Full Name:

Roy Oliver Disney

Occupation / Title:

, ,

Date of birth:

24/06/1893

Date of death:

20/12/1971

Birthplace:

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Biography


Roy O. Disney was an American businessman and co-founder of Walt Disney Studios with his younger brother Walt Disney. While Walt was the creative mind behind the company, Roy handled and maintained the company’s financial stability, with Walt noting that Roy was the one who kept him “straight and narrow.”

In 1923, as Roy was recovering from tuberculosis in California, Walt came to his hospital bed and asked him to join him in forming his own production company as his business manager. Walt had come to Hollywood in August with $40. After two months of working and failing to gain a job with one of the film studios, a New York company agreed to distribute his Alice in Cartoonland series. Roy agreed as he needed a new job to support his future family, and feard tuberculosis would prevent him from getting jobs. The Disney Company was officially formed in a garage on October 16, 1923. Initially, the company was called Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

Roy was a lifelong business partner and supporter of his brother Walt. When Walt struggled to get cartoon work at the beginning of his career, Roy’s co-worker at the bank helped connect Walt to his first cartoon job. It was Roy’s idea to call the company Walt Disney Studios, and when Walt passed, he demanded that the Florida park be named Walt Disney World in Walt’s honor.

Roy and Walt’s relationship was not always content. Throughout the 1950s-early 1960s, the brothers rarely interacted with one another without an intermediary. Roy was initially against Disneyland and, with the board’s backing, successfully blocked Walt through conventional funding. Walt borrowed against his family’s life insurance to establish WED (Walter Elias Disney’s Enterprise), a holding company set up to oversee the planning of Disneyland, and Retlaw, a company to control the rights to his name. By the mid-1960s, they had resolved their issues. However, this conflict created “Roy’s men” and “Walt’s men.”

Roy’s critical contributions to the company included: Helping form Disney’s stock offering, inviting the United Artists to hand over Disney’s future TV rights, reestablishing the Disney brand overseas following World War Two, helping buy back ownership of Disneyland, protecting the Disney characters through copyright, and helping make Disney World a municipality.

When Walt died in 1966, Roy took over the company and established an executive committee consisting of himself, Donn Tatum, and Card Walker until 1971. However, Roy was less successful in mending the division between Walt’s Men and Roy’s Men.

Roy suffered a stroke and died on December 20, 1971, following Walt Disney World’s opening in October 1971.

Family and early life


Roy was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 24th, 1893. As the third of five children of Elias and Flora Disney, Roy is the only one of his siblings not born in December. His middle name, Oliver, derived from his parents seeing a big load of lumber driving on the road from the Oliver Lumber Company. When Roy was a child, he was a sickly baby. His uncle, Robert Disney’s wife, Margaret, recognized the problem and had a Boston doctor get Roy on a special milk formula.

In 1906, when Roy was 12, the family moved to Marceline, Missouri. One of Roy’s first jobs was planting and selling popcorn to the people of Marceline. When the family moved to Kansas City in 1910 during Roy’s senior year of high school, Roy and Walt helped their father’s newspaper distributing business by delivering newspapers before and after school. This would form a lifelong business partnership between the brothers.

Roy met his wife, Edna, when his friend, Mitch Francis, who he worked with at First Nation Bank of Kansas City, invited him to a dance with his two sisters. Roy and Edna married in 1925 after over ten years of dating. They had their son Roy E. Disney in 1930, who would later become the Vice Chairman of The Walt Disney Company.

During World War One, Roy served in the Navy as a petty officer on a cargo ship. While overseas, he contracted tuberculosis and recovered in a hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which he didn’t like, so he went to Tucson, Arizona, to seek treatment. After recovering, he went to Glendale, California, where he sold vacuums door-to-door, and then eventually relapsed and stayed in a hospital in Los Angeles.

Roy was a lifelong Republican supporter.

Personal style


Roy had a conservative approach to his financial management of the Disney Company. While Roy was often skeptical of Walt’s creative visions due to the financial costs, but he always came around and supported his endeavors. Roy’s favorite expression when he learned from a studio employee that Walt was planning another big project was, “Junior’s got his hand in the cookie jar again.”

Those who worked closely with him described him as friendly and easygoing. Roy was also stingy with money. For the first 25 years of marriage, Roy and Edna never owned more than two cars. Edna would pick up Roy from work. Roy’s hobby was driving around town and on long trips in a big, comfortable sedan.

Honors and awards


Roy has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Filmography


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References:


IMDb. “Roy O. Disney.” IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0228397/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm.

Ohmer, Susan. George Gallup in Hollywood. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Smoodin, Eric Loren. Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. Routledge, 1994.

Thomas, Bob. Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire. Hyperion, 1998.

Wasko, Janet. Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy. 2nd ed., Polity Press, 2020.




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