I have a friend who collects sets of encyclopedias from different decades but in particular from the middle 1800s to the early 1900s. Now, I have some unusual things I collect and some people even consider the fact that I collect Disney items unusual enough. However, I had difficulty understanding why a fellow writer would want to devote so much of his home space to those old volumes when a recent set of encyclopedias should be sufficient, especially supplemented by internet available information.
Then he explained to me how valuable those volumes are to a writer. He has written fiction stories taking place at the turn of the century and he opens up one of his encyclopedias from that time period and there is a full page or more entry just on buggy whips. Try to find that in a modern encyclopedia. All of the information that has happened since 1850 has been crowded out or minimized with all the new information on airplanes and rockets and cloning and more. Also, at the turn of the century, buggy whips were an important part of the daily life. Today, they might be an interesting oddity to a small part of the population.
While I don’t collect old encyclopedias (although after talking with my friend I am sorely tempted to start to do so), I do collect old magazines for the same basic reason. I often buy magazines from the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s with articles about Disney because they often feature information or Walt quotes that appear nowhere else. I was able to pass along to Jim Hill the information that in 1954, Walt was quoted in a magazine article from THE MOTION PICTURE HERALD that one of the things he wanted to do at Disneyland was have a behind the scenes animation studio tour for guests! (This fact makes it especially sad that Disney is considering closing the Feature Animation Florida which offered the only thing close to a behind the scenes animation tour for guests.)
The first Disney cartoons were distributed by Pat Powers. Columbia distributed Disney cartoons from 1930 to 1932. United Artists distributed Disney cartoons from 1932 to 1937 (although they also distributed VICTORY THROUGH AIRPOWER in 1943). RKO distributed Disney cartoons from 1937 to 1956 (features only until 1954). RKO’s reluctance in distributing the TRUE LIFE ADVENTURES featurettes and later the features was one of the contributing factors to Disney creating its own distribution arm, Buena Vista Distribution Company. Its first release was the TRUE LIFE ADVENTURE feature film, THE LIVING DESERT. The film made for $500,000 made five million dollars during its original release.
At a Mouse Club or NFFC Disneyana Convention over a decade ago (and it has been so long ago they both blend together but they were both more fun and friendly than Disney’s version of Disneyana conventions which became merely merchandise opportunities instead of celebrations of Disney), I bought from one of the dealers a pack of eight yellowed pages which was entitled “Biographical Sketch of Walt Disney” which was produced by RKO in 1937 as a publicity release in connection with their taking over the distribution of Disney cartoons as well as the upcoming release of SNOW WHITE later that year.
As I was rearranging my Walt biographies for my previous column on WALT DISNEY: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL, I ran across a manila envelope with the RKO release that I had forgotten I had. Since there really was no biographical information about Walt Disney at the time other than an odd article in a magazine like McCalls at the time, this may be one of the first “official” Walt biographies since I’ve never heard of Columbia or United Artists producing a similar handout.
So, I thought it would be fun to share it with the readers of JimHillMedia and to record it for historical purposes. Nothing amazingly new, except for some Walt quotes that don’t appear anywhere else and the fact that Walt must have talked with a writer who formatted that information. Walt was a great storyteller so I am sure some of the material was telescoped or exaggerated for the purpose of a good story. Therefore some of the information is a bit misleading or a bit happier than it actually was. For instance, Walt’s newspaper boy days were a lot more traumatic than this account suggests. Walt had nightmares about the newspaper route for decades.
Where there is an obvious error in fact (rather than just colorful storytelling) I have put in a comment in parentheses and capital letters to make the correction.
So for your enjoyment, here for the first time in decades is the eight page RKO Biographical Sketch of Walt Disney:
Walt Disney’s valiant and Lilliputian Mickey Mouse is much more real to children, not only in America, but in every country in which his films are distributed, then Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Unlike those symbolical childhood characters even sophisticated grown-ups believe solemnly in Mickey and his devoted sweetheart, Minnie. The Disney Silly Symphonies, those lovely colored bits of fantasy and whimsy, are America’s finest contribution to the world’s folklore. Legend has been made to walk and talk.
But of the young man Walt Disney who created them, little has ever been known or written – due mostly to his innate modesty, and to the fact that his work, the accomplishment of a dream, still interests him far more than the fame which has come to him because of it. It is time Walt Disney were made to walk and talk. Perhaps this story may bring you closer to him.
He was born in the city of Chicago, Illinois, on December 5th, 1901. He probably looked a little like Mickey Mouse at the time, since most new babies do. He real name is Walt Disney; his father was Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, is of German-American descent. He has three brothers and one sister.
Elias Disney was a contractor and builder in Chicago for twenty years; later the Disneys moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, where Walt attended a little country school and probably carried his lunch in a red lard pail. Later he went to the Benton Grammar School in Kansas City. He remembers being on the track team but he was too busy to be especially active in athletics. At the age of nine, he tackled his first business venture which was not unlike the financial debut of many young Americans. He had a paper route.
