Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

I’ve been reading Neal Gabler’s mammoth new biography Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. I didn’t really know anything about Disney’s life, particularly his early life, and it’s been striking, given the magnitude of his eventual success, to read about just how long and hard he had to work for it, and the unbelievable amount of stress and disappointment he had to weather. For example, here’s an episode I just read about. At this point, Walt has created Mickey Mouse and produced “Steamboat Willie,” the first-ever sound cartoon, and now Walt, desperately broke and having triple-mortgaged everything he owns, is trying to get people to care: “Increasingly desperate, Walt began hiking to studios again with his animations, hoping to interest one of them in securing the rights … The writer Francis Marion claimed that two editors at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had seen Disney’s cartoons and recommended them to Marion and Metro directors George Hill and Victor Fleming. Standing in the projection room, Walt was, as Marion remembered, ‘A tall, shy youth who wore a shabby suit and whose apprehensive glance at us told very clearly of many past disappointments.’ He even apologized for the crudeness of the animations. But the group was enthralled by Mickey. Fleming, his long arms flailing the air, exclaimed, ‘Man, you’ve got it! Damnedest best cartoon I’ve ever seen!” Marion said that Walt had also brought along a second cartoon, a Silly Symphony … and that the group was just as enthusiastic about it. So much so that Marion immediately headed to the office of Metro head Louis B. Mayer to drag him down to the projection room. Mayer, however, was not impressed. Watching the symphony, he pressed a button to stop the projector, pronounced the cartoon ridiculous, and growsed that while men and women dance together, and boys and girls dance together, flowers do not dance together. When Mayer rose to leave, Fleming eased him back into his chair and advised him to see the Mickey Mouse. No sooner did the film start, however, than Mayer let out a bellow and demanded that the cartoon be stopped. Driving his fist into the pit of his stomach, he declared that pregnant women go to see MGM films and that women are terrified of mice, especially a mouse ten feet tall on the motion picture screen. Mayer stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him, while Walt stood there in embarrassment.”