Chapter Nine
Life without Roy nearby was a new challenge for the young Walter Disney. While Elias was the strict disciplinarian and thought that holding the highest expectations of his children would make them good, productive people, Roy was kind and compassionate; while Elias was tight with his money to ensure that the family’s needs were met, Roy instead often spent his money on his little brother and sister by purchasing them treats or small gifts, or occasionally taking them to Electric Park or the movies. Without his best friend and hero, Walter soon found himself distracted by his daily life, which included school, work, and new friends.
Shortly after Roy’s departure, Flora decided that she’d had enough of their rented home and convinced Elias that the family needed to purchase a more permanent place. Recognising the importance of owning a home close to the paper route, the family moved a half kilometre east to 3028 Bellefontaine Avenue, a small two-storey house with white wood slat siding, and a large porch spanning the front of the house held up by heavy wooden pillars.
Living in a quiet neighbourhood rather than along a busy street, Walter and Ruth soon found it easier to develop a social life with the neighbouring kids. A short distance away on 41st Avenue lived the Pfeiffers: Mr and Mrs Pfeiffer and their two children, Kitty and Walt, who was the same age as Walter Disney. The two boys quickly became friends, and Walter found himself spending his free time at Walt Pfeiffer’s house rather than at his own. The Pfeiffers were everything that Elias was not: fun-loving, musical, mischievous, and creative. Walter Disney and Walt Pfeiffer soon realised something else they had in common other than their names: their love of performance and joking around. The two boys soon started coming up with vaudeville acts in the Pfeiffers’ back yard, caricaturising themselves as a pair of Dutchmen, complete with heavy Dutch accents. These impromptu comedy acts were often performed in front of the Pfeiffer family, accompanied by Walt’s sister Kitty playing the piano. Walter quickly became an unofficial part of the Pfeiffer family, spending all the time he had while not in school or delivering his father’s papers at their house, attempting to fill the hole left by Roy’s departure with his new friend. Walter and Walt were even inseparable during illness; one winter, when Walt Pfeiffer had come down with a case of the mumps and was bedridden, his artistic best friend sat at his side, giving him drawing lessons.
Over the next few years, Walter’s penchant for performance often found its way into the classroom to stave off his boredom, much to the delight of his classmates. The most popular shtick was one Walter called ‘Fun in the Photograph Gallery’: completely silent, the little actor would pose his classmates into a number of ridiculous gestures, then step behind a prop camera to mime taking their photograph. Instead of producing a photo, however, the camera would produce a stream of water, squirting the unsuspecting subject. As the good sport he was, however, Walter would always finish his performance by drawing a caricature of his subject to take with them.
Walter’s tendency to act as the class clown also drew the attention of the staff at Benton, which they occasionally used for their benefit. One year, on the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, fifth-grade Walter dressed as the Great Emancipator, donning Elias’s long church coat, wearing a makeshift stovepipe hat, pasting crepe paper to his chin to create a bushy beard, and smearing shoe polish across his face to give himself a moustache. As he strode into class that morning, he loudly began to give ‘The Gettysburg Address’ in the character of Lincoln, enthralling his classmates but frustrating his teacher. When Benton principal James Cottingham learned of this, he decided to embarrass the boy by giving him the biggest audience possible to perform before: the entire school. Cottingham paraded Walter from classroom to classroom to perform the speech, but his ultimate goal of punishing the boy failed: Walter loved the attention, and all the students loved him.
Not all of Walter’s teachers were harsh towards him. In seventh grade, the boy had the pleasure of sitting in the classroom of Miss Daisy Beck. Beck was sympathetic to the boy’s situation, delivering papers before school: the warmth of the classroom as the day progressed often lulled the delivery boy, who had been awake since 2.00 am, to sleep. The compassionate teacher often let him sleep, recognising that he would not accomplish much more if he were awake and exhausted. She also noticed the boy’s artistic talent and bribed him by explaining that if he finished his classwork, he could spend the remaining class time drawing. This motivated Walter, who quickly completed his arithmetic so he could doodle instead. Miss Beck was also Walter’s track coach while attending Benton, and under her tutelage, he earned a medal in the 80-pound relay event.
After a brief stint working on Uncle Will Disney’s farm in Ellis, Kansas, followed by working as a news butcher selling refreshments on the railroad, Roy returned to Kansas City in 1913, living in his own apartment and finding a job at the First National Bank of Kansas City. It was here that the young man became fast friends with another teller, Mitch Francis. One afternoon Francis told Roy about a dance at a local social club, suggesting that they accompany Francis’s two younger sisters to the dance. Roy was not a great dancer, but not wanting to disappoint his new friend, he agreed. Later that evening, Roy showed up at the club in a suit and tie, careful to make sure that neither was covered with chilli or beans. Francis arrived with his two sisters, and the dancing began: Roy was paired off with Edna Francis, and the two had a wonderful evening. After the success of the dance, Roy and Edna began spending more time together and it soon became obvious the two would eventually marry.
