According to former Disney animators, the whispered code that Walt Disney was nearby was "Man is in the forest," a sly reference to the film Bambi (1942).
Active anti-communist.
After adapting Ludwig van Beethoven's 6th Symphony for the soundtrack of Fantasia (1940), he exclaimed, "Gee! This'll make Beethoven!".
Although he has been called politically conservative, actually voted mainly for Democrats until the 1940 presidential election. This was a main reason why he was asked by HUAC to testify, and was always particularly anti-communist, because his worst nightmare was being called one.
Although he wore a mustache all his life, he forbade his employees to wear them, not wanting to compromise on the "clean-cut image" that the Disney company had.
Among his favorite desserts were lemon meringue pie and chocolate ice cream soda.
As a teenager, Walt Disney was a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth organization affiliated with Free Masons.
Became friends with Charles Chaplin during their respective days at United Arists in the 1930s; Disney credited Chaplin for helping him correctly pace his feature films.
Became interested in personalizing animals' characters after carelessly killing a small owl as a young boy. He felt deeply remorseful and guilty and vowed never again to kill a living creature.
Before his 35th birthday, his brother Roy encouraged employees to throw the boss a surprise party. Two of the animators thought it would be hilarious to make a short movie of Mickey and Minnie Mouse "consummating their relationship." When Disney saw the animation at the party, he feigned laughter and playfully asked who made the film. As soon as the two animators came forward, he fired them on the spot and left.
Born at 12:30am-CST.
Brother-in-law of Hazel Sewell.
Built a life-size train set surrounding his house in Holmby Hills, CA.
Chose Anaheim, California for the location of Disneyland after demographics experts convinced him it would become a major population center within 10 years. They were right.
Daughter Sharon Disney was adopted.
Death caused by circulatory failure due to complications from lung cancer.
Disney had been in bad health for a few months, before he finally entered St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank, California, on 2 November 1966, complaining of pain in his neck and back. An X-ray revealed a tumor on his left lung and surgery was advised. Disney, however, checked out to finish some studio business and re-entered the hospital on 6 November. Surgery was performed the next day and his left lung was found to be entirely cancerous and was removed.
Disney is credited as Retlaw Yensid for Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (1966)'s original story. The pseudonym is Walter Disney reversed. The Disney family's company was named Retlaw Enterprises, Disney's first full name reversed.
Disney was long rumored to be anti-Semitic during his lifetime, and such rumors have persisted after his death. Disney's 2006 biographer Neal Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concluded that available evidence does not support such accusations. "That's one of the questions everybody asks me," Gabler said in a CBS interview. "My answer to that is, not in the conventional sense that we think of someone as being an anti-Semite. But he got the reputation because, in the 1940s, he got himself allied with a group called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, which was an anti-Communist and anti-Semitic organization. And though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not anti-Semitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were anti-Semitic, and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life." Disney ultimately distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance in the 1950s. The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that Disney did have "difficult relationships" with some Jewish men, and that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons, such as Three Little Pigs; but points out that he employed Jews throughout his career, and was named "Man Of The Year" in 1955 by the B