Credit: DisneyDuring his lifetime, Walt Disney was arguably the most famous man on the planet. There are millions of photos of him in various locations, from his famous studios to Disneyland to a patch of nothing in the middle of Central Florida.
There are photos of Walt with presidents, actors, Hitler’s favorite director, his family, and Mickey Mouse. However, The New York Times has recently uncovered a photo of Walt Disney that no one was ever meant to see. It wasn’t that who Walt was in the photo with, but the fact that Walt was in the photo at all.
In its Sunday edition, the Times revealed that it deliberately edited Walt Disney out of a photo to highlight the man sitting next to him: Igor Stravinsky. In the photo, Walt is sitting next to the famous Russian composer, looking at an unknown piece of music.
Jeff Roth, who curates the New York Times’ photo and clipping archives, found the photo but noticed something unusual about it. The image initially only showed Stravinsky, and next to him was a greyed-out figure.
Roth removed the gray, water-based paint to reveal that it was none other than Walt Disney with the famous composer. The writing on the back gave Roth a clue as to why Disney was removed from the photo.
It was rare to have a photo of Stravinsky, who had only recently fled to the United States to escape the war in Europe. At the time, money was tight for the composer as royalties from his compositions dried up because of the war.
Stravinsky met with Walt Disney so that the latter could use part of his opera The Rite of Spring in Disney’s upcoming movie, Fantasia (1940). Without his knowledge, Disney rearranged the music and, in Stravinsky’s opinion, ruined his music.
Stravinksy said of working on Fantasia:
The order of the pieces had been shuffled, and the most difficult of them eliminated — though this did not save the musical performance, which was execrable.
The Times used the photo three times during the 1940s and 50s, but the newspaper thought that having an image of the elusive composer was more important than another photo of Walt Disney. The paper also believed that having Disney in the photo would draw attention away from Stravinsky.
So, The New York Times decided it was better to leave Walt Disney out to feature someone else for just this one photo. Walt probably wouldn’t have minded.