From the studio that specialises in happy endings, virtually all its animated heroes and heroines have no mothers in their lives, while some, such as Bambi, the Jungle Book’s Mowgli and even The Little Mermaid have mothers who have been killed in often awful circumstances.
The lack of any kind of roles for mothers in Disney movies has been a Hollywood mystery for decades, even spawning a whole Wikipedia page with experts, from leading feminists to entertainment journalists. espousing on the subject.
Now, however, producer Don Hahn, who has worked at the studio for more than 35 years, has revealed the tragic reason why some of the world’s most beloved characters have been cursed with such unstable family backgrounds.
Hahn says that Walt Disney blamed himself for a tragic accident that killed his own mother, Flora, just before Christmas 1938 at the age of 71 and, since that day, could not bear to have even fictitious happy mothers in his movies.
The studio’s visionary founder had bought his parents a huge house close to his own family home in North Hollywood after Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs became an international box-office blockbuster.
He was really haunted by his mother’s death. He would never talk about it, though. Still today, nobody ever does
Less than a month after they moved in, however, they called his office to report that their gas boiler was faulty and Disney sent a team of studio workmen to repair it. Instead, they botched the job.
“The housekeeper came in the next morning,” says Hahn, whose producing credits include The Lion King and Beauty And The Beast. “and realised that deadly carbon monoxide fumes had filled the entire house. Somehow, she managed to pull Flora and Walt’s father Elias out and on to the front lawn.
“Walt’s dad was sick, although he eventually recovered in hospital. Flora, sadly, didn’t make it. She died from asphyxiation and Walt was absolutely grief-stricken and racked by guilt.
“He actually believed he had contributed to his own mother’s death. It’s every kid’s dream to buy their parents a house and just through a strange freak of nature and through no fault of his own that dream became a nightmare for Walt.
“He was really haunted by his mother’s death. He would never talk about it, though. Still today, nobody ever does.”
Afterwards, Disney would almost always reject references to mothers in scripts; even when movie spin-offs of popular children’s novels required a mother figure as part of the on-screen back story.
In the case of Pinocchio, for example, the Blue Fairy acts as his surrogate mother and even Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, and his Lost Boys friends appoint Wendy as their matriarchal figure.
The sad motherless tradition has been continued in both animated and live action films since Disney’s own death from lung cancer at the age of 65 in December 1966.
In the Pirates of the Caribbean series, whose fifth film is scheduled for 2017, there has been only one reference to the principal character Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, having a late mother.
In Beauty and the Beast, Belle doesn’t have a mother, in Lilo and Stitch, both parents are referenced as being dead and in Ratatouille, Remy the cartoon rat has a father, Linguini, but no mother.
Producer Don Hahn believes the sad tradition provides an insight into Walt Disney. He said: “To me, it humanises him. He was devastated by the death of his mother and the lack of mothers in his films are a mark of just how deeply affected he was.”