100 years of Disney: The businessman behind the magic factory

100 years of Disney: The businessman behind the magic factory

Post By World Animated cartoon, disney, family, multinational companies, Walt Disney

The Walt Disney Company is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Although Walt Disney was originally a cartoonist, it’s his business vision that defined his lasting – and often magical – legacy.

Disney movies have been an iconic mainstay in popular culture for the past century, with millions – if not billions – of people having seen at least one of the company’s world-famous animated films.

The adventure began in Hollywood on 16 October 1923, when Walt Disney signed a contract for a series of silent half-live, half-animated shorts: Alice’s Wonderland. The date marks the beginning of Walt Disney’s success –and of his eponymous company.

Animator and entrepreneur

Walter Elias Disney, born in Chicago in 1901, developed a taste for drawing in his childhood.

Originally called the Disney Brothers Studio, then the Walt Disney Studio, Walt and his brother Roy Disney worked tirelessly to build the company we still know and love 100 years later.

Another central figure in Walt Disney’s early career was cartoonist and animator Ub Iwerks. His most iconic work is none other than Mickey Mouse.

Disney’s most famous mascot was ironically not drawn by Walt Disney himself, although he’s the one behind the concept, and lent him his voice.

Mickey Mouse also showed Walt Disney how there was a great deal of money to be made around a flagship character. He sold licences for commercials and launched the production of merchandising.

Although drawing and animation are how he entered the business, Walt soon understood that his talent lay elsewhere.

“He eventually realised his greatest skill was not being the animator himself, but in pulling together a crew that could help him realise his stories and visions,” explains Louis Louise Krasniewicz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Walt Disney: A Biography.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a crew of nine core animators emerged – the Nine Old Men, as Disney himself would call them.

Walt surrounded himself with highly skilled animators, demanding the best from them and all of his employees.

‘That’ll do’

“I don’t want to say he was bad to work for, but he demanded excellence,” said Aaron H Goldberg, author of several books on the Disney enterprise.

According to Goldberg, Disney was known for putting people in challenging positions and pushing them out of their comfort zone to bring the best out of them – like tasking animators with writing a song for a film when they had never previously done it.

“He was very intense,” said Goldberg, “and he was not very forthcoming with credit. If you did a great job, you weren’t necessarily going to hear ‘you did a great job’. But the phrase that he used to love was, ‘that’ll do’.”

Walt Disney prided himself on his staff coming together as one big family, with himself as the father figure.

He considered that only the core of outstanding workers, like the Nine Old Men, should get privileges and high salaries, while the rest had to prove they were worthy of more than the bare minimum.

He didn’t see the 1941 strike coming. Why, after all, would such a big and united family be unhappy?

But the artists working at the studio felt otherwise, in part because they had yet to get their share of the massive revenues generated by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated film produced by the studio in 1937.

The strikers demanded better benefits and higher salaries, as they were earning below the national average.

Refusing to admit that his management style was the problem, Walt Disney added fuel to the fire during a speech he made while meeting with the strikers:

“I have always felt, and will always feel that the men that contribute the most to the organisation should enjoy some privileges,” he said. “My first recommendation to a lot of you is this: put your own house in order, you can’t accomplish a damn thing by sitting around and waiting to be told everything.”

The eccentric idea of Disneyland

After the strike was resolved by the creation of a union, the studio went back to its usual business. However, the Second World War forced Disney into producing propaganda films.

Even on US soil, which was almost entirely spared by combat, people deserted theatres. Although today considered Disney classics, movies such as Dumbo (1941) or Bambi (1942) were a commercial failure at the time of their release.

Success came back after the war, while at the same time a somewhat extravagant idea emerged in Walt Disney’s unconventional mind: a theme park.

Although commonplace across the world nowadays, amusement parks were not widespread back in the 1940s.

Walt Disney imagined a place where children and adults could meet their favourite Disney characters, while enjoying a whole day of fun activities in a place where everything reminded them of their childhood.

Beyond the decor replicating his studio’s biggest hits, Walt Disney’s ambition was to recreate the place he most cherished: Marceline, a small Missouri town where he spent five years as a child.

The memories he created from that time, filled with farm animals and typical daily activities of an early 20th century mid-western American town, inspired his parks’ Main Street.

