The Walt Disney Company is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Walt Disney, by extension, has become the epitome of a household name. Walt took the dreams and imagination alive in American children and brought them to screen, stage, and in the summer of 1955, theme park. Walt was a complicated man, although when we simplify his story, it becomes inspiring.
A young man comes from nothing. He does so poorly in school that he drops out. When he comes back from helping with WWI cleanup he starts his first animation company as a teenager. That company fails, but this man preservers and moves to California where he starts again. He struggles but works hard. Eventually, the young man proves how valuable animation is. He creates the first full length, animated feature film. Everyone loves it. He continues to defy the odds, and thirty(ish) years later, he opens the world’s first true theme park. Walt Disney creates the American dream.
That is the story we are told, and at the end of the day, it is not untrue. However this narrative ignores many key factors of The Walt Disney Company, more specifically the people other than Walt who greatly contributed to the company’s success. The most significant of these people can be summed up in Roy O. Disney, Walt’s older brother, and co-founder of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, a company now known as The Walt Disney Company. Roy was eight years Walt’s senior, and would remain his most important relationship throughout his lifetime. Though only his older brother, to Walt, Roy functioned as a best friend, business partner, and a surrogate father.
However, it is not only Roy’s relationship with his brother that made him so valuable to the Walt Disney Company. If Walt was the heart of the company, Roy was the brain. Walt constantly worked on films and other projects, but it was always Roy who ran the company from the practical standpoint. Roy dealt with money, employees, board meetings, and all the other things Walt didn’t have the attention span for. When Walt had a crazy idea, Roy almost always agreed with everyone else that it was insane. Roy was with being fiscally responsible, and Walt never was, which lead to a lot of conflict between the two brother. However, in the end, Roy would always give in, and do everything in his power to make Walt’s dreams come true. Some might say while Walt was a dreamer, Roy was a realist, although it can be argued that both brothers were dreamers. The only difference was only one understood the reach of their budget.
This difference in attitudes may have painted an image of a cold, fiscal Roy as the opposite to the warm and loving uncle Walt that many Americans grew up with on their TV screens. In reality, this could not be more different from the truth. While Walt projected an overly friendly persona in public, his smiling face didn’t always translate behind the scenes. Walt was often described as a hard and cold boss. His perfectionism usually got the better of him, and an end product was always more important to Walt than the feelings of his employees. This was Walt’s world, and everyone else was just living in it. A boss to be admired but feared, Walt was in no way how people imagined him.
Roy, however, was often described in a way we might have expected of Walt. Roy was charismatic, and had a sense of humour about things. He had more interpersonal skills than his younger brother and got along much better with employees and people in general because of it. Animator Frank Thomas said of Roy that “You could put your arm around [his] shoulder.” followed by “Not with Walt.” Roy wasn’t consumed with the ideas of perfection like his brother was, and really cared about the well-being of his employees. He was said to have had a hard time firing or laying people off, at some points sacrificing his own paycheck and having Walt sacrifice his so that layoffs could be avoided. This lead to the people who knew the Disney’s, or at least the people who worked for them, to usually harbour a favour toward the elder brother.
When it comes to the “big stuff”- meaning the accomplishments Walt Disney is most famous for such as Snow White and The Seven Dwarves or Disneyland, none of them would have been possible without Roy. The creation of Disneyland began as a “personal project” of Walt’s, although quickly spiraled into something very real when Roy got a phone call from the bank asking for more information on this “theme park idea” that Walt had just secured a loan for. Walt would say he did it this way because Roy refused to seriously talk about it, but many (including Roy) would say that Walt liked to over-dramatise these conflicts with his brother to make himself seem like a genius that nobody ever listened to. These unclear reports may outline the problem of running a business with your brother.
Roy’s problem with Disneyland was the same as his problem with so many of Walt’s other ideas, the Disney company could simply not afford it. However, once the ball got rolling there was no stopping it. Begrudgingly agreeing that in case of absolute failure, the lot could be used for studio space and filming, Roy began working on getting Walt’s park paid for. Using Walt’s fascination with television and desire to start their own programs, Roy suggested a fifteen minute program that would promote Disneyland among the other shows that were being planned. ABC eventually bought this idea, a decision that they would benefit from greatly. Walt Disney’s Disneyland beginning to air on the network in 1954, a year before the park’s opening. However, this alone would not pay for the park, which was looking to cost a good 5.25 million dollars- nearly 50 million dollars by today’s standards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkwAvBuXZKs
To combat this problem, Roy began working on selling shares and making deals with companies small and large. Although the ABC show cost more to produce than it made, the network itself had invested in Disneyland, and the show garnered attention from other companies who were looking to invest in the recently marketed amusement park. At the same time Walt was hard at work making sure Disneyland was being built exactly to his specifications, Roy was doing the equally heavily-weighted job- making sure this wouldn’t send the company into bankruptcy.
The park had its shortcomings in those first few years, but was an ultimate success. Of course, with hindsight over a half-century later we know what a massive phenomenon Disney Parks became, but at the time it was unprecedented, and an absolute marvel to see. With the success of the park, Disney was able to buy back all its shares in Disneyland in the next ten years, assuming full ownership. What had been Walt’s dream became a reality, allowing him to move on to envisioning Disney World. Disney World became a project actualized by Roy, as Walt died 5 years before the park’s opening. Roy would spend his dying days re-living the days of twenty years before, making sure every rock was laid in the manner his brother would have wanted. When the parks first opened in 1971, it was Roy who gave the dedication speech. It was also Roy who renamed the park from Walt’s original plans- Disney World became Walt Disney World, as a dedication of Roy’s admiration of his brother.
Roy was never one for the spotlight, which largely contributes to the reason that he’s not widely talked about like his brother. Roy never aspired fame the way Walt did. Despite being co-head of Disney for years one end, there aren’t many public photos or videos of him. Roy was rarely shown to the public, and while it is hard to remember what you do not see, it feels like we have forgotten Roy entirely. When searching for Roy O. Disney, most of what you will find are things named for him, buildings, concert halls, and trains, instead of records from his actual life. He is almost a foil character of his brother. In goals, strengths, and weaknesses, the two never quite matched up. This seems to have left us, almost 100 years after the Disney company was formed, worshiping one brother and ignoring the other. We may even run the risk of rendering Roy Disney completely unremembered.
Although at the end of the day, Roy built one of the biggest companies of all time from the ground up and stayed in the shadows while doing so. When that company is a media empire, it is clear that this was a conscious choice. Perhaps we haven’t done Roy a disservice by letting his memory stay in death how he liked to live his life- unbothered.
To commemorate his life, I completed a short timeline of some of the most important events in Roy’s life, while many are outlined by Disney, it was interesting to dive into his life before the mouse consumed his family name.
Sources:
Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire by Bob Thomas
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
