Authors: Leslie Le Mon
For most of the 1980’s I was consumed by college studies and personal life, and
Disney
wasn’t on my radar at all – which wasn’t bad timing, since that wasn’t exactly a golden age of
Disney
film or television.
Disney
fortunes were sustained during that time by its thriving theme park division.
Then, i
n 1989,
Disney
animation returned triumphantly with the feature
The Little Mermaid
. With its fresh artistic eye and Broadway-style score and musical numbers,
The Little Mermaid
announced in no uncertain terms that “the mouse” was back to rule animation. Anyone interested in how
Roy E. Disney
,
Michael Eisner
,
Jeffrey Katzenberg
, and the
Disney
animation team gloriously revived the
Disney
animation dynamo should view
Waking Sleeping Beauty
(2010).
Beauty and the Beast
, 1991’s follow up to
The Little Mermaid
, was unquestionably one of the year’s best films, animated
or
live-action. I saw this movie with my aunt—one of those wonderful, über-aunts, like an Auntie Mame—at a local theater in Greenfield, MA.
Beauty and the Beast
’s artistry, inventive production numbers, humor, and moving story resulted in Oscar nominations for
three
of its songs, as well as for Best Music, Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Picture.
It won for Best Music, Original Score and
for the title song
Beauty and the Beast
. Against strong competition (“Bugsy,” “JFK,” “The Prince of Tides,” and “Silence of the Lambs”) it didn’t win Best Picture. That honor went to “Silence of the Lambs” and its portrait of a chilling
human
beast. But although “Silence of the Lambs,” the first horror movie ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, took home the gold,
Beauty and the Beast
had the distinction of being the first animated feature ever nominated in that august category.
Beauty
and the Beast
’s achievements cemented
Disney
’s successful return to feature animation and heralded a new golden age that would begat
Aladdin
(1992),
The Lion King
(1994),
Pocahontas
(1995),
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1996),
Hercules
(1997),
Mulan
(1998) and
Tarzan
(1999). A number of these films were adapted as Broadway musical productions with great success.
In each
of these films the animators pushed the envelope and developed new techniques, such as the
deep canvas
approach that gave
Tarzan
its unique depth, an appropriate advancement for the studio that had originally developed the groundbreaking
multiplane camera
that (starting with the Academy Award-winning short
The Old Mill
) raised audience expectations ever-after for how deep and rich animated landscapes could be.
The 1990’s found me plugged into
Disney
media again, not merely because the animated features were once again brilliantly entertaining and worth the ticket price, but because I was spending so much time with my toddler nephew. He was an avid fan of
Disney
fare like
Fantasia
,
Aladdin
, and
Tim Burton
’s
Nightmare Before Christmas
. With videos and VCRs finally affordable and ubiquitous, my nephew was able to watch his favorite
Disney
films over and over again on videocassette to his heart’s content.
In the new millennium, I had
vicarious brushes with the
Disney Company
. My sister-in-law began a career at
Disney
in the legal and later the licensing departments. My sister worked for a couple of seasons at
Disney
’s beautiful old
El Capitan Theatre
in Hollywood (and can still recite almost every line of
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
which she saw multiple times every day for weeks). She experienced first-hand
Disney
’s stringent expectations of
safety
,
courtesy
,
show
, and
efficiency
at all of its entertainment venues.
El Capitan
workers are held to high standards, tasked with providing theater-goers with a flawless cinema experience.
The new millennium brought me a baby niece, and
, wonderful timing for her, saw a revival of the canonical
Disney Princesses
(
Aurora
,
Cinderella
,
Snow White
, etc.) and the birth of a modern princess phenomenon, as
Disney
told updated
Cinderella
stories best exemplified in the first decade of the new millennium by the
Princess Diaries
series (the films that launched actress
Anne Hathaway
’s career; before she “dreamed a dream” as the tragic Fantine in “Les Miserables,” she ruled
Genovia
).
For boys not captivated by
all of those princess movies and merchandise, there was an out-of-left-field revival of the thrilling pirate movie genre, launched by
Disney
’s 2003 live-action
Pirates of the Caribbean
and continued in the 2006, 2007 and 2011 chapters of the series. (Good news for
Pirates
fans: In January 2013,
Disney
announced that
Pirates 5
, starring
Johnny Depp
, will be released in July 2015.)
