History- The Walt Disney Co. and where it is today

[aprilshowers93]

I would like to know some things about how the corp. got started, what happened when walt passed away, eisner, the disney war, the future of the company with Iger, and most of all, what is the family doing today? Is there a possibility someone in the Disney family will become greatly involved again?

If you know a lot about this, please, feel free to write a very long post. I'm interested to here it.

[positive0negative]

(yay, this is my first post.)

I was actually looking for some of that information too. I am just finishing up reading "Walt Disney: An American Original" by Bob Thomas, which (as far as I know) is a pretty great book about Walt's life and getting the company started.
I've also read "Work in Progress" by Michael Eisner. I read it once before, and I didn't realize people had negative feelings about him! When I was growing up in the 90s, he was the face of the company and I always liked him.
On the other hand, people say a lot of negative things about Walt too. From the book, it does seem like he had a really strong personality and yeah, he could be a grumpy old man, but that's okay. He was brilliant. No one's perfect.
ANYWAY. So, I don't have a lot of answers because I'm digging for information too, but I hope that helped a little.

[magicofdisney]

I just watched "Walt Disney Treasures: Tomorrowland" (Disc 2). It was completely fascinating, seeing Walt Disney's original vision for EPCOT. It was so sad to think he died just two months after completing his sales pitch video. He was such a visionary. I can only imagine how incredible EPCOT would be right now had he been able to see it through. His brother Roy died about 3 mos after WDW opened in 1971. I believe his son, Roy is still with the company, but I don't know what role he plays or how much influence he possess. If you google Disney Family Museum, you get a website on Disney.com with a lot of information. It was a very interesting read.

[snifflesmcg]

Just a thought, wouldn't it be great to have a full length movie on the life of Walt Disney. It would be done as a film biography (same such as Howard Stern's "Private Parts, "Ray", Johnny Cash's "I walk the Line" or "Patch Adams). Just last week Lifetime had on a 4 hour movie about Judy Garland (sadly, I missed the first hour and a half). People are fasinated by life stories (I certainly am!).

OR

Make and release an entire "Disney legacy" documentary about Walt and the company itself. Either way, I'd be at the movie theatre or video store to see those.

[LandFan]

Walt Disney by Neil Gabler came out recently and DH got it for me for Xmas. It was an incredibly thorough book! Very well researched and a great book for any avid Disney fan. I found it to be almost hard (sad) to read - he was such a creative genius and yet, so human (had so many flaws). Poor Roy - his job was always to find the money - Walt didn't care where he got it from or how he did it either. Just so there was $$ when Walt needed it.

I got to the end of it and almost cried. It really was an amazing book but it put everything into truly realistic terms. Life was always a struggle for them.

Anyway, I recommend it!!