Feature Article Walt's Legacy Walt Disney died in 1966. But his legacy lives on, in a number of ways. Of course, his creations, from Snow White to Disneyland, continue to entertain fans of all ages each year. He created feature-length animation as we know it today, as well as the theme park. He was a pioneer in nature films. He virtually invented the form of motion picture known as "family entertainment." Anyone who takes pleasure in any of these — whether they are the product of the Disney Company or not — owes a debt to Walt. Following is an excerpt from "Inside the Dream; the Personal Story of Walt Disney," which helps shed some light on the ways in which Walt's work continues to influence the world 40 years after his death. Beyond the creations themselves, of course, Walt has affected millions of fans in a very personal way. Consider Ralph Castaneda, Jr., who wrote to the Walt Disney Family Museum, "One of the things that I've learned from Walt that I use in my everyday work and life is that nothing is impossible. The quote of his that I love the best is, 'Actually, it's kind of fun to do the impossible.' I try to remind myself and others of this every day." When Walt was a boy, he took art classes, likely at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the time he was just another child anxious to learn how to draw better. About 80 years later, Timothy Lennon, conservator of paintings there, wrote to Walt's daughter Diane, "From my earliest recollections, the films that your father produced have been among my most wonderful and most indelible impressions. The animated features and the live-action films provided me with some of my most delightful childhood memories. It has been a further delight to take my own children to these same films, as well as to the parks, and to see and share in their enjoyment ... may I simply say that he has given more pleasure to more people than most artists of this century, and his place in the history of the arts is high and secure." Though the number of Disney Company employees who knew Walt personally continues to diminish with each passing year, his influence is still felt by many cast members, as they continue to be called. As Joseph Titizian, a cast member at Disneyland, wrote to the Family Museum, "Even though Walt hasn't physically been in Anaheim for nearly 35 years, we all work with the feeling that his spirit is here and we are still HIS hosts or ambassadors to the world. We welcome guests to HIS park ... the place where he spent so much time and energy, and the place where he could personally invite and entertain the world. Walt lives on in our hearts and minds today, even for those of us who were born after his death." Many artists, historians, scholars, critics, and others have given a great deal of thought to the meaning of Walt's legacy. Here, a handful relate their impressions: Paul Goldberger, internationally known architecture critic for the New Yorker, says he believes that the late architectural scholar Charles Moore was right when he indicated that Disneyland was one of the most important pieces of construction in the West in this century. Goldberger sees Disneyland as a model for a new kind of urbanism. "Walt Disney realized before anybody else that while much was gained in the sort of new suburban, automobile landscape of Southern California, something critical was lost. That was the experience of urbanism; being in a public place, where you walk around, see other people and have this wonderful combination of security and surprise. Real cities might have still had surprise, but they didn't have security any longer. And the suburbs may have had security, but no surprise. That whole element -- what a traditional village was -- had just disappeared, with people going in their cars on freeways and sitting in little tracts, and not connecting in quite the same way as they once did. "The shopping mall, town square, and entertainment zone were combined for the first time in Disneyland. This idea that you could combine a return to that experience with entertainment, was pretty dazzling. How much of that was because he understood these things, and how much was just intuitive is an open question. "In the 46 years since Disneyland opened, we've seen the real city and the theme park become more and more alike. Cities have become less and less necessary economically, because we don't need them to do business the way we once did. They've survived, by and large, by becoming places of entertainment. So, real cities have become more and more like Disneyland. "I can't say none of that would have ever happened without Disneyland, but there's a line of descent that starts with Walt Disney and goes to the cities we find today." News anchor Walter Cronkite, long known as "America's most trusted man," argues that Walt's creation of the feature-length animated film replaced century-old fairy tales in the pantheon of childhood. "Well, of course, I think of him as a moviemaker, as well as the genius who invented the theme park, though they're both equally important probably. He developed the full-length animated motion picture to a point where, in many ways in the visual age, it has supplanted the old Aesop's Fables as a staple of childhood. They tell fairy tale stories, with magnificent color animation that makes them come alive and has continued to feed children's imaginations and those of adults. "They are classics, and anyone who has ever seen them keeps them in mind, and wants to see them repeated, even as we reread the classics like Hans Christian Andersen. For me, the Mickey Mouse scene in 'Fantasia,' where he acts as the Sorcerer's Apprentice and performs with the brooms, comes immediately to mind. "Furthermore, he had a conviction of the necessity of integrity and cleanliness of approach. None of his material could ever be considered dangerous to children in any way, even with the small degree of violence that appeared in them. It was of the classical fairy tale type." Maurice Sendak may well be the most creative author and illustrator of children's books in this century. His books "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen" are classics of children's literature. His first inspirations as an artist were found in Disney cartoons. "There was always a double feature -- and in between the double feature was a cartoon. And most likely it was a Disney cartoon, and the emblematic opening was the humongously large head of Mickey, with rays, as though he was the Sun God. And the sight of that tremendous head -- I'm 72 now -- is as vivid in my head now as it was then. Though I was hardly aware of graphics when I was a kid, its rendering, the simple colors, the black and white and the red tongue and yellow rays of sunlight had an extraordinary effect on me. "I would suspect that this was the beginning of a creative process being conjured up inside me. And bringing to consciousness that color and shape and line would be the most important thing in life. "Then there was the visit to Radio City Music Hall to see 'Snow White.' I remember her skirt, I remember her waist, and the puff sleeves, and they were all these soft graded colors. And all the dwarfs were in subtle gray greens, grey-browns, and that palette was captivating. "It is still in my work. It has been imprinted and integrated. You would find, in probably all my work, the muted palette that I know came from 'Snow White.' I just remember the sheer beauty of the compositions. That was the best of it." John Canemaker is an Academy