Roy E Disney, the son and nephew of The Walt Disney Company founders who twice led shareholder revolts that shook up the family business, died today. He was 79.
The Walt Disney Company announced that Disney died in Newport Beach, California after a bout with stomach cancer.
Although he generally stayed out of the spotlight, Roy Disney didn't hesitate to lead a successful campaign in 1984 to oust Walt Disney's son-in-law after concluding he was leading the company in the wrong direction. Nearly 20 years later, he launched another successful shareholders revolt, this time against Michael Eisner, the man he'd helped bring in after the previous ouster.
Disney, born in 1930, had practically grown up with the company. His uncle Walt Disney and his father, Roy O Disney, had co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio seven years before, later renaming it The Walt Disney Company.
Two years before he was born, the company gave birth to its iconic cartoon character, Mickey Mouse. While Walt was the company's creative genius, his brother was the one in charge of the company's finances.
Starting in the 1950s, the younger Roy Disney worked for years in the family business as an editor, screenwriter and producer. Two short films he worked on were nominated for Academy Awards: the 1959 Mysteries of the Deep, which he wrote, was nominated as best live action short, and the 2003 film Destino, which he co-produced, was nominated as best animated short.
Despite his heritage, Roy Disney never got the chance to lead the company as his father and uncle had. But as an investor who grew his Disney stock into a billion-dollar fortune, he ultimately had a huge impact on the company's destiny.
In 1984, dissatisfied with the leadership Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller was providing, Disney resigned from the company's board of directors and sought investors to back a bid to install new management. (Miller was the husband of Diane Disney Miller, Roy's cousin.)
His efforts resulted in the hiring of Eisner and Frank Wells, who led the