Disney In The Groovy Sixties / Disney (ePub)

After reading the biography of Walt Disney, what immediately comes to mind, is the several elephants in the room when discussing Disney product. His right-wing tendencies only increased during the sixties leading, to my mind, in one or more serious breaches of good taste. You will also note in this period, how out-of-sync with the history of the times the company was. The accusations of systemic racism aren't far off. The accusation of anti-Semitism comes from his involvement with the anti-Semitic group, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, in the forties. While the grand old man did make the Studio a safe haven for (closeted) gays, he also had to deal with the controversy star, Tommy Kirk's, sexuality caused for the Studio.

The big crunch came in 1966 with Walt's death. His autocratic ways left no one with a clear vision. To complicate matters, the theme parks were making the money (as was pointed out in the late seventies to the executives - the theme parks only make money based on the films providing new content to base new themes on. Walt, himself, said, "We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies"). The executives were unimaginative enough to ask themselves, at every roadblock, what would Walt do? They then modelled their response on what Walt had done in the past. What Walt would really do is something innovative. Walt had given a kind of ground plan when he said, "…we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths". The executives were only curious about how much profit the Company had made in the last quarter.