Walter was ecstatic that his big brother had moved back to Kansas City and did all he could to spend time with Roy. But Roy wasn’t a kid any longer: with a career and a girl, the boy’s childhood friend had become a man. Walter’s naivety didn’t stop him from looking for Roy throughout the neighbourhood when the elder Disney took Edna out. The couple often spent time at a local drugstore soda fountain. After making his rounds, Walter wandered into the establishment to find his brother on his date. Tactlessly, the pre-teen youngster marched up to his brother and asked him for a quarter to purchase drawing paper. Embarrassed and trying to cover up his frustration, Roy pulled some coins from his pocket to satisfy the boy.
It soon became obvious that Roy was now living in a different world to Walter’s. Instead, Walter and Walt Pfeiffer began to hone their vaudevillian performances by attending shows at nearby theatres for inspiration. Walter had picked up additional jobs to supplement his allowance from the paper route, such as selling newspapers on a nearby corner, sweeping out a candy shop, and delivering medicine for a local druggist, all to help pay for his admission to the shows. It was clear to the two boys that they could do the same type of comedy acts they saw on stage, and due to their youth, they could create a unique appeal. They decided they would enter a variety competition to test out their hypothesis. This would have to be done secretly, however: Elias felt that vaudeville was crude, immoral and corrupted one’s character, and as a result forbade his youngest children from attending such shows.
On the night of the competition, Walter, feigning illness and going to bed early, sneaked out of his window and met Pfeiffer on the pavement outside the house, and together the two boys walked to the nearby vaudeville hall. Somehow, Roy had heard that Walter would be performing that evening and suggested to Elias and Flora that they enjoy an adult evening at the Agnes Theater, not revealing that their youngest son would be performing.
As Elias entered the vaudeville hall, he was disgusted and embarrassed that he was accompanied by Flora and Ruth, who was too young to stay home alone for the evening. The smell of tobacco and alcohol hovered in the air while the raucous laughter and dirty jokes of inebriated men filled the room. Roy led the family in and found a place to sit with a good view of the stage.
The family sat through a variety of acts, Elias becoming more agitated as the evening progressed, uncomfortable with the impolite humour onstage and the behaviour of its audience. As Elias was beginning to gather the family to leave, the announcer on the stage introduced the next act, ‘The Two Bad Walts’. Elias froze in his tracks, his eyes glued to the stage. As the curtain parted, he saw his youngest son on stage dressed as Charlie Chaplin, wearing oversized shoes, his father’s long church coat, a shoe polish moustache, and holding a cane. Not wanting to draw attention to himself by storming out of the hall, Elias sank down into his seat to watch his son’s performance in grim embarrassment as Walter and Pfeiffer chased each other across the stage in the slapstick manner characteristic of the Chaplin films. As the act continued, however, Elias found himself with a mirthful smile spread across his face: not only were some of the jokes clever, but some of them were even funny.
When the act was finished, Elias motioned to the family and they stood up and left. Walter, clueless that his parents and siblings had seen his performance, sneaked back home at the conclusion of the evening 25 cents richer: he and Pfeiffer won fourth place, earning themselves a cash prize.
Elias, who had been amused by the comic performance after the initial shock had worn off, chose not to say anything about his son’s ‘secret’. Perhaps, Elias thought to himself, there is something to this boy’s love of art and performance. Thus, when Walter requested to take some classes at the Fine Arts Institute of Kansas City at a nearby Y.W.C.A., learning technique in sculpting, sketching, and drawing animals and the human figure from local professionals, Elias relented due to his belief that it was important for one to hone skills in a specific hobby. However, he intended for his son to pursue the mastery of these skills as a hobby only: art, he believed, could never become a successful profession, as he’d learned due to his failure as a fiddler in Denver.
As Kansas City progressed into the twentieth century, it began to upgrade its technology and infrastructure. In 1915, Elias decided that the home on Bellefontaine needed to be expanded to accommodate the family’s needs. Enlisting Walter to help, Elias applied the skills he hadn’t used since he had built houses semi-professionally with Flora in Chicago. Together, father and son added an addition to the rear of the home, building an interior bathroom and space that could be used as a bedroom. Their success in building the extension together inspired Elias to construct a garage in 1916 to provide automobile access to the alley that ran behind the house, once again with Walter’s assistance. However, Elias’s temper often flared when he became frustrated, either with his work or with his son, sometimes resulting in the boy dodging tools thrown at him by his angry father.
