the folks who ran Disney before Eisner were the worst leaders of Disney, ever, because their actions and inactions almost led Disney into bankruptcy.
The old lie is back once again I see. People must understand that simply repeating a lie over and over again does not make it true.
I suppose its easy for some without any first hand knowledge of the company nor any first hand knowledge of the entertainment industry to continue believing in falsehoods, especially when they have to push their own agenda. But ignoring the real history leads only to erroneous statements and false conclusions. Real damage is done when basement experts post their false conclusions as facts. Fortunately, there are people out here who actually know what happened, actually saw it happen first hand, and continue to deal with Disney and its industry.
Throughout the whole period of the old leadership Disney remained the ONLY Hollywood studio to neither go bankrupt (as with 20th Century Fox, MGM, RKO) nor to be sold off to an conglomerate (as with Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, Columbia). To be the only one standing as all of your competitors fall is hardly the mark of the worst leaders. In fact, the only time an offical offer to take over the company was becasue of Michael Eisner - the Comcast proposal.
The problems started not with business problems, but with a long standing feud inside the Company the mutual dislike between the Walt side and the Roy side. After the passing of the two brothers, Walt Disneys son-in-law, Ron Miller, slowly garnered more power than Roys son, Roy E. Over time Roy E. grew resentful enough simply to take his money and go away. But after a series of financial failings, Roy decided that
he should really be running Disney (and that the company needed to make more millions for him so he continue playing with his yachts and Irish castles). He started a series of events that financially weakened Disney and left the company to be preyed upon by other corporate raiders.
Despite the damaging being done, Roy persisted and eventually convinced the Bass Brothers of Texas to buy a sufficient amount of stock to control the company. They hired Frank Wells, a former executive at Warner Brothers, to run the company and the calm the jittery nerves of Wall Street. Roy E. forced the board to fire Ron Miller and to install his people into the company.
Mr. Wells, knowledgeable of the Hollywood game, knew that the company needed someone with street cred to please the Tinsel Town Elite (Frank Wells ran the business side of Warner, but had limited experience with the creative side). After several names were batted around, they selected Michael Eisner, who at the time was being shoved out the door at Paramount (because never Paramount nor their parent company wanted to put up with him any more after Eisners failure to create a new Paramount TV network).
So the management structure was set Frank Wells would actually run the company while Michael Eisner took lunches at Spago to convince Robin Williams to put down the coke spoon long enough to make a movie.
In fact, all of the great things that Eisner is falsely credited with The Disney Channel, mainstream motion pictures, a return to television, expanding the resorts at WDW, The Disney Stores, and other were all started by Ron Miller.
What Roy Disney or Frank Wells had counted on was Eisners uncontrollable ego. But thats another story.
For people interested in the what really happened, please read
Storming the Magic Kingdom by John Taylor. It was written as the events unfolded with the cooperation of people that were there. Its out of print, but can usually be found on any large used book website (Amazon.com lists several).
