AMERICA’S “POET LARIAT” REMEMBERS WALT DISNEY

Will Rogers was one of America’s favorite humorists, up there with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Ogden Nash, Stan Freberg, Garrison Keillor, and many more. In the 1920s and 1930s his influence was keenly felt through the cinema and radio, as he kept Americans laughing through a good part of the Depression. He was our “cracker-box philosopher” to use Will’s self-effacing and clever wit (the “poet-lariat” is also his work, making clever use of his use of words and the rope).

One of his favorite sayings (often spinned in a drawl, while at the same time spinning his lasso) was that he never met a man he didn’t like! One would be hard pressed to find a man (or woman) that didn’t like him, although there were a few. For the most part Americans loved him, because he was a true American and was living the American Dream. A famous historian wrote about him: “Like America, when Will Rogers started out, a wad of gum in his jaw, twirling a rope, a grin on his face, he didn’t know where he was going. His was no planned, educated, groomed, scientifically test-tubed existence. That’s why it is so American.” Will Rogers was America. One man that Will really liked, and the feeling was mutual, was Walt Disney (the image above feature’s the two dubyas at the Writer’s Club banquet in 1933–note the obvious and overwhelming admiration on Walt’s face).

The two had become good friends early in the 1930s, while both were at the genesis of the popularity in their chosen careers of entertainment. The two also shared a common interest in the game of Polo, and several times Walt had played Polo with Will at the Rogers Ranch in California. It was only natural for the two to talk about doing a project together.

In 1932 Walt was contemplating a full-length animated feature based on Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. The film would star his friend Will Rogers, who was planned for the starring roll, the Dutch Colonist who mislays twenty years of his life after drinking with the strange little men of the Catskill Mountains (Will Van Winkle). It was not to be however, as Paramount owned the rights to the book and after much wrangling they refused to grant Disney permission. No doubt the thought of a competitor, especially with the likes of a blockbuster box office potential of the Walt and Will team, lead Paramount to their senses. The result was the friends first potential project was shelved, but they continued to discuss other possibilities. Will did make a cameo appearance in the 1933 Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey’s Gala Premiere, but little else developed.

Their mutual interest in the sport of Polo was what brought the dynamic duo back together, and once again the pair were in talks about a possible collaboration. Walt honored Rogers by selecting him to be one of four Hollywood stars chosen for a “starring” roll in the 1936 Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey’s Polo Team. The cartoon was to feature a Hollywood Polo game between the Disney characters and the stars of the silver screen. Four Hollywood stars would represent the cinema, complete with a cheering section of many “lesser” stars (one wonders if it was section “B”?). This Hollywood Polo team was to play the Disney Stars Polo team. The stars would be caricatures, which most likely grew out of the popularity of Mickey’s Gala Premiere. An additional Disney touch was added with the idea that each horse would also be a caricature of the star. The cartoon is brilliantly executed, and to this day, even with its excessive dating, it is a well-loved Mickey Mouse short.

Tragically Roger’s scene never made the cartoon, as his untimely death in an airplane accident with Wiley Post in 1935 prompted Walt to remove the sequences. At the time of his death Will Rogers was the top moving-picture box-office attraction, radio entertainer, newspaper columnist, after-dinner speaker, and lecturer in the United States. It was a life cut tragically short, and a world often wonders what Will witticisms we have missed, and what other potential Will and Walt projects may have developed.

The Writer’s Club banquet photograph at the head of this essay gives us a glimpse into the fondness Walt had for Will, but what did Will think of Walt? The two were obviously friends, had discussed joint projects, played a beloved sport together, and shared Midwestern roots. Yet, someone with a career based on his use of the English language, what would that person’s words about Walt be? In the book The Autobiography of Will Rogers, (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1949), edited by Donald Day (actually a collection of Will’s writings, speeches, newspaper columns, letters, etc.) we get a glimpse into Will Rogers thoughts and feelings through his writings on Walt. The aforementioned header photograph plays an important part in the excerpt that is to follow. The evening together prompted Will to write the following in his newspaper column:

“We were all down to a might fine dinner they gave to Walter Disney. He is the sire and dam of that gift to the world, ‘Mickey Mouse.’ Now if there wasent [sic] two geniuses at one table, Disney and Charley Chaplin [sic]. One took a derby hat and a pair of big shoes, and captured the laughs of the world, and the other one took a lead pencil and a mouse, and he has the whole world crawling in a rat hole, if necessary, just to see the antics of these rodents. But there was more than shoes and pencils and derby hats and drawing boards there. Both had a God given gift of human nature. Well of course they base it all on psychology of some kind and breed, but its something human inside these two ducks that even psychology hasent [sic] a name for.” October 15, 1933.

The film review side of Rogers prompted the pundit to write his thoughts about Walt’s work, in his nationally syndicated column following the release the Silly Symphony Three Little Pigs (1933). Will had this to say about the film: “. . . that Three Little Pigs, why I would have given my life just to have played one of them. That’s the best picture ever made.”