Disney lost revenue due to the 2^nd World War which meant that roughly 40% of the companies revenue was cut. After the success of Snow White, Disney had invested in a major Pinocchio and Fantasia, which were not able to replicate the 8million dollars of revenue that Snow White delivered. You need finances to make things happen of course. If Snow White had been a failure, Disney Studios would have likely shutdown.

Disney Studio was ripe for unionisation directly because of the decreased movie going in Europe in the 1940s. Later, government policy in the UK forced Walt Disney to create a film in the UK since at the time Disney tax revenue was being taken out of the UK. The result was the creation of the first live action Disney production which was a version of Treasure Island. Disney studios was commandeered by the US army after Pearl Harbour and the company was forced to create an anti-Nazi propaganda films for a time. So yes, governments tend to mess with businesses in more overt ways when needed.

Walt Disney incorporated Laugh-O-Gram films at age 20. But Disney was completely incompetent as an artist and couldn’t draw Mickey if asked.  Disney was the visionary instead. But by the late 1920s, Laugh-O-Gram had failed as a viable business with Walt doing (unfortunately) a good portion of the drawings for his cartoons. What Walt realised was that his talent did not lie in actually drawing cartoons. Instead Walt Disney had the intelligence to hire and train quality artists rather than try to improve his skill as an artist and persist in failure. Kansas City Film Ads introduced him to puppet joints but he was unsuccessful in animating them. Only after moving to the West Coast could he, his brother and Iwerks realise their full potential as artists, project managers and entrepreneurs. Disney famously invested in training his employees in an art school to improve the visual quality of the backgrounds and character craft. “I put all my artists back to school” then set up a new art school within Disney Burbank Studios to control the education more closely. Because they were dealing with action, reaction and motion, these animators had to try to bring the animals to life while making the act realistic.

Audiences had to believe in the animals and Disney’s perfectionism made sure that this was realised. He knew what he wanted to do but then realised his weaknesses and shifted his career. Other artists would provide the human-like characteristics to characters in all the Disney movies. The human like features were essential to allowing viewers to connect with Bambi or Jiminy Cricket, as examples. So in short, Disney trusted in the creative genius of his team rather than micro-manage his team and the creative process. He had the ability to trust in others and focus on what he could bring to the table which was vision, financial backing and business acumen.

Walt Disney was not that great as an animator but he was at the forefront of what logically should happen, but no idea can be realised without finance. He knew how to make gambles on game-changing ideas so much so that he was willing to mortgage his house to create Snow White. Since Disney took so many risks, he didn’t like giving out praise to his animator, he felt he was the only one worthy of praise. Walt always attempted to take as much credit for creative output as possible. After all, nothing would have existed with out a risk taking visionary such as himself. He had a chronic cough especially when he was bored, liked to wear casual sweaters and smoked chesterfields in the meeting, which were regularly scheduled to ensure production was moving on schedule. Disney would animate each ‘voice’ of the each characters but that was the extent of his contribution. No one got credit, not even Walt Disney’s brother Roy who kept the finances in check throughout the development of the Disney empire. This thinking was precisely due to business experiences where Disney had been robbed of value by other manipulators like Charles Mintz.

Disney was viciously anti-union in the 1940s. Walt wanted to reward employees who did exceptional work while refusing to provide salary boosts to mediocre employees, he believed it was his right as the creator of the job opportunities in the first place. He didn’t like to fire most employees directly and delegated that to his top executives. As revenues floundered during the 2^nd World War, he had to cut back on staff…The 1941 strike lasted 5 weeks after which the union was solidified much to Disney’s disapproval. Walt Disney later went on the offensive in order to attack Disney was against having cartoonists getting credit generally throughout his life and wanted them to act as functionaries through salary compensation as the sole means of recognition. Walt Disney had meetings transcripts carbon copied to ensure that his instructions were fulfilled.

Walt Disney’s early entrepreneurial experience took him to Kansas City to start a company called Laugh-O-Gram. The two Disney brothers learned early that owning the character and controlling intellectual property was essential. In 1926, the Alice Adventure cartoons (mixed live and animation) were put to rest as they weren’t gaining traction so Iwerks and Disney created a new character called Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.

With the help of Iwerks, Disney began to see great success with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, which was created under licensing through Winkler Pictures. Unfortunately, the copyright contract was up for renewal within a year and so Walt Disney headed to New York in order to renew ownership of Oswald but Charles Mintz who worked at Winkler Pictures had already stolen the Oswald The Lucky Rabbit character from Walt Disney. Mintz started his own cartoon production with most of Disney’s staff. Mintz figured he could do the cartoons just as well as the Disney studio for cheaper and also cut out the middle-men. In those days, the distributor owned the rights to the character and they outsourced the creative to studios such as Laugh-O-Gram. Mintz ended up doing a favour for Disney since Iwerks immediately developed another character called Mortimer Mouse later Mickey Mouse.

So after this lesson in licensing, Disney would go forward ensuring that he owned the distribution rights. Disney later on would actually re-release films like Snow White and Pinocchio regularly every 7 years after their original release since these films could be deemed timeless and Disney could control access. Disney engaged in mass merchandise sales using his film characters to build idolized characters. Only after the release of Little Mermaid was home viewing of Disney content expanded significantly. Controlling who can view and how they viewed Disney content was essential for generating reliable revenue streams for Disney as demonstrated from his early experience with intellectual property.

Animators in the 1920s were taking live action and adding cartoons to them. Walt Disney with (Kansas City-based) Laugh-O-Gram reversed this idea and had cartoons with one live action character in his Alice Adventures series. Ub Iwerks was the actual artists, Walt Disney was the visionary and Roy Disney was the finance guy all collectively working towards innovating. Disney believed in realism but also believed in constantly improving. After some modest success and then brutal failure, Disney headed to where all movie makers go: Hollywood.

In 1929, Steam Boat Willy was the first sound based cartoon with Walt providing the voice of Mickey. This short animation was a hugely successful production for Disney. In addition, the Silly Symphony was a colour based cartoon with sound that expand Disney’s scale as a business. Walt Disney took animation forward but it was never about completely re-inventing ideas. The steps and innovation were secondary to the discipline of delivering the film.

From the start, Disney would take contemporary fair tales and provide a modern spin on them rather than do something completely different. The idea is that he was borrowing from the past the way the Beatles borrowed from Blues. Colour was introduced in 1932 and then the first feature length Disney movie Snow White was released in 1937. Learning by trial and error was trying to figure out how to create something creative. Adding multi-layered images, adding colour served as later innovations that would put Disney at the top of innovation nonetheless the innovation was incremental and logical. The Multi-Plain Camera allowed Disney to have multiple layers on the screen, which was essential after the success of Snow White. It provided dimensionality to standard images. This addition of depth to an image was another innovation that was quickly developed within Disney.