This form of discipline wasn’t an isolated incident for the boy, even as a young teenager. Whenever Walter made a mistake along the paper route or got into his usual mischief, Elias would send his son into the basement to wait for a whipping. As he got older, Walter began to resent these beatings, which had become more regular in the days following Roy’s departure. Remembering his brother’s words to him on the night he left, Walter resolved to finally stand up to his father. One afternoon, when Elias raised his hand to beat his son, Walter caught the man’s wrists and held them above their heads, preventing the discipline from occurring.
Elias exerted a brief, half-hearted struggle with his youngest son, before allowing the strength to fade from his arms. Realising he had escaped corporal punishment, Walter slowly let go of his father’s wrists and stepped backward, still on guard in case Elias’s anger returned. Instead, the man’s face fell and without saying a word, he turned and walked silently back up the stairs, closing the door behind him. It was in that instant that the man realised he no longer had power over his youngest son, and from that day forward, Walter never received another beating as discipline from his strict father.
Elias quickly realised that with Walter standing up to him, the boy was more likely to follow his brothers and depart in the middle of the night, leaving him with only the few boys he’d hired to deliver the papers and none of his children to help. As a result, he decided to invest in his son and take it a little easier on the boy to encourage him to continue working the route and to stay with the family. When Walter begged his father to allow him to use his savings from his side jobs to purchase leather boots (considered both a fashion and occupational necessity), Elias surprised the boy with a pair for Christmas.
Walter was proud of his new boots: not only did they help keep his feet warm and dry during the winter deliveries, but they also gave him some credibility with the other boys in the neighbourhood, many of whom had a tendency to bully the country boy from Marceline.
One cold evening, while walking home after finishing his paper route, Walter kicked a chunk of ice as he walked down the side of the road. Unbeknownst to him, the chunk of ice contained a large nail, which pierced the toe of his new boot and was driven into his foot. Bending over, Walter grabbed the chunk of ice and pulled on it, attempting to dislodge it from his boot. When it wouldn’t pull away, he attempted to remove the shoe, but this only dug the nail deeper into his foot, causing terrible pain. Sitting down on a curb, he began to call for help to those walking past or riding the trams, but everyone thought he was a teen just causing trouble, so they ignored him. Finally, when people nearby saw that he continued to yell after several minutes, they came to help. The driver of a buggy went for a doctor, who explained that he had nothing Walter could take for the pain. Instead, he enlisted the help of a few men who held the boy’s legs down while he pulled the nail out of Walter’s foot. By this time, his foot had become so swollen that the only way to get it out of the boot to inspect the injury was to cut his precious new boot off.
Over the next two weeks, Walter lay in bed recuperating from his wound. During this time, Elias relied on additional help from his other delivery boys: the only time Walter got off delivering papers for his father in the duration of the paper route. Instead, the aspiring artist practised drawing from his bed, showing off his sketches to his mother and sister who gave compliments on his work. To hone his art skills, Walter once again began to copy from political cartoons that were featured in the Star and Times, much like he did from Elias’s copies of Appeal to Reason in Marceline. The long hours spent in bed, his drawing paper at his side and a newspaper spread out across his lap allowed the boy to study the cartoons. He was particularly interested in the depiction of people and animals, symbolism, and the wit of the cartoonists. It was at this juncture that Walter’s hobby for art and drawing transitioned to a desire to turn his interest into a career. He had made up his mind: he would become a newspaper cartoonist.
As the second decade of the 1900s progressed, Walter soon found himself in a transitionary period from childhood to young adulthood, becoming increasingly aware of the larger world around him and his place in it. In late summer 1914, the world erupted as the First World War set Europe aflame. While young men in nations like France and Germany quickly enlisted and marched off to war, the United States maintained its policy of isolation: the German Kaiser and his army didn’t impact America. Tension in cities throughout North America began to rise as thousands of European immigrants started to choose sides. This resulted in the general public doing the same, joining with Britain and its allies while still maintaining the general policy of isolation and refusing to deploy troops or supplies across the Atlantic. To encourage its citizens to support its allies, the U.S. government started producing wartime propaganda, and political cartoonists for major newspapers began to draw content commenting on the war, the enemy, and events transpiring overseas. It was this environment into which Walter Disney, who had decided to become a political cartoonist himself, was thrust, forcing the young man to become even more aware of the world outside Missouri and its goings-on.
