Lillian Disney gave few interviews, and never had much to say about a side of Walt few but her saw. For Bob Thomas, however, she made an exception.

It was an exciting thing to live with Walt. I remember how the girls at the studio would call and say, “Walt wants to talk to you.” And he might say that he had to leave for somewhere else and it would be exciting and fun to travel with him. He was never bored. He always found something to do and he always found someone to talk to. He could be walking down the street in a strange town and find things in store windows that fascinated him. Or he would find someone in the town to talk to. I remember when we went to Zermatt in Switzerland when he was making Third Man on the Mountain. We were only going to stay a couple of days, but he found so much to interest him there that we stayed on. He enjoyed going down into the town square and talking to the old characters who hung around there.

He had a terrific temper, just like his dad. But it would be over with in a hurry. Diane is the same way. Whenever he started to get mad at home, I’d ease out of the room until the temper was over. He’d sometimes blow up at the cartoonists at the studio. But he was usually right. They all profited by his direction. He’d work with them as long as they had talent, even if they went off the lot for lunch and came back after having had several drinks. As long as they produced, that’s all he cared about.

He loved children and had no trouble in talking to them. But he didn’t like fresh children. The one thing he couldn’t stand was rudeness in anyone.

Every Sunday he took our daughters to Sunday school. Walt was very religious, but he never went to church. He loved every religion and respected them, although he got upset with pious ministers. I never knew of his going to church. He never read the Bible or anything like that. But he was very religious.

Walt loved to talk to people as long as they were interested. After Disneyland opened, people sometimes came up to him in the park and asked him questions. If they seemed interested, he would talk on and on, but if they seemed a little bit bored, he just walked away. Walt knew every nail in Disneyland. He loved to show it off to me. I remember when they were building the Pirates ride he insisted that I walk through it with him, even though it was all dirt. He put a plank down over the dust for me to walk on, because he wanted me with him.

I remember one time when we were building the Monsanto exhibit. Walt was showing me around and when we tried to enter the building a guard stopped us. “I can’t let you in without permission,” the guard said. “But don’t you know who I am?” Walt asked. “Yes. You can come in, but she can’t,” the guard said. Walt told him, “She owns the joint,” and we went in. Walt fired the man. He reasoned that if the guard talked that way to him, he might be ruder to other visitors. Walt simply could not stand rudeness.

Walt was terribly honest. When he was in a lawsuit and it seemed easier to make a settlement to get rid of it, Walt said, “No. We’re in the right, and we’ll see it through.” And usually he won.

You couldn’t give Walt anything that really pleased him. He bought gifts for me, often perfume because he could order it by phone. But usually I would have to exchange it because it wouldn’t be something I liked. Occasionally, he would buy me things like antique jewelry that he knew I wanted. Once a jeweler sent up some pins for me to see and I said they were too expensive. But Walt later ordered them for me anyway.

He didn’t really like to shop for the girls and me. One time he handed me a pamphlet on fur coats and said, “Here’s your Christmas present.” I never really bought him anything that he liked. Once I bought him a firebox for the fireplace, made of brass. He looked at the firebox and said, “I’ll get you a cord of wood next year.” If he found out I wanted something, he would go out and buy it, but he hated to shop.

Continued in "Walt's People: Volume 10"!

Walt hired Admiral Joe Fowler to help him build Disneyland, and later, after Walt's death, Joe was instrumental in the construction of Disney World, as well. Whenever Walt gave Joe a task no one else could handle, his response to Walt was always the same: can do.

BOB THOMAS: He was nutty about trains, wasn’t he?

JOE FOWLER: Yes. You know, that was another experience. When I first came to Disneyland he wanted a monorail. He had some plans that had been given him by some of the authorities in Los Angeles. He asked me to look at them. Well, my God, they were just… A high school senior in manual training could have done a better job. There was nothing there to put your teeth into. No evidence of anything that would be at all satisfactory from an engineering point of view. I explained that to Walt and he said, “All right, but keep on the lookout.” Well, in 1957 I went to Europe and met him at the Oktoberfest. I had four of the most wonderful days of my life there with Walt and Lilly and my wife and myself. I told him that I had heard of this monorail in Cologne, Germany, which was running on an experimental basis on a mile-long track, and I was going to look at it. He said, “Fine.” I did and I got all the data (I had all the pictures and everything) and I came back to the studio and I told Dick [Irvine], “Dick, if we show these to Walt, we’re sunk. He’s going to build it, I’m sure.” And he did. And that was the beginning of the monorail.