Over the years, rumours have claimed that Walt Disney’s unconventional idea was rejected by over 300 investors – but that he persevered and pushed for his $17 million family-friendly dream theme park to be born.

The first Disneyland Park opened in 1955 in California. Back then, a ticket cost $1 (roughly $11 or €10 today) for adults and $0.50 for children, but that only entailed the park’s entrance. Each of the 35 rides cost an additional $0.25 for adults, $0.10 for kids.

It was an immediate success, with the one million visitors threshold reached not even two months after the park’s opening.

The one and a half hour opening ceremony was broadcast live on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in the United States, which at the time was the longest live programme to ever have aired.

Four decades later, The Walt Disney Company would acquire ABC, adding it to the impressive list of entities owned.

From a family-owned animated films studio to a massive international conglomerate

Walt Disney died from lung cancer in 1966, meaning The Walt Disney Company has spent more years without than with him during its 100 years of existence.

His brother Roy Disney, who had been Walt’s business partner since the early hours of the company, took over. Like his brother, Roy was a businessman – but he didn’t share Walt’s creative mind.

Roy Disney continued his late brother’s work, including plans to open the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. However, Walt’s absence was soon felt in the creative department.

Roy Disney took on a different approach, wishing to increase the production of live-action movies, such as The Million Dollar Duck or Scandalous John, whose legacy speaks for itself.

Roy Disney died in 1971, just two months after the opening of Florida’s Disney World. Since then, The Walt Disney Company has never again been led by a member of the Disney family.

The entertainment giant it has since grown into was worth $203.63 billion in 2022 (€191.6 million). Disney theme parks have opened in four additional locations: Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The Walt Disney Company has bought several well-known studios, meaning a diverse set of previously separate iconic series and household names now fall under the Disney banner.

It purchased Lucasfilm, known for the Star Wars saga; Marvel Studios, renowned for its superhero films; and Twentieth Century Home Entertainment (formerly Twentieth Century Fox), the home of the US’s most famous family: The Simpsons.

It also acquired many other companies from the news and entertainment industry, such as the American sports cable channel ESPN and National Geographic.

The company owns cruise lines, real estate companies, holiday resorts and many more. In short, The Walt Disney Company has grown into a gigantic international conglomerate, a far-cry from the tight-knit firm that the father of Mickey, Donald and Goofy first envisaged a century ago.

What would he think of it if he could see it today?

“When you look back at those years before his death in 1966, it was very much a family company, a family business. Nowadays, it’s so big and it’s so vast. But I think overall, he would probably be happy,” said Aaron H Goldberg.

According to Louise Krasniewicz, while Disney may have exploded in size compared to when Walt was at the reins, places such as the Disneyland parks still carry that family-oriented spirit from the early years of the company. And it’s not all:

“The main thing that Walt introduced to media productions was the idea of marketing-related merchandise,” she said. “So I think he would be very pleased about that aspect of the company today.”

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How David and Victoria turned their family into ‘Brand Beckham’

Post By World Celebrities, family, footballer, Pop music

The former top-football player and pop star combined their fame, forging it into a vast business empire over the years.

By now, you’ve probably either seen or heard of the Netflix documentary “Beckham”, released earlier this week.

Over four episodes, David Beckham and many of his relatives talk the viewers through his football career. A decade after he retired, the ex-football star is still very much a star – and so is his wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.

The Beckhams have been described as a power couple, as they are part of this very select elite of celebrity pairings that most people know – like Jay-Z and Beyonce, or as they once were, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

As well as being famous in their own right, the likes of these couples are also so well known for coming together to turn their relationship into a worldwide business brand.

In spite of the Beckhams’ disputable initial fashion tastes of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the unknown-kids-turned-celebrities established a solid business.

According to the Sunday Times, the celebrity couple’s net worth is estimated to be close to €500 million.

How did they reach such status?

The obvious answer would be to say that both were individually famous before becoming an item.

Victoria Beckham, then Adams, was a member of 90’s girls band the Spice Girls. David Beckham was Manchester United’s rising star.

But it takes more than two celebrities getting married for their family to become household’s names.

For David Beckham, his sports career took off at a moment when footballers were progressively becoming celebrities. It may seem normal nowadays when you think about the likes of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, but it was not so prominent in the 1990’s.

