Words From Walt
Page 7 of 20
December 12
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life. |
For a person who never really excelled as a student and who only completed one year of high school, the fact that Walt Disney was such an advocate of reading and a champion of books is a testament to the genius that he really was. Through the years, Walt would become an avid reader, finding source material for his motion pictures, purveying scripts and gleaning knowledge of such subjects as urban planning.
Walt hoped that after watching one of his productions based on classic stories and fairy tales, that people would want to go home and read the originals. He felt that his motion pictures would augment the stories rather than supplant them. He thought that his movies and television programs would stimulate reading, in children particularly.
Walt owed much of his success to books. Nearly every movie the Disney Studio produced had its roots in literature. Walt loved a good story and had an understanding of how a story worked. He understood the visual power that a good book could create in the mind's eye and had an uncanny knack of developing the story for the screen. Walt's personal power of storytelling allowed him to take the best parts of the story and plus it with music and pictures.
When asked if Walt would ever read bedtime stories to his children, daughter Diane responded that he was more interested in what she and her sister Sharon were reading. The Mary Poppins stories were particular favorites and Walt, convinced that they would make the perfect motion picture, negotiated with author P.L. Travers for many years for the film rights to her tales. He found riches in bringing Mary Poppins to the screen as the film was a critical and commercial success, earning the Disney film five Academy Awards.
Besides providing Walt with source material for his motion pictures, books influenced Disney's life in other ways. His quest for knowledge often found his nose buried in a book. Early in his career, Walt discovered a book on animation at the Kansas City library, which described the basic methods of making inanimate drawings come to life through stop-motion photography. That book opened a new world to Walt and convinced him to pursue a career in animation as opposed to becoming a cartoonist for the newspaper.
As time has passed, the visual mediums of motion pictures and television have seemingly dislodged reading for pleasure. The phrase, "I didn't read the book but I saw the movie" is a lexicon of today's society. But with the success of the recently released Harry Potter film and the anticipation of success for the Lord of the Rings series, the expectation is that viewers will once again turn to the original novels to supplement the movies. As reading becomes more in vogue, people will discover the treasure that Walt Disney described in books long ago.
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-- Matthew Walker
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