How to be Like Walt

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The four attractions Disney designed for the World’s Fair were a shrewd move on Walt’s part. Walt’s Imagineers crammed a decade’s worth of research and development into two years. The technological lessons they learned were applied to numerous Disneyland attractions, including “The Enchanted Tiki Room,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and the “Haunted Mansion.” Best of all, Walt got three corporations and the state of Illinois to foot the bill.

Walt’s cinematic obsession Four months after the opening of the New York World’s Fair, Walt unveiled his crowning achievement as a filmmaker—Mary Poppins. Based on the 1934 children’s classic by P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins is the story of the magical English nanny who disturbs the well-ordered routine of the Banks family on London’s Cherry Tree Lane.

Walt first encountered the book in 1939 when he found his daughter Diane reading it with her sister Sharon. In January 1944, Walt learned that P.L. Travers had moved to New York to escape the Nazi bombing raids over London. He sent Roy to meet with her and secure the adaptation rights. Pamela Lyndon Travers (a pseudonym for Australian-born Helen Lyndon Goff ) refused to sell. “I cannot conceive of Mary Poppins as a cartoon character,” she said. Roy returned to California empty-handed.

Walt wouldn’t give up. He thought: If Ms. Travers can’t imagine Mary Poppins as a cartoon character, then let’s do a live-action picture. He made a new offer to Ms. Travers, and she refused again. Over the next seventeen years, Walt and Roy continued to write, phone, and meet with P.L. Travers, and were repeatedly turned down. In 1960, Walt offered Ms. Travers the right to approve both the script and the casting of the title role.

She finally agreed.

Walt’s first task was to translate the book into a filmable story. He decided Mary Poppins would be a musical, so the story had to be structured around the music. So Walt placed the project in the hands of his composers, Richard and Robert Sherman. He gave them a copy of the book and said, “My wife and my daughters think this would make a good movie.

Read it and tell me what you think.”

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The Sherman brothers read the book from cover to cover, then went to the table of contents and circled six of the book’s twelve chapters. They believed that those six chapters formed the core of a strong plot. When they showed Walt the chapters they had circled, Walt smiled, opened his own “Mary Poppins is the culmination of copy of the book, and showed it to Walt’s career. It draws on them. everything he’d learned how to Walt had circled the same six do—blending animation with live chapters. action, integrating songs with Now Walt had a storyline. So he put Richard and Robert Sherman story, and of course, his great eye for talent. After all, he’s the one together with Don DaGradi, one of the studio’s top story artists. Walt who brought Julie Andrews to wanted to encourage a creative synHollywood.” ergy between his composers and his Leonard Maltin story man—and it worked. The Film Critic Sherman brothers’ music inspired DaGradi as he created the storyboards, and his storyboards inspired the Shermans to write more music. Once the story was blocked out in songs and images, Bill Walsh wrote the screenplay.

Robert Sherman described the synergistic relationship between music and story. “Don DaGradi came in one day,” he said, “with a sketch of a chimney sweep who was whistling and carrying his brooms. I saw it and said, ‘This is a song!’” The song sparked by that drawing was “Chim-ChimCher-ee,” which won an Academy Award.

Ideas might come from anyone. One of the film’s key musical sequences was suggested by Peter Ellenshaw, Disney’s British-born special effects artist. Bill Walsh was admiring Ellenshaw’s paintings of the rooftops of London and happened to mention that the Sherman brothers were having trouble writing a dance song for the rooftop scene.

“I know the kind of song you need,” Ellenshaw said. “It’s an English pub song called ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown.’” Then he demonstrated the dance.

Walsh excitedly called Don DaGradi and the Sherman brothers to Ellenshaw’s office. Ellenshaw taught them all how to link elbows, kick up their knees, and dance to the old English knockabout song. The Shermans

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loved it! The whole group moved down the hall to Walt’s office and demonstrated the dance for him. Walt said, “Can I do that?” and he joined right in, linking arms with DaGradi and Ellenshaw. “We only performed it once,” Ellenshaw recalls. “Walt was out of breath afterward—but what a wonderful memory.”

