“Everything connected with Marceline [Missouri] was a thrill to us [the Disney family in 1905], coming, as we did, from a city the size of Chicago. The cows, pigs, and chickens gave me a big thrill, and, perhaps, that's the reason we use so many barnyard animals in the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony pictures today. Who knows? You know what the psychologists say about the importance of childhood impressions,” wrote Walt Disney for the September 23, 1938, Golden Jubilee edition of the Marceline News.
On Oct. 29, 1966, just six weeks before his death, Walt Disney received an award from the American Forestry Association “for outstanding service in conservation of American resources.”
During his lifetime, Walt also received recognitions and awards from many similar organizations, including the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the American Humane Association.
Walt had a sincere and passionate commitment to wildlife and nature. It was an awareness that was born with his early childhood years on his family's farm in Marceline and remained with him for the rest of his life.
Walt's first pet was a frisky Maltese terrier, but he also considered the animals on the farm his pets, as well, even though they were fated to be shipped off to be sold at market or ended up on the dinner table.
He had no sentimental illusions about the animals, despite his affection and respect for them. At an early age, he became aware of the cycle of life and the laws of nature.
“It may seem odd that I am so beguiled with nature animals. Actually, there is a very close kinship between real animals and the creatures we invent for fable,” wrote Walt in the essay Why I Like Making Nature Films from Woman's Home Companion of May 1954. “Fabulous animals must remain credibly close to universal nature to be acceptably funny or have any meaning.”
“We can learn a lot from nature in action. Each creature must earn his right to live and survive by his own efforts and the thing, which in human relations we call moral behavior,” he wrote.
Because of the many chores needed in operating the farm, his family was often too busy to play with young Walt, and neighbors were so far away that they only made infrequent visits. So, Walt bonded with the animals as his playmates.
A little runt pig named Skinny followed him around as if it were a pet dog, and Walt would feed him with a baby bottle. Walt would herd the pigs from one grubbing place to another and played in the mud with them.
Since Walt was too small to ride the huge work horses on the farm, he would ride big sow called Porker.
During a 1956 visit to Marceline, Walt told reporters, “I don't know if you are aware that I was quite a pig rider. I would jump on the old sow's back, grab her ears and off we would go to the pond where she would dump me.”
Walt would later claim that Porker was the model for one of the foolish pigs in his animated short Three Little Pigs (1933).
Walt also stated that a chicken that he called Martha would lay an egg for him on command. He was especially fond of a horse named Charlie who was a sway-backed, gray-dappled horse that pulled the Disney buggy.
As Walt's little sister Ruth Disney recalled, “I remember our playing in the fields and by the creek and always taking a short cut home across the bull pasture, even though being very scared of the bull who always chased us. With Walt's help, I would just make it over the fence before the bull got me.”
One of Walt's earliest encounters with animals in Marceline was very traumatic. Just after he had arrived, he went out with his older brother Roy to look over the property. Roy shot one of the large jackrabbits that threatened to overrun the property. The animal did not die immediately but was still twitching when they got to it and Roy had to snap its neck. Walt's mother Flora made rabbit stew that evening, but Walt refused to eat it.
Later, Walt tried to catch an owl and accidentally killed it, an incident that would haunt him in dreams for the rest of his life.
Walt Disney's love of the natural world led to the Studios making 13 True-Life Adventure films in the the 1950s.
While in Marceline, Walt did a little fishing, catching catfish and bowheads in Yellow Creek, but gave it up after he left, and never did any hunting in his life.
It was while in Marceline that an inventive Walt sewed some old burlap bags into a makeshift circus tent and herded in some feral farm cats, dressing them in his sister Ruth's doll clothes, to try to produce a show.
In the January, 1940, Better Homes and Gardens magazine article titled At Home With Walt Disney, by Elmer T. Peterson, Walt stated:
“In one way, you know, animals are superior to human beings. People try to change nature to conform to their own queer notions. Animals don't — they adapt themselves to nature. You never saw a wilderness wrecked by animals.
“Why do human beings, as soon as they move into a place, declare war on the birds, animals, fish, and wildlife of all kinds? Why do they declare war on natural shrubs and flowers, the rivers and mountains, the fields and forests? They make a mess of things by destroying the balance of Nature. They strip the land of trees and start soil washing into the ocean. You never see animals do that.
“The beaver even helps Nature to keep water where it is by building innumerable dams. At the same time, man, who is alleged to be far more intelligent, does just the opposite. He straightens and deepens streams so the water will get to the bigger streams more quickly and increase floods. Can you beat it?”
The natural beauty of the world was also an inspiration to Walt who told reporters it was “just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”
In Walt Disney's foreword to the book Secrets of Life (Simon and Schuster, 1957), he wrote:
“In truth, landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine on other planets.
“Some of Earth's own inhabitants are almost too startling for belief. They are graceful and gentle; they are horrible monsters; they are giants-or dwarfs. They communicate with each other by devices that are far beyond the reach of our senses. Modern science helps us to explore these hiding places of nature and to study the activities of their inhabitants-playing and fighting, eating and mating, taking care of their babies-living life in full swing. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?”
