#158 Walt Disney (Disneyland)

What I learned from reading Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. ---- [1:29] In Disney's Land, popular historian Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker's precision, an artist's conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.  [4:13]  When he reached middle age it seemed that we were going to witness an all too familiar process—the conversion of the tired artist into the tired businessman. When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney. We were quite wrong. He had, instead, created his masterpiece.  [4:58] Walt Disney was an obsessive with soul in the game.  [5:26] Disney’s father didn’t believe children should have toys.  [14:50] One small enterprise did please him, though, and it had little to do with the art he had done so much to invent and of which he was the undisputed master.  [15:09] He was dismayed to find the man whose work he had long admired “seemed totally uninterested in movies and seemed wholly, almost weirdly concerned with the building of a miniature railroad engine and a string of cars. All of his zest for invention, for creative fantasies, seemed to be going into this plaything.”  [17:15] Disney on his nervous breakdown: “I had a hell of a breakdown. I went to pieces. I kept expecting more from the artists and when they let me down, I got worried. Costs were going up and it was always way over what they figured the picture would bring in. I just got very irritable. I got to a point that it couldn't talk on the telephone. I would begin to cry.” [17:49] The money wasn't coming in. His last successful feature, Bambi, was six years in the past.  [22:19] Why would yo