Walt Disney

"I don't make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures."
-Walt Disney

On this day, Dec 15, 1966, Walt Disney passed away at age 65. This year also marks the 110th anniversary of Walt's birth on Dec 5, 1901. I was raised on everything Disney with Micky Mouse & friends on the wall, Disney records as Christmas gifts (I still love the soundtracks to Robin Hood and Aristocats), Disney story books, Wonderful World of Disney on TV, watching Jungle Book at the theater, visits to Walt Disney World, etc. This all seemed quite natural at the time but an article on PJ Media points out Disney was quite the innovator and "invented" many of the experiences I took for granted.

1. Animation

Steamboat Willie (1928), starring Mickey Mouse, is credited as the first animation synchronized with sound and music. Watch it on Youtube to see how clever it was and remember - sound was NEW! Four years later Disney produced Flowers And Trees (1932) in Technicolor and won the first Academy Award for animation. The Old Mill in 1937 was the first short film to use a multiplane camera and it also won an Oscar. [Multiplane means the sun/moon is painted an one cell layer, then middle ground, then foreground and then the "actors" on top. They are stacked with space between each layer and filmed together. The advantage is 3-D depth to the film; you can move in for a close up and the moon in the sky remains small while objects in the top cells get larger.]  1937 also saw the release of "Disney's Folly", a full length cartoon called  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To the surprise of everyone (but Disney) it was a smash success and won another Oscar for Walt (along with seven honorary dwarf Oscars presented by Shirley Temple).  Disney never stopped experimenting with Animation. Fantasia (1940) mixed classical music with dinosaurs & dancing hippos; Song of the South (1946) mixed live actors with animation.

2. Education

Disney "had a long history of commitment to artists’ training." He held regular classes taught by masters of various media. Zookeepers brought live animals in for the animators to learn how to replicate natural movement. Many animators that created companies to rival Disney were trained by Disney studios. Walt promoted the creation of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and the school opened on land donated by the studio.

By the way, something to look for in recent Disney films; not content just to copy from the past, each film has a visual theme that motivates the animators. In Hercules look for Greek design with red/black colors, sharp angles, pottery & patterns. Look at the Asian animation style in Mulan, etc.

3. Merchandising

We expect toys from films today but Disney was a trailblazer in merchandising.  The studio earned 2.5 to 5% royalty on every item bearing the image of Mickey Mouse (and they are legion). Some of his movie/TV songs became hits like “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” and  Davy Crockett. You would think Hollywood had learned the power of merchandising from Disney but when George Lucas made Starwars, Hollywood saw little profit in it and let Lucas keep all the merchandising rights (big mistake).

4. TV

As early as the 1930's Disney refused to sell the rights to his films to others,

…everybody wanted to buy all our old product. We wouldn’t sell it. We wouldn’t hear of it. We wanted to handle it ourselves, make good use of it.

And indeed he did make "good use" of his films. He discovered he could release the films every 7 years to profitable runs. He made a TV Christmas special in 1950 on NBC and another the following year. In 1954 Disneyland the TV series debuted on ABC with a mix of B&W and color. A few years later he moved to full color back on NBC with  Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.  Walt reused films and created new content for his Wonderful World series. He also started another new hit show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Today we have an entire TV channel owned by and featuring Disney material.

5. Theme Parks
An entire park dedicated to cartoons? Who would have believed it? Since 1955, "Disney theme parks led the industry as the gold standard of excellence in amusement park entertainment."

Bottom Line

PJ Media sums it up nicely,

"Disney filled many roles in his 65 years: artist, husband and father, philanthropist, anti-Communist, filmmaker, and even the original voice of Mickey Mouse. But his greatest role was as an American innovator. From animation to television to theme parks Disney left his mark on our culture and enhanced our lives."

P.S.

The 1928 release of Steamboat Willie resounds to this very day. It's my personal theory that Disney Studios will do anything to keep the copyright from expiring on Mickey Mouse. In copyright law 1923 is a special date, all books and other works published before 1923 have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. Works from 1923-1963, published with notice and with copyright renewed, are protected for 95 years. In theory Mickey becomes public domain in 2023 but as has happened many times in the past century, US copyright keeps getting extended for longer and longer periods. In 1998 the Sonny Bono Act (also called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by Lawrence Lessig) added 20 years of copyright protection keeping Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain in 2003.

Two Charts

Today I have two items with nothing in common except both struck me as interesting statistics.

1. Which adult American film actress was the highest paid movie star of the year four times?

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Did you guess Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff?

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Better known as Doris Day, this actress was a top-ten movie earner in years 1951-1952 and from 1961-1966. She was the highest paid movie star in 1960, 62, 63 and 64. This puts her 6th place overall, tied with John Wayne and Shirley Temple who were also were the top star for four years.

