Acquired
03:38:54 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:38:54] S1: Roy must have been so happy on that day. And Walt was already scheming how to blow some more money. Yes. [03:39:04] S0: So one thing we foreshadowed is is Sleeping Beauty. We talked about Sleeping Beauty Castle. You might be wondering what ended up happening with the film. This, like many of the other films we talked about, did not recoup costs. I mean, since then, it's done phenomenally well and made probably hundreds of millions of dollars in cumulative profit for Disney, but did not pay back at the box office. [03:39:26] S1: Mhmm. Part of that was it had a really high production cost. Right? After all the success of Disneyland and all the ballyhooing about the flywheel and everything in the Wall Street Journal article. I mean, [03:39:37] S0: they went building around it. [03:39:39] S1: Whole hog on this one. [03:39:40] S0: Yeah. They spent $6,000,000 making it. It was the most expensive to produce to date. Yep. But, I mean, Walt was pretty distracted with Disneyland, so he wasn't that kind of authoritative voice to help the team find the great story in there. But, yeah, if if it wasn't such an extravagantly detailed animation piece, then it probably would have been profitable. [03:39:59] S1: And, hey, given the company's business model, they're happy to play the long game. Right.
03:39:59 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:39:59] S1: And, hey, given the company's business model, they're happy to play the long game. Right. [03:40:03] S0: So the weird thing is the financial blip that happens in this year 1959. Everything is true about this really stable platform. But if you look at that year, the financial year 1960, the company actually shows a loss. Like, they flipped briefly from looking increasingly profitable to suddenly net income negative because Sleeping Beauty had that hole. Mhmm. ABC canceled Zorro and Mickey Mouse Club, which were both TV shows that Disney was making, which was related to Walt Disney Productions blowing up the Disneyland deal and saying, you guys are kinda difficult to work with now. We wanna buy you out of Disneyland. And ABC is like, alright. Then we're gonna stop paying you huge sums for your TV shows and giving you all this free marketing. So that relationship ended there, at least for [03:40:50] S1: For the moment. ABC would come back in the Yes. [03:40:54] S0: But the takeaway is the company is actually financially stable now. This is okay. [03:40:58] S1: Yeah. The last time that Walt and the company bet big on investing in production ahead of revenues was 1940 with the move to Burbank and having Pinocchio and Fantasia and Bambi in production all at once. [03:41:11] S0: Any one of those almost killed the company on their own. [03:41:13] S1: Yeah. Now though, post Disneyland, they've got this stable base that they can take these big swings.
03:41:13 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:41:13] S1: Yeah. Now though, post Disneyland, they've got this stable base that they can take these big swings. [03:41:19] S0: Yeah. Merchant licensing taught them to crawl, and then they they walked and ran with Disneyland in terms of that that stable platform. Just to illustrate this bounce back point, here's the trend. 1957, they do 3,600,000 in net income, then the next year, 3.9, then the next year, 3.4, then, ah, 1960 happens. That perfect storm of badness, $1,300,000 loss. Then they bop right back. 1961, 4.5, then 05/2002, then 06/2005, then '7, then '11, then '12. I mean, they just stability. Mhmm. Mhmm. [03:41:54] S1: And then Walt decided that it was too stable, and he needed to blow it all up again. [03:42:04] S0: Or at least he wanted to. [03:42:06] S1: So he starts wondering, how can I bet it all again? [03:42:10] S0: And in a bigger way. Right? Is Disneyland like, is is a theme park gonna really be my legacy? Are these animated films really gonna be my legacy? I shouldn't I do something actually meaningful to the world? [03:42:21] S1: Yes. I mean, this this idea of a physical Disney location worked really well. But what if we don't stop at an amusement park? What if the next time we build an entire city? Maybe like, an experimental prototype community of tomorrow. You know, Epcot. [03:42:48] S0: And if you think you know what we're talking about because you've been to Epcot, that's not it. [03:42:53] S1: Not what we're talking about.
03:42:53 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:42:53] S1: Not what we're talking about. [03:42:54] S0: That's a theme park named Epcot, but Walt had this insane, insane vision that never got built but got pretty far along in the process for, again, a fever dream, not just of a place that you go for a day, but a place where you live and you work and you are transported in futuristic transport mechanisms. And all the most innovative companies locate their innovation centers all in in one place together. And there's this beautiful tower in the center of it. I mean, this is the ideal future. [03:43:35] S1: So this was Walt's final project, the Florida project that never got built, as you say. And I think it all kinda stems back to Burbank and that brief moment before the strike. When the studio at Burbank really was this utopian physical place that was the perfect marriage of art and commerce, I really think that that's what Walt always wanted to realize in the world. And now after the success of Disneyland, his ambition is restocked, and he wants to build it in this city. [03:44:19] S0: To my mind, the most interesting part about this is how far it got.
03:44:19 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:44:19] S0: To my mind, the most interesting part about this is how far it got. [03:44:23] S1: Yes. Yes. Yes. So the way that Walt starts working towards realizing this vision is the nineteen sixty four World's Fair in New York. So Walt gets this great idea leading up to the fair that Disney, on the success that they have at Disneyland, can partner with other big American companies and institutions to create Disney sponsored pavilions and exhibitions at the fair that they can then transfer into Disneyland. But even more than that, the New York World's Fair can serve as this sort of undercover test bed for this big idea of an East Coast City that will be a partnership between American industry, Disney, and the public. So the four exhibitions that they create for the nineteen sixty four World's Fair, many of which should probably sound familiar to you. It's a small world sponsored by Pepsi and UNICEF. [03:45:29] S0: Which is actually designed by Mary Blair, who's this famous designer. She brought modernism to Disney. She's the one that basically did all the concept art for Alice in Wonderland, which is why it looks the way that it does. She's kinda responsible for that aesthetic, and she was one of the original team members of Imagineers that came over from Wed, and I believe the first female Imagineer.
03:45:29 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:45:29] S0: Which is actually designed by Mary Blair, who's this famous designer. She brought modernism to Disney. She's the one that basically did all the concept art for Alice in Wonderland, which is why it looks the way that it does. She's kinda responsible for that aesthetic, and she was one of the original team members of Imagineers that came over from Wed, and I believe the first female Imagineer. [03:45:53] S1: That's right. That's right. And then she's the one who does small world. Yep. By far, the most successful pavilion at the fair that makes its way to Disneyland. So that's one. Two, the Carousel of Progress sponsored by General Electric. Three, the Magic Skyway, sponsored by Ford. And then four, great moments with mister Lincoln, sponsored by the state of Illinois. And that's the last one of which catch that. Is how Disney Imagineering develops audio animatronics Yep. For Abraham Lincoln. [03:46:24] S0: Yes. This whole thing is this amazing test bed for audio animatronics, which Disney kinda invents and then popularizes in Disneyland and then in Disney World. [03:46:33] S1: Yeah. And because it's Disney and part of Disneyland, we think, oh, yeah. Audio animatronics, like Disneyland. Like, these are robots Right. That Disney Imagineering is inventing in the late fifties, early sixties. [03:46:46] S0: Well, David, you you and I have had the privilege of being at some pretty cool robotics conferences, and you meet these, like, PhD researchers who are sort of in and out of Disney. Like, that is still where a lot of cutting edge robotics happens.