In 1956, Walt started planning what was originally called The Marceline Project and then, later, Walt Disney's Boyhood Farm.
The late Rush Johnson, who then lived in the old Disney family house in Marceline, would tell people in later years that he remembered Walt settled in an easy chair in the house and sipping a drink, predicting that some day soon American children would have no idea where milk and eggs came from.
To help modern children to learn the importance of early farm life and to learn about animals and respect nature, Walt decided to build a Disney attraction based around a working farm in Marceline.
“He was such a visionary,” remembered Kaye Malins, who was Johnson's daughter and now runs the Walt Disney Hometown Museum in Marceline, “He said there will come a time when a child will not know what an acre of land is. There will come a time when a child will not know what happens when you put a seed in the ground. We're there now.”
When Johnson expressed concern that Marceline was too off-the-beaten track to support such a project, Walt smiled and told him that to just wait until during introductions to the popular weekly Disney television program Walt would look at the camera and smile and say, “When you are visiting Missouri, make sure you stop by and see my boyhood farm” and just like Disneyland, he would produce television shows devoted to the building and maintenance of the attraction.
Buzz Price later determined that, even with that type of publicity, the project could not be profitable. So Walt decided it would be a non-profit project.
With Johnson's help, Disney bought his father's old Marceline farm and the land adjacent to it, in the hopes of creating a secret project that Walt referred to as Walt Disney's Boyhood Farm. Although, for security purposes, it was dubbed The Marceline Project, so that land prices wouldn't soar.
Walt imagined a living-history farm where young and old could relive a simpler time and discover their roots. Johnson corresponded frequently with Walt over the next decade and visited the Disney Studios in Burbank at least 10 times to discuss the project's development with an excited Walt. Rush became not only a business partner but a friend and specific plans were drawn up.
With Walt's death in 1966, work on the project slowed considerably as all the resources of the Disney Company were focused on the building of Walt Disney World. With Roy's death in 1971, the project was completely abandoned and the land was re-purchased from the Disney Company at a bargain price by Rush Johnson.
Walt's love of animals and nature did not just manifest itself in exaggerated comical interpretations like Flowers and Trees (1932), but in more serious projects like Bambi (1942).
Bambi was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2011 and in its induction, the Registry said that the film was one of Walt Disney's favorites and that it has been “recognized for its eloquent message of nature conservation.”
Some of the earliest work for the film was done by naturalist Maurice “Jake” Day who spent several weeks in the Vermont and Maine forests, sketching and photographing deer, fawns, and the surrounding wilderness areas. In addition, he arranged for two fawns from Maine to be shipped to the Disney Studio for live action reference study along with other animals in a pen behind the animation building.
Bambi was recognized by the National Film Registry in 2011 due to its “message of nature conversation.”
Tyrus Wong created the impressionist water color backgrounds for the film, emphasizing the ethereal beauty and mystery of the forest that eliminated the busy detail. He created grass with just a few streaks of actual blades, and allowed patches of light to bring out necessary details like the trunk of a tree or a log.
Walt was enthusiastic:
“I like that indefinite effect in the background—it's effective. I like it better than a bunch of junk behind them.”
“Well, actually, it was a change of pace for us from what we'd been doing,. Snow White, Pinocchio, and the others were more the obvious cartoon-type of characters. But, with Bambi, there was a need for subtlety in our animation, and a need for more of a life-like type of animation.
“Now you know, animal anatomy is a thing that very few artists ever get anyway. And before I started Bambi we had been doing these little cartoon animals. But Bambi, they had to be a little closer to the real animal—it's a caricature with a certain little humanized touch, but still believable as deer as animals in the forest. So the background for that was a good study of animal anatomy, and how deer and how these other animals actually moved, reacted.
“So I set up this special training course before I started Bambi, and I selected the artists that were going to work on Bambi, and we put in an intensive series of training on animal anatomy. I brought in the best instructor on animal anatomy, name of Rico Lebrun. Rico was teaching around—he was in Santa Barbara then when I brought him down for a six-week course.”
It was Walt's vision to show nature through the eyes of its inhabitants. It is the thoughtlessness of man that disrupts the balance of this peaceful scene.
Hunters not only kill Bambi's mother, they also kill other animals indiscriminately, their hunting dogs attack Faline, and their carelessness with their camp fire ravages the forest, destroying it and many of its inhabitants. Even the animals that survive might no longer have shelter or food to sustain them.
It was Walt's original intent that the charred bodies of the hunters would also be shown, victims of their own thoughtlessness. The year after the film's release, Bambi and his friends were loaned out for a national poster campaign to promote fire prevention and then were replaced the following year by Smokey the Bear.
While the film was initially criticized for lacking the elements of fantasy in Walt's previous films, it is certainly a fantasy that the animals do not die from over population, harsh winters or even the predatory behavior of other animals.
Walt's point was not that all hunters are evil, just those who do not adhere to a code of conduct that respects nature and its creatures.
