In the third decade of this century America produced a young man of genius. He drew pictures with pen and ink and wash. Like other geniuses, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo and Bernini, he had a mechanical turn of mind; and, by means of all sorts of devices, he made his drawings into motion pictures which were works of art. He drew animals to perfection. With care and his knowledge of mechanics he made these animals move, talk and sing like living actors, and often much more entertainingly.
Other people had produced animated cartoons before him, but none were like these. To make them, Walt Disney invented a whole world of his own. His animals thought Disney thoughts, did Disney actions in Disney scenery. They had Disney emotions, Disney successes and Disney disasters.
To make his little animals move and talk, Walt Disney needed assistants. He also needed a production plant to house the ingenious machinery which his pictures de-manded. The businessmen gave him money to hire help and to build his factory. He rapidly became famous, rich—and entrapped.
He had built up around him a huge organization of helpers, advisers and financial backers. All revered his genius and all were proud of having a finger in the pie. But soon the pie was nearly all fingers. To keep his organization going, Disney had to turn out films continuously. When he reached middle age, it seemed to admirers like myself that he had been forced by circumstances to turn his genius into an industry. It seemed that we were going to witness an all-too-familiar process—the conversion of the tired artist into the tired businessman. When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney.
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