Walt Disney (right), with brother Roy in the early 1940s, has been the object of speculation and false accusations through the years. © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Walt Disney and his corporation are either one of the most evil companies in the world or they have become the subject of countless false rumors, lies and hoaxes. Conservative preachers have warned their followers not to pollute their minds with the company's products and to boycott their theme parks. The National Enquirer has run numerous exposés including one article that began, "Walt Disney was one of America's most admired geniuses. But behind the scenes, he was a hard-drinking drug user whose behavior was so weird his brother Roy feared he was crazy!" Books and magazine articles claiming to reveal the truth have labeled the man an illegitimate child, an FBI spy, a Nazi sympathizer and many other shocking things.

To understand why so many people are fascinated with spurious facts about the man and his company, one should look at their history. In the early 1930s Mickey Mouse went from being a troublemaker to become a virtuous member of society who could do no wrong. By the mid-30s the company's films were always wholesome family entertainment. In the '50s the company's TV shows further perpetuated their wholesome image by creating the myth that the first theme park was "the happiest place on earth." Walt's TV image was that of the perfect father or uncle. The public seems to have forgotten that the studio produced hard-hitting war propaganda that taught us to hate our enemies during WWII and that there was a nasty strike at the cartoon factory in 1941.

No other Hollywood studio has the carefully manicured reputation that Disney spent years cultivating. As a result when other companies create controversial product, nobody seems to care. When Disney does something slightly irreverent, conservative family oriented pressure groups can and will protest. The problem is Disney has carefully created an image that is hard to live up to all the time. It is known to employees of the company as "The Franchise" and it stands for quality, wholesome entertainment.

Song of the South (left) and Disneyland's "It's a Small World" made the company an omnipresent image in the public's mind. © Disney. All rights reserved.

When Disney doesn't live up to its image and the press becomes aware there is a problem, it is news. When a few people protested the release of Song of the South as a racist film in 1946, it was reported in many papers, but not on page one. By the time Hippies held an uninvited "be-in" at Disneyland in the late '60s, the park's overreaction to the "Hippie invasion" was front page news across our nation. When wildlife was killed by gardeners using and/or disposing of pesticides incorrectly in Florida, the company was labeled an enemy of the ecology movement and for several months the press seemed to take delight in revealing every human error that they became aware of at Disney parks.

I maintain that certain members of the clergy, press and other groups and individuals have, over the years, exploited the public's fascination with the company to further their own self-interests. In some cases they have deliberately created false rumors. While some stories were probably started as harmless forms of humor, others appear to have been fabricated and/or spread by religious leaders to strengthen their point of view. What is even worse are elaborate hoaxes published in books and articles that report fascinating facts that scholars find impossible to confirm, but in some cases are easy to disprove. The sad thing is that a gullible public rarely learns they have been fed a lot of misinformation, so false myths become "well known facts." For instance, my wife has a 95 year-old aunt who once told me that she is sure Elvis is alive.