There’s another incident that I would like to just mention, just to show you what a great guy he was and how he could be vitally disappointed but not be at all emotionally, shall we say, upset. We had the little Casey Jr. train and he loved it. And just before we opened, this was the first time the train had come back, down from the studio, and we ran it around and it was top-heavy. I told Walt, “Walt, I’m sorry, but we just shouldn’t run that train for the public until after we get some keepers on it so that going around the curves or if she’s loaded on one side or the other, it won’t tip over. Otherwise, very frankly, it would be very dangerous.” He said, “All right, Joe,” and he walked away. And I heard afterwards he was very disappointed. But that’s all he said. In two weeks we got the keepers on. And that was all there was to it.

BT: That train you looked at, at Los Gatos, did he find it interesting? Was it something that helped?

JF: Very interesting. Walt had known the man who owned it, a fellow named Jones, for a long time—Casey Jones, they called him. The train ran through Casey’s orchard right next to my ranch that I had up there, my home. But he wanted a fabulous amount of money for a lot of broken-down, obsolete equipment. And I told Walt, at the time he asked me, I said, “Walt, I think we’d be far better off to build our own train, because by the time you get through renovating this and so forth… That would be my offhand opinion.” Which was what we did, as you know. Roger Broggie built our trains. But Walt was fascinated. We rode the train around.

And, oh the time we had in the Oktoberfest. God, it was funny! He had come in from Sweden and the countries through Germany and to Munich. And I had landed in England and gone south to France and Italy and up through Austria and we met in Munich. So, we went out to the Oktoberfest and, of course, we had a wonderful time. But we saw the first of the so-called mouse rides. A small car that comes down, it’s a very small car, two people get in it, and it’s like a roller coaster. They call it the Wild Mouse and it was a very flimsy construction. I told Walt the night before that I had lost seven pounds since I hit Europe, because Maurie and I had bought this little English car and I had to unpack and pack that damn baggage every day. Well, all right, we get in the car and we go up and we come down the hill, hell-bent-for-an-election, and by the time we got down to the platform to get out we were wedged in. Neither one of us could move. The attendants had to give us a hand to really get us out. And Walt turned to me and he said, “Joe, you damned liar, I don’t think you’ve lost a pound.”

BT: Did he learn something from that ride?

JF: We learned that we didn’t want it. That was one great thing about Walt. Anything that we did had to be especially adapted or designed by ourselves. The one or two things at Disneyland that we bought we completely redesigned. There was no real semblance or similarity to what we had.

BT: The sky ride?

JF: Yeah, the sky ride. We changed the attachments. We made our own cabins which were entirely different. And the Astro-Jet. We redesigned that completely with regard to the way the cars went up, etc.

Of course it was quite interesting when we started Disneyland. Some of the old-time operators, owners of parks… One of them in particular told Walt, “Now Mr. Disney, you should never pay over $25,000 for a ride. I mean anybody who does that ought to have their head examined.” Well, of course, Walt started right in the first contract we had with Arrow, why, we paid $47,000 for [an attraction]. And God knows some of our things cost way into the millions. But they all paid off.

At the same time, contrary to what you might hear, Walt and Roy were a great team. Because whereas Walt would never compromise with perfection or a complete situation that he wanted himself as he saw it, he was the first to criticize spending money that you didn’t get your returns on. He was very, very definite on that. When I started in building Disneyland I didn’t know a damn thing about what we were getting into. In July I had a budget of 4.5 million. That was before we had any plans at all. And in September it went up to 7. And in November we talked 11. Of course, we came to a crisis in December. See, we built Disneyland, from the day we pulled the first orange tree until we opened our gates, in 11 months.

I went to Roy in December. I had the steel for the opera house on the ground. And by that time I had made up my mind we simply could not get the millwork accomplished outside, either with regard to the degree of perfection we needed or with regard to its volume. We had to have our own metal. I needed $40,000 to put my steel up and get a roof on so I could put the mill in the opera house. Roy said, “Jesus, Joe, can’t do it. We’ve borrowed on the life insurance and everything. Can’t get any more out of…” I went back the next day, I said, “Well, Roy, how about it? Can I have my money?” And he said, “Yes, I’ve got your money. Go ahead.” And that was the turning point.

Of course, we had subsequent crises. On the first of January, plans had been to board up Tomorrowland with a fancy construction fence. Walt suddenly decided that wouldn’t do. So we had to get in Tomorrowland and make some semblance of an opening. But, of course, the Tomorrowland we opened with in 1955 was never a happy situation for him. He always had in the back of his mind… And in 1959 we completely rebuilt it. I can remember sitting on the old hill with Walt in Tomorrowland and listening, just listening to him plan what he was going to do with it.

BT: What did he say?

JF: He said, among other things, “You know, Joe—this was the beginning of the toboggan, the concept of the Matterhorn. Do you suppose we could get some snow and have a toboggan ride here?” This was in Tomorrowland. Of course, the hill was only about half the height of the Matterhorn. I said, “Well, Walt, I think we could, but, man, it would be [complicated] to try to keep a machine supplying snow for the summer season. It would be a terrific job and would involve a lot of drainage and so forth.” He forgot about that, but then very shortly he came up with the Matterhorn.

I can remember Disney World. You know the thing I miss more than anything else? It is Walt’s passing before we’d opened Disney World. I spent a lot of time with him, walking around the area down there listening to his plans. And the amazing thing is the degree to which we have followed those plans in building Disney World. It’s almost identical. And many times I can almost… I don’t believe in the supernatural, but nonetheless I had a feeling that he’s looking at the boats there. He’s looking at these things that are operating just the way he planned it. And the number of people coming in and their wonderful reaction. But to have been able to have him there and see it come into being would have been even more of a great pleasure.

BT: How did Roy solve the financial problem of Disneyland? Were you aware of where he got the money from?

JF: Yes. There was a man named Dean in the Bank of America at that time, a great, great guy. This was in April and we were still talking 11 million. And we walked down Main Street and Mr. Dean looked on all sides and he turned to Roy and he said, “Roy, you know if ever I have seen anything that appeared to me to be a little bit of variance; I think we’re looking at 15 million rather than 11.” Actually, we spent 17. But the secret of the whole thing was the fact it took off and was a tremendous success from the day we opened, in spite of the press. If you’ll forgive me… I mean…

BT: That’s all right. I think I gave it the only good review.

JF: Is that right? Well, you know, it was a problem, a real problem. My God, I can remember the day we opened, all that tremendous number of people. I was tied up in part of the Jack Sayers show. I was in the cabin of the Mark Twain with Irene Dunne. And we were marooned there for an hour and a half. She was perfectly delightful, but because of the crowds we couldn’t get off. Then I finally got a call when I hit the beach that we had a problem up in Fantasyland and we did. We had a gas leak. And you could smell gas coming up through the courtyard there somewhere. The question was, “What the hell will we do? Will we close up and get everybody out of the park?” I got hold of the fire chief and we decided we’d rope off the area. I don’t think half a dozen people knew it, because we had this area where it was apparent there was a leak through in the gas, so nobody could get in and there couldn’t be any question of any concentrated explosive mixture.

BT: Was Walt aware of that situation?

JF: No. We never told him those things. He knew about it afterwards. Walt knew everything. And it must have been a couple of weeks when he said, “Gee, Joe, you had a little problem up in Fantasyland.” And I said, “Well, yes, Walt, we had, but it worked out all right.” He said, “Well, that’s fine.”

BT: What about those last frantic weeks when you were getting ready for opening? Were there any real problems then?

JF: Oh, man. Well, we had two critical ones. In the first place we had a plumber’s strike.

BT: I remember.

JF: We had all the plumbing on hand and we couldn’t get it installed. So, we had a wonderful relation with labor. We had a committee. And I got this committee of management, my people, and the labor boys. The teamsters, who as you probably know are a very powerful outfit, said, “Now, if the plumbers won’t put this in, we’re not going to have this park defeated. We’ll put it in for you.” That word was passed along and the plumbers said, “All right.” I told the plumbers, “Tell you what we’ll do now. We’ll guarantee you that whatever the settlement on your ultimate finishing of the strike, we will pay you the same thing. Now, under those circumstances will you put it in?” And they said, “Yes.” The other thing is: all the hot-asphalt plants in Orange County went on strike. And for my last roads I had to haul it all from San Diego. Jesus, what a cost! But we did it. We opened.

BT: You made these decisions without consulting Walt?

JF: Oh, no, no. Put it this way. He would say, “Well, what about it?” And I said, “We’re gonna open.” There was a time when C.V. Wood in June said, “Joe, we might just as well postpone it till September. We’re not going to make it.” And I said, “Woody, we have to make it.” Course I’d been sort of indoctrinated during the war. I had been working right under limits, I had twenty-five private shipyards and by doggie, we had to make dates! There wasn’t any two ways about it. That was probably the greatest thing in the world that we opened in July. If we had waited until September when the crowds sloughed off, and so forth, we might never have gotten it off the ground.

BT: Did anybody come to Walt with that decision to make?

JF: No. no. All Walt would say was, “Are you going to make it?” And I said, “Yes.” That was as far as it would go. He never opened it up.

Continued in "Walt's People: Volume 10"!