The public was progressively becoming used to players promoting face creams, sneakers or mobile phone plans. That’s exactly what David Beckham did: his image was not just associated with Manchester United or England’s games anymore: People saw him in magazines, on TV, and soon enough, on the internet.

Meanwhile, Victoria Beckham was a world-famous British pop star.

“Posh”, as she was called thanks to her alias as “Posh Spice” while a member of the Spice Girls, stayed in the spotlight after the band fell apart. As the wife of the man who was probably, at the time, world’s most famous football player, the paparazzi never let her out of their sight.

Victoria Beckham continued appearing on the frontpage of magazines – and soon, she would launch her own fashion business.

Capitalising on their notoriety

Their wedding is a good example of how they monetised their young family. The press talked about the event as the show business event of the year. The bride and groom received £1 million from a British magazine to get exclusive hold of the pictures (over €2 million adjusted to today’s inflation).

In the recent Netflix documentary, the couple shares how getting constant media attention could be extremely stressful for their family – especially with young children.

At the same time, that very media attention helped them build their brand, and turn their name into a lucrative business.

In “Beckham”, David states: “I knew my career was going to end at some point, and I wanted to have a career after football.” And that’s exactly what he did.

After sponsoring Pepsi, H&M and other brands, David Beckham decided to create his own. He sells perfumes, eyewear, and runs several investment companies.

Following a lucrative football career entailing multi-million-pound contracts (or euros, or dollars, depending where he played), David Beckham invested in different companies, including owning an unknown percentage of the US’s Major Soccer League (MSL) and becoming a 10-year ambassador for Qatar, starting from the 2022 World Cup.

He and his wife Victoria also co-own companies, such as Beckham Brand Holdings Limited, that covers David’s brands and Victoria’s fashion business. In the latest accounts filed, the couple declared a profit of over €22 million for the year 2021.

Victoria went through a very similar path. After being a model for brands such as Dolce & Gabbana and making fashion magazine front pages regularly, she launched her own fashion lines.

After a first denim collection in 2006, under the brand dVb (which stands for David and Victoria Beckham), she quickly moved to the Victoria Beckham label and introduced her first fashion line at New York Fashion Week in 2008.

To say that she was first met with scepticism would be an understatement. The former pop-star was not initially taken seriously in elite fashion circles.

However, Beckham proved herself worthy of the world’s luxury brands and runways. Vogue described her as “one of the most unexpectedly serious fashion contenders in recent memory.”

Family turned into a brand

Victoria and David Beckham grew their businesses and family while the internet and social networks were actively developing.

Just like the world’s most famous family of celebrities, the Kardashian-Jenners, the power couple understood the importance of exploiting their family image to boost their brands.

Even in the late 1990’s, David enjoyed the image of a family man who didn’t hesitate to miss a training session with Manchester United to take care of his sick infant son.

In interviews and magazines over the years, both Beckhams enthusiastically shared details about their parenting styles and private family life, once again reaching an audience beyond their respective fields.

The couple doesn’t hesitate to share private pictures on their Instagram profiles, captivating their tens of millions of followers with not just what they have to sell, but who they are.

Their four children, Brooklyn, Cruz, Romeo and Harper Beckham, aged between 24 and 12 years old, are walking in their parents’ footsteps.

Last year, Brooklyn, the Beckhams’ eldest, married American heiress Nicola Peltz. The wedding attracted media attention just like his parents’ before him, and the press battled to obtain the picture rights to the event that is rumoured to have cost over €3.5 million.

It appears the Beckham business empire may yet have many years ahead of it.

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How have social attitudes changed in the UK over the last 40 years?

Post By World family, sexuality, United Kingdom, Welfare State

Brits today think about many things differently than they did in the 1980s, but some views remain deeply entrenched.

The 40th incarnation of the British Social Attitudes survey was published on Thursday.

Authored by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), it highlights how social, political and moral thinking has changed in Britain since the 1980s.

Here are some of its main findings.

Society is much more liberal

Attitudes towards many sexual and family issues have become strikingly liberal.

In 1983, 50% of those surveyed said same-sex relationships were “always wrong”; now just 9% think so.

Opinions on abortion have changed markedly, too. Today 76% say a woman should be legally allowed a termination if she does not want the child, up from 37% in 1983.