The Sherman brothers composed a similar song and called it “Step in Time.”

I asked Richard Sherman what it was like to work with Walt on Mary Poppins. “Walt believed in teamwork,” he said. “We all chipped in and felt we were part of something special. We were proud to be on Walt’s team, and this made us want to make Mary Poppins work. We all had our own little bailiwicks, but we felt free to make suggestions to each other and learn from each other.”

Whether in his studio, or in his Imagineering team, or at CalArts, Walt continually tried to break down the walls that separated creative people. He encouraged the creation of open communities where talented people— artists, musicians, writers, actors, dancers and filmmakers—could challenge and inspire each other to greater heights.

The mercurial Ms. Travers It took Walt four years to take Mary Poppins from conception to completion—and they were four of the toughest years of Walt’s career. His greatest challenge was dealing with P. L. Travers. The temperamental author had script approval—and she rejected draft after draft.

The biggest source of conflict was Mary Poppins herself. The original book portrays her as proud, demanding, fussy and vain—in short, a reflection of her creator, P. L. Travers. Walt wanted to soften Mary’s character and make her more charming and sympathetic. Ms. Travers opposed any tampering with Mary’s character—but she failed to reckon with Walt’s determination to get his film made his way.

P. L. Travers also insisted that there be no animation in the film, but her stubbornness was no match for Walt’s. “When he was making Mary Poppins,” said Diane Disney Miller, “the people involved with the picture would go to the daily rushes, and they’d see Song of the South. They were

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confused. They thought, ‘Jiminy Christmas, does Walt want to put “As the original Mary Poppins animation in this picture?’ They budget of five million dollars knew that P. L. Travers had said continued to grow, I never saw a she didn’t want any animation. sad face around the entire studio.

What Dad was doing was planting And this made me nervous. the seed. He might want to use I knew the picture would have to animation in Mary Poppins. And gross ten million dollars for us to he did.” break even. But still there was Walt revealed his intention to no negative head-shaking. No use animation while listening to a new song that the Sherman prophets of doom. Even Roy brothers had just written. Richard was happy. He didn’t even ask Sherman recalled, “I was in the me to show the finished picture middle of singing a song that Bob to a banker. The horrible thought and I had just written, ‘Jolly struck me: Suppose the staff had Holiday.’ We came to a section finally conceded that I knew where a quartet of waiters comes what I was doing.” out and sings, ‘Order what you Walt Disney will, there’ll be no bill, it’s complimentary.’ Walt said, ‘Hold it!’ I thought he didn’t like the tune or something.

“Then Walt said, ‘Waiters always remind me of penguins. I think the waiters should be penguins.’ I said, ‘How can you teach penguins to sing?’

Walt said, ‘We’ll animate the penguins. All the principal characters will be live action, and everything else will be animation.’

“Walt came up with that idea in a flash of inspiration, and ‘Jolly Holiday’ became one of the film’s most memorable sequences. It could have been a very ordinary scene, but Walt made it extraordinary.”

P. L. Travers spent a month at the Burbank studio during the early stages of production. She attended story meetings and lectured the artists and writers about every detail of each character. She demanded that an entire animated sequence—the fantasy world inside the sidewalk chalk drawing—be eliminated. She hated the Sherman brothers’ musical score and insisted that only authentic songs of the period (like “Ta Ra Ra Boom De

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Ay”) be used. She even demanded that the Disney wardrobe department purchase the cloth for Mary Poppins’ skirt from a certain dressmaker on Kensington Road in London.

“When we sat down with Mrs. Travers to present our treatment,” Richard Sherman recalled, “she hated everything we had done. Disliked it with a passion! For every chapter we developed, she had a definite feeling we had selected the worst one. She started naming the chapters she felt we should adapt, and they were the ones we thought were absolutely unusable.”

