I will be a guest speaker at the Disney Family Museum on Saturday, July 23, talking about “Walt Disney and Outer Space.” It will be my first trip to the museum and I am eagerly looking forward to seeing all the special exhibition. Among those items displayed are the charcoal sketches that artist Norman Rockwell did of Walt’s daughters, Diane and Sharon, that hung in Walt’s formal office at the Disney Studio for many years.
Not many people know the many connections between the popular cover artist for The Saturday Evening Post and Walt Disney.
Rockwell's obituary in Time magazine, in 1978, read: “Rockwell shared with Walt Disney the extraordinary distinction of being one of two artists familiar to nearly everyone in the U.S., rich or poor, black or white, museum go-er or not, illiterate or Ph.D.”
In the minds of many, The Saturday Evening Post and Norman Rockwell were synonymous. His legendary association with the magazine spanned 47 years, from 1916 to 1963. During his nearly five decade affiliation with the publication, he produced 323 Saturday Evening Post covers.
Because of that work, Rockwell ended up painting a cover of the well-loved DELL comic book series “Walt Disney’s Comic Book and Stories”. In one of Rockwell’s paintings, “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” that appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, April 29, 1950, in the lower-left-hand corner is a shelf with comic books. Since Rockwell often worked using photographs, he had apparently snapped a shot of an actual comic on a shelf, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, issue No. 111 (December 1949) with a cover by Walt Kelly. Donald Duck is leaning over a fence with an amused look on his face as he sees his three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, trying to give a hairy, sad-faced brown dog a home permanent with rollers.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech about the “Four Freedoms” everyone should have: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, and freedom of worship. Norman Rockwell painted these Four Freedoms as four separate covers for The Saturday Evening Post.
In one of the letters that Walt Disney wrote to Norman Rockwell, he stated: “I thought your ‘Four Freedoms’ were great. I especially loved ‘Freedom of Worship’ and the composition and symbolism expressed in it.”
Walt’s brother-in-law and Disney Studio storyman Bill Cottrell remembered in several interviews over the years Walt’s first meeting with Norman Rockwell:
“We were traveling in New England and stopped for lunch in a little tea room. It had pictures by Norman Rockwell all over the walls. Walt said, ’Rockwell lives around here, doesn’t he?’ The waitress answered that he did and told him to go back three miles down the road and turn at the covered bridge. Walt and I, along with our wives (Walt’s wife, Lillian, and Cottrell’s wife Hazel who was Lillian’s sister), ended up spending a couple of hours with Rockwell. We just dropped in on him-it was nothing formal. He was mowing the grass when we drove up. He told us how he photographed people of the village and used them in his painting as he needed them. He showed us ‘Saturday Evening Post’ covers and several other paintings. Later, he did a commissioned portrait of Walt’s daughters.”
Amusingly, the name of the creator of Mickey Mouse was not immediately recognized by Rockwell’s cook and he initially refused admittance to Walt and his entourage. Because of his horde of admirers, Rockwell’s staff had been instructed to politely turn away any casual visitors. As Walt started to leave, Rockwell, according to Walt’s account, happens to see him and runs over to meet him.
This incident probably explains why some of Disney’s correspondence to Rockwell is humorously signed: “Walt WHO?”
Cottrell mentioned that at that first meeting “They talked of many things like town meetings and Grange meetings.”
Unfortunately, Rockwell’s studio in Arlington, Vt., that Walt visited on that memorable outing burned in May 1943 so most of Rockwell’s correspondence and reference photographs were destroyed, including anything relating to Walt up to that point.
In preparation for the charcoal portraits, Rockwell took photographs of Walt’s daughters in Walt’s office in Burbank for reference, but they no longer exist, perhaps being burned in that fire. When asked about it, Diane Disney Miller laughed, “I was about 10 years old and a real brat about it.” Sharon was 7.
(When Sharon was about 16, Walt commission two more portraits of his daughters from other artists, including Herb Ryman who tried to insist that Walt have Rockwell do the new portraits, as well.
“I can’t remember if the Post cover came before our portraits [by Rockwell],” Diane has said.
The Saturday Evening Post cover of March 1, 1941, illustrated by Rockwell, is titled “Girl Reading the Post.” It depicts a coming-of-age school girl in bobby sox, saddle shoes, and a plaid skirt with her face hidden, engrossed in a fictitious issue of The Saturday Evening Post, whose cover features a close-up head shot of an elegant lady the bobby soxer is hoping to become. The demand to see the real face of the model (16-year-old Millicent Mattison) was so great that the magazine later printed a photo of her in a similiar pose but peering around the side of an issue with the Rockwell painting on the cover.
