5 Things You Didn't Know About Walt Disney

By Andy Scott /

5. He Did The Same Job As Hemmingway

In 1917, genocide in Europe now settled in quite nicely, Walt Disney strapped on his idealistic boots and enlisted in the army in order to go and give the Hun what for. Being 16, though, the nice chaps in the army sent him packing with his tale between his legs and said they€™d happily send him to his death when he€™s got a little more plumage on it.

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Still eager to €˜do his bit€™ though, he enlisted in the Red Cross and was sent over to France to drive ambulances. A curious idea shared by lion-charging Wunderbloke Ernest Hemmingway. Two creative names you wouldn€™t normally put together but they actually shared some common characteristics that weren€™t ambulance related either. They were both paradigms of idealism (as we€™ll see later on), both practised their art from a very early age (Disney having churned out cartoons for his school newspaper pre-Dropout) and they were both partial to a tipple. Hemmingway famously sloshed most of the livelong day and Disney kept his office stacked with his own library of bibulous delight. Rumours abound concerning Disney€™s particular attitude towards the bottle but, who knows, his famous €˜banning of alcohol in the studio€™ could well have been for his own good rather than a Machiavellian scheme to keep everyone else sober! Either that or he really was just a mean ol€™pickled bar-steward!