He despised women and killed his mother: the real face of the Walt Disney animator

Many popular cartoons were created at the Walt Disney Studio. But Disney himself, according to the reviews of his relatives, was not at all a kind uncle who comes up with cartoons!

Walter Elias Disney, whom we know as Walt Disney, was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, but spent almost all of his childhood first in Missouri, then in Kansas City. He had three older brothers-Herbert, Raymond, Roy — and a younger sister, Ruth. His father suffered from borderline personality disorder, because of which he could suddenly punish children or scold them for no reason.

This left an imprint on the rest of the animator's life: there are almost no happy full families in the scripts of his cartoons, but almost all the problems of child-parent relations are presented.

Disney's birth certificate stated that he was 10 years older than he really was, but no one paid attention to this for a long time. Walt himself tried to understand this issue as an adult and even suspected that he was illegitimate. But this version was not confirmed in the end.

From the age of 14, Walt worked as a newspaper delivery boy, and during the war he volunteered for the front and drove Red Cross ambulances in France.

After returning to the United States, Walt Disney began working at fairs-entertaining the audience with tricks and jokes. In addition, he took advertising photos. In 1920, he got a job in an advertising agency, and soon opened his own small studio in Kansas City, Laugh-O-Grams, which quickly failed. Disney did not despair and moved to Hollywood, where in 1923 he created a new studio, now known all over the world.

The image of the good uncle Disney, who was actively promoted in the press (and many still think so), is shattered if you go into details.

So, Disney was a miser cleaner than Scrooge McDuck from "Duck Stories". He tried with all his might not to raise the salaries of the employees of his studio, spoke on strikes and forbade them to join workers ' unions. Disney fired the instigators of the strikes without hesitation. One of the strikes lasted for two months — and still did not lead to anything.

Disney believed that women were not capable of creative feats, and reluctantly hired them to work. Despite all this, the work at his studio was considered very prestigious.

In 1936, on the 35th anniversary of Disney, the studio staff drew a cartoon with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, in which they beat the situation with wages and strikes. Walt applauded this idea, and then asked who the authors of the idea were, publicly dismissed them without severance pay and left the room in complete silence.

Numerous friends and relatives of Walt Disney said that he was cute in public, but at home he was a real tyrant.

His wife, Lillian Bounds, who worked as a secretary for Disney, fully understood this. In 1925, they got married — and for eight years they tried unsuccessfully to have a child. Walt, whose work brought in more and more money, was very worried about this and took out his anger on his wife, who had suffered several miscarriages.

Finally, in 1933, their daughter Diana Mary was born, who later became involved in many of the studio's affairs. Disney dreamed of a big family, but doctors said that they had little chance of having a second child, so in 1937 the couple adopted baby Sharon May.

Walt was an exemplary father and perfectly coped with his duties, the children doted on him.

In 1938, an event occurred in Disney's life that he could not forgive himself for the rest of his life. When the studio began to generate income, and the cartoon "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" broke all rental records, Walt bought his parents a house in North Hollywood. They moved there in the fall of 1938, being already at a respectable age.

Less than a month later, problems with the gas pipe began in the house. Disney sent repairmen working at his studio to fix it, they seemed to have fixed the breakdown... but on November 26, the mother of the animator Ruth Disney suddenly died of gas poisoning. It turned out that the workers were not qualified enough and did not notice the leak.

No one directly accused Walt: at that time, it was not customary to sue because of the negligence of workers, who, moreover, were not officially sent to his parents ' house. Nevertheless, the death of his mother made a huge impression on Disney.

Over the years, Disney became addicted to alcohol and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. In addition, he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, because of which the animator constantly washed his hands. 26 Oscar statuettes, 111 films of Walt as a director and almost 600 as a producer could not improve the situation: the animator withdrew into himself and felt worse and worse.

In 1966, Walt was diagnosed with a terrible diagnosis — "lung cancer". The best doctors and a huge fortune did not help, and on December 15, Disney died at his home in Los Angeles. He left behind a huge creative legacy, but also went down in history as one of the most difficult people to communicate with.