The influence of his increasing global perspective led Walter to begin to see himself as a member of the collective, rather than an isolated individual who wasn’t part of the greater community. On 27 January 1917, Walter made his way to the Kansas City Convention Hall where he had been invited, along with every newsboy employed by The Kansas City Star, to a screening of the silent film, Snow White. As he sat in his chair, he was one in a sea of thousands of boys and young men who braved the elements to bring the news and commentary to the front doors of Kansas City’s citizens.
But the screening of Snow White had a larger impact on Walter than simply rewarding the paperboy for all his hard work. The boy sat transfixed in the dark of the room, barely noticing the mass of kids around him shouting, throwing things, and climbing over the chairs: his attention was fixed instead on the action taking place on the screen in front of him. He watched in awe as the film’s star, Marguerite Clark, held woodland creatures in her dainty hands and spoke to them. He laughed as he watched the seven dwarfs hard at work in their mine and cried with them as they mourned the girl asleep in her bier, cheering for joy as a kiss from the prince woke her from her slumber. It was one of the most ambitious presentations of entertainment Walter Disney had ever experienced and the elaborate sets, colourful characters, rich detail, and engaging plot would influence how he would create entertainment for the duration of his career.
Everything changed for Walter in June 1917 when another new opportunity for investment arose for Elias. As early as 1912, Elias had been investing in a jelly and soda factory in Chicago called O-Zell, believing that he could turn a profit and become wealthier than relying solely on the paper route. Much to Walter’s chagrin and disgust, Elias was even forcing his son to invest the money he’d made from tips collected while selling the Star on the street corners, attempting to teach him how to be wise with his money instead of merely hoarding it or spending it. Elias was particularly interested in the moral benefits of O-Zell, as its owner, Ernest A. Scrogin, decided to produce fruit soda as an alternative to alcoholic beverages that had become prevalent in Chicago. Thus, Elias purchased 2,100 shares of O-Zell stock from Scrogin at $1 per share, not only investing in the company, but investing in a moral and dry America.
Over the next few years, Scrogin continued to write to Elias, asking for more money, trusting that one of his most prevalent investors would support the company even more as it continued to perfect the formula for its Oriental Fruit Beverage. Between 1912 and 1918, the Disneys purchased more than 7,000 additional shares, but oddly, O-Zell failed to put anything on the market for public consumption.
With the public market not very interested in the sodas available, O-Zell began instead to develop a line of jellies, jams and preserves, which seemed to be more marketable to the average consumer. With this new development, Scrogin realised he was in over his head and needed all hands on deck. On 6 March 1917, Elias received a letter from O-Zell’s CEO explaining that the investor needed to decide whether he was all-in when it came to the success of the company. If he was, Scrogin explained, it would be in both Elias’s and O-Zell’s best interest if he moved to Chicago to help operate the business. Sending $16,000 to Scrogin, Elias purchased a partnership in the company and was awarded the position of head of factory construction as a result of the company’s expansion into production of jams and jellies.
Maintaining the same attitude towards her children that she’d had in Marceline, Flora decided that she would remain in Kansas City so Walter and Ruth could complete the school year while Elias went on ahead to secure a home for the family in Chicago. When the children’s studies concluded in June 1917, Flora and Ruth packed up their remaining belongings and took the train from Kansas City to Chicago to join Elias, who had acquired a house located at 1523 Ogden Avenue in west Chicago. It was decided that Walter would remain in Kansas City to help provide a smooth transition for the paper route’s new owner, who had inherited a much larger route than Elias had originally purchased in 1912 due to the Disneys’ success in gaining new subscriptions. Walter wasn’t left alone in Kansas City, however: the boy kept his room in the Bellefontaine house, staying with his brother Herbert, his wife Louise, and their child Dorothy. Herbert had pled for Elias’s forgiveness and had recently moved back in with his parents.
With the school year done and the paper route having undergone a successful changing-of-hands, 15-year-old Walter was looking for summer work before joining his parents and sister in Chicago for the autumn semester at his new school. Roy, who had worked as a news butcher, selling papers and refreshments to passengers on train rides and on platforms during stops, suggested that his brother do the same. Walter, who had developed a deep love of trains during his time in Marceline, jumped at the opportunity, and Roy loaned him $30 to purchase his first stock of supplies to sell.
