Walt Disney's life wasn't always magical (with Kirsten Komoroske)

Vote for Call 'Em Like Museum in the 2026 Signal AwardsThe Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco faces a unique challenge: How do you tell the story of one of history's most important storytellers? When Diane Disney Miller founded the museum, her goal was to let her father tell his own story. To achieve this, she amassed 30,000 artifacts and extensive archival media to create a deeply personal look at the man behind the magic."She really wanted to debunk these myths that he was not a family man, not committed to his friends and family," says Kirsten Komoroske, the executive director of the museum. "She wanted to tell the truth about all of the challenges, the failures, the setbacks."Those challenges include the devastating loss of his first hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; a polarizing animators' strike that led to Walt testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and the lifelong smoking habit that ultimately ended his life at age 65. Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Kirsten shares how the Walt Disney Family Museum stays fresh as a single-subject institution, the importance of a "good, hard failure," and why there is a plaque next to one of the museum's benches explicitly telling visitors to sit down. Full transcript of this episodeSubscribe to the newsletterThis episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPodChapters(00:00) - Introduction (02:18) - Kirsten Komoroske's Museum Memories (06:20) - How Diane Disney Miller Shaped the Story (09:38) - Walt Disney's Failures and Perseverance (12:09) - The Animators' Strike and HUAC Testimony (19:00) - Becoming the Museum's Executive Director (24:46) - The Museum's Enormous Collection (28:21) - The Ribbon Room and Griffith Park Bench (37:08) - The Disneyland Model Explained Music: www.purple-planet.comImages:The museum exteriorWalt DisneyNarcissa Niblack ThorneThorne's "English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period"Gates of HellRiver of StoneFaultlineWood LineSpireEarth WallVideos:Walt Disney Testifies at HUAC (1947)