Rockwell offered Walt the original art of any of the Saturday Evening Post covers he still had.
“Dad was invited to come to Rockwell’s studio to pick out the cover of his choice, but couldn’t spare the time to do it,” so he sent someone else, possibly Clyde Forsythe [an artist friend of both Rockwell and Disney], to choose a painting,” recalled Diane.
As a result, Rockwell gifted “Girl Reading the Post” to Walt Disney in 1943. The original oil is inscribed, “To Walt Disney, one of the really great artists, from an admirer, Norman Rockwell.”
In appreciation, Walt wrote to Rockwell on May 21, 1943: “I can’t begin to thank you…my entire staff have been traipsing up to my office to look at it…minutely they inspect it…to all of them, you are some sort of god.”
To accompany the note, Walt sent the illustrator a set of ceramic figurines featuring characters from Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia.
The Post cover and his daughter’s portraits hung prominently in Walt’s office for more than two decades. After Walt died, the Post cover hung in the Disney Archives for many years and then beginning in 1984, in the offices of Retlaw Enterprises. The individual portraits ended up in homes of Diane and Sharon.
After Lillian Disney died and the Disney family closed the family office, Diane took possession of the Post cover.
In August, 2001, Diane Disney Miller donated “Girl Reading the Post” to the Norman Rockwell Museum with this note: “I visited your museum last year, loved it, and am pleased to know that the painting will hang where it belongs.”
“Our appreciation for her kind, significant, historic gift is as boundless as the esteem that Rockwell and generations of Americans have had for her father’s work,” said Norman Rockwell Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt at the time. “We are so grateful to Mrs. Miller for her extremely generous gift. ‘Girl Reading the Post’ is an important addition to our collection.”
The museum lists the painting as a gift but Diane refers to it as on “permanent loan.”
Walt and Norman Rockwell shared many of the same honors. The Silver Buffalo Award for distinguished service to youth from the Boy Scouts of America was given to both. The Silver Buffalo Award is presented annually to adults who generously dedicate their time and resources for the benefit of youth. Walt and Rockwell also share space in the Art Director’s Hall of Fame.
“The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be,” stated Rockwell, a sentiment that echoes Walt’s own feelings about his art.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend of November 1961, Rockwell visited the Southern California area, including Disneyland. Walt wasn’t available to be a tour guide so he had Bud Coulson (who was in public relations at Disneyland) escort the Rockwells through the park. Rockwell wrote to Walt saying how much he enjoyed Disneyland. Walt responded in a letter dated January 4, 1962 that whenever Rockwell was in Los Angeles again that: “I’d like you to come and over and have lunch with me and some of the artists who I know would enjoy meeting you…So far as the Park goes, it’s worth a trip about every other year because, then, you always see new attractions.”
One of my favorite Disney paintings was inspired by Rockwell’s legendary “Triple Self Portrait” painted when the artist was 66 years old.
For the cover of the Summer 1978 issue of Backstage magazine for Disneyland cast members, Creative Services Department artist Charles Boyer created “Walt’s Self Portrait” as an homage to Rockwell’s famous painting.
Charles Boyer began his Disney career in 1960 as a portrait sketch artist at Disneyland Park. His work was so well received that after just six months he was transferred to Marketing to conceptualize and create all phases of graphics for the Park. In the 39 years he was with Disneyland, he produced nearly 50 collectible lithographs, as well as a diverse range of artwork for magazine covers, flyers, in-Park packaging, merchandise and corporate sponsored oil portraits for retiring employees. His tremendous work earned him the title of Disneyland’s first full-time illustrator and subsequently was elevated to the Park’s only Master Illustrator.
“Walt’s Self Portrait” was so popular that it was made into a limited edition lithograph to be sold to Disney cast members and instantly sold out. The original painting is on display at Walt Disney Hall at the exclusive Smoke Tree Ranch, Walt’s Palm Springs vacation home.
The popularity of the painting resulted in Boyer doing another variation, “Mickey’s Self Portrait,” which was later merchandised on postcards, embroidery kits and sculptures among many other items.
Somehow the connection of the worlds of Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney seemed to be a natural fit, reminding us all of the core values of small town life that once upon a time made the world a better, nicer place to live.
