The Walt Disney Family Museum

This past week­end I paid my sec­ond visit to the Walt Dis­ney Fam­ily Museum located in the Pre­sidio in San Fran­cisco. Both times I was drawn by talks given by my col­lege pro­fes­sor John Cane­maker. The first time it was for his book “Two Guys Named Joe” and this time a look at the influ­ence of illus­tra­tor Hein­rich Kley and other euro­pean artists on the Dis­ney studio.

The Dis­ney Fam­ily Museum is not con­nected with the Dis­ney com­pany. Walt’s daugh­ter, Diane Disney-Miller owns a win­ery in Napa Val­ley, and this is their family’s per­sonal project. If you love ani­ma­tion, and are in San Fran­cisco, it is a must see attraction.

The museum con­sists of 10 gal­leries about Walt, a small spe­cial exhibits area, a small and beau­ti­ful the­ater, a gift shop and a cafe. The recep­tion and ticket area is actu­ally one of my favorite parts. Show­cases con­tain hun­dreds of awards and hon­ors bestowed on Walt, includ­ing the famous Oscar with the seven lit­tle Oscars he received for Snow White.  Just this room alone com­mu­ni­cates what an inter­na­tion­ally beloved per­son he was.

The gal­leries are arranged chrono­log­i­cally through Walt’s life. After the first two gal­leries about Walt’s fam­ily and youth in Mis­souri, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in World War 1, guest go to the sec­ond floor rid­ing in and ele­va­tor decked out to look like a train. It rep­re­sents his move to Cal­i­for­nia, and just on get­ting out of the “train” is one of the most instruc­tive things I have read there. Upon arriv­ing in Hol­ly­wood, Walt believed the ani­ma­tion busi­ness was already estab­lished, and he was too late to break in with his own stu­dio. If you find your­self feel­ing like a small fig­ure in the world of ani­ma­tion, remem­ber that Walt Dis­ney once felt that way, but with imag­i­na­tion and hard work, he rede­fined the art.

The museum is more than a biog­ra­phy of Walt, it is a his­tory of ani­ma­tion, and how Walt influ­enced it. If you have read much about the his­tory of car­toons, this will bring it all to life. If you haven’t, this is an amaz­ing intro­duc­tion to early art, tech­nol­ogy and busi­ness of the craft. There is a multi plane cam­era that is so big the dis­play case runs through both the first and sec­ond floors.

But Walt was into far more than ani­ma­tion. Later gal­leries address live action movies, music, tele­vi­sion, mer­chan­dise, theme parks, and his con­tri­bu­tion to the effort in World War II. They even have a cor­ner dis­play about the strike at the stu­dio, and how it effected Walt. Halfway into the museum, guests are treated to a strik­ing view of the Golden Gate, recently improved by the removal of Doyle Drive.

At the end, there is a won­der­ful pho­to­graph of Walt sit­ting out on a rock, smil­ing and wav­ing his hat. He seems to be say­ing good­bye. That is fol­lowed by record­ings of the news broad­casts of his death, and the worlds reac­tion. Edi­to­r­ial car­toons and telegrams cover the wall.

Every­one knows the bits and pieces of his life. But to have it all laid out together in detail, you can’t help but real­ize what an enor­mous fig­ure he was in our culture.