieth century. His father (often unfairly portrayed as an overbearing ogre) gave a model of gritty determination and resilience. His mother contributed a love of fun, jokes and pleasure in people. His life -- first on the farm and later in Kansas City -- gave him a wealth of experience from which he was to draw in films and other creative ventures for the rest of his life.  At an incredibly early age, he was already involved in animation, starting his own (albeit unsuccessful) company. And by his 21st birthday, he was on his way to California and incredible success.
EHistory has not been kind to Walt Disney's father, Elias. Over the years, he has been portrayed as a cheap mean-spirited fellow whose life was made up of a series of failed careers. One biographer even goes so far as to claim that Walt's life with his father was a never-ending series of beatings, major and minor -- and that in this miserable childhood lay the roots of his personality flaws as an adult. Rubbish. No question that Elias Disney was a man with a temper. He held his five children to high standards, and sometimes that meant corporal punishment. But the image of him as some kind of turn-of-the century child abuser, working out his anger at the world on five defenseless children, is an unfair slander.
Ironically, it was largely Walt's own words, misused by others, that condemned his Dad to this unfair portrait. Walt, after all, always liked a good story. And so, when he was interviewed in the mid 1950s, he simply couldn't resist a few dramatic stories of confrontations with Elias. "He'd pick up a saw and try to hit you with the broad side of the saw," recalled Walt. "He'd pick up a hammer, you know and hit you with the handle." 
Elias Disney

Elias Disney, photographed
in Chicago around 1918
 

Elias and Flora

Elias with his wife Flora, 
photographed around 1913

High drama? Sure. Truth? Who knows? (It does seem unlikely that the fourteen year old Walt could have overpowered his angry father). The whole truth? Absolutely not. In fact, these stories represent only a tiny portion of the anecdotes Walt repeated concerning Elias. Walt also recalled his father as "a good Dad (who)thought of nothing but his family.  "I had tremendous respect for him. I always did. . . I worshipped him. Nothing but his family counted," Walt once said.
Elias was a fiddler, who frequently spent Sundays playing with neighbors, while Walt and Ruth listened. If a homeless man came into town -- and he could play a musical instrument -- Elias would invite him home for a warm meal and a little music.  "He'd bring home some of the weirdest characters," Walt said.  Walt also remembered, with pride, his father's concern for his fellow man; in fact Elias had socialistic political leanings and was deeply concerned about the lot of the poor and disenfranchised. "I used to talk to my dad a lot about it," said Walt, "And my dad used to love to talk. He loved to talk to people. He believed people. He thought everyone was as honest as he was." Listen, too, to Walt's siblings. Said Walt's younger sister Ruth: "One thing that isn't told was that (my father) was a social person. Very sociable. He had such a way of grace with people who came to our house. I always wanted to be like that. I admired him. His friendliness. Always such a gentleman."

 

Roy, who was eight years older than Walt, put Elias's temper in context, "He was a strict, hard guy with a great sense of honesty and decency. He never drank. I rarely even saw him smoke, even. And he was. . . a good dad. So I don't like him put in the light of being a brutal or mean dad. That he was not. But when (he hit us on the back of the head with his hand) that (was) impulse. . . temper. He wasn't a mean man at all." As for his legendary tight-fistedness, it seemed to apply mostly to himself. "We had everything we needed in every way," said Ruth. "He bought a fine piano for me when I was nine years old. My mother and father gave us every opportunity for education, and for extra education when we showed interest and talent."

Walt himself reported that "If I wanted to go to the show at night, the only way I could go was to come and tell my dad it was an educational picture on there that I wanted to see. And my Dad would shell out." As for his father's fabled failures, it is true that he had a series of careers; as a carpenter, farmer, newspaper route owner, and jelly factory manager. But though he never got rich, he did well enough all along the way. When he sold his newspaper route, in 1917, to buy an interest in the O'Zell Company, a jelly manufacturer in Chicago, he was able to put together $16,000. Consider that in 1917, a man could easily support his family on $3,000 a year, and it puts that accomplishment into context!
 

Walt and his sister Ruth

Walt with his baby sister Ruth,
from a photo dating around 1905

 
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