PBS: Walt Disney Revealed! - Communist Scapegoating, Strike Busting, Blacklists, Nervous Breakdown

[tomm2thumbs]

Last edited Wed Sep 16, 2015, 12:19 AM - Edit history (2)

A remarkable story of a man who's story has been protected by a corporate veil for decades. If you watch this initial offering of the 2 part biography about Disney, you will find a depth of story about the man you would not expect... not by a longshot.

The innovator. The dreamer.
Yet, the story reaches very deep into his darkness as well.

A dark, raw portrayal of the man, including his own voice speaking of his nervous breakdown, video of his mother and father, stories of tragedy (how the house he and Roy bought his parents became a death trap for his mother) and other events which have, before now, never been revealed.

Revenge firings. Enemy blacklists. Studio fistfighting. Shoving his brother out of the limelight. Remaining on vacation during father's death & funeral. An in-depth and emotional story of a man who had a troubling life, but somehow managed to be kept squeaky clean by a corporate shield -- until now. Powerful.

Promo (above) for the PBS two-part series, part I of which is below: A Must see --
(Part II: Tuesday, Sept 15)

FULL EPISODE, In its entirety....
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365556519/

If you watched part I already, begin about 1:50:45 into the full episode to continue

Notes:

Producers in an extended interview (below) say they were granted unfettered access to archival footage, photographs, motion picture rights, data and other background on Walt Disney to produce their un-restricted biography on the man who started the Disney corporation.

Not only was the corporation given absolutely NO authority to edit or restrict the final production, they would not be allowed to see the finished product until the rest of America watched it on Sept 14 and 15. (The producers note they were given such broad freedoms due their vast resume of prior biographies on US Presidents and other famous Americans).

Interview with filmakers:

______

This post was updated to include original, full episode link (see above)

[msongs]

1. really old news but perhaps more interesting in this 2 nite presentation nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. I know he was getting a bit weird near the end....

There's a place called "Club 33" in Disneyland for the elite. Each table was wired so he could listen in on their conversations and he had the moose head over the fireplace set up so he could talk to the people. There have been rumors that he cooperated with the CIA to field test their gear and that's where they came up with the laser microphone. (Fire a laser at a patio door of a hotel a half mile away and listen to the conversation inside the room.)

[Lorien]

4. Our phones were all bugged when I worked in house

Disney is far from the only corporation to do that, though.

[Kablooie]

6. It was a vulture up in the corner of the dining room, not a moose head.

one of the first audio animatronic creatures.
Disney died before it was finished so it was never used but it remained up in the corner until the remodeling in the past few years.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. I heard it was a moose head but the source was obviously wrong.

[starroute]

11. He was pals with the FBI and got business advice from the CIA

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/06/movies/disney-link-to-the-fbi-and-hoover-is-disclosed.html

From 1940 until his death in 1966, Walt Disney served as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents that have come to light under the Freedom of Information Act.

Details about the film maker's F.B.I. connection emerge for the first time in "Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince," an unauthorized biography by Marc Eliot to be published in July by Birch Lane Press.

Mr. Eliot, who has written several books on popular culture, provided a copy of the Disney file to The New York Times so that information and direct quotations in the book could be verified against the Government documents. Experience with similar F.B.I. dossiers leaves no doubt that the material submitted by Mr. Eliot is authentic. As it happens, because many of the 570 pages in the Disney file are blacked out or withheld for national security reasons, it cannot be determined what names of Hollywood figures Disney passed on to the bureau as Communists or subversives.

During a strike of animators at the Disney studio in 1941, however, he publicly accused the strike leaders of "Communistic agitation," according to an advertisement taken out by Disney in Variety on July 2, 1941. And when Disney, whose right-wing leanings were well-known, testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington, he named several of the animators who had led the strike as Communists.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/14/how-the-cia-helped-disney-conquer-florida.html

Starting in the mid-1960s when Disney set out to establish the Disney World Theme Park, they were determined to get land at below market prices and Disney operatives engaged in a far-ranging conspiracy to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their Central Florida property. By resorting to such tactics Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for less than $200 an acre, but how to maintain control once Disney's empire had been acquired? The solution turned out to be cartoon-simple, thanks to the CIA.

Disney's key contact was the consummate cloak-and-dagger operator, William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Sometimes called the "Father of the C.I.A," he was also the founding partner of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, a New York law firm whose attorneys included future C.I.A. director William Casey. Donovan’s attorneys provided fake identities for Disney agents; they also set up a secret communications center, and orchestrated a disinformation campaign. In order to maintain "control over the overall development," Disney and his advisers realized, “the company would have to find a way to limit the voting power of the private residents" even though, they acknowledged, their efforts "violated the Equal Protection Clause" of the U.S. Constitution. Here again the CIA was there to help. Disney's principal legal strategist for Florida was a senior clandestine operative named Paul Helliwell. Having helped launch the C.I.A. secret war in Indochina, Helliwell relocated to Miami in 1960 in order to coordinate dirty tricks against Castro. At a secret "seminar" Disney convened in May 1965 Helliwell came up with the approach that to this day allows the Disney organization to avoid taxation and environmental regulation as well as maintain immunity from the U.S. Constitution. It was the same strategy the C.I.A. pursued in the foreign countries. Set up a puppet government; then use that regime to do your bidding.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. After reading that I'm wondering when Trump will have his nervous breakdown.

[Lorien]

3. I have a lot of friends who knew him well

Last edited Tue Sep 22, 2015, 11:06 PM - Edit history (1)

and I knew his nephew Roy, who always fought the corporate brass on behalf of us artists. Walt was neither a Saint nor a villain. Trying to paint him as either is absurd. The did some great things in his life, and he did some shitty things too. However, if he hadn't existed then neither would the last 26 years of my career. I'm grateful to him for that.

[Unknown Beatle]

7. It sounds like a great job.

What did you do at Disney?

[Live and Learn]

5. K&R nt

[yuiyoshida]

8. bookmarking for later

thanks.

[ChazInAz]

10. Harlan Ellison's story.

I always got a kick out of Harlan relating his one day of employment as a writer at Disney. Harlan can do spot-on impersonations of Disney's classic cartoon characters. On his first day at the studios, he regaled his tablemates in the cafeteria with a truly scabrous, stream-of-consciousness riff on a cartoon orgy, featuring all the beloved cartoon icons. We must assume, from our current knowledge, that this was the bugged area. No sooner had he left the dining room, he discovered that his name had been painted off the office door and his parking space was gone. Security escorted him off the grounds. Guess Unka Walt didn't have much of a sense of humor.