Dying Alone

Walt Disney was famous.  And I don't mean famous in the sense it is used today.  Today our celebrities are famous for being famous, not for any real accomplishments.  They can do nothing without being in a crowd.

Walt was famous because he took his hopes and a shoe string operation to Hollywood and made a studio.

Walt was famous because he made the first full length animated feature and grossed $7 million dollars, an amount larger than any film up to that point (and this was 1937 dollars--adjusted by the consumer price index, it would be equivalent to $103.5 million today).   For further context, the average ticket price that year was just under a quarter.  That means that Snow White sold over 28 million tickets.  With the population hovering at 129 million or so, this means that slightly fewer than 1 in 4 people in the US bought a ticket.  It was dethroned from its earnings perch by Gone With The Wind, but that may have been because the Scarlet O'Hara movie sold far fewer half-price children's tickets.

Walt was famous because he felt that he had done all he could do with movies and took some of his most trusted employees and designed a movie come to life that people could enter and find themselves immersed in a new reality.  He didn't have the money to build it, so he launched a weekly television show to promote it.  And within a few years, Disneyland made enough money that he was able to buy back the share of the park he had sold to the network for airing the program.

Walt was famous because he was an everyman.  He was not a suit in the building, but would often go to Disneyland to walk around and talk with the people there.  In the early days, he would sometimes go to the ice cream shop on Main Street and scoop for customers.  He would ride the Jungle Cruise incognito and time the pilot's journey to make sure that it lasted long enough.

Walt was on television all of the time, his name ubiquitous.  Everyone thought they knew him.

But like many people who are friends to everyone he had a hard time developing real friendships.  He guarded his personal life and feelings.  Many people could say they worked closely with him.  Few people could say that he trusted himself with them.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer after a life of serial smoking, he didn't tell anyone but a few of his closest friends.  When it began to become obvious to everyone that something was wrong, he underplayed the seriousness of his condition.  Some say that his greatest performance was when he struggled into the studio and recorded his pitch to the state of Florida about Epcot and Disney World.  He almost literally collapsed when the red light went off and the taping was over.

One of the most startling things I learned in researching Walt was that when arguably the best known person in the U.S. died of lung cancer in his hospital room he was the only person there.  No family was there, no hospital personnel, no co-workers--no one.  His final uncompleted project was a utopian community that would overcome all of the problems of modern society, and ironically his death was an illustration of the death of community in modern society.

The famous Walt Disney died alone.