SOME cloud-sitting Joves of Hollywood, enthroned for a little hour among the thunders of self-praise, are unable to comprehend the world fame of quiet, mousy Walt Disney.
He never has had a paid publicity agent. No bankers, radio pashas or tapioca magnates own shares in his small but thriving studio. He seldom uses the words “me” and “mine.” He has yet to patronize those voodoo asylums for exhibitionists — certain cocktail lounges and night clubs. Nor does he choose to wear the robes of high priest in a community where even the altar boys are apprentice geniuses.
Honors fall upon him like confetti, and he is confusedly grateful. He is happy that his work is known. He is equally happy that he, as a person, is permitted the luxury of privacy.
In Hollywood, a genuinely accomplished person may experience an undreamed-of anonymity. Einstein, Millikan, Rachmaninoff, Katharine Cornell or Eugene O’Neill can stroll down Sunset Boulevard at high noon with none of the headline worshipers to startle with shallow huzzas. Disney, too, can walk in peace, unrecognized.
The artistic sire of Mickey Mouse is accounted a heretic for rejecting the surrealist moods of Hollywood earth shakers. He wears ready-made suits and shirts of the middle-class Chicago stamp.
Another caprice of Hollywood’s thirty-five-year-old Aesop is that he eats what he wants, when and where he wants it — frequently in lunch cars. The caviar and chutney addicts cannot risk the stigma of kraut with its peasant implications.
Disney, the modern Aesop, now seeks to be Homer; to progress from the fable to the epic. He is investing a million dollars (of his own money) in the screen’s first full-length cartoon feature, to be released at Christmas-time. It is a fairy tale, a bridge between fable and heroic legend. He has chosen for this purpose the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” If it fails, Disney’s elder brother and business manager, Roy, will have a nervous breakdown. If it succeeds, Walt will create a feature cartoon annually, drawing upon story materials now inaccessible for fables and shorts.
Such experienced showmen as Darryl Zanuck and Walter Wanger predict Disney’s success with “Snow White.” There are some others who have doubts. They always do have them when pioneers are at work.
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