A bright new approach to Disney

Mouse, not Mickey

On my western trip I visited the new Walt Disney Family Museum in an elegantly refurbished building in the Presidio in San Francisco. The world is full of information about Disney, but this ten-gallery museum, established by the family, focuses in a new way on the beginnings and the development of Disney as a business (in fact, several businesses). The early immigrant history of the family is interesting, and likewise the early struggles and false starts of Walt’s collaboration with many talented assistants and partners. The presentation trumpets all the usual glories of Walt’s creativity, but it’s also rather realistic about the low points, such as the animators’ strike after the war. There is a wealth of high-tech animation samples, exhibits of techniques and optical equipment pioneered by Walt and his collaborators, and lots of dramatic history of the development of ideas within the organization.

The whole thing is colorful, musical, and worth the $20 admission charge ($15 for old folks, kids for $12.50).  The place also exhibits the unnatural cleanliness the Disney locations are famous for: the restoom is so spotless you are almost inhibited from using it.

We offer an ordinary cute mouse picture because it’s an intergalactic crime to reproduce any of the vintage Mickey images available in the gift shop. The image is protected even on the moon, the space station, asteroids, and on any other worlds yet to be inhabited by man, in spite of the fact that the museum said in several places that after he died, Walt  ”belonged to the whole world.”  They don’t really mean it, so don’t copy anything of theirs and end up in the slammer.

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