Walt worried that, at any moment, the mercurial Ms. Travers might pull the plug in mid-production and demand the rights back. It was during this time that Walt purchased the rights to Mary Norton’s The Magic BedKnob. If need be, he could fall back on Ms. Norton’s tale of three English children and an apprentice witch. (The movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks was, in fact, produced after Walt’s death).

Julie Andrews: Worried about her nose Walt personally made all of the casting decisions for Mary Poppins.

His first choice for Mary was surprising—Bette Davis. One of the reigning queens of moviedom, Ms. Davis was in her fifties at the time. In voice and appearance, she couldn’t have been more different from the twentyseven-year-old singer Walt ultimately chose. Yet P. L. Travers had given no hint of Mary’s age in the books— most readers at the time assumed “I was brought up on the Mary her to be a middle-aged woman. So Poppins books. . . . When I was the choice of Bette Davis seemed a kid my friends even suggested logical.

I should play Mary one day, but But as the Sherman brothers I never thought I would. Certainly developed the score for the film, there were several songs written for Walt Disney didn’t consider Mary Poppins to sing. Bette Davis me for the role when he first was not a singer. Walt contacted planned the film.”

Mary Martin, famed as Peter Pan on Julie Andrews Actress Broadway and TV, but Ms. Martin turned down the role.

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Walt was in a quandry until his secretary, Tommie Wilck, suggested a young actress who was a big hit on Broadway as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Queen Guenevere in Camelot. Her name was Julie Andrews.

In late 1961, Walt went to New York and attended a performance of Camelot. He was impressed by the acting ability and lovely soprano voice of Julie Andrews. After the show, Walt went backstage and told her he wanted her to play Mary Poppins. Then he launched into a scene-by-scene narration of the story.

Ms. Andrews was impressed—but not convinced it was the right role for her screen debut. She was being considered to play Eliza Doolittle in the Warner Brothers production of My Fair Lady, a role she had created on Broadway. Ms. Andrews agreed to appear in Mary Poppins only if she didn’t get My Fair Lady. When Jack Warner chose Audrey Hepburn to play Eliza, Walt had his Mary Poppins.

The biggest concern Walt had about Julie Andrews was her age. What if Ms. Travers rejected her as too young? So Walt called Ms. Travers and asked, “How old is Mary Poppins?” The author replied, “I’ve always thought of her as about twenty-seven.” Walt was amazed, for that was Julie Andrews’ exact age.

In late November 1962, Walt arranged a telephone meeting between Julie Andrews and P. L. Travers. At the time, Ms. Andrews was in a London hospital following the birth of her first daughter, Emma Kate. The author and the Broadway star had a long talk by phone. Ms. Travers approved Julie Andrews, based on her voice alone.

Julie Andrews was nervous about her first motion picture role. She was accustomed to acting and singing on a stage, but worried about acting before cameras. In an article in Showtime magazine, January 1965, she recalled her feelings of anxiety. “Would I be self-conscious?” she wrote.

“How big would my nose look on the wide screen? . . . My nose worried me particularly. I had been thinking of having it fixed (it tilts up!) but my husband objected. ‘Leave it alone,’ he said, ‘It’s a good nose. You can see it against the scenery!’”

An interviewer once asked Ms. Andrews to describe Walt Disney. “He was a charming man with a twinkling personality,” she replied, “and he put in an enormous number of hours at his studio each week. Among all of his

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skills, one of his great talents was an almost phenomenal ability for picking nice people to work with. His studio had a special charm—it still does.”

When I met Julie Andrews at a Chicago book convention, I asked her what she remembered most about Walt. “Oh!” she said, “His sparkling eyes!” Walt’s presence, it seems, had that effect on everyone who met him.

Dick Van Dyke: A serendipitous thing Though Bert the chimney sweep was a minor character in P. L. Travers’ original book, the Sherman brothers saw a much bigger role for him in the movie. So Walt and his story artists built Bert into a full-fledged leading man. In a casting decision that raised many eyebrows, Walt picked AllAmerican TV star Dick Van Dyke to play the Cockney chimney— sweep/kite-peddler/sidewalk artist/one-man band.

