As the Walt Disney Company celebrates its centenary, John Wills traces the story of the ‘House of Mouse’ from early animations to global blockbusters – and political controversies
As the 2023 Super Bowl television commercial for the Walt Disney Company’s centennial anniversary played on 12 February, emotions soared. The advert showed children dressed up as princesses, waving lightsabers and hugging Mickey Mouse mascots. With its vast array of cartoon characters, classic movies and superhero franchises, the Walt Disney Company has proven to have extraordinarily broad appeal. On its centenary, it’s hard to imagine a world without Disney – yet the history of the media giant is far more complicated than you might imagine.
“It was all started by a mouse,” Walt Disney explained in the 1950s, attributing the colossal success of Walt Disney Studios to one simple cartoon character: Mickey Mouse, first drawn in the late 1920s. Before creating that game-changing mouse, the young Disney, son of a businessman and farmer, had worked as a Red Cross driver in France, before trying his hand at animation for a range of Midwest companies. Eager for success, Disney helped set up the Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City and got paid $500 for a dentistry cartoon, Tommy Tucker’s Tooth (1922). He also began work on the Alice Comedies, an innovative series that combined cartoon with live action. When the studio financially collapsed, a bankrupt yet determined Disney, still only 21 years old, headed to California to begin his business ventures anew.
In 1923, together with his brother, Roy, Walt established a small animation business on Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles: the Disney Brothers’ Studio. Not long afterwards, he produced the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series of short films for Universal. In 1928, having lost the rights to Oswald, Disney and fellow animator Ub Iwerks made three black-and-white cartoons based around their new character, Mickey Mouse. Steamboat Willie (1928), the first cartoon film made with sound, starred Mickey as a rambunctious, raspberry-blowing rodent working on a steamship – vastly different from later, much softer incarnations. Thanks to some shrewd marketing, mouse frenzy took hold. By the 1970s, even Japanese emperor Hirohito sported a Mickey Mouse watch.
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In the early 1930s, thanks to money coming in largely due to the success of Mickey Mouse, Disney turned to grander ideas of movie-making at his new studio on Hyperion Avenue. The company soon started developing full-length animated features, and in December 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened to rapturous applause at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, while a movie-themed exhibit, Dwarfland, entertained crowds nearby. That film saw Walt Disney recast the Brothers Grimm’s dark folk story into a remarkably family-friendly and colourful experience – a tactic he later repeated with other European stories.
Snow White offered a welcome escape from the Great Depression and escalating global tensions – a “tonic for disillusion”, as one critic called it. Perhaps partly for that reason, it became one of the most successful movies of the era. Watched in 41 countries around the world, Snow White strengthened Disney’s global recognition. In Britain, one police constable in Salford, after gaining Disney’s permission, used the seven dwarfs in his local road-safety campaign. Interviewed by a journalist about the film’s phenomenal success, Disney told him: “All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment.” However, the good entertainment came at a cost. A perfectionist and workaholic, Disney controlled his projects and staff tightly, and took it personally when animators chose to strike in 1941 over working conditions (as retribution, he later named strike leads in hearings designed to punish and blacklist communists).
Disney had begun to influence cultural ideas of domestic life and gender roles, introducing the first ‘Disney princess’ in Snow White. During the Second World War, the corporation also began assisting with the production of wartime propaganda.
Alongside a desire to entertain the masses, Walt Disney nurtured ambitions of securing his status and artistic reputation. Work on Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942) reflected his perfectionism and personal quest for recognition. For Bambi, Disney insisted on having live animals parading around the studios to encourage more natural-looking animation, while the production of Fantasia involved a full symphony orchestra. As a result, costs spiralled and bankruptcy loomed. Only more commercial, simpler offerings – most notably Dumbo (1941) – kept the company afloat.
Era of opportunities
In the aftermath of the Second World War, many Americans embraced a new era of consumer power, leisure opportunities and technological conveniences. They took to the freeways in their chrome-finned Cadillacs, and watched television for the first time in freshly constructed suburban homes fronted by white picket fences.
Disney took advantage of this new decade of recreation and entertainment by expanding into live-action movies and nature documentaries (called True-Life Adventures). The studio also produced weekly television programmes for the ABC network, with Walt warmly introducing the shows – and becoming a father figure to the nation in the process. Meanwhile, The Mickey Mouse Club, with its legion of young Mouseketeers, appealed to children, and soaring numbers of kids grew up ‘Disney.’
