One of our most valuable artifacts is Walt’s voice. The museum is designed so that Walt himself is the narrator, taking you through his life. In this spirit, Storyboard presents Walt’s own words, on a variety of topics, regularly. Here’s what Walt said to journalist Pete Martin about the percentage of adults to go to see Disney films in an interview.
Pete: Walter, I noticed as I stood in front of Grauman’s Chinese [Theatre]—and I also think this is true of Disneyland, and it certainly is true of Swiss Family Robinson because I took the trouble to count—there was lines of people waiting to get in. It seemed to me that three out of every four of them were adults. Have you got any statistics on that?
Walt: In recent years, we’ve increased the adult patronage on our motion pictures. When we first came out with Snow White, there were people who felt that it was for children. They were hesitant. They needed to take their kids. Or they were hesitant, if they didn’t have children, to go in. But since then, they have realized that these things I build have appeal to them, too.
Pete: Like The Absent-Minded Professor?
Walt: It's been growing, growing, growing, you see. And I’ve noticed recently all of our pictures where we used to say in the [Radio City] Music Hall, with Snow White, and when it broke records in the music hall, and it set the record, and held that record for three years, it didn't equal it... it still fell off at night. You could throw a stone in the theater—say, at the nine o’clock show—and not hit anybody. And that isn’t true today.