Class Act: The History of Disney

All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

-Walt Disney

Fans of the site may know that the entire purpose of these essays is to hopefully make tears shoot out of your face like cheap sprinklers, and ruthlessly smash dreams like if the sandman took steroids and got pissed one night. But for this essay, Imma talk about my polar opposite in every way (except in exceptional classiness), one man who decided to take his talents, his business savvy, and his overall non-creepy paternal love for all children (as long as they’re not minorities), and build dreams. And then whore them out for profit (that’s where the business savvy comes in, of course).

"Oh what's the Mickey? You DON'T have my money? WELL GET BACK OUT THERE!"

I am talking about Mr. Walt Elias Disney, born December 5, 1901, and since his childhood was literally the exact same childhood of every other child living in that time (his father went to California in search of gold, didn’t find any, stayed out west and bought a farm, Bob Loblaw… [Sorry couldn’t help it]), I’m just gonna go ahead and skip past all that to the part where his brother Roy Disney bought land in Marceline, Missouri when Walt was four. That was where Walt ultimately grew up and developed his talents for drawing at his summer job. No, not doodling penises (peni?) on napkins while serving food at McDonalds, just a little creepier. His neighbor, retired doctor “Doc” Sherwood had this young boy come to his home, where he would pay him to draw pictures of Sherwood’s horse, Rupert. If this doesn’t already come off as pretty damn weird to you, remember the fact that he paid this VERY young child to draw these pictures in a time when money was kinda tight (twenty years away from the Great Depression tight), meaning ultimately he was paying this kid daily what you pay Netflix monthly (and we all know how people feel about that), just to draw his friggin horse (so in a way, yes, peni were drawn). Anyway, time progressed, and Walt grew up, eventually moving to Chicago, where he became the cartoonist for his school’s newspaper. Walt dropped out soon after though at the age of sixteen, so he could join the US army to fight in WWI. Which he was too young for.

Well... shit.

Sooo apparently the reason that he didn’t think to check the age limits for the army BEFORE he went ahead and just straight up dropped out of public education was because he was so jazzed up at the idea of fighting for America, or it was for the same reason he was the cartoonist for the newspaper instead of a writer (I’m implying he’s stupid). Not one to go back on his word, Walt instead joined the Red-Cross, driving ambulances in France until 1919, when he moved back to Kansas. Unable to find good work (apparently he was worse at drawing cartoons for newspaper than writing articles), he ended up accepting his brother Roy’s help again, who got him a temporary job at Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he ended up meeting a man with a sillier name than him, cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks (Word 2003 just put two red squiggly lines under both of those words and I do not blame it at all). Anyway, bonded by their mutually hilarious monikers, when their time at Pesmen-Rubin ended, they decided to start their own studio, and so was born Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. But come on, this is Disney here, as soon as he started the company he left to go work for Kansas City Film Ad Company, leaving Iwerks to just go, “WTF man? What in the hell just happened?” It was at Kansas City that Disney gained his love for animation, and with positive influence from his boss, AV Cauger, he started reading up on it. He then decided his boss was an idiot and shouldn’t have been using cutouts for animation, cel was where it was at baby.

Fuck yea.

