The Loss of a Disney Family Member

Roy Edward Disney
1930 - 2009

If the Walt Disney Studios were to have a real-life Jiminy Cricket, it would have been vice chairman Roy Edward Disney, son of Roy O. Disney and nephew of Walt Disney, the Company’s founders. Besides being its conscience, Roy had also been called the “soul of the Company” because he often looked to its past to define its future.

It’s because of what he meant to the Company as to why his death earlier this morning is such a huge loss. Roy Disney died December 16, 2009, after a yearlong battle with stomach cancer, according to a Walt Disney Co. spokesman. He was 79.

Born in Los Angeles on January 10, 1930, Roy practically grew up at the Studio, where his father managed business affairs, while his uncle inspired artists to create magical animated worlds for movie screens. Roy was there when Snow White and Pinocchio were born and once recalled, “the animators used to test stuff out on me. They’d say, ‘Come on in and watch this and see if you think it’s funny.’”

In 1951, Roy graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English from Southern California’s Pomona College, and soon launched his entertainment career as an assistant film editor on the television series “Dragnet,” starring Jack Webb. He joined The Walt Disney Studios in 1954, working as an assistant editor on the successful True-Life Adventure films, including “The Living Desert” and “The Vanishing Prairie,” both of which won Academy Awards. He later wrote and co-produced “Mysteries of the Deep,” which won an Oscar nomination in 1959.

Roy left the Studio in 1977, to become an independent producer and investor, but returned seven years later to serve as the Company’s vice chairman and head of the animation department. Since then, Disney animation has produced some of its greatest box office successes of all time, including “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” Roy literally combined the Company’s past with its future when he revivied one of his uncle’s most colorful visions of all time. “Fantasia 2000,” which is a continuation of Walt Disney’s 1940 classic “Fantasia,” combining classical music with original animation, rang in a new millennium on January 1, 2000, at Imax Theaters across the county.

The entire Thank You Walt Disney, Inc. staff wishes to extend its condolences to the friends and family of Roy E. Disney during their time of sorrow.