Disney theories

3rd Disney Theory

In a recent interview with Glamour, director of Maleficent Don Hahn is asked about the motherly presence in his film as opposed to their absence in The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. In his answer he tells a story about Walt Disney’s mother:

‘Walt Disney, in the early 1940s, when he was still living at this house, also bought a house for his mom and dad to move into. He had the studio guys come over and fix the furnace, but when his mom and dad moved in, the furnace leaked and his mother died. The housekeeper came in the next morning and pulled his mother and father out on the front lawn. His father was sick and went to the hospital, but his mother died. He never would talk about it, nobody ever does. He never spoke about that time because he personally felt responsible because he had become so successful that he said, “Let me buy you a house.” It’s every kid’s dream to buy their parents a house’

The story is a tragic one, and it’s hard to imagine such sadness in a man who was already responsible for so many heart-warming children’s films and whose name would continue to be attached to wonderful family films for decades to come.

So it’s a shame that this interview lead to an outbreak of click-bait headlines like ‘The Tragic Reason Why Disney Movies Rarely Have Mother Characters’ and ‘The Heartbreaking Reason Why Disney Princesses Don’t Have Mothers’.