When Disney died in 1966, the company went into virtual suspended animation. Its last big hit of that era was 1969’s The Love Bug, about a Volkswagen named Herbie. Today, Disney executives trace the...

When Disney died in 1966, the company went into virtual suspended animation. Its last big hit of that era was 1969’s The Love Bug, about a Volkswagen named Herbie. Today, Disney executives trace the problem to a tyrannical CEO named E. Cardon Walker, who ruled the company from 1976 to 1983, and to his successor, Ronald W. Miller. Walker was quick to ridicule underlings in public and impervious to any point of view but his own. He made decisions according to what he thought Walt would have done. Executives clinched arguments by quoting Walt like the Scriptures or Marx, and the company eventually supplied a little book of the founder’s sayings. Making the wholesome family movies Walt would have wanted formed a key article of Walker’s creed. For example, a poster advertising the unremarkable Condorman featured actress Barbara Carrera in a slit skirt. Walker had the slit painted over. With this as the context, studio producers ground out a thin stream of tired, formulaic movies that fewer and fewer customers would pay to see. In mid-1983, a similar low-horsepower approach to television production led to CBS’s cancellation of the hour-long program Walt Disney, leaving the company without a regular network show for the first time in 29 years. Like a reclusive hermit, the company lost touch with the contemporary world. Ron Miller’s brief reign was by contrast a model of decentralization and delegation. Many attributed Miller’s ascent to his marrying the boss’s daughter rather than to any special gift. To shore Miller up, the board installed Raymond L. Watson, former head of the Irvine Co., as part-time chairperson. He quickly became full time.