The beanpole comedian had already achieved fame as comedy writer Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, yet Walt had never heard of him.

After a private screening of an episode of the CBS comedy, Walt “It’s my third motion picture, but chose him on the spot—no audition the best one I’ve ever been in, and needed. While working on Mary the best one I ever will be in if I Poppins, Van Dyke and his wife live to be a hundred and fifty Margie became friends with Walt years old. To me, this is the and Lillian Disney. greatest family classic of all time.”

Some critics panned the casting of Dick Van Dyke Dick Van Dyke, claiming his Actor Cockney accent is, well, less than authentic. Maybe so. But Walt wasn’t as interested in Van Dyke’s accent as his on-screen chemistry with Julie Andrews. What’s more, the Sherman brothers had created a demanding part for Bert, requiring an actor who could sing, dance, do physical comedy, and create a believable, likable character. The multi-talented Van Dyke was uniquely qualified.

When Dick Van Dyke heard that the role of the old bank chairman, Mr. Dawes, had not yet been cast, he told Walt, “I’d like to play Mr. Dawes— and I won’t charge you a nickel.”

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“The price is right,” said Walt, “but you’ll have to test for the part.”

So Van Dyke went to the studio and did a screen test as doddering old Mr. Dawes, long white beard and all. The actor improvised a slapstick scene of a wobble-kneed oldster descending the steps with a cane. Walt loved it so much he had a step added to the boardroom set so Van Dyke could do the bit in the movie.

Because of union rules, Dick Van Dyke wasn’t allowed to do the role for free—but Walt suggested an alternative. The Disney company paid Van Dyke $4,000 to play the part of Mr. Dawes, and the actor donated that amount to Walt’s favorite cause, CalArts.

Dick Van Dyke remembers the months he spent filming Mary Poppins as “the happiest, most fun few months I ever spent in my life.” The best part was working with Walt. “What I liked about him,” the actor recalled, “was that he had the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old about the work. To work with him was one of the most serendipitous things that ever happened to me.”

Practically perfect in every way Walt put as much care into casting the secondary roles as he did in casting the leads. He looked for screen chemistry, even in his child stars. Child actors Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber, who had previously starred in Disney’s The Three Lives Of Thomasina, were together again as the Banks children, Jane and Michael. “Uncle Walt” paid to bring Karen’s family over from England so she wouldn’t be homesick.

David Tomlinson was cast as the stuffy father, George Banks, and “Walt Disney was magical. He Glynis Johns was his dizzy suffragette would give you a challenge and wife, Winifred. Other memorable say, ‘I know you can do this.’ It performers included Reginald Owen was electric to be around him.” as Admiral Boom, Arthur Treacher as Richard Sherman, Constable Jones, and Elsa Lanchester Disney Songwriter as Katie Nanna.

For the role of the old bird woman, Walt chose Jane Darwell, who had won an Oscar as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. Her career went back to the silent era, and at the time Walt cast

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her, she was living in the Motion Picture Country Home and could no longer walk. Darwell gave a touching performance, the last of her long career.

The casting of Glynis Johns required some agile thinking on Walt’s part.

He invited her to lunch one Friday in the Coral Room, the executive restaurant just off the main commissary of the studio. Joining them were Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi, and the Sherman brothers. Walt began by saying that he was casting a new movie, Mary Poppins. He didn’t even finish his sentence before Ms. Johns began thanking him. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to play Mary Poppins!”

There was an awkward silence—then Walt explained that Julie Andrews had already been cast in the title role. “You see,” Walt added, “I want you to play Winifred Banks.”

Ms. Johns was crestfallen. “I really wouldn’t be interested—” “And just wait,” Walt continued smoothly, “until you hear the wonderful musical number that Richard and Robert have written especially for you.” He glanced at the Sherman brothers and they looked back as if to say, What musical number?