“The vast social changes that Britain has witnessed over the last 40 years have been accompanied by a near-revolution in attitudes towards many social and moral issues, including sexuality,” said Senior Research Fellow Sir John Curtice in comments published on NatCen’s website.

Yet some things buck this liberal trend, such as attitudes towards transgender people.

Only 30% of Brits think someone should be able to change their sex if they want – a drop from 53% in 2019.

That sudden decline comes with discrimination and violence against the transgender community on the rise in Britain. According to the LGBT+ charity Stonewall, two in five trans people have experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.

An upsurge in support for state action

Views about the role of the state appear to be shifting.

Nearly twice as many Brits (55%) currently believe the state should increase taxes and spend more on health, education and social benefits compared to the 1980s (32%).

“The pandemic and the cost of living crisis seem to have left the public rather more inclined than at some points in the past to look to government to solve the problems they and the country face,” said Curtice.

However, the independent researchers at NatCen said attitudes towards state action followed “a cyclical pattern” over the decades.

In 1998, 63% of people wanted higher taxes and spending, but by 2010 it had fallen back to just 31%.

At the same time, the proportion of people who say it is the government’s responsibility to keep prices under control now stands at 68%.

Millions in Britain have had to cut down or skip meals amid a savage cost of living crisis, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported in June.

It attributed this trend to rampant food price inflation and poor state support which have forced 7 million households to make “impossible choices” between food, heating or basic toiletries.

Greater acceptance of non-traditional families

Brits are seemingly now more accepting of family structures beyond the traditional nuclear arrangement.

Half of those surveyed agree one parent can bring up a child just as well as two parents – that’s compared to 35% who said so in 1994.

Meanwhile, only 24% of Brits believe that people who want children should get married, down from 70% in 1989.

These attitudes have shifted as Britain has seen an increase in the number of non-traditional families.

While data on so-called “sexual minority families” is limited, Britain’s Office for National Statistics recorded 212,000 same-sex families in the UK in 2019, a 40% rise since 2015.

Several factors are behind this, including more progressive laws and advances in fertility treatments.

Yoyoing attitudes towards welfare poverty

The survey found that British people have spates of being more or less generously disposed towards those living in poverty.

During the 2000s, the era of Tony Blair’s centrist New Labour, attitudes towards welfare became less generous – but they have since swung back again.

In 1989, 61% of those surveyed by NatCen thought the “government should spend more on welfare benefits for the poor, even if it leads to higher taxes”. That figure fell to just 27% in 2009, but now stands at 37%.

“Although they have fluctuated up and down in response to changing political and economic circumstances, attitudes towards inequality and the economic role of the state are still not that different from those of forty years ago,” said Curtice.

“The debate about these subjects still has a familiar ring to it.”

Class still matters

This year’s report showed Brits were just as likely to see themselves as middle- or working-class as they were 40 years ago.

They also still strongly believe that a person’s economic and cultural wealth shapes their future.

In the latest survey, as many as 77% say that social class affects someone’s opportunities in Britain “a great deal” or “quite a lot”. This is slightly higher than the 70% who thought as much in 1983 and the 66% who did so in 1985.

Brits are also significantly less likely than they have been to see a chance of climbing up the ladder.

One-third of those surveyed now think it is very difficult to move from one class to another – almost double the proportion (17%) who said this in 2005.

Social mobility in Britain has decreased since the Conservative government came to power in 2010.

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies from September found there has been a striking breakdown in social mobility, with people growing up in the north of England and those from an ethnic minority background finding it a lot harder than others to become wealthier.

Young voters lean left

The survey also explored the relationship between age and voting patterns.

In 2022, centre-left Labour was the most popular political party among under 35s, whereas the Conservatives are favoured by those aged above 55.

This age gap, which has doubled in size since 2015, barely existed in the 1980s, wrote NatCen.

However, though Labour is historically associated with more state intervention, younger people are in fact less likely than older people to say taxation and spending on “health, education and social benefits” should be increased.

In the latest survey, only 43% of those aged under 35 support that view, compared with 67% of those aged 55 and over.

Young people may have “become aware of how, in an ageing society, public spending has become increasingly focused on the needs of the old – illustrated most vividly perhaps by the increasing cost of university tuition while old age pensions have been treated generously,” said Curtice.

“As a result, their concern about inequality is not matched by greater support for more spending.”

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