So once again, he made friends with a co-worker, Fred Harmon, and left the studio to go make his own (AGAIN), with Harmon as his first employee. They became very famous in the Kansas area for their self-titled Laugh-O-Grams (I know, it sounds like birthday messages from clowns), and then subsequently went bankrupt a few years later. Disney, deciding he was tired of fucking around in Kansas, the worlds most boring sandbox, grabbed his brother Roy, and moved on up to Hollywood, California, to make it big in that ‘ol entertainment biz (which they actually had a chance at since neither of them were interested in mainlining coke, LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE IN HOLLYWOOD EVER). Walt really wanted to distribute his ‘Alice Comedies,’ the short animations he had based off of Alice in Wonderland, that everybody else in Kansas had basically told him was garbage. But just like Walt had never finished High School, and never found a business he could run successfully, Walt never took the hint, which was pretty lucky, since it meant that he would then form his own studio in Hollywood to distribute it, and so was born Walt Disney Brothers Studios. Walt managed to talk people into coming over from Kansas to Hollywood to help him with the show, including his old business partner who had so far been screwed by Walt’s failures in business twice, Mr. Ubbe Iwerks (who must’ve had a serious bromance for the guy). Sadly, his bro-love would go unrequited as in 1925, just two years after the formation of the studio in 1923; Walt hired a young woman, one Lillian Bounds, to ink and paint celluloid. He promptly commenced with tapping that ass, and soon the two were wed. It was in fact Lillian who might have influenced the future of Walt Disney Studios the most, as it was Lillian who, when Walt was trying to figure out a name for his new mouse cartoon character, told him to name the little guy Mickey, instead of (ew) Mortimer. Which reminds me, you may be wondering how Walt ever ended up even making Mickey Mouse. Well, it’s a long story, full of betrayal, greed, love, and sex. Well not sex, technically, unless you count the copious amounts of love making between Walt and the lovely missus Lillian Disney. I do.

Mr. Disney, you have a fine taste in women sir.

Anyway, it was near the end of the Alice Comedies that Walt was interested in branching out towards a different cartoon character, this time of his own original creation. For some reason he chose a rabbit, who he coined, Oswald (seriously, where was Lillian when he needed her, right?). The character was actually drawn by good old Iwerks, who continued working with Walt, drawing about 26 more of the ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’ cartoons (which sounds like Lucky Charms and Trix cereals ill-fated imaginary 80’s Saturday morning TV show), until Walt made the infamous decision to try and earn some more money off of Oswald. Disney made a plea to the Mrs. Margaret J. Winkler, the woman who was distributing Disney’s cartoons through Universal, but when Walt finally brought her attention to Oswald, and she saw how successful it was, she basically got two giant money signs in her eyes, and told Disney, in the most polite way possible, she was gonna steal the fuck outta that Rabbit. And since Oswald was technically Universal Studios property, she totally could, and did, giving it to her husband Charles Mintz, to distribute instead. Charles then went ahead and stole all of Disney’s best animators and cartoonists, leaving only one behind- and yes, you guessed right- Ubbe Iwerks, the creator of Oswald. Walt understandably felt like punching Mintz in the dick, but instead just had to wallow in self pity. Which he totally didn’t (bitch, he’s DISNEY). Instead, he tried creating another character, a certain MOUSE character, and the rest is history… which I will continue to explain. Making sure this time that he owned very single character he created, Walt and Iwerks made another series of cartoons starring Mickey, their third one being the most famous, as it had synchronized sound, a new invention at the time. It was called ‘Steamboat Willie,’ and despite the slightly homo-erotic name, the cartoon was anything but.

Awww yea Mickey, you shake that ass.

It was so famous that it was actually presented in B.S. Moss’s Colony Theatre in New York City on November 18, 1928; now know by its more familiar moniker, THE BROAD-FUCKING-WAY THEATRE. The instant success of the first couple Mickey Mouse cartoons inspired the creation of even more ‘Silly Symphonies,’ which played all over America, with even more iconic characters showing up in them over time, including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, and Retard McDownsyndrome, or as he was later titled to be more ‘politically-correct,’ Goofy (every group needs a Zoidberg). Walt felt like Disney Studios could handle an even bigger project though, so, using all their assets, Walt began production on the first fully animated Sound and Screen motion picture, in 1934. All kinds of new tech was used to make the film, so that when it was finally released, it was literally proclaimed as one of the greatest movies of all time- and no, Disney did not release ‘300’ in 1937. I’m talking about Walt Disney’s Snow White, which was a lot like Avatar today, in the sense that nobody had any idea how the animation used in the film could have been made to look so real, and so beautiful, and everybody liked the story because it was unoriginal, and hadn’t actually been written by the creators of the movie. And if you think all that success was just because tech was so primitive back then, if those people got a look at the shit we could do just on our laptops with a Flash Program, they wouldn’t give two stinky shits about fucking Snow White, then prepare to be brutally mind fucked. The film has been re-released, usually in company down times, in 1952, ‘58, ‘67, ‘75, ‘83, ‘87, and ‘93, and still netted at least in the tens of millions each time, literally shaming any other movie that had the balls to be released in the same week, and couldn’t make as much dough as Snow White.