For both boys and girls (and their elders) there were increasingly imaginative
Disney-Pixar
films to enjoy. Taking computer-generated story telling to a virtuoso level,
Disney-Pixar
’s success began with
Toy Story
in 1995, but truly became a household brand known for excellence with the 1999 release of
Toy Story 2
. Our family saw
Toy Story 2
at the
El Capitan
. My niece, then an infant, cried and slept through some of the picture, but the rest of us were riveted.
S
ubsequent
Disney-Pixar
triumphs included
Monsters, Inc.
(2001),
Finding Nemo
(2003),
The Incredibles
(2004),
Cars
(2006),
Ratatouille
(2007),
Wall-E
(2008),
Up
(2009),
Toy Story 3
(2010),
Cars 2
(2011),
Brave
(2012), and
Monsters University
(2013). As with all
Disney
successes, the
Disney-Pixar
films are winners because they combine dazzling new technology with warm, human stories.
The new millennium also
saw
Disney
’s television arm, the
Disney Channel
, hit its stride. By the middle of the decade,
Disney
had ushered in a new golden age of children’s television, with its pre-school programming, its pandemonium-inducing
Disney Channel
original movies, and an array of delightful new animated characters like
Phineas and Ferb
, pint-sized
Imagineers
who embody
Disney
’s creative spirit.
Disney
displays an uncanny ability to identify talent, nurture it, and build warm and entertaining shows around pop princes and princesses like
Raven
,
Miley Cyrus
,
Selena Gomez
,
Demi Lovato
, the
Jonas Brothers
,
Ross Lynch
,
China McClain
,
Bridgit Mendler
,
Bella Thorne
, and
Zendaya
, talented youths who strike gold not only with their TV shows but sometimes with CDs and feature theatrical releases.
Why
do some of these stars later grapple with personal demons? That is a topic for another venue, well beyond the scope of this book. What is undeniable is the talent of these young entertainers – and their heart.
Over the years,
Disney Channel
has become destination TV for generations of kids, and shrewdly synergizes
Disney
TV successes with
Disney
’s music, cinema, and online distribution channels.
On Valentine’s Day in February 2011
Disney Junior
launched, first on the
Disney Channel
, then taking over
ABC
’s defunct
SOAPnet Channel
.
Disney Junior
targets children aged 2 – 7 and is comprised of
Playhouse Disney
programs as well as newer fare like
Jake and the Never Land Pirates
and
Sofia the First
. An entire channel devoted to preschoolers builds
Disney
brand loyalty almost from the cradle.
It would not be too broad a statement to
call today’s infant-to-teen demographic a “
Disney
Nation,” so heavily have they been inundated and indoctrinated by
Disney
shows, films, music, websites, products, clothes, characters, themes, and values.
Some critics rue the powerful consumer pull of
Disney
’s products, and try to cast
Disney
as an evil corporate empire.
Missing the forest for the trees, these critics fail to perceive that
almost every company on the planet exists to make a profit from its products; why
Disney
should be exempt from a profit-drive is a deep mystery.
Disney
’s artisans craft fairy tales and never-never lands, and we’re all the better for it, but if
Disney
’s corporate teams suddenly began conducting business in a dreamy-eyed manner, the whole empire would soon be bankrupt.
T
he values typically espoused by
Disney
productions include honesty, hard work, perseverance, loyalty, ambition, creativity, innovation, friendship, fun, leadership, team work, and service—a positive youth manifesto. And
Disney
’s galaxy of young stars, whatever their personal challenges, share positive messages related to topics from environmentalism, to charitable giving, to dealing with bullies.
Because
Disney
and its TV arm (a little entity called
ABC
) are run largely like the old Hollywood studio system, with a great deal of synergy and cross-pollenation, and a tight reign on what information is released to the public, and how it’s released, we’ll probably never know (until they write their memoirs) what
Disney
’s young stars
really
believe, deep down, about bullies or volunteering or friendship or going “green”. But the young idols’ encouraging public service announcements and inspirational messages reach millions of kids. And the bottom line is, that’s what matters.
Walt
might almost be transmitting today’s
Disney
value playbook from beyond the grave. Because the values that
Disney
productions encourage today are core values, those that
Walt
embodied and communicated through his art, his stories, and his original theme park.
* * *
After I’d made dozens of
Disneyland
visits and completed substantial research, my sister (the one we almost lost to the bottomless pit near the Lemon Squeeze cavern) told me I should be a
Disneyland Guide
.
That was flattering, but I already had a
rewarding occupation as a manager for a busy insurance office in Downtown L.A. My team and I faced many challenges in a competitive, pressure-cooker environment. Visits to
Disneyland
were a great weekend stress release.