happy birthday, walt!

It is Walt Disney's birthday, and it just so happens that I finished reading Walt Disney, an American Original by Bob Thomas last night. It's taken me all semester, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a totally compelling read. It was the right amount of facts, anecdotes and personal information you'd like in a biography. I thought it sped up in the last half. Thomas belabored Walt's childhood and growing up years, and really detailed the start of his company, but his later years felt rushed.
I was nervous to read a biography about one of my favorite icons, worried I would find out about some sordid past (corruption, affairs or embezzlement and the like). But not so with Walt Disney. He was through and through an honest person in every way. He loved his wife, his children and grandchildren, and loved his company and employees.

Things that Suprised me:

• Walt was a genius at urban design and city planning. I love his ideas of how living and working spaces should be places of creativity, productivity and imagination. I love his philosophy about how art should be an integral part of everyday living.
• I was suprised at the effect World War II had on the entertainment industry, it seems like the whole nation's tastes changed.
• Walt was an innovator. There are so many inventions (particularly in the film industry) that Walt invented himself.
• Walt was not a wealthy man until the last decade of his life. The company never actually turned a huge profit until Disneyland was completed and Mary Poppins became an enormous success. Until then, every single production was a struggle.
  

Walt's Business Strategy:

• He always believed in absolute top quality in everything. Nothing left the Disney Studio half-baked. He demanded quality from everyone working for him, and demanded it especially of himself. I loved this. He believed that people don't want cheap, low-quality products. Everything was well thought-out, was the collected effort of dozens of creative minds, and was always an improvement from the last project.
  
• He had an excellent talent for finding other people's talents and knowing how to utilize them. Walt was no a great artist, but he could easily recognize and appreciate others' talents. I think this was a huge part of his company's success.
• His leadership style was interesting. He rarely praised his employees, and if he did, he did it in a discrete way, like sending the compliment via the spouse. He was never a favoritist, and he never imagined himself as more important than his artists and creative teams.

The book, to me, justified my love of Disneyland. Walt poured himself into it, and every detail was considered. It is blatantly nostolgic, idealistic, and "contrived," but it was always meant to be that way. And, clearly, there must be something in it that appeals to a huge amount of the world's population.
I think Walt would have loved the new Pixar films, hated how the company has become such a monstrous conglomerate (losing the intimacy, quality and independence he absolutely valued), and I think he would have disapproved of 65% of the business choices made by the executives that followed him. California Adventure (the new addition to the Disneyland Park in Anaheim), I'm positive, Walt would have disapproved of. It doesn't tell stories or enchant - it's just like a boardwalk. I think the company has also lost a lot of the innovative and forward-thinking it once had. Walt's engineers invented a system that could take trash and incinerate it in such a way that the only output was steam - whoa! Where's that kind of creativity?

My respect for Walt Disney increased, and my understanding of American 20th century cultural history also revolved a bit. I highly recommend the book, and,

Happy Birthday Walt!