During the last few years, the Walt Disney Family Foundation has taken steps to preserve the history of Walt's Latin American activities in the 1940s. This writer has been at work on a book detailing the history of the Disney studio's work in South and Central America, and the wildly diverse group of films that resulted from it. In addition, award-winning filmmakers Ted Thomas and Kuniko Okubo have undertaken a feature documentary film, shot in five countries to commemorate the 1941 South American trip, its impact, and the memories of it that still linger today.

In researching the Disney journey through South America, I've made any number of fascinating discoveries. None of them have been more captivating than the role Walt himself played in the trip. In photographs, newsreels, and documentary footage, we see a carefree Walt happily experiencing South American cultures, a world celebrity cast in the role of an ordinary tourist. He seems simply to have hopped a plane on a whim to see what those faraway lands were like. That's the image we're supposed to see, but it's deceptive. Undoubtedly, Walt did enjoy his South American experience, but in fact his trip was painstakingly planned for months in advance, and he was carrying a huge responsibility on his shoulders.

What is sometimes forgotten today is that the Disney tour of South America was made in cooperation with the U.S. government's "Good Neighbor" program, an effort to encourage friendly relations among all the American republics in the face of impending world war. To help bolster those friendly relations, the government called on the magic of Hollywood. The major movie studios were encouraged to feature a heavy concentration of Latin American themes in their films, while movie stars and other celebrities were pressed into goodwill tours of South America.

The trouble was, some of those goodwill tours had already fallen flat by the summer of 1941. Some movie stars, who had insulting manners and demands, actually created "ill will" among their Latin American hosts. As a result the Good Neighbor program had acquired a bad reputation, and Walt and his artists were encouraged not to identify themselves with the government's diplomatic efforts. They were simply to represent themselves as working artists, gathering story material for their films—which of course was the truth. Nevertheless, the government was counting heavily on the international goodwill engendered by Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the other Disney creations. Would Walt be able to succeed where other celebrities had failed, cementing popular sentiment in Latin America on the side of the Allies?

They needn't have worried. From the moment Walt's plane landed at the Rio de Janeiro airport, met by a crowd of over 1,000, he was given a hero's welcome. Everywhere he went autograph seeking fans surrounded him. Many just wanted the honor of shaking his hand. Significantly, government officials and dignitaries were just as anxious as the man on the street to meet Walt. John Hay "Jock" Whitney, one of the executives behind the U.S. Good Neighbor program, was present at the time and was happily amazed at Walt's instant acceptance by all levels of society. "Walt Disney is far more successful as an enterprise and as a person than we could have dreamed," Whitney wrote to the home office. "His public demeanor is flawless. He is unruffled by adulation and pressure—just signs every autograph and keeps smiling." Walt had never relished the role of a public figurehead, but in Rio he assumed that role with apparent ease: posing for newsreels with the president of Brazil -- speaking as the voice of Mickey Mouse, in Portuguese, in a radio broadcast to the children of Brazil -- presiding over the Rio premiere of "Fantasia."

His role as a goodwill ambassador became even more important when the party moved on from Brazil to Argentina. It was in Argentina that South American Nazi propaganda was strongest, and Walt's unspoken mission was to counteract that propaganda. This was nothing to be taken lightly -- "El Pampero," the Nazi newspaper in Buenos Aires, published a vitriolic attack on Walt while the Disney party was still in Brazil. But once again, when Walt arrived in Argentina, he swept away all opposition seemingly without effort. Like their Brazilian counterparts, Argentine fans couldn't get enough of Walt—and, again, this included fans at the highest levels of society and government. On just one afternoon, he was presented to four prominent dignitaries, including the president and vice-president of Argentina. Just as in Brazil, the overwhelming popularity of Walt and his films quickly silenced any detractors. One U.S. stringer noted that "El Pampero" had abruptly dropped its critical remarks, and observed: "Belief is that any attack against a figure as popular as Disney would have only served to kick back on them."

This spectacular success as a builder of goodwill had its downside. As Walt had pointed out before leaving the U.S., he was more interested in making films than in shaking hands. Hustled through a steady round of receptions, cocktail parties, banquets and other formal affairs -- Walt had much less time than he would have liked to devote to the creative process. Fortunately, the other artists in his party—a group that quickly adopted the self-nickname "El Grupo"—were devoting their time to the creative process: sketching, painting, and photographing their impressions of South American culture and scenery, meeting and consulting with other artists and musicians. Walt met with members of El Grupo on a daily basis, supervised their work, and did participate in some high-profile research activities. But despite his carefree manner, he was charged with maintaining the prestige of the U.S. in a politically divided nation, and he took it seriously.

Too, other serious matters weighed on his mind: the final resolution of the animators' strike at his Studio back in California (on terms painfully unfavorable to the Studio) and, in September, the death of his father Elias. But Walt was in the midst of a crowded schedule, carrying a tremendous responsibility on his shoulders, and he could not afford to slow his pace. He kept his feelings to himself. "Walt took it very well," said Norm Ferguson in a letter to Roy after Elias Disney's death, "but we knew just about how he felt on getting the news."

Early in October—after further visits to Uruguay, rural Argentina, and Chile, and after dispatching some of his artists to still other countries—Walt and most of El Grupo boarded an ocean liner in Valparaiso to begin the voyage home. The trip wasn't over yet -- further stops would be made as the ship sailed up the west coast of the continent, but the most intense part of Walt's South American adventure was finished. On shipboard, in a pensive mood, he wrote in his journal: "We're on the homeward lap . . . We're tired of looking at our own, and each other's, same two suits, and our bags are getting pretty shabby.

"Now that the majority of the mileage is behind us, we're beginning to gain a perspective on the trip. And all of us realize now that you certainly can't learn about countries from reading books, or from listening to other people tell you about their trips."

But most people couldn't describe their trips as Walt Disney could. He and his artists had absorbed much of the essence of the various South American cultures -- not only the dry statistics, but the living atmospheres of the many lands they had visited. In return, they had left their hosts with warm, happy memories of their North American visitors, and the unmistakable stamp of the best, the friendliest and the most creative in U.S. culture. Charged with a delicate diplomatic mission, Walt had delivered far more than was asked of him. And now, armed with the abundance of visual and musical impressions his artists had brought back from the trip, he was about to create a series of films that would deliver even more.

Be sure to visit this month's Walt's Thoughts in Audio to hear Walt's own recollections from his journey through South America.