Award-winning animator, writer, author and historian and is director of the animation program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. As one of America's most respected animation historians, he believes Walt's legacy in animation is second to none. But he also believes that there's some reason to lament the fact that Walt wasn't able to carry the form even further. "He was after believability in animation. Animation takes two paths, as I see it: it either announces that it is an abstraction, a cartoon, or it takes Walt Disney's trick of saying this isn't a cartoon. It's real. It will make you cry as well as laugh. Both paths are valid and both create wonderful animation. It's just that Disney did more to push the path toward believability than anybody had done until that point, and perhaps no one could have done it more powerfully and more quickly than he did. "And still, he kept emphasizing that animation was a different kind of art form. While he did use certain kinds of things from live action, he kept emphasizing in the 1930s that they should find things in animation that were unique to the medium. "The fact is, much feature animation hasn't gone beyond the blueprint of 'Snow White.' 'Fantasia' was a way to get beyond that, and the 'Silly Symphonies' were just exploring, exploring. The question is where was he going with it. "I believe he lost his consuming interest in animation in the strike of 1941. That was a body blow. Maybe his diversification into other fields including live action films, which happened after the War, wouldn't have occurred otherwise. "Look at the things that were never finished, like "Destino," using Dali's work. The great painters and poets and playwrights, musicians and songwriters -- like Stokowski and Dali -- were all coming to him. But that was all stopped and we still haven't gotten it back." Leonard Maltin has written extensively about Walt's films and cartoons. He is probably best known for his work on television and his widely distributed book "Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide." Among his other books are "Behind the Camera," "The Whole Film Sourcebook," "Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia" and "Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons." "When Walt made 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' he was interviewed about whether the film was a children's film and he said no. The idea was to make a film that children and their parents would both enjoy. He virtually defined the term 'family film.' That's a goal some people have reached for ever since. And it's a credo that others have foolishly forgotten which is silly because the master laid out the plan for them years ago. "And of course, he established a studio that was based on continuity. In that sense, the company that still bears his name is unique in Hollywood. There is no other entertainment company that continually draws on its past the way Disney does - in literal as well as figurative ways. Today's animators will still call up vintage animation drawings to study how some of the old masters at the studio did what they did. Warner Brothers still does things with Bugs Bunny, but the staff is completely different. They don't have the library or archive that Disney does to draw on. There is no equivalent. "And, of course, he left behind films that can still serve as a yardstick for others who want to do it right. You couldn't ask for a better role model than Mary Poppins when it comes to great entertainment." John Lasseter is the creative force behind many of the Pixar films, including the recently released "Cars." Any number of fans of his work have said that Lasseter is the closest thing in Hollywood today to Walt Disney. Appropriately enough, he is chief creative officer of both the Pixar and Disney animation studios. He also has been named Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering. "I remember when I was in high school I found a book in the library called "The Art of Animation" by Bob Thomas. It told how they made films at the Disney Studio. And it dawned on me at that moment that you could do this for a living - make cartoons and make money. I said, 'OK, that's what I want to do.' "And every Sunday night, there was Walt on television. He was such a memorable figure and he embodied what all the films were about. So when I saw a Disney animated film, in the back of my head there was always Walt because I grew up with him. "And as I went to the California Institute of the Arts and was taught by some great old Disney animators and artists, I started hearing the stories of Walt and realized that he was really, really involved in the making of all these films. I mean it wasn't just his name above the title; it was him in these films. I was always inspired by his drive for the story and the characters. "One of the things I heard Walt always believed in is that you could take new technology to keep pushing the art form, but always in the service of the story. The story was everything. Because as an audience member when you walk into a theater with your popcorn and your Coke and the lights dim, within a few minutes you should be into the story. You forget about when your homework is due or your checkbook balance or all of that. You're being entertained. You want to be swept away in this world of fantasy. And that's what Walt always did so well. And you didn't realize you were looking at incredible technology and incredible artistry. "That's something that I carry through in my work. At Pixar Animation Studios, art challenges technology. We come up with a story idea and then we say, well, we don't know how to do it. Well, let's figure out a way to do it using the new technology. But it's always in service of the story." Author Ray Bradbury met Walt Disney by chance at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York in 1964. They had lunch the next day and became regular companions thereafter. They shared a fascination with the future and a faith that people would behave well if they were just given the proper information. "I look upon myself as a defender of the faith. When Disneyland opened, New York intellectuals made fun of it. I made my first trip through there after it had been open about eight months with Charles Laughton, the great Shakespearean actor . . . "Walt Disney's Disneyland liberates men to their better selves. It's true. The great thing is to walk around at Disneyland and see smiling people. Smiles, given away. They'd like very much not to smile, but they can't help it. And in the middle of the night you wake up and you feel something tugging at the corners of you mouth. And you put your hand up and by God, there's a smile there. "What was Walt Disney's biggest asset? I think the totality of Walt Disney. His gift of himself to the world. Because when you drop him in a glass of water, like a Japanese flower he just expands in all directions. So, it's the expanse of Disney that's moved out into the world in so many different ways and has done nothing but good. You can't point to anything that's ever come about that you can consider evil. It's the total man that's a gift to our time. "A lot of people question me about the myth that after Walt Disney died, he was frozen. You know, put away in storage to be waked at some future date. And I say, he didn't have to be frozen because he's gonna be around forever. When you walk around the studio, they talk about him as though he were still alive. He doesn't have to be frozen at all."