Secret Hiding Place
Inept at almost everything, Little Elias was ridiculed and scorned by his father virtually every day. His only place to hide was in the secret world of his mind – a place of imaginary friends too wonderful to describe.
During the summer of 1918, 16 year-old Elias lied about his age to become a Red Cross ambulance driver in France near the end of World War I. But the ambulance of Elias wasn't quite like the others. His was covered with drawings of the imaginary friends that had been with him in his childhood. That year, when Elias wasn't playing poker, smoking or writing letters, he and another young man painted helmets with camouflage colors, banged them up to look battle-scarred, and sold them to Americans in search of souvenirs. To Elias' way of thinking, he was only helping these souvenir seekers enter the world of myth and adventure they sought.
After the war, Elias raised $15,000 from investors to launch Laugh-O-gram incorporated. When he won a contract to draw a series of fairy-tale cartoons for $11,100, Elias accepted a down payment of a mere $100 and enthusiastically dove into the assignment. Six months later the client claimed bankruptcy and Elias never saw another cent.
Despite his frantic efforts to bring in money, Elias couldn't pay his rent so he moved into the Laugh-O-gram office. His workers soon left him and he had hardly enough money left to buy food. When he received $500 for producing a dental hygiene film, he poured it into a last-ditch effort called “Alice's Wonderland.” But before it could be completed, Elias had to declare bankruptcy. Just as Job sat in the ashes and cried out to his God, Elias sat among the shards of a thousand broken dreams.
But Elias never quit dreaming. On December 21, 1937, the biggest movie stars of the day gathered to see the premiere of his new film. Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, Jack Benny, Shirley Temple, and George Burns were all there. As one attendee would later recall, “It was at the climax of the film, when Snow White is presumed to be dead and she's laid out on the slab… Here was a cartoon, and the audience was crying. The biggest stars, you name them, were all wiping their eyes.”
During his lifetime, Walter Elias Disney, along with members of his staff, would receive more than 950 honors and citations from every nation in the world, including 48 Academy Awards and seven Emmys as well as honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, UCLA and the University of Southern California. He would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, France's Legion of Honor – Thailand's Order of the Crown – Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross – Mexico's Order of the Aztec Eagle.
Sometimes it's good to have a secret hiding place in your mind.
Roy H. Williams
PS – If you can be in Austin this weekend for the Wizard Academy reunion at the Four Seasons, we'd love to see you there. We just received confirmation from Edwards Bros. that advance copies of my new book, Destinae, are scheduled to arrive on Friday. Everyone who attends will receive one as my gift. We're going to have a great time. For more info contact Corrine Taylor at 800-425-4769 or emailCorrine@wizardacademy.org – RHW