Who's #1 on the list? Another surprise, at least to me. Tom Cruise has 7 years at the top of the pay scale. There is a four-way tie for 2nd place with 5 years as #1: Bing Crosby, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, & Tom Hanks

'I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.'- actor Oscar Levant

2. The second statistic is an unusual graph at Axiis (go to the source to see the chart key). It shows the percentage market share of the major Web Browsers from 2002 to 2009. Normally one would show this as a bar graph or multiple pie charts. While this chart is clever I'm leaning towards not liking it. I find it very difficult to "see" the relative size of each browser and it's hard to "see" if a given percentage is 30% or 40%? The original image at Axiis is interactive; as you hover over a band, the percentage is shown.

Bottom Line

I love numbers. This weekend I met a man who does actuary science, the statistics of accidents and mortality. I explained I had a great admiration for statisticians but also a wariness that it was easy to mislead with stats. You can make convincing false arguments by manipulating the data.

For example, the Doris Day numbers cited above are a bit of fluke. She may have been #1 some year by just $1 over the next star or missed being #1 by the same amount. The yearly rankings don't tell us how much she won (or lost) by. It's a classic winner take all scenario much like the electoral college in US presidential elections. A President might have just 50.001% of the vote but take 49 of the 50 states (losing only the home state of his opponent).

How could star power be more accurately measured? Two ideas come to mind.

1. Measure their total earnings in inflation adjusted dollars. Possible problem? Have stars always earned the same percentage of a movie's gross? Like modern free-agent sports stars, did salaries at some point leap upwards (way above inflation) so that modern stars demand a higher share of ticket sales and hence skew the statistics?

2. Assign weights to the top ten rankings. Top Ten is absolute and immune to the salary scale spikes describe above. To avoid the arbitrariness of counting only #1, assign ten points for #1, nine points for #2, and so on down to 1 point for #10. Then add the points and see who comes out on top. This gives 2nd placers a chance to come out on top.

Saving Money at Amusement Parks

“I look just like the girls next door... if you happen to live next door to an amusement park.”-Dolly Parton

If you have kids, it’s very likely that you’ll visit an amusement part sometime this summer. A day at a park can be VERY expensive – Dad, I want another hot dog. Mom, can I have more tickets for the carnival games? I want a balloon!

Because of the recession, park attendance is down and parks are hurting (Six Flags In Bankruptcy Court). So this is a great time to get bargains on the entrance price.

“Wet N’ Wild Orlando, for instance, is currently advertising its “best deal ever” -- unlimited visits to the park during 2009, for the regular single-day pass price of $45. … Southern California residents can snag a three-day pass to Disneyland at a special rate of $99, compared with $180 for other visitors. In fact, discounts on admission are pretty much standard these days.” [SmartMoney.com]

SmartMoney.com suggests the following ways to save money at Amusement Parks:

1. Look for weekday discounts on admission or tickets. Wet 'n Wild is offering a discounted “season pass” that is good for weekday visits only.
2. Look for discounts by buying your tickets online.
3. Stick to one Park – most parks are big enough to keep you busy for the whole day. Why pay to visit two? Even at Disney you’ll save by buying a one-day ticket to just one-kingdom/park.
4. Look for discounts for arriving later in the day
5. Use coupons for Parks
6. If you plan to visit more than once or for more than one day, buy a season pass
7. Look for employee discounts or state residence discounts

Bottom Line

Last year we took our niece to Rye Playland, a state run amusement part in Rye, New York. There is a small parking fee but no per-person entrance fee. We bought her an unlimited ride pass, which was not cheap, but within an hour she had ridden so many rides that the unlimited pass was saving money over the individual ride costs.

Don’t forget that admission cost or ride cost is just half the battle. We gave a friend a free pass to a local fair and she then proceeded to spend nearly $100 on t-shirts and souvenirs for her two girls. Another cost factor at fairs and parks is food. Six dollars for a hamburger? Bring your own food if you can. If coolers are prohibited, pack some snack bars in a purse.

Watch out for the midway of games! Perhaps some are honest but many are not. I once spent many tickets trying to knock items off a shelf with a cork gun at a fair. The non-prize items fell over easily. When I finally hit a prize winning item, the cork bounced off it! The prize items were heavily bottom weighted. Another common trick is bent rims and an over-inflated ball with the basketball hoop toss. You can not see it from where you stand but the hoop is slightly oval, not round, and the backboard is extra bouncy. This makes it much harder to make the shot.

EHow.com has some advice how to win at coin toss and balloon dart toss.
See also How To Beat Carnival Games