I'm gonna straight-up rape you in the box-office.

Walt would continue to ride of this success all the way into WWII, when this time, instead of just up and quitting everything for no logical reason (again), he decided to help the troops overseas by entertaining the families back home. Walt released many movies at the time including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, but what earned him copious amounts of fame and well-wishers at the time were his propaganda cartoons, which delighted and amused thousands, for some reason. I mean, I know there’s a difference in time periods, but fucking seriously, there’s an episode where Donald play a goddamn NAZI. He hails the fume-here (get it? Because Hitler stinks?) and everything, they even make it pretty funny. Post-war, Disney’s success continued, with him making even more movies, and cartoons, soon becoming one of the richest, most respected men in Hollywood, if not the world. But what Walt was most excited about though, was the creation of a project he’d had in his good old fancy-schmancy imagination ever since he was a kid (don’t worry, it had nothing to do with the horse peni). That’s why in 1954, Walt unveiled an idea that would become paramount to the company’s future, and seriously, was, and is, the exact same dream of literally every single child anywhere, an entire theme park, named after HIM. FUCKING DISNEYWORLD.

This castle is like the Washington Monument for dreams.

Needless to say, when he showed off his designs for the project, everyone involved literally orgasm-ed at once, and set about to making sure that going to Disneyworld even once would be the experience of a lifetime, like the death of a loved one, except happy, and not depressing and shit. Opened to the public on July 17, 1955, the park had a shaky start, but after just one visit from Ronald Reagan, aka the most interesting man in the world’s long lost brother (probably), shit got booming. Another probable reason the park ended up so successful, the reason Walt wanted to make it, was out of pure fucking jealousy of his two kids. He said that whenever he took his two kids to carnivals and amusement parks, he was always pissed when they got to have the time of their bitchy little lives going on merry-go-rounds and such, when he had to sit on the fucking bench, like a world class tool. So he wanted to make an amusement park where adults could have just as much fun as the kids, and if he could get PAID for it, we-he-he-hail shoot, he was gonna do it by golly! Disneyworld grew and grew, with more chapters of it appearing around the country and eventually the world) as time progressed, Walt’s dream finally coming to fruition. Sadly, the stars that shine brightest die the fastest, or at least die after they’ve created an entertainment empire dedicated simply to how awesome imagination and dreams are. On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney passed away, just two years after his crowning achievement, Mary Poppins. His death was like when Gandalf died protecting everybody in the Fellowship. His death was like when Dumbledore died at the hands of Severus Snape (I’m not putting fucking spoilers, if you haven’t read Harry Potter Six by now, you’re probably illiterate, in which case you can’t understand this and you smell like poo so there). Fucking men cried tears at his funeral. God himself sent Jesus to high five him on his way into heaven. Which reminds me- Walt Disney might not have actually made it into heaven. Yea, sorry about that, but there’s some pretty heavy evidence that Walt, in all honesty, was more racist and homophobic than even some of his close friends could handle. And if you don’t believe me, just check out a little thing called ‘Song of the South,’ Disney’s middle finger to black people. Oh, and by the way, Disney also apparently didn’t really care for the jews that much either, he just hated Hitler because, seriosuly, fuck Hitler, go AMUHRICA! Yes, the man had some pretty hardcore faults, and while I won’t go so far as to call any one of them redeemable, the man’s legend, and passion, and overall love for the world (as long as there weren’t any minorities in it) still made him the kind of man millions of people still owe their childhoods too today. And after he died, I’m sorry to say this, but the Disney Company was never the same again. After that, it was all business, and while some of the movies they made are very good, none are on par with the exceptional classiness of the Walt-era cartoons, which still go down in the annals of entertainment history today.