The 1950s marked a significant coming together of Disney culture and American values – at least, those of the white middle class – and, arguably, the highpoint of Disney dominance. The Mickey Mouse brand now seemed as American as the Star-Spangled Banner, and ‘When You Wish upon a Star’ synonymous with the American Dream.
This interface of cartoon fantasy with American dreaming also found physical form. In an orange grove in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney created what he enthusiastically promoted as a radical new kind of theme park. Disneyland was clean, fun and family-friendly – the antithesis of worn, dirty Coney Island in New York City. In reality, though, the designs borrowed heavily from previous world’s fairs and amusement parks.
On Disneyland’s opening day in July 1955, trouble was brewing. Thousands of visitors crowded into the park, some entering illegally over fences. Drinking fountains ran dry, freshly set asphalt melted, cars were stuck at a standstill on the Anaheim freeway, and the Mark Twain steamboat nearly sank.
Perfect escape
Despite the difficulties of opening day, though, Disneyland quickly proved a huge success. Around 90 million Americans watched the live special on ABC television, with then-actor Ronald Reagan hosting
And the new park offered a perfect escape – a cartoonist’s bunker – from the pressures of the wider world, particularly the looming Soviet nuclear threat. It also depicted the sort of world that Walt Disney wanted – in particular, Tomorrowland, with its white city utopianism. While looking forward in time, Disneyland also heavily invoked nostalgia for an imagined American past, with Frontierland and Main Street celebrating ‘traditional values’.
Walt’s death from cancer in December 1966 led to an extended period of uncertainty for the corporation. Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971, but the company’s overall energy and dynamism had dissipated. Animated films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981) merely mimicked earlier Disney movies, while the blockbuster sci-fi The Black Hole (1979) was a pale imitation of its obvious inspiration, George Lucas’s 1977 space opera Star Wars. Perhaps reflecting the social and economic difficulties of the 1970s, Disney no longer seemed so influential or relevant to the US or the wider world. By the early 1980s, Disney appeared open to takeover bids and acquisition.
The appointment of Michael Eisner as CEO in 1984 helped turn Disney into a profitable company once more. Eisner oversaw what is now termed ‘The Disney Renaissance’, with a decade-long run of new animated features such as The Little Mermaid (1989) and The Lion King (1994) recapturing the classic Disney magic, bolstered by successful marketing and merchandise campaigns. The first Disney Store opened in Glendale, California in 1987. The first overseas store followed in London in 1990, its shelves laden with copious soft toys and limited-edition re-releases of classic Disney films.
As in the 1950s, the corporation also began to expand its business profile, opening Disneyland Paris in 1992, entering the luxury cruise-line sector in 1996, and building the residential community of Celebration in Florida around the same time.
In the 1990s, though, tensions surfaced over the direction of the Disney corporation, and its deviation from Walt’s family-oriented and largely conservative entertainment brand. Disney purchased Miramax, an adult-focused studio that would produce Quentin Tarantino’s stylish but super-violent Pulp Fiction (1994), and acquired the ABC Television Network, noted for its hit show Ellen, starring out gay woman Ellen DeGeneres. These moves provoked a backlash from US Christian evangelical groups, who boycotted all things Disney, claiming: “You can’t walk the family side of the street and the gay side of the street in the Magic Kingdom at the same time.” The revival of Disney fortunes seemed dependent on a more diverse portfolio but also a more liberal message at odds with the traditional values espoused by its founder.
Corporate expansion accelerated in the 21st century. The company produced several successful teen shows, including High School Musical and Hannah Montana. Following the purchase of pioneering computer animation studio Pixar in 2006, Disney Studios deployed more ambitious animation techniques, leaving behind its classic hand-drawn style.
In 2013, Disney released Frozen, a progressive film about two sisters in a snowy world that netted the corporation more than US$1bn in revenue, and proved that a movie could easily succeed without male leads or male heroes. The lead song, ‘Let it Go’, served as an anthem for the rejected or oppressed.
Stellar ambitions
Strengthening its position as the world’s leading media and entertainment company, in 2009 Disney acquired Marvel Comics, and in 2012 bought Lucasfilm (home of the Star Wars films). For Marvel and Star Wars fans, a Disney acquisition initially sparked concerns over the ‘Disneyfication’ of their prized franchises. Such fears proved largely unfounded, and the takeovers were followed by a spate of highly acclaimed and technically accomplished movies. These included nostalgia-heavy crowd-pleasers such as The Force Awakens (2015), launching a new phase of Star Wars stories with neither Jar Jar Binks nor even a space-suited Mickey Mouse in sight. Marvel Studios have also created films strong on message, including Black Panther (2018), with its overtures of black cultural nationalism, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (2023), with its animal rights storyline.
