What better way to finish out celebrating Women’s History Month than to highlight the First Lady of the Walt Disney Company, Lillian Disney. She is most famous for marrying Walt Disney and famously disagreeing with the original name of Mickey Mouse. However, she should be most known for how she was able to balance being married to the most famous man of the time, a working woman and a loving mother. Lillian was the one of the first four employees at the Disney Bros. Studios.
What better way to finish out celebrating Women’s History Month than to highlight the First Lady of the Walt Disney Company, Lillian Disney. She is most famous for marrying Walt Disney and famously disagreeing with the original name of Mickey Mouse. However, she should be most known for how she was able to balance being married to the most famous man of the time, a working woman and a loving mother. Lillian was the one of the first four employees at the Disney Bros. Studios.
The Disney Bros. Studio was just starting off and was just being the Alice series and hired their first employee Kathleen Dollard who worked as a darkener in the studio. When Kathleen was asked if she knew of anyone else to assist the company. She would later recommend a stenographer by the name of Lillian Bounds. Lillian would later apply for the job since it was in walking distance from where she was living where she would interview at the Kingswell Studio. On January 19, 1924, her seven year old niece Marjorie Sewell, walked her to the studio so she didn’t get lost and late for her first day. Walt frequently would offer to drive both Lillian and Kathleen to the studio in the company’s Ford runner during the very early days of the company. The story goes that Walt would always drop Lillian off last even if she was the closest to the studio.
She worked at the Disney Studio as an inker of animated cells in the “ink and paint” department. Lillian met Walt, who would sometimes ask her not to cash her $15 (worth approximately $263.89 today) weekly paycheck. She would work her way from inker to Walt’s personal secretary. She would later say that she wasn’t very good as a secretary and would later go back to the Ink and paint department.
While Lillian was working in the “ink and paint” department she met Walt Disney. She married Walt a year and a half later July 13, 1925, at her brother’s home in Idaho. Since her father had passed away when she was seventeen, her uncle the chief of the Lewiston Fire Department walked her down the aisle. She wore a dress she made herself. Walt Disney’s parents were not in attendance at the wedding.
During a trip from New York to California in 1928, her husband showed her a drawing of a cartoon mouse that he called Mortimer Mouse, Lillian replied that the name sounded “too formal” as she suggested the name of Mickey Mouse instead. This character was set save the studio after major business setbacks. The rest is as they say history. Lillian would travel with her husband on many business trips including the famous government-sponsored goodwill tour of South America in 1941. The trip would later result in the production of the animated features of Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.
It has been said that Lillian was the conservative balance to her husband’s daring personality. She supported so many of his wild ideas that she was said to even allow him to dig a tunnel under her flower garden for his Holmby Hills backyard railroad. She was often the sounding board for Walt as he created films and the theme park. All who know Disney history, know that the founder of the company was a true train enthusiast. It comes as no surprise that one of the carts of the Disneyland Railroad was named Lilly Belle by Walt in tribute to his wife.
Walt and Lillian had two daughters; Diane Marie Disney and Sharon Mae Disney. Sharon was adopted by the Disney’s 2 weeks after her birth in January 1936. The Disney’s were very open about the adoption with their family but preferred to keep this information out of the media. The Disney’s didn’t want her to grow up feeling as though she was not apart of the family. At the time of her adoption, the view of the act of adoption was seen as taboo. It is said that the idea of adoption would shift in later year with some help of the Disney Studio with the release of several films featuring adoption such as Meet the Robinsons, Pete’s Dragon and The Jungle Book.
The Disney’s would protect Sharon from the media as well as any ill talk about her. The Disney’s knew that most of society at the time couldn’t understand that love and not blood makes a family. While raising their two daughters Lillian was always her husband’s biggest support to all his dreams. Lillian was a grandmother to ten, seven from Dian and her husband Ron and three from Sharon and her two husbands, Robert Brown and William Lund.
While she was usually shy to the publicity, she did enter the public eye after her husband’s death in 1966 in order to lend her support for the fulfillment of his dreams. October of 1971, she attended the dedication of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida along with her brother in law Roy O. Disney. She would also attend the 1982 dedication of EPCOT, one of her husband’s biggest dreams come true.
One of her husband’s lesser known ventures was in education. After her husband’s death, she supported the multi-disciplinary California Institute of the Arts, which opened in 1971 in Valencia, California. One of her gifts to the school were funds to remodel a theater on campus which was renamed the Walt Disney Modular Theater in 1993. On May 12, 1987, she announced the ultimate gift to the community in honor of the love of her life, a $50 million to build a new symphony hall designed by the architect Frank Gehry in Los Angeles. The Walt Disney Concert Hall became the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic which debuted in 2003.
It comes to no surprise that there are several references or honors all around the Disney parks and in the very essence of the company. Lillian is featured in a photo hung in the trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar of her, Walt Disney and others disembarking from plane in Rio de Janeiro in 1941. She is pictured alongside Trader Same from the Jungle Cruise who was their “tour guide”. Along the Rivers of America and outside the Golden Horseshoe Saloon in Disneyland is a petrified tree from the pike petrified forest of Colorado, with a plaque below the tree recognizes it having been given to Lillian as a gift by Walt in 1957. In 1971, the Walt Disney Company obtained a steamship known as the Baily-Finortner Floating Arts Palace which was renamed by the company to the Empress Lilly” and commemorated in Lillian’s honor. Pleasure Island’s restaurant the Empress Lilly was named for her with her having christened the ship. She is also likely the retrospective namesake for the Lilly Plaza of Pleasure Island. Her father is also mentioned in the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attraction as the U.S. Marshal Willard P. Bounds in the town of Rainbow Ridge who was involved in the operations of the Big Thunder Mining Company.
Lillian suffered a stroke on December 15, 1997, exactly 31 years to the day after the death of her husband. Sadly, she passed away the next day on December 16, 1997, in Los Angeles at the age of 98.
Lillian was a true believer in the dreams of Walt and in my opinion without her by his side he would not have grown the company and enterprise that is the Walt Disney Company. Her behind the scenes work listening to his dreams and creative ideas allowed him to move these ideas to the real world and cream a company that is turning 100 years old October 16, 1923. She may not have been in the public eye for anything more than being the wife of Walt Disney but her support alone in her husband is truly something to look up to. She was truly the driving force behind the man of the internally known company that has lived on well after his passing.
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