There’s Still Magic in Disney’s Words

Say it’s Mickey Mouse, say it’s goofy, but 35 years after Walt Disney’s death, he is having a successful career as a guru.

Disney’s bon mots are not as widely known as those of Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill or even Satchel Paige, but Walt is increasingly cited, especially in business books, where such Disney adages as “If you can dream it, you can do it” are fast becoming favorites.

Never regarded in life as the Sage of Burbank, Walt isn’t known to have said anything that sings like Churchill’s “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But however pedestrian the phrasing, Walt’s wit and wisdom are often quoted by today’s business writers.

“His name pops up all the time,” James O’Toole, a professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, said of Disney. In a world where Moses, Machiavelli and Attila the Hun have all been lauded for their business acumen, O’Toole isn’t surprised to see Disney’s name in the titles of half a dozen recent books on how to apply the Disney philosophy to business.

“There’s a fascination with the company, because it’s a quintessential American company, and there’s a fascination with him,” O’Toole said. “There’s Ford and Edison and Disney, and Bill Gates, on the software side. Those are the people who become the subject of fables, and Americans love that.”

Now, more than 200 of Walt’s choicest sayings have been collected in the book, “The Quotable Walt Disney.” Recently published by Disney Books, it was compiled by Dave Smith, the 60-year-old archivist at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which houses Walt’s papers and other Disneyana.

“It was actually put together about 30 years ago as an internal document,” Smith said of the collection of Disney’s observations on everything from sequels (he didn’t like them) to women as critics (“If the women like it, to heck with the men.”).

In an office decorated with porcelain figures of the baby satyrs from “Fantasia” and other Disney kitsch, Smith said that the original collection began circulating inside the company around the time Disney World opened in 1971.

It was designed to introduce the people who were building the Florida theme park to the Disney mind-set that had proved so successful in California. Later, copies were given to new managers and used for training.

The little square book is filled with down-home sayings that sound as if Grandma might have cross-stitched them--if Grandma had run the world’s largest entertainment empire. Animation, the theme parks, making your dreams come true are favorite subjects. A section on business and the Walt Disney Co. includes such enigmatic pronouncements as: “As well as I can, I’m untying the apron strings--until they scream for help.”

And because Disney was frequently asked the secret of his success, it is no surprise to read, among Walt’s explanations: “I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversify--and never miss an angle.”

Business consultant Bill Capodagli is one of several authors who counsels his readers to use Disney’s principles as a model for how to run a business. Based in Indianapolis, Capodagli is co-author of “The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company” and “The Disney Way Fieldbook: How to Implement Walt Disney’s Vision of Dream, Believe, Dare and Do in Your Own Company,” from McGraw-Hill.

Capodagli starts the chapters of “The Disney Way” with quotes from Walt or present-day Disney executives. Capodagli also cites Jiminy Cricket’s “a dream is a wish your heart makes.” One critic described the book as “so useful you may whistle while you work.”

Capodagli said he admires Walt Disney for his willingness to take chances. “A lot of people have dreams, a lot of people have great values, but I think taking risks and putting everything on the line to make those dreams come true is what really sets him apart.”

Michigan business consultant Thomas K. Connellan wrote a bestseller on improving customer service titled “Inside the Magic Kingdom: Seven Keys to Disney’s Success,” published by Bard Press.

Connellan, who said he has no Disney affiliation, paraphrased his favorite quote from Walt because he couldn’t remember the exact wording. It goes something like: “Just when everybody’s saying how great you are, that’s when you’re most vulnerable.”

Connellan said he interpreted that to mean that a company is in greatest danger of crashing and burning when it seems to be doing especially well. Connellan said it was advice that might have saved some fallen dot-coms.

Those who actually knew Walt don’t remember him as being particularly glib or silver-tongued, especially employees who felt his legendary wrath. And while he loved to have talented people working for him, he had little tolerance for prima donnas. As he said: “We allow no geniuses around our studio.”

Leo Braudy, author of “The Frenzy of Renown” and one of USC’s specially honored University Professors, described Walt’s posthumous emergence as a pundit as “an intriguing phenomenon really, because he was never noted for being witty or verbal in his lifetime.”

Braudy speculated that many who write about the Disney Way mean today’s conglomerate, not the troubled studio Walt left behind when he died. “So much of it is about what Disney has become since his death,” Braudy said.

Braudy said he thinks that invoking the name of Disney may be a way for relatively unknown writers to enjoy some of Walt’s reflected luster. “People anchor these things in a familiar name to give them some ballast and substance, to make you pay attention to them,” he said.

Veteran entertainment reporter Bob Thomas of Encino met Walt in 1945 and worked with him on several book projects, including a biography of Walt for children. Thomas said Walt was no intellectual, and he was “a very homely talker.”

But Thomas said Disney’s burgeoning reputation as a thinker comes as no surprise. Disney had little more than a high school education, Thomas said, “but he had a native intelligence that was astounding.”

Thomas, whose books include a study of brother Roy O. Disney’s role in building the company, said his favorite adage of Walt’s was one he used in times of crisis.

“Whenever they got into a bad patch, which they did especially after the war, Walt would say, ‘We can lick ‘em with product,’ ” Thomas recalled.

“I listened very closely because there was a great deal of natural wisdom there,” Thomas said of working with Disney on the juvenile biography. Among Walt’s memorable remarks: “Whenever I don’t have the answer to something, I find someone who does.”

“He advised children to do the same,” Thomas said.

Graduate students are among those who contact Smith, seeking quotations from Walt for theses and dissertations. But Smith cautioned that, Geppetto-like, publicists and speech writers may have helped Walt out on occasion.

“As with a lot of famous people--I think it’s true here--he didn’t actually say all these quotes.”

Whoever dreamed them up, Walt delivered them. Smith’s own favorite is one of Disney’s most quoted: “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing--that it was all started by a mouse.”