“When can I hear it?” Ms. Johns asked.

“Come back next week,” Walt said. “Dick and Bob will be happy to play it for you.”

Dick and Bob grinned bravely. “Yes, absolutely,” they said.

After Ms. Johns left, the Sherman brothers asked Walt what song he was talking about.

“I’m sure you boys will come up with something,” Walt replied.

So the Sherman brothers worked through the weekend, racking their brains for a good tune and lyrics. Finally, they adapted a tune they had originally written for the nursery scene, a song called “Practically Perfect in Every Way.” They wrote new lyrics, called it “Sister Suffragette,” and they played it for Glynis Johns the next Tuesday. She took the part.

Walt cast Elsa Lanchester as Katie Nanna a short time after the death of her husband, actor Charles Laughton. Laughton and Lanchester had enjoyed one of the longest marriages in Hollywood, and she was deeply depressed over her loss. Elsa Lanchester happened to be the godmother of Karen Dotrice, so Karen’s mother suggested that Walt cast Ms. Lanchester in the film. Walt agreed. The role helped Elsa Lanchester through her grief,

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and her role in Mary Poppins marked her successful return to acting after a six-year absence.

Filming of Mary Poppins began in May 1963 and was completed in September. Post-production and animation took another eleven months to complete. Mary Poppins premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on August 27, 1964, and was universally acclaimed.

Well, there was one dissenter: P. L. Travers.

At the party following the premiere, Ms. Travers told Walt, “The movie was quite nice, and Miss Andrews is satisfactory as Mary Poppins. But I’m afraid Mr. Van Dyke is all wrong as Bert. And I don’t really like mixing the little cartoon figures with the live actors. When do we start cutting the film?”

Walt smiled. “The picture is completed,” he said. “We aren’t going to change a thing.”

Mary Poppins went on to earn $44 million in its initial release. It was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, and won five. Though it didn’t win best picture (that award went to My Fair Lady), Julie Andrews captured the Oscar for best actress in her very first screen role (ironically, Audrey Hepburn wasn’t even nominated). As Julie Andrews accepted the award, she looked to Walt and said, “I know where to start. Mr. Disney gets the biggest thanks.”

Tuppence is all it takes In a phone conversation, Richard Sherman told me how, during the last year or two of Walt Disney’s life, he would stop by the Sherman Brothers’ office at the close of every Friday. “We had our own little private ceremony,” Richard told me. “He’d ask us what we were working on, and we’d tell him. Then he’d say, ‘Play the song, Richard.’ And I knew which song he meant. I’d play ‘Feed the Birds’ from Mary Poppins.

“Walt would look out the north window of his office while I played the song. And when it was over, he’d say, ‘Yep, that’s what it is all about. Have a good weekend, boys.’ And with that, he’d send us home.

“Walt understood what Bob and I were saying through that song, and I think that’s why it became his favorite song. It was the first song we wrote

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for the picture—our first inspiration after we read ‘The Bird Woman’ chapter in the book. It was the song we played for Walt at our first story meeting, and it was the last thing we played for him. When we wrote it, we knew it was the metaphor for the whole picture.

“It’s a song about the bird woman who sells bread crumbs in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The old woman says, ‘Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.’

That’s the theme of the picture: It doesn’t take much to do an act of kindness—just tuppence, just a penny or two.

“That’s what everyone learns by the end of the film. The children just needed some love and attention from their parents. They didn’t care about their mother’s causes or their father’s money. They just wanted to know that Mum and Dad were interested in them. And that’s what Mary Poppins taught them. It’s a subtle thing, but Walt loved the meaning of that song.

That’s what he was all about.

“Even after Walt left us, I continued to play the song every Friday afternoon in his honor. It was a very personal thing for me. I’d feel his presence.

