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It's always interesting when, in attempting to verify a story we've heard, we come across another version of the same story with a completely different ending: Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1996] That's the case here, as Charles Shows, a scriptwriter and producer-director with the Disney Studio in the 1950s and 1960s, related in his 1980 book about his experiences working for Walt Disney: We've also come across yet another version of this anecdote, one set at a birthday party thrown for Walt by studio employees, which allegedly included the showing of a film (drawn by a few animators) depicting various Disney characters in intimate activities. Walt supposedly laughed along with everyone else, calmly asked who had put together the film, and fired the parties responsible for it. This appears to be another one of those anecdotes that plenty of former Disney employees have heard, told to them as a true story by other Disney employees, yet nobody seems to have been there when it happened, or to know anyone who was. (That former studio staffer Charles Shows recounted this tale in his book does little to establish its veracity: all throughout the book he presents first-person accounts of incidents he clearly did not witness, but only heard about from others.) It remains one of the many stories that can (for now) neither be proved nor definitively ruled out. This anecdote sounds to us like the kind of tale about which one might say, If it isn't true, it should be, because it's a legend that so neatly encapsulates several stereotypes associated with larger-than-life figure of Walt Disney: How true are these stereotypes? Although Walt Disney certainly pioneered some technological advances in his films and theme parks, he achieved his tremendous success in the entertainment field not because he possessed preternatural abilities, but because he was a very good judge of what his audience wanted, he was a superb story-teller, and he was consistently willing to take risks to pursue his vision. He was, like most everyone, a product of his time and place (i.e., a turn-of-the-century midwestern farm boy), and his attitudes were formed accordingly — he allegedly was so offended by his employees' sexual frolicking at a weekend resort bash thrown to celebrate the completion of Snow White that he packed up and left early, yet he also reportedly had no qualms about discussing bodily functions in front of his staffers. And while those who worked for him noted that he could be petulant, irascible, and demanding at times, they noted that he could also be kind, generous, and patient. In short, Walt Disney was pretty much an ordinary human being, despite what the legends (true or not) generated by his fame and success might suggest.
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