It was not always comfortable work,. He had to get up at 3:30 every morning, and deliver papers till 6:00. Then he hurried home for breakfast and went off to school. Every evening after school he made the same route.
“No,” he recalls with a boyish smile, “that’s not quite right. I missed a total of one month during those six years, on account of illness. I was pretty proud of my record, though.”
It was always pitch dark when he started out on winter mornings, and often bitter cold. Sometimes he plowed his way through several feet of freshly fallen snow, breaking his own path in those early hours. Occasionally, when he reached the warm hall of an apartment house, he would lie down for a short snooze – waking to find it was daylight. Then he’d have to run the rest of the way so that he could deliver all his papers and not be late for school.
Business interfered a great deal with his pleasure at this time; still he managed to be a member of the “gang,” build a few caves, join a couple of secret societies, the aims and aspirations of which are still a secret even to its members, and take part in a few shows.
He was always interested in the stage, and Charlie Chaplin was his idol. On amateur nights in neighborhood theatres he often did impersonations of the great silent comedian, for which he sometimes won prizes of as much as two dollars! He was not alone in his stage ambitions; his chum, a boy named Walt Pfeiffer, and he got up a vaudeville skit. Pfeiffer pere coached them, and the boy’s sister played the piano for their songs. Their billing read “The Two Walts.” and they won prizes in several local theatres.
Later on, in Chicago, finding another dramatic aspirant, Walt Tried to go into vaudeville with a “Dutch comedian” act. The act got, as he calls it, the hook – and his stage career ended. But he never entirely got over his early passion for disguises and sleight-of-hand tricks, and even now will attempt the latter occasionally unless watched carefully.
But the thing he always liked to do best, as far back as he can remember, was drawing. He doesn’t know why; nobody else in the Disney family is at all artistically inclined. The other boys are all business men, including his brother Roy who handles all of the studio’s business affairs. His were not the type of parents who doted on “showing off” their children’s talents. He got no particular inspiration from them or from his brother or sister, but could always count on sympathetic interest and encouragement. His favorite aunt supplied him with pencils and drawing tablets, he recalls; and a very dear old neighbor, a retired doctor, often “bought” his drawings with little presents.
“I remember one time especially,” he says, laughing. “I guess I was about seven. The doctor had a very fine stallion which he asked me to sketch. He held the animal while I worked with my home-made easel and materials. The result was pretty terrible – but both the doctor and his wife praised the drawing highly, to my great delight.”
At high school, McKinley High School in Chicago, Walt divided his attention between drawing and photography, doing illustration for the school paper and taking his first motion pictures with a camera and projector he had bought. Motion photography was to interest him more and more; it is his long interest in both mediums which has led to their happy combination in his pictures. Not content with school all day, he also went to night school at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied cartooning under Leroy Gossitt, a member of the old Chicago Herald staff.
His first real job was when in 1917, at the age of fifteen, school was over, he became what is known as a “news butcher.” With peanuts, candy, magazines, apples, he supplied the strange wants of people riding on trains between Kansas City and Chicago. Any boy of his age would have loved such a job. He liked traveling; he liked hanging nonchalantly on the steps of the train as it pulled into stations — and he loved wearing a uniform.
Sometimes he would go up and ride on the coal car with the engineers, buying that privilege with a cigar or a plug of tobacco. It was a job with a special sort of thrill.
“But it didn’t last long,” h regrets. “It wasn’t a very profitable venture. You see, I was only fifteen – and I ate up all my profits!”
During the summer of 1918, when there was a shortage of man power in Chicago on account of the War, Walt Disney decided to apply for a post office job. He was only sixteen, and looked it – and of course he was turned down. Here his talent for character disguise stood him in good stead, for he went straight home, changed his clothes; wearing a hat instead of a cap, he put on old make-up and promptly applied again for the job – and to the same man. Since his first application had not gotten as far as his name, and the man did not recognize him with ten years added, he got the job. He worked for several months as a down-town letter carrier in the daytime and a route collector at night.
That fall the War had set in in good earnest, and it was the fashion for young men to enlist. Turned down by both the Army and Navy and Canadian enlistment offices on account of his age, Walt felt as though he were too young for anything. He was finally successful in joining the Red Cross as a chauffeur. After a short period of training he was sent overseas, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. On one occasion he drove General Pershing’s son Jack then eleven years old, around Neufchateau, France, when the boy visited his famous father.
Walt had the distinction of driving one of the most unusual ambulances in France — for with all the excitement of war, he had not forgotten entirely about drawing. His vehicle of mercy was covered from stem to stern with works of art, and not stock camouflage, but original Disney sketches.
Although his education was not completed and he was only eighteen years old when the War suddenly stopped, Walt could not bear the thought of going back to school. He wanted to do something practical, something constructive. He took stock of his two ambitions: should he be an actor or an artist? It would be easier, he decided, to get a job as an artist; so an artist he would be.