Steam

Poop-Poop!

Now, there was 

only one problem with 

Ratty's cure for Motormania... 

it didn't work.

You see, Toad was 

far too clever 

and, at the moment, 

completely mad.

We're Merrily On Our Way - 

Wind and the Willows

It seems that some creatures 

have the capacity to 

fill spaces in you, you 

never knew were empty. 


TROI: 

I had a Betazoid kitten once —

My mother and the cat reacted 

badly to one another. 


Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

The Headless Horseman

PICARD: 

Sure you don't want to try? It's very relaxing. 

We can find you something that will be quiet and gentle. 


TROI: 

No, I prefer a mode of transportation 

that doesn't have a mind of its own. 


PICARD: 

Strange. I would expect Betazoids 

to be outstanding animal trainers. 


TROI: 

We become too involved in the thoughts and 

shifting passions of the beast. We lose our way 

and get swept up in emotion. 


PICARD: 

I should think the shifting passions of 

this beast would be far more terrifying. 

Walt had talked of having a big family of his own for years. He wanted 10 children, he would tell his sister, and he would spoil them all. Lillian had her doubts about raising any number of children, especially when she considered the office hours Walt kept. But he talked her into it -- Roy and Edna had had their first child, already -- and by the spring of 1931, Lillian was pregnant. Walt was giddy. He was already making plans for a bigger house to accommodate the new addition.

Then Lillian miscarried. Disney waved off the well-wishers and sympathizers. He threw himself back into his work. He insisted he was fine. He was not.

Walt Disney (archival audio): In 1931 I had a hell of a breakdown. I went all to pieces. It was just pound, pound, pound. And it was costs. My costs were going up. I was always way over whatever they figured the pictures would bring in. And I cracked up. I just got very irritable. I got to the point that I couldn't talk on the telephone. I'd begin to cry, and the least little thing, I'd just go that way.

Narrator: In October 1931, Walt Disney took his doctor's advice and escaped on the first real vacation of his life. He and Lillian went across the country to Washington, D.C., then to Key West, and on to a week's stay in Cuba. They rode a steamship through the Panama Canal on the way back to Los Angeles.

Once home, Disney told people that the breakdown had been a godsend. Life was sweet, he said, and there was more to it than work. He dove into a new exercise regimen, went with Lillian on long horseback rides, learned to play polo, and joined a league.

Neal Gabler, Biographer: Walt comes back from his nervous breakdown and he does change his lifestyle. But does Walt Disney withdraw? Does he delegate? Does he do the things that one might have expected him to do? No, he does not.

Narrator: Disney had never been shy about spending money on his vision, even when the studio was cash poor. He had already used up his earliest Mickey profits in the creation of a new series of cartoon shorts called Silly Symphonies.

Eric Smoodin, Film Historian: The Silly Symphonies were much more about animation as art. So The Skeleton Dance and others like them were understood as these wonderful almost avant-garde films that merged music and dance, and made characters out of nature and also other kinds of inanimate things in ways that people hadn't really seen before.

Narrator: Silly Symphonies raised Walt to near mythic status among cartoonists and animators. Artists from all over the country packed their bags and headed for California, just for the chance to work with the great Walt Disney. The Hyperion staff grew to nearly 200. Men ruled the studio, as they did all studios in the 1930s; the women who came to work at Disney were relegated to the low-wage ink-and-paint department. In the middle of the Great Depression, few complained about a steady job with steady pay.

Sarah Nilsen, Film Historian: It becomes like the studio to work at. And all of those animators just thrive because Disney sets it up as a legitimate profession. "Here I step in. I will recognise your talent. I will pay you well."

Robert Givens, Animator: It was like a renaissance to us, you know. It was a flowering of the animation industry. It'd never been done before. This was fine art, you know, not just dumb cartoons.

Narrator: Disney's new series was the test ground for innovation, with firsts in sound technique, color and multi-plane camera technology, which produced a three-dimensional depth never before seen in animation.

