"What Would Walt Do?"

It's a time-honored game. An ancient game. A tired game. But an easy one on which to hook an article.

What would Walt have thought of "Two More Eggs"? ... What would Walt have made of the modern day Disney Company? ... Disney XD? ... etc.

Here's the answer, Jim.

When Ward Kimball created Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, Walt didn't like the short much. He wasn't into the limited animation thingie, believed that it looked bad. He had an aversion to the short because he'd already been in the cheapo animation game during the twenties, and didn't want to go back. To Walt, this was going back.

But when TWPaB won the Academy Award for best short subject, Walt Disney graciously accepted the Little Gold Man.

And Walt didn't like the art direction and Xerox lines of 101 Dalmations. He complained to art director Ken Anderson about it (which caused Anderson to go into a funk, but that's another story.)

But when Dalmations became a sizable hit, Walt graciously accepted the box office returns. And kept the company doing animation with Xerography.

So when I hear "What would Walt think of the current Diz Co.?", I think to myself:

That's an easy one. He would have grumbled, he would have disliked some of the bigness and impersonality of the mega conglomerate, the sheer "corporateness" of the whole enterprise, but he would have graciously accepted the billions and billions flooding in from the parks, and television, and the movie franchises. Because Walt might have been "the old Maestro" and an artist, but he was also a businessman. Who liked money. (Mostly because money enabled him to do more and bigger things. Also, too, he wasn't above enjoying the corporate plane.)