Walt's Right-Hand Man

Well, my Steven Watts textbook literally just came in through the post office today and I spent a fair amount of time searching for information about the “nine old men” as was suggested by Collin and seconded by Dr. Croce, but instead I learned a fair amount about Ub Iwerks. The cursory glance and brief skimming/reading that I did of the text were relatively uninformative about the relationship and growing dependence between Walt and his so-called cabinet.
There were several pages denoted in the index but they offer shallow depths of information although it should be mentioned that there seemed to be much more to be read about a select few people. Again since I was limited on time I have only had a chance to read a small portion about the relationship between Kimball, one of the original nine and Walt. It would not be much of a stretch to hazard a guess and say that the same is true for one or two of Walt’s other cabinet members in this text, if not all of them. This definitely is something I look forward to reading more about when I get an opportunity because as far as I know, the nine old men gained more and more authority until they were essentially running the show without much of any input from Walt.

Until now I have been relatively uninformed about who this Iwerks fellow was and why he keeps popping up. It seems as if early on the two had developed a friendship of sorts and stuck together through various periods of unemployment and failures. Iwerks clearly had a talent for art, animation, and the like which put him in a class of his own and consequently Walt felt no need to waste his own time on doing drawings when he could be doing the writing and other necessary things for his business. Eventually, Iwerks would leave the Disney Studio and try to succeed on his own which may be largely due to having worked in the shadow of the personable Walt for most of his life. After all, the Disney Studio was a success whereas early on when Iwerks and Walt were partners earlier, the business failed after Iwerks pushed Walt towards a better job. All in all, Iwerks was an integral part of the success that was experienced by Walt and the entertainment conglomerate which is still thriving today. Just as an added note, here’s something from Iwerks struck me as particularly interesting that I thought you all might as well: “it was what Walt did with Mickey that was important, not who created him.” (Watts, p.51)