Walter was hired to work for the Van Noyes Interstate News Company and was assigned to work along the Missouri Pacific route between Kansas City, Missouri and Denver, Colorado, a distance of approximately 1,000 kilometres. During his trips, Walter would walk up and down the aisles of the passenger cars, offering snacks, beverages, sweets, and cigars to the travellers. On the boy’s first day, he decided to keep his store of supplies, as well as empty bottles he could return for a refund on his deposit, in a freight car at the end of the train. While business was steady, the news butcher was dismayed to see soldiers on his line throwing their empty bottles out of the window of the speeding train: it was like throwing his money out the window. Sometime around midday, the train made a stop to restock its supplies of water, sand and coal, so Walter went out onto the platform to attempt to sell to those mingling outside. When the whistle blew, Walter joined the passengers back onto the train, making his way to the rear of the train to put his empty bottles away and restock his supplies before going back up the aisle. However, he found that the freight car holding his supplies and his stock of empty bottles was no longer attached to the train: it had been detached and left behind at the last station, and with it, his investment and income. Walter also found on subsequent trips that he didn’t sell fresh fruit fast enough; the majority of the fruit quickly spoiled and attracted flies, forfeiting much of the money he and Roy had invested in the product.
Having had the characteristics of hard work and a refusal to give up imparted to him by his father, Walter, though dismayed at his bad luck, took this as a learning opportunity and devoted himself to his job to provide the best service possible to his customers. The young salesman was so successful and personable that Van Noyes expanded his routes, adding the Kansas City Southern and Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad lines to his repertoire. Walter also recognised that he was able to make sales to those who worked for the railroad, not just the passengers. During lean journeys, when the passenger cars weren’t as full, Walter would make his way up to the locomotive, where he would sell chewing tobacco and cigars to the engineers and firemen, who would allow the young man to ride in the engine until the next stop. Fondly remembering his time on Uncle Mike’s lap in Marceline, Walter was in heaven, getting a chance to see the work of driving a train first-hand.
Working for the Van Noyes Interstate, Walter was able to experience the world outside his hometown, something that was very special for the boy whose family hadn’t been wealthy enough to sample life outside Marceline and Kansas City. Unfortunately, his naivety often led to him getting into trouble or being put into uncomfortable situations. One evening, the train stopped overnight during a run between Kansas City and Downs, Kansas. Walter, who wasn’t yet tired, checked into a hotel and changed out of his Van Noyes uniform before wandering into town to explore. A local policeman spotted the unknown youth, who was looking into the windows of various shops, and accused him of casing the town for future burglaries. When Walter explained he was staying in town overnight as an employee of the Van Noyes Interstate News Company, the police officer refused to believe him, hauling him back to the train yards before the staff there vouched for him.
On a separate occasion, Walter disembarked a train for the evening in Pueblo, Colorado for an evening off before the route continued on to its destination the next day. As the young man was unfamiliar with the town, he asked around for accommodations and was directed to a ‘boarding house’ inside a large Victorian-era storefront. Walter felt decidedly upper-class as he stood on the pavement looking up at the building, a large staircase leading up to a heavy wooden door, while the windows were framed by red velvet curtains edged in gold fringe.
When no one answered his knock at the door, the tired young man pushed it open to find a foyer complete with cushioned couches, gilded furniture, and a sparkling crystal chandelier. Beautiful young women, a few years older than he, sat in pairs or small groups, talking quietly, sometimes casting coy glances Walter’s way. A full-figured woman came into the foyer, her eyes brightening when she saw the timid young man standing in the doorway. A large smile spread across her painted face, which was topped by a flurry of wild, red hair. Drawing the collar of her bathrobe tighter around her neck, she offered the young man a cold beer while he ‘made his decision.’
Walter thanked the woman for her kind offer, his mind confusedly trying to piece together what kind of boarding house would offer patrons an alcoholic beverage. Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention, and he glanced up to see a young woman, the skin of her neck and upper chest flushed, escorting a cowboy down the stairs. Walter moved to the side for the couple, watching as the young woman opened the door for the man, who smiled back at her over his shoulder as he stepped into the night and she closed the door behind him. Suddenly he understood: this was no boarding house, but rather a bordello, and the ‘decision’ the matron had referenced was in regards to which girl would be escorting him upstairs! Nodding at a couple of the girls seated nearby, he quietly opened the door and made his way down the front steps before he could be be propositioned again.
At the end of the summer, Walter tallied up the cash he had made from his sales working for the Van Noye Interstate News Company and realised that he had hardly made any money, instead forfeiting the $30 bond for supplies Roy had loaned him to get started. However, his time riding the railways did earn him a number of experiences and reinforced many of the ethics and morals taught by Elias, including hard work, the importance of treating people well, and the refusal to give up. It also proved that the young man didn’t want to settle for odd jobs or the ‘next best thing’ like his father, but rather wanted to find a career that would stand the test of time.