“On Walt’s hundredth birthday, they had a big celebration in the middle of Disneyland. I was there, and I spoke about Walt. They had a piano and they asked me to sing ‘Feed the Birds.’ I sang it, and I choked up, but I got through it. As I was singing, a beautiful gray dove flew right by me and then up again into the sky. Don’t tell me there is no God in the heavens!

“My love for Walt Disney is stronger now than when he was alive. It keeps compounding. All the lessons he instilled in me are becoming more clear as the years go on. Hindsight gives me more appreciation for him.

Walt was a humble man—a sweet, humble man. Very rarely, a special man comes to Earth and I got to be around that very special man.”

As Richard told me this, he was moved to tears—and so was I. After a few moments, I said, “Richard, could I ask a favor of you? Could we sing that song together?” And over the phone, without accompaniment, and with me remembering only half the words, we sang “Feed the Birds” together.

And I felt a little closer to Walt Disney.

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Project X While Walt was building World’s Fair attractions and producing Mary Poppins, he was also devoting time and effort to his last and most ambitious dream, “the Florida Project” or “Project X.” Walt’s inspiration for the Florida Project dates back to the first few years after Disneyland opened.

His great regret was that he lacked money to create a buffer zone to keep the park from being surrounded by cheap motels and other unsavory establishments.

Soon after Disneyland opened, the public clamored for an East Coast Disneyland. At first, Walt said he would never build another Disneyland.

Sometime in the late 1950s, however, he experienced a change of heart and began laying plans for a vast resort complex east of the Mississippi. But Walt’s new venture—his “Project X”—was more than just a theme park.

He was determined to build the Community of Tomorrow.

In 1959, Walt contacted Harrison “Buzz” Price, the former Stanford Research Institute consultant who had helped find the Disneyland site in Anaheim. Price had formed his own company, Economics Research Associates, in Los Angeles. Walt commissioned ERA to find the best East Coast location for Project X. After looking at all the factors, ERA iden“It’s like the city of tomorrow tified three Florida sites: Palm Beach ought to be. A city that caters to on the Atlantic coast, Ocala in the the people as a service function. center of the state, and dead-last on It will be a planned, controlled the list, the little citrus town of community, a showcase for Orlando.

Walt rejected Palm Beach—an American industry and ocean-side location meant hurricanes research, schools, cultural and and high humidity—and he zeroed educational opportunities.” in on Ocala. He set aside a back Walt Disney room at the WED design studios where he held top-secret brain-storming sessions with a few trusted Imagineers. The plan for Project X moved forward in secrecy.

In 1963, Walt learned that a freeway was under construction, linking Tampa-St. Petersburg on Florida’s gulf coast with Daytona Beach on the

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Atlantic coast. That freeway—Interstate 4—would pass right by Orlando.

Walt had ERA take another look at Orlando, and the connection to I–4 completely changed the equation. Orlando shot to the top of the list.

In November 1963, Walt and several associates (including Donn Tatum, Card Walker and Buzz Price) boarded the Disney Beechcraft in Burbank and set off on a cross-country journey. They stopped in St. Louis and talked with city officials about building a park on the banks of the Mississipi, but there wasn’t enough available land. They visited Niagra Falls and Baltimore, but the bitter winters ruled out both locations.

On November 22, Walt and his team flew down to central Florida. The Beechcraft passed over the sleepy little community of Orlando and approached a large freeway construction project—the interchange between the Florida Turnpike and the brand-new Interstate 4. Walt pointed and exclaimed, “This is it!” Walt had made his decision. Project X would be built near Orlando. Within thirty years, that little community of 60,000 people would become a global tourist destination with over a million and a half residents.

The plane continued on to New Orleans. Arriving at their hotel, Walt and his team learned that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated during a motorcade ride through Dallas. It was a quiet and somber flight home the next day.

Soon after his arrival, Walt informed Roy that he had selected the site for the Florida Project. Roy was not enthusiastic—but he knew it was pointless to oppose Walt’s vision. For one thing, Walt never took “no” for an answer. For another, Walt was usually right.

