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...founder's ideas still run the show: almost everything Disney is now into was conceived of by Walt. "That's the way Walt would want it" is a refrain heard frequently in the stucco Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif. The executive most responsible for sticking to Walt's winning formulas is E. Cardon Walker, 60, who joined Walt as a camera operator in the 1930s and has been Disney president since 1971. A tall, husky man whose use of profanity is limited to an occasional G-rated "damn," Card Walker occupies an unpretentious office on the Disney...
Walker believes that "the biggest challenge we face is still to make top-quality films," and film critics tend to agree. Though slick and successful, the recent crop of Disney animated and live-action films (Gus, Treasure of Matecumbe, Robin Hood) shows little of Walt's skill at tugging an audience over pop-emotional peaks and valleys. Nor do the forthcoming The Rescuers and Pete's Dragon. Indeed, not since Mary Poppins in 1964 has Disney produced a genuinely smashing, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...
This fact troubles Walt's corporate heirs. Says Walker: "I don't know exactly what it is. We don't cut costs. Based on the quality of people involved in the film making, I would just have to say that we do our best." Others blame excessive reverence for the traditional Disney method of moviemaking: batteries of cartoonists working under a rigid discipline on a single project for as long as three years. Says one young artist-animator who worked briefly for Disney: "The work is too confining. There's not enough room to use your...
...film projects, however, account for three-fourths of Disney revenues and therefore generate the greatest excitement in the Disney organization. With Disneyland and Walt Disney World booming, the company is now moving on the biggest of Walt's ideas: EPCOT, or Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. To be built by the early 1980s in Florida as an expansion of Disney World, EPCOT will be a living laboratory of applied technology in transportation, housing, communications and waste disposal. Near it will rise the World Showcase, a permanent World's Fair. Still another theme park, Oriental Disneyland, now planned...
Double Duty. Whatever its problems, Disney has perfected one talent that other Hollywood fantasy factories envy: piggybacking. The familiar cartoon characters boost attendance at the theme parks, and the parks increase attendance at the movies. Though no one at Disney claims to be Walt's equal in artistry or dreaming, Card Walker has made Disney's characters do double duty as stars and as barkers to all the world. As a merchandising idea, it has proved to be almost as successful an inspiration as the original Mickey Mouse...