Neal Gabler, Biographer: Walt intended the studio to be the place where you created great art. That was so instrumental to Walt's understanding of the studio. And that became, in many ways, the most powerful element in how he dealt with his workers. They wanted to produce great things. He made them want to produce great things.

Tom Sito, Animator: He was very jovial. He was very informal. He's the one who first insisted on only being referred to by his first name.

Ruthie Tompson, Ink and Paint Artist: Boss? He wasn't boss. He was a friend. And everybody called him Walt. If they didn't call him Walt, that was the end of that one.

Robert Givens, Animator: We used to play volleyball at noon, over there across the street in the annex. And Walt used to come over there and watch us, you know. He used to say, "Don't play too rough," he'd say. And he wanted us to be careful, not hurt our hands, our drawing hand, particularly. And we loved to win, because then he'd applaud. But he was the big daddy there. He didn't miss anything.

Narrator: Disney offered drawing classes at the studio, and brought in professors from the Chouinard Art Institute to teach them. He invited experts to lecture on Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, the Mexican Muralists.

Don Hahn, Animator: He was always very much about not only hiring the artists, but providing a safe place for them to do their job. And by "safe," I mean a place to make mistakes, and a place to fail, and a place to take criticism without the fear of being fired, and a place to be able to learn.

Ron Suskind, Writer: He wanted a family, a community, a place. "I can actually create a little world, bordered, mine, just what I need it to be. Inhabited by all these people. A community marked 'Disney.'"

Narrator: Walt Disney, not yet 35, appeared to be in possession of the magic beans; his studio was a Technicolor rainbow in the middle of the pale, gray Depression-era America. His home life was thriving too: Lillian had given birth to a daughter, Diane, and the Disneys would soon adopt a second daughter, Sharon. But Disney wasn't satisfied. He needed a "new adventure," he would say. "A kick in the pants to jar loose some inspiration and enthusiasm."

Disney's employees were still telling the story decades later: One evening in 1934, Walt sent his entire staff out for an early dinner, but told them to hurry back to the Hyperion soundstage for an important company meeting. The room was buzzing by the time Walt took the stage.

Neal Gabler, Biographer: Disney is lit on the sound stage, and he then proceeds to act out -- alone, just him, a one-man show -- the story of Snow White.

Steven Watts, Historian: What he did was to go through the whole movie as he saw it, acting out all of the parts, impersonating all of the characters, going through all the emotions, all the ups and downs -- the queen, the princess, the seven dwarves, even the animals.

Narrator: What Disney was proposing had never been done, never even been tried: a feature-length, story-driven cartoon.

Steven Watts, Historian: Roy Disney was pretty skeptical about all of this. And the more he thought about it, actually, the more convinced he became that this could be a disaster for the studio because he was afraid that, it wouldn't sell, that people wouldn't see it, and it would drag the studio down into bankruptcy. And Roy dug in his heels.

Narrator: Walt would not let it go. He was convinced this century-old Brother's Grimm fairy tale about a virtuous princess chased into a deep, dark forest by her hateful stepmother was a can't-miss proposition.

Neal Gabler, Biographer: He must have told that story after that first night, you know, a thousand times. People would always say he'd collar them in the hallway and tell the story of Snow White again. He'd have to repeat it again and again and again, to keep them energized, to keep himself energized, and to review the film in his head so that it was always rolling. This was obsession.

Narrator: Walt's excitement was catching. "We were just carried away," remembered one animator. "I would've climbed a mountain full of wildcats to do everything I could to make Snow White."

Roy grudgingly came around and managed to shake the money free from their longtime lender, Bank of America. But he warned his brother the bankers were very nervous about this gamble, and they expected Walt to stay on schedule and within the agreed-upon budget. The schedule, the budget, the company's debt were secondary considerations to Walt, who was preoccupied with a single overriding problem: how to translate his idea to the big screen. Snow White would have to captivate its audience in a way no cartoon ever had before.

Neal Gabler, Biographer: In the shorter cartoons, you can make people laugh. And the gag is the basic component of these things. You get people to laugh. But Walt Disney now is asking another question : 

“Can you make people CRY? 

Can you make people cry over a DRAWING?”