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youtubeA Bloom in the Garden of a Marriage
Friday, April 8, 2011 at 12:00PM English poet Alfred Austin said, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.” Our Consulting Historian Paula Sigman Lowery has turned the earth in the Disney garden, and her discoveries are pleasant revelations of Walt’s life at home.
Lillian and Walt Disney were a Hollywood anomaly: happily married for more than 40 years. © Disney
Coming home from a visit to the 1948 Railroad Fair in Chicago, Walt told Lilly, “That was the most fun I ever had in my life.” He was determined to build and run his own miniature railroad. He began spending his spare time in the Studio’s machine shop, working on a one-eighth-scale model train.
Meanwhile, he and Lilly had been looking for property on which to build a new house as sort of a 25th anniversary present for themselves. Now the property would have to be big enough to accommodate the railroad he envisioned circling their home. “All in all,” he wrote to his aunt Jessie, “I think it is going to be a very happy set-up, and I am looking forward to spending more time at home than I have in the past.”
“Walt was not so much interested in a new house,” Lilly recalled, “as he was in the property so that he could build his train on it.” They found the perfect site in Holmby Hills, and as the architects drew up plans for the house, to be situated on Carolwood Drive, Walt had Studio employee Eddie Sargeant devise a system with a trestle, overpasses, and gradients that allowed eight operating miles of track. He was thrilled with Eddie’s plans, and rolled them up to show Lilly.
Lilly had thought the train would run around the lower portion of the property, and planned extensive gardens around the north side of the home. “I made it clear that I wasn’t thrilled because his train was going to run thought the middle of an area where I had planned to grow a beautiful flower garden.”
Walt had to come up with a solution that would save Lilly’s flowers and allow him to run his train. First, he consulted with Studio attorneys about devising a humorous “legal” document in which Lilly would grant him a “right-of-way” for his railroad.