The scope of Walt’s latest, greatest dream was truly breathtaking. He “Solving the problems of didn’t just want to build a theme the city obsessed him.” park. He wanted to build a city—a John Hench, Disney Artist and Imagineer real, working community of the future where American industries could experiment with innovative solutions to human problems. But to build it, Disney would have to acquire a vast amount of property.

Building Disneyland had been a back-breaking challenge. Project X appeared a hundred times more complex. There would be financial, legal,

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and governmental problems to be solved. Walt wanted to build everything at once—the city of tomorrow, the futuristic transportation system, the second Disneyland, everything. Roy suggested it be built in stages.

“Let’s build the new Disneyland first,” Roy said. “We’ll get the park up and running, and that will give us an income stream that we can use to build everything else.” The duplicate Disneyland would become, in effect, the “wienie” that would attract people and money to Disney’s Florida operation.

Roy’s plan made sense. Walt agreed to make a new Disneyland-style theme park as “Phase One” of a larger Florida Project.

In the summer of 1964, as Mary Poppins premiered on the West Coast, a number of anonymous land buyers began purchasing real estate near Orlando, Florida. Much of it was swampland, and the going price was around $200 per acre. The buyers operated under various names and purchased the land in separate parcels. For months, the people of central Florida had no clue that Walt Disney was moving into their neighborhood.

The success of Mary Poppins made the Florida land acquisition “We had a lot of fun writing the possible. The movie brought millions songs of The Jungle Book . . . into the Disney treasury just when it It was the last animated movie was needed for the land purchase. In supervised by Walt Disney and fact, the Disney-created company he was very involved in every that planned and built the Florida aspect of the project. You can Project was called Mapo (combining “Mary” and “Poppins”). Mapo later find all his humor and sensibility merged with Walt Disney in this movie, which is why Imagineering. it’s been so successful.”

Walt desperately wanted to go to Richard Sherman, Florida, but Roy reminded him that Disney Songwriter his face was too recognizable. Finally, Walt could resist no longer. Against Roy’s wishes, he took some studio executives down to Florida and walked around the Orlando property.

Afterward, he and his associates dined in a hotel restaurant. A waitress came over and said, “Sir, did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Walt Disney?”

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“Look like Walt Disney?” he said. “I am Walt Disney!”

The other men at the table dropped their jaws in shock.

“You’re pulling my leg!” the waitress said.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Walt said. He took out his wallet and showed the waitress his driver’s license. The other men groaned silently.

Fortunately, the waitress never told her story to the newspapers.

Fun in the jungle Though Project X consumed most of Walt’s time, he continued hosting the weekly television show while guiding the development of new Disneyland attractions. He also became deeply involved with a new animated feature, The Jungle Book.

Walt assigned The Jungle Book to veteran story artist Bill Peet, who produced a faithful adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s original book. Songwriter Terry Gilkyson composed a musical score to match Peet’s artwork. When Walt saw the storyboards and heard Gilkyson’s score, he said, “This isn’t the movie I want to make! It’s too dark and depressing!”

“But that’s what the book is like,” Peet said. “That’s the way Kipling wrote it.”

“I know it is,” Walt said, “but that’s not the way Disney will make it. I want this to be a funny movie. There’s nothing funny in these storyboards—and there’s only one good song in the score.” The song Walt liked was “The Bare Necessities.”

Embittered over the rejection, Peet angrily resigned, ending a relationship with Walt that went back to 1937. Walt assembled a new creative team: Richard and Robert Sherman would write the score, Larry Clemmons (a former comedy writer for Jack Benny) would develop the storyline and gags, and Wolfgang Reitherman would draw the storyboards. Walt began by asking them if they had ever read Kipling’s original book. All said no.

“Well,” Walt said, “make sure you don’t. We’re not doing Kipling’s Jungle Book—we’re doing Disney’s Jungle Book. All you need to know is the storyline, and I’ll give it to you right now: It’s the story of a boy named Mowgli who is raised by wolves. He’s lived his whole life with the jungle