A great piece from today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail:
Walt Disney died 40 years ago this month, but his work continues to leave a huge imprint on American culture. A new biography by Neal Gabler provides a definitive look at the man and his legacy, including fascinating glimpses into his role as an authentic conservative hero who would no doubt be horrified by some of the politically correct stands taken today by the company that bears his name.
As a Horatio Alger figure who built an entertainment empire from nothing, Disney was often celebrated as a great entrepreneur. He firmly believed that the free enterprise system had enabled him to succeed and he supported candidates whom he felt would defend it. In 1952, his company produced a commercial for Dwight Eisenhower that featured an animated Uncle Sam and introduced the jingle "I Like Ike." To this day, the jingle retains the ability to lodge in a listener’s brain.
When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, Disney went all out for the Arizona senator, donating today’s equivalent of $97,000 and offering him use of Disney company planes. Disney declared that supporting Goldwater was his way of "taking up the gun against the enemy." But that didn’t prevent him from attending a ceremony at the White House two months before the election to receive the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson. Disney had a chuckle over the fact that he wore a Goldwater button under his lapel during the ceremony.
The entertainment mogul was also an enthusiastic booster of George Murphy, an actor friend of Ronald Reagan, who ran that same year for a U.S. Senate seat in California. Disney loaned the Murphy campaign furniture for its headquarters, took out full-page ads supporting him and allowed Disney’s name to be used in a direct-mail campaign. Murphy defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Pierre Salinger (who had been appointed to the seat on the death of his predecessor) with 51% of the vote, so Disney’s help may have been crucial. It was Murphy’s victory that helped convince Reagan a conservative could win statewide in California.
Disney had already given a boost to Reagan’s television career. In 1955, he tapped him to be one of three co-hosts for a live 90-minute broadcast celebrating the opening of Disneyland. In fact, it was Reagan himself who introduced Disney to the television audience, which ended up numbering an astonishing 70 million people — almost half the population of the United States at the time. After Goldwater’s defeat, Disney joined with actors John Wayne and Chuck Connors in urging Reagan to run for governor. Disney lived to see the Gipper win a million-vote victory in 1966, but succumbed to lung cancer and died a month later.
Despite Disney’s outspoken conservatism, Hollywood was much more tolerant of political diversity back then. Mr. Gabler’s book reports that when the Tournament of Roses was looking for a grand marshal a year after the Goldwater defeat, the organizers concluded that Disney was "one person no country could find fault with." The New York Times reported on his selection as grand marshal by noting that Disney was "revered and honored almost to the point of absurdity."
How times change. Just imagine how someone with Disney’s strong conservative views would be treated by his Hollywood peers today — not to mention by the New York Times.
–John Fund