Walt's Thoughts in Audio Walt and Money Here are some of Walt's own reflections on the role and use of money. Be sure to also visit the special exhibition Walt and Money. "I've always been bored with just making money. I always wanted to do things. I wanted to build things. I wanted to get something going. What money meant to me was to get the money to do that, you see?" (Hear Walt's Voice) Walt found out at an early age that it takes money to create things: "I finally got around to where I had 20 dollars in the bank that I'd earned. My father got sold on a deal of investing money in a preserving factory. So they called me in. They said, 'Walter, we've been thinking, now your father's going to invest in this factory and we're going to invest your $20 ...' They kept it. I had to turn it in. Said 'We're going to invest this.' I didn't want to invest it. I had a lot of things I wanted to do. I wanted to build an automobile and I wanted to get all the parts. I wanted to build one of these little things, you know? ... Roy helped me on that ... Then I started doing all kinds of chores to pick up money. So the upshot of it was I was working all the time. I mean, I never had any real play time. But my mother would always slip me a little something. When I turned in, lots of times, she would kind of ... I would say 'Mother can't I…' and she would say 'yes.' She wouldn't report it. She had the money, you see." (Hear Walt's Voice) When Ub Iwerks and Walt decided to set up their own business in Kansas City, Walt remembered he had $500 in savings which his parents had kept for him: "I had this $500 ... I got a letter back from my mother and she said, 'Your father and I talked it over and we want to know first what you want to do with it.' I wrote another letter back. I said, 'It's my money. It's none of your business.' I said, [laughs] 'Let me have it.' I said, 'I'm going in business.' You see? I had back and forth letters. Finally she sent me half of what I asked for. So what I did with it, I bought two desks. I bought drawing boards. I bought an airbrush. Oh, a big tank of air and this fancy airbrush cost 35 bucks, I think, you know? Then I had to buy supplies." (Hear Walt's Voice) Walt went on to create his Laugh-O-grams company. After it got into financial trouble, he spent every last dime to try to keep the business afloat: "I didn't have enough money. When my credit ran out I was tempted to go and eat, order my meal, and then tell them I couldn't pay. But I didn't have the nerve. I was so damn hungry." (Hear Walt's Voice) But things looked a lot better in Los Angeles, following the success of Mickey Mouse. "Right after Mickey Mouse hit, I was in New York and we needed money and a fellow kept hanging around the hotel with $300 in cash waving at me all the time. I finally signed a deal to put Mickey Mouse on these big cheap tablet type of things, you know? It was the first deal I ever signed. Of course, when Mickey Mouse hit there, why, I begin to think I wanted to get into that. I knew that that was an important thing, to exploit the characters as well as to make money." (Hear Walt's Voice) When Walt decided it was time to experiment with color, he took a nearly finished cartoon, "Flowers and Trees," and wanted to redo it entirely in beautiful Technicolor. Roy argued that this was expensive and might not work. But Walt won out, and "Flowers and Trees" -- in color -- won an Academy Award®. "Well, it was about that time I spending probably more money on the pictures than my brother would see coming in. And it was quite a deal. My brother was very much against it. The reason he was always, I've said before he always lived with figures and figures, as I've found out, the people who live with figures as a rule, it's post mortem. It's never ahead. It's always what's happened. Well, in my particular end I was always ahead. In other words I was always working on things to come. I was always ahead. Looking ahead. And I can't blame him because he never had the same experience in the business I had. He came into business because of me and because of his respect for me. And it was quite a deal and I said, 'I want color.' I said, 'I think it's the thing that it will set the thing right off.' And his reasoning -- the series is sold. I was about half through this particular series. We'd sold the series. Twelve of them. And once you made a deal with the theater man, you had to deliver all 12 at that price. And the series was half sold. Changing in the middle of the series would get us no more money from the theater man to pay for the extra cost." (Hear Walt's Voice) Even after The Walt Disney Company became a major animation studio, Walt recognized the importance of bank credit: "For a long time we couldn't get any credit because they didn't consider it a stable thing or anything like that. It was always a risk. We had to move from one bank. We moved to the Bank of America and they gave us credit. And it took quite a bit of doing for us to get our first $25,000 credit. But the Bank of America was very sympathetic. They knew the movie business. And they had a Doctor Giannini who was a brother of A.P. who was in charge of all the motion picture loans. Dr. Giannini was a fellow that didn't set in a chair and just make decisions according to what he found on a piece of paper that was presented to him. He wanted to know behind the things themselves. And he wanted to know the people and he sort of went a lot on that. And he became a very good friend and he fought for us many times when he thought somebody was trying to take unfair advantage of us. ... He was really a good friend." (Hear Walt's Voice) Still, it was Roy rather than Walt who had to face the music with bankers and stockbrokers: "I felt very sorry and I'm always sympathetic to him because he, he has to sit with the bankers. He has to sit with the money men. He has to fight with these stockbrokers who come in and harass you and say 'Why ...I haven't turned any Disney stock in six months. Now, DO something so I can turn it and make a profit.' You know? He had to sit with them. And I had to tell him lots of times, 'You have to get away from those guys. You sit with those fellows and they beat you down!' I said, 'You have to stay as far away as you can.' I told him one time in New York when they had him down, I said 'Come on, the sun is shining in California!'" (Hear Walt's Voice) Walt wanted to build an amusement park, but Roy was concerned that shareholders would be furious if he put the company's resources in such a risky new venture. Unperturbed, Walt decided to go and find the money himself. "I haven't invested money in ranches. I haven't got anything here. I have a home -- that's all. But this thing I was willing to put my own money in. And before I got that park going I spent over $100,000 that I borrowed on the insurance that I'd been paying on for 30 years. I even had to sell my home in Palm Springs to use that money to get this thing to a point where I could show people what it would be." (Hear Walt's Voice) In sum, money for Walt was always a tool to be creative, rather than a goal in itself. In this quote, he laughingly calls himself "the most broke guy in Hollywood." "But honestly, to tell you the truth, it's the last thing I think about. But the only thing I know that I have to make dough in order to do things. And my fun has never been in having money. I think I've been the most broke guy in Hollywood. I mean right now, I just told my daughter I've only got 3,000 dollars in my bank account. Well there've been a lot of ways to make money if we'd wanted to make it personally. And but what I want is to get the money to do things. But I've had to learn how to be a … I'd go headlong into some of these things then run smack into a big financial problem. Then you've got to fight your way out of it. So now, I'm trying to kind of keep myself, well, fortified if I'm doing something. I try to keep aces up the sleeve if I have to. I mean the finances … I mean, well it's my brother on the finances. Still, I work with him a heck of a lot. And I've had some darn good ideas of where to get the money [laughs] and how to get it." (Hear Walt's Voice)   Click to play audio