If anything, the steady stream of Marvel and Star Wars productions threatened to overwhelm the Disney brand, rather than vice versa. As part of other overhauls, several theme parks were redesigned to feature Marvel and Star Wars areas, in the process potentially relegating to history some Disney elements. The success of the streaming service Disney+, too, owed much to new Marvel and Star Wars television series, most notably The Mandalorian (2019–). With no new Mickey Mouse features for decades, Spider-Man, Groot and Grogu (‘Baby Yoda’) inspired popular new soft toys for kids.
As Disney celebrates its 100th anniversary, it is also fully entering the culture wars. In 1992, scholar Stephen Fjellman declared Walt Disney World “the most ideologically important piece of land in the United States”. In the 2020s, the company serves as a symbolic and contested landscape. On the one side, liberal Disney employees and fans defend progressive Disney values; on the other, Republican pro-life, anti-LGBTQ politicians such as state governor Ron DeSantis have been keen to wrest power from the entertainment institution in the state. Deliberately or not, Disney’s message of diversity, communicated across a range of movies such as the animated science-fiction adventure Strange World (2022), as well as live-action remakes of older cartoon classics, put it on a collision course with wider societal forces.
The business of hope
At 100, the Walt Disney Company is decidedly different in message, global reach, business revenue and character line-up from the classic Disney corporation of the 1950s – and light-years away from young Walt, drawing sketches in Hyperion Studio in the 1920s. However, and crucially, Disney is still in the same business: it offers hope for a better world, it facilitates escape for all who want it, and it provides, on the whole, dependable family entertainment.
As a bellwether of American culture – and global trends – Disney continues to assert a largely positive influence. That idea recalls the experience of one New York Times journalist who, after watching the 1937 premiere of Snow White, observed that: “Wars are being fought as the picture unreels; crimes are being committed; hatreds are being whetted; riots are being brewed. But the world fades away when Mr Disney begins weaving his spell, and enchantment takes hold.”
The darker side of Disney
Questions linger about the beliefs, culture and impacts of the company and its founder, says John WillsThough the popular image of the Walt Disney Company is Mickey Mouse-eared innocence, the reality behind the brand is more complex. Founder Walt Disney remains a controversial figure, with shadows cast over his near-mythic reputation by charges of sexism in the workplace and racism – particularly relating to the live-action Song of the South (1946). That film views life in the cotton-growing south with warm nostalgia, glossing over racial injustice. An ardent anti-communist, Disney appeared at the US House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 to smear former employees, despite little hard evidence. Latterly, the Walt Disney Company has worked hard to defend its founder’s reputation, with Saving Mr Banks (2013) seen as a strategic attempt to save Walt’s public image.
Though seemingly offering utopian playgrounds, Disney theme parks have faced accusations of negative environmental impacts, poor food quality, consumer exploitation and harsh conditions for workers. For decades, park staff were subject to the strictest of controls over body image: the ‘Disney Look’ prohibited visible tattoos or piercings, and dictated what facial hair was acceptable for men – though in recent years rules have been relaxed considerably.
Critics have argued that visitors frequent the parks as passive and controlled consumers, never allowed to lie on a bench or wander freely, while $100-plus ticket prices target the richest echelons of society. Such aspects were brilliantly satirised in 2015 by artist Banksy at Dismaland, a temporary art installation in the Somerset seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare. Here, guests visited a dystopian park falling apart at the seams, populated by unfriendly staff throwing insults as well as pointing arcade guns at them.
On a broader level, the Walt Disney Company continues to be criticised for its century-long appropriation of global stories, cultures and traditions for mass profit. In the early 1990s, plans for an American history-themed park in Virginia collapsed, chiefly as a result of a distrust of the corporation’s ability to interpret the nation’s past – the suggestion being that ‘Distory’ would be pitted against history. As Disney’s global entertainment empire continues to grow in the 21st century, questions of trust, power and influence remain prominent.
John Wills is a professor of American culture at the University of Kent, and author of Disney Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2017)
This article was first published in the December 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine