Free Disney by Rees Quinn Page B

gags and ideas seen in our pictures today,” he said. But he had an abundance of creativity to draw on, and no shortage of new ideas coming from his team. While Mickey Mouse remained the Disney studio’s most-popular property, it was clear Disney could survive, even thrive, without the mouse.
    Disney animators began work on Snow White late in the summer of 1934. Walt and Roy Disney originally thought the film might take a year-and-a-half to make; instead, it took twice that long and cost $1.5 million, three times their initial estimate. Their critics likened the project to gambling on a sweepstakes ticket, which infuriated Roy, who responded, “We’ve bought the whole damned sweepstakes.” Other Disney properties felt the pinch of the rising costs: Mickey Mouse lost his tail in a cutback that made animating him take less time, and subsequently less money.
    Disney expected the finished Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to comprise between six and eight reels, with each reel consisting of 16,000 frames - a potential of 128,000 individual images. Because each frame was a composite made from multiple drawings, the actual number of drawings was staggering.
    The Disney Brothers Studio remained busy with animated shorts throughout the three years Snow White was in production. It made more than sixty cartoons, introduced Donald Duck, and won five Academy Awards. Disney used one of the shorts, The Goddess of Spring , based on the Greek myth of Persephone, a training vehicle for the animators who worked on Snow White.
    The studio now had close to 500 employees. Walt paid his animators well, even though Roy groused about it. One of their top artists earned $15,000 a year, an astonishing amount in the Great Depression . At the same time, the collaborative nature of the studio - which Walt valued above all else - made it seem almost communistic. For Disney, the studio had become the embodiment of an idealized vision - a “near-perfect world” he had created for himself to live in.
Walt’s girls
    Life was less ideal at home. Lillian resented even more the long hours he spent at the studio. His fixation on work often set off furious arguments between the couple. A dark stain on the wall might appear the morning after a late-night tiff – evidence of a cup of coffee hurled by Lillian in Walt’s direction. As Lillian bonded with their daughter Diane, she and Walt grew apart. At one point, during production on Snow White , the couple considered divorce. Walt wanted more children, and they decided to try again. Then another miscarriage in 1936 brought them closer together. Walt and Lillian decided to adopt. On New Year’s Eve that same year, they welcomed a six-week-old daughter, Sharon Mae, home. A case of pneumonia sent the baby back to the hospital for a month.
    The Disneys made no distinction between their biological and adopted daughters. In fact, Walt preferred to keep the adoption a secret and bristled whenever anyone mentioned it. Walt was a loving and attentive father, and, as Diane would later say, “Daddy is a pushover.” Disney was adamant, however, about keeping his daughters out of the public eye. He had been horrified by the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh ’s baby in 1932. Disney kept his private life private.
    Walt did not attend church, though his daughter Sharon later remembered him as “a very religious man.” She said, “He did not believe you had to go to church to be religious. He respected every religion. There wasn’t any that he ever criticized. He wouldn’t even tell religious jokes.” Lillian, for a few years, “dabbled” in Christian Science, Diane said. They attended the Christian Science Church, and Lillian enrolled Diane and Sharon in a small Christian Science school. But Sunday, Diane said, was “daddy’s day.” When the girls were old enough, Walt would drop them off for Sunday school, pick them up after, and take them to Griffith Park to ride the merry-go-round. “He’d see