In any case, the film has become an enduring metaphor for protecting wildlife and nature and a tribute to Walt's desire to create a greater awareness of the intrinsic value of those aspects.
In response to reporter Dick Strout's question: “Isn't there a little bit of Bambi in Walt Disney, or for that matter, in everything you do?” Walt replied, “I respect nature and the creatures of nature. Man can learn a way of life from it. Man is the most helpless and pathetic of all animals”.
Walt made 13 live-action nature films in the late 1950s known as the True-Life Adventures series. Eight of them won Academy Awards. They were shown in public schools for decades and some young people were even influenced into going into environmental careers, like the forestry service due to seeing these films.
Walt was inspired to start this popular series by the fear that the frontier was vanishing and needed to be preserved. He sent a husband and wife team, Alfred and Elma Milotte, to one of the last remaining wildernesses, Alaska, to shoot everything they could, from Eskimos to businesses, to try to capture the spirit of this disappearing outpost.
Examining the many hours and hours of raw footage, Walt zeroed in on footage of seals and asked the Milottes to emphasize the lifecycle of the seals and not show any indication of man's presence. The resulting short documentary, Seal Island (1948), received an Academy Award and sparked the series.
For some of the films, three to five different cameramen might shoot the same action. In general, for every 120,000 feet of 16mm film shot, perhaps only 30,000 feet was used in the final film. The Milottes spent three years getting footage for The African Lion (1955) and only 6 percent of film they shot was used in the 72-minute final film that helped inspire the Jungle Cruise attraction at Disneyland.
About the films, Walt said:
“Nature remains the director. You can often set up your spying camera within a few yards of expected action. But only instinctive promptings, elemental urges, goad wild things to do what comes naturally. The cameraman must be ready for the moment of revelation; often he has to depend on luck as well as advance preparation.
“Many of nature's finest and most exciting moments of action come with almost no warning. Wilderness creatures don't pose for their portraits. They cannot be directed. Human presence, especially among the larger ones, is just one more menace in their fear-haunted lives. So the telescopic lens is a necessity in filming the more cautious, shy, or dangerous animals.
“We did not succumb to the alluring temptations to make villains or saints of the creatures portrayed in our films. We have maintained a sensitive regard for the wisdom of Nature's design and have attempted to hold a mirror to the out-of-doors rather than to interpret its functioning by man's standards.
“Our films have provided thrilling entertainment of educational quality and have played a major part in the worldwide increase in appreciation and understanding of nature. These films have demonstrated that facts can be as fascinating as fiction, truth as beguiling as myth, and have opened the eyes of young and old to the beauties of the outdoor world and aroused their desire to conserve priceless natural assets.”
Walt was certainly right about that because, more than a half-century later, these films are still effective thanks to Walt's keen storytelling (aided by such Disney legends as James Algar, Winston Hibler, and Ben Sharpsteen), the evocative music (primarily by Paul Smith) and the amazing visuals by those self-sacrificing and long-suffering nature photographers who captured moments that had never before been filmed.
In 1956, for a Public Service Announcement for National Wildlife Week in March. Walt appeared on camera and said: “You've probably heard people talk about conservation. Well, conservation isn't just the business of a few people. It's a matter that concerns all of us. It's a science whose principles are written in the oldest code in the world, the laws of nature. The natural resources of our vast continent are not inexhaustible. But if we will use our riches wisely, if we will protect our wildlife and preserve our lakes and streams, these things will last us for generations to come.”
The following was written by Walt Disney to appear in the March 19, 1956, issue of Sports Illustrated magazine:
“We do ourselves a great human service by conserving our wildlife resources.
“To protect birds and animals from onslaught by thoughtless elements of the population is not a matter of soft sentiment. Their careful preservation is now recognized as vital in the balance of nature under which our cultivated fields and gardens thrive and our healthful existence often depends.
“These are practical considerations to which the U.S. Wildlife Service and its allied organizations are devoted in program and administration.
“But I do not discount the sentimental aspects, either.
“Native wildlife, to me, is part of the American land and scene. It is closely associated with our history and traditions. To observe our wild creatures in their natural habitat, I regard as a privilege of the American citizen. We are entitled, by common consent, to experience the delights, the beauties and wonders of living creation in the world around us – just as we have asserted a common right to visit woodland, mountain, desert and seashore areas in national parks and monuments. We claim these privileges for our children as well as for the present generations.
“There are very few responsible citizens, I am sure, who do not agree with this viewpoint. Even the majority of hunters recognize it in their sportsman's code of the limited bag and the measures being taken to keep endangered species alive.
“Bu there is always need for vigilance and further education in all public channels, on matters of conservation.
“To have dedicated a National Wildlife Week to these ends, therefore seems to me a valuable occasion in a most worthy cause.”
Long before ecological outcries like Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring (1962) or the celebration of the first Earth Day in 1970, Walt Disney was an aggressive advocate for the importance of conservation and protecting nature and its inhabitants. It was just another thing that made Walt such an amazing visionary.
