Uncle Walt

Even though Walt Disney died nine months after I was born, I feel like I know him.  I suspect that most people my age or older feel the same.

On Sunday evenings, back in the dark ages when we had only four TV channels (and walked uphill in 3 feet of snow to school each way, dag nab it!), the Wonderful World of Disney entered America's homes.  Each weeks episode included Uncle Walt sitting at a desk and introducing the program for the week.  He was a calm gentle presence.

Television allowed his voice and image to continue to be the voice of the program even 10 years after his death.  I really thought that he was a still living person as a child as I sat in the couch on the living room (now it seems a little disconcerting--almost zombie-ish now that I think about it).

So I knew Walt Disney as the humorous, kind man with the mustache who introduced the cartoons or Davy Crocket.  A man we gladly invited into our home each week because he shared our values--he was one of the family.  That was precisely the way that Walt and the company he founded wanted it.  He was to be known as the quintessential American success story.  A man whose dreams, decency and hard work brought him to the pinnacle of success.

The reality is a little murkier.  The man on the TV was in reality a much more complicated person with a much more complicated life story.

You may not have known that Walt Disney was a chain smoker who carefully avoided being photographed with a cigarette.  Not the right image, he felt.  He died of lung cancer, an illness he carefully concealed.

Early in his career, Walt Disney went into bankruptcy in Kansas City and left behind a trail of debts that he never paid back.  The company which controls Walt's image tells the story of him getting on the train to California to follow his dreams.  They don't mention that he hocked his camera and rather than paying off his creditors bought a first class ticket and a brand new suit for the journey.

The company histories rarely remember the perfectionist who refused to allow any of the artists to have billing higher than his.  Or that he would wait until the artists left for the day and go through their trash to evaluate their work.

His near nervous breakdown at one point in his life is also rarely discussed or his polo injury that left him in persistent pain for most of his life.

These pieces of back story in no way diminish his accomplishments.  Instead it reminds me that we always need to be aware of who is telling the story, because that voice may have an agenda or an image that they want to highlight and will leave us with only part of what we ought to know.