Walking Through the House that Walt Disney Built

Walt Disney's Home

Walt Disney's Home

**Disney provided me with an full expense paid trip to Los Angeles for the #VeryBadDayEvent and #DisneyInHomeEvent in exchange for my review of the events of the trip.  No other compensation is given. The opinions  in my posts are 100% mine.**  

Walking Through the House that Walt Disney Built

So it began… After arriving in LA for our first night of our press trip we were shuttled to this house.  A house that Walt Disney built for his family.  A house for his wife and himself, and later both of his daughters.  Driving up the cobblestone driveway was breathtaking, and as I closed my eyes I imagined what it might have been like so many, many years ago.

We stood outside awaiting our tour guide, all the while looking at the beautiful landscaping and the view from the house overlooking the city. This was such a beautiful scene.

Maleficent_09-24-14_028

 

Our Tour of Walt’s House

Our tour started with some words from Paula Sigman Lowery outside of the home.  As we walked through the front door, it was then it became real that we would be walking through the house that Walt Disney built.

Paula Sigman Lowery
Tour Guide: Paula Sigman Lowery

One great thing about Paula Sigman Lowery? She has a deep love for all things Walt Disney. To hear her tell us about the different areas in his house with such passion, was wonderful to listen to.  All the while hearing the passion of what she was telling us in her voice.

Here is some information that we learned about Walt Disney’s house during our tour.

Background about the House

Walt Disney’s home is a historic home that is not furnished as it was when the Disney family lived here.

But the owners have made a concerted effort to give the feel of the 1930s.  As we went  through the house photographs of Walt taken in the house were displayed.  We were able to see some of the photos on Paula’s  iPad, ones that are not released to the public.  Paula had  some others that she didn’t  have permission to publish but it enabled us to see the life from the house.

This house was built to be Walt Disney’s family home.   Diane Disney Miller was born in December of 1933.  Walt was actually receiving an award from Parents magazine during this time.   The call from his wife Lilly was to tell him that she was in the hospital about to give birth. So he rushes out of the Parents magazine presentation because he himself was about to become a parent.

Three years later, they are joined by Sharon.  So, they have two daughters, Diane and Sharon.  This is the house that the girls grew up in.  This is the house where he was able to be dad.  It was the house from which he drove every morning to take the girls to school.  Sharon off at the West Lake school for girls and Diane over to Marlboro in a different direction.  He drove them to their music lessons, to their dance lessons.  He took them to the opera.

He and Lilly  wanted to make sure that they had a normal childhood growing up.  In fact, Diane was one day at school and she came back to her dad that night and she said, “dad, are you Walt Disney? ” Needless to say they had a very quiet, private life.  The house is made to your liking, when you have the opportunity to design a home and design it to create an environment to live the life that you want to lead.

So here we have a home that is beautiful in detail, has a lot of fairy tale, European-esk accents.  Perhaps some of this is a nod to the Disney family origins at Disney Sotomayor in France where the family originated before immigrating to Ireland and then eventually to North America.

Stairwell leading to Upstairs

 

One of the pictures that Paula showed us was Walt with their dog, Sonny.  The chow sitting on the stairs over here.  Originally the stairs were plaster and wood.  They’re  now all wood.  Later on they were carpeted.  This dog, by the way, Walt takes things from his home life and puts them into films.  This dog was his Christmas present to  Lilly.   He bought the dog having researched the kind of dog that does not shed and that she would be happy with.  But he just loved dogs.

This dog would become Lilly’s constant companion. They actually  had this dog, before they came to this house, they lived in a kit house right next door to his brother, Roy.  A kit house being the kind of house you’d get from Sears Roebuck that they (Sears Roebuck) had built.  He takes the puppy over to Roy’s.  The puppy spends the night in Roy’s garage and the next morning, the puppy is brought over in a hat box for Lilly to open.

But then Lilly’s not real happy with Walt with this; because she wants to pick out her own hats, right?  So she takes the lid off and there is this beautiful dog.  Now, where have you seen that before?  Lady and the Tramp.  Comes right out of Walt Disney’s life.  So, again, they live in the house for many, many years.  So, like every family, you change the environment to suit the style.  So, this is probably from the 1940s and you can see it’s now all carpeted.

This photo is probably  Diane showing Walt the dress  that she’s going to wear at the father/daughter dance at Marlboro.  So,  that life all happens right in here.

The Building of the House

Now, when he builds this house, it’s, the throws of the depression and later tells Collin the story about how people would complain about the lavish lifestyle of Hollywood producers.  He said, “when I built this house, look at the number of people I put to work helping build this house. ”

Every morning, they would come to the property and there would be a line of workmen hoping to come in and work on this project.  In fact, he hires a graduate of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts who ends up painting the ceiling murals.

Graduate of the Vienna Academy paints ceiling

It’s incredible.  So again, the house today, I’m pointing out the architectural features that Walt Disney himself designed.  He built this house with the assistance of his contractor from the studio, the Hyperion studio. This building is a wonderful example of great architecture, for some more examples of great architecture, facade engineering and MEP engineering just research, there are some really incredible places out there.

[I have to interject on how detailed and magnificent the ceiling was, along with the architecture of the winding stairwell. The shiny wood floors and the wrought iron railings. It was just so impressive to look up and see all of this with just walking into the house.]

More Background on the House

All the furnishings contemporary today, are designed to evoke the 1930s.  You will see a lot of the Disney art on the walls , (that’s the collection of the current owners to give a sense of what the creative life was like at the time that the Disney’s lived here. ) Walt  did nothave Disney art on his walls because he was surrounded by that all day long. Next we went into the living room.

This is as grand as this house gets is this sort of, almost European great hall feeling.  But when Disney’s lived here, it’s very comfortable and very cozy.  Lilly liked chince so her chairs were all overstuffed chairs and very, very comfortable.  Then we saw a photo of Walt with this window with his globe and some Mickey Mouse dolls.

This was obviously a publicity shot because he did not have Disney memorabilia all over the house.  But, Paula wanted to show us Walt as a dad.  Here, sitting on the floor playing with his girls.  He’s reading to them, he’s wearing a Pinocchio nose and this was dad.  This was really dad.  Then later on, you see that same picture on the fireplace.  That’s probably better when you see, Walt with his teenage daughters.  Sharon was probably actually about twelve at the time that that picture’s taken, and  Diane’s probably about fifteen. (showing us another photo with Walt and his girls)

Snow White Castle for Diane & Sharon

 

When you go outside, you will take a look at the Snow White play house that Walt had built for his girls.  Walt had it built for the girls over Christmas.  He had his studio carpenters come out. It is lit, it is electrical, it is plumbed and it has a telephone in it.

So the next morning, the girls are out there and the phone rings.  It’s Santa asking them how they liked the house.  Of course, Santa kind of sounded like dad, but…..  When they lived here  the pool was not there.  It was a lawn because the property continued down and they had a pool house, and a badminton court, and a pool further down the property.

Entry way into Walt Disney's House

We’re going to go now into the dining room so you can see a little bit more of the hand painted ceiling. This room like the others was very detailed and elegant, but also you noticed that it was a great place for the family to gather together for their family meals.

View from Upstairs

The Tour of the Upstairs

As we were going up that beautiful staircase (above) we were able to get a better look at the ceiling.  We held onto  to the hand rail. (as it was a bit slippery in our light blue booties we had to wear as to not get our dirty feet on the shiny wooden floors.)   There was another door that led to another staircase which we could see from upstairs.

Down the road, Lilly hid that with a grandfather clock.  When we went outside, we noticed the art glass, the stained glass.  It just glows at night time but during the day, it’s gorgeous with the sun coming through. So, it’s very medieval, very fairy tale images throughout the glass in the house.

Walt & Lilly's Bedroom

This is where Walt and Lilly slept.  This is the master bedroom.  The family is in residence so we don’t walk in there now.

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Pointing to what I would call a small balcony overlooking the living room, Paula points out how great of an area it was.  This is what Diane, the eldest daughter, called Christmas tree point.

The reason behind this is on Christmas morning, the girls, who’s rooms were here and down the hall, would come running over to the little Juliette balcony and look down at the beautiful Christmas tree that was erected with all the presents around it.  This is from 1940, from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine.  So this, this is where they would come running.

When we were done seeing Christmas tree point, we went on in to Diane’s room. Now again, this was not, is not furnished as it was when the Disney’s lived here.  This was originally the nursery for Diane born in December of 1933. Walt wrote to his mother talking about how the nursery had been all completed.  And there was a bassinette, a crib, and a dresser and all over everything were little pink and blue tinies (hair decorations) that he had no idea what they were for.

Walt was so excited about this, this new addition to their family.  In this room, is where Walt heard, you might have heard this story with Saving Mr. Banks, Walt hears Diane laughing.  And he comes in to see what she is laughing at. He tells the story that she’s reading a book, and what book is she reading?  She’s reading Mary Poppins.

This is when  he’s then determined to get the rights to Mary Poppins.  Diane later tells me, well, actually yes, I did enjoy Mary Poppins and we had all the Mary Poppins books in the house as we were growing up.  Actually, the publisher sent them to him in 1938 because Snow White had come out in 1937 and everybody was wanting Walt to make movies out of their books.  What Diane first remembered laughing at was Winnie the Pooh, the stories of Winnie the Pooh.

She loved Winnie the Pooh.   Walt wrote a letter to his sister when he was sending a stuffed Mickey for a new baby in the family.  He said, “these stuffed Mickeys are popular all around the country, but in my house, Diane goes to bed with a Winnie the Pooh. ” So, actually, his interest in obtaining the rights to both Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh began in this room.  Isn’t that amazing?  This was Diane’s room.  The older, elder daughter.  Then we went to go now down the hall to Sharon’s room.

Again, you know, this would have been the room of a little girl and so she would not have had a big bed like this.  We have a picture, I had mentioned they were very private with their children.  I have a picture here.  We’ve got another copy of it over  here of Walt reading to Diane and Sharon in this room.  He’s reading to them Pinocchio, one of the Disney Pinocchio books.  So, this is circa 1940.

Look around the room.  Ok, now turn and look behind you.  Alright?  Do you see a door with a light switch there? Yes, ok?

Now, look right here.  Here’s the light switch, here’s the door.  So, Walt and Sharon, or Walt and the girls are sitting right about here.  Probably the bookshelves are here and she’s probably in a twin bed over here.  (pointing out areas in the room that looked like the ones in the photos.)

It’s exciting to think about this home being the foundation for the continued storytelling of a father with
his daughters, of  Lilly with the daughters.  That Walt being, as Don said, the great storyteller of the 20th century.  This is the house where stories are told.  We’re going to go now to Walt’s exercise room.  Um, which is later to become the girls’ playroom.

Maleficent Costumes from the Movie

So, a great exercise room.  Walt was very athletic.  He played not only badminton, swimming and taught the girls to swim down in the pool.  He and Lilly were avid skiers.  The children became great skiers.

They went ice skating in the winter time.  He played polo and so, this room, in addition to being his exercise room, um and where he kept his athletic equipment, was filled with his trophies from playing polo, on these shelves.  The walls were covered with pictures of his polo ponies.  So, when the girls got big enough to have a real play room, they loved this room because they loved coming in where all the horses were.

This room also gave them, this is called the sleeping porch and it’s currently used by the residences as their exercise room.  It’s kind of an indoor/outdoor room and it overlooks the backyard where Walt liked things very natural.  So, he didn’t build retaining walls.  He was out there building trails and those trails are still there.

Paying Sharon, the younger daughter, to bring him his soft drinks.  As they were working on what they called the burner trail because he was working so hard.  He liked to work with his hands and you may know that he collected trains .There’s an article that’s on the Walt Disney family museum web site that talks about the whole train thing in their lives.  He runs this train for a couple of years and then he sets it aside because he has an opportunity, an idea about someplace where he can play with a bigger train.

That, of course, is Disneyland.  So, that train he eventually pulls up the track and he donates it to the Los Angeles live steamers.  And, so when you go down to travel town at Griffith Park,  you can ride the live small steam train.  And you’re riding  on some of it on the Disney loop made out of the train tracks from Walt Disney’s Carolwood home.  The barn in which he built all of this stuff is there on exhibit.

Special, unique to your visit here are original costumes from Maleficent.  This is of course, Maleficent, Angelina Jolie’s costume. And, Elle Fanning’s costume from the film.  So, rarely, rarely seen outside of the Disney studio but brought here for you to enjoy.  I think you’ve got some information about the costumes here.  We have one more room that I’m going to take you down to.  We’re going to get a presentation and that’s Walt Disney’s library and screening room.  So, we’re going to go down the stairs, you can follow once you guys  take pictures of the costumes.

Our tour guide had so much interesting information; I am sure she could have went on and on, but we had to move on to the next part of our visit to Walt’s house.

A Beautiful View of the Pool

One of the biggest reasons we went to  the house, was  in honor of the upcoming release of SLEEPING BEAUTY on October 7th !!

As you can see this was the tour of a lifetime. To know that The Disney family lived in that house, slept in those rooms, and made their memories there was an experience I would never have imagined. I am appreciative that Paula was able to give us such a wonderful tour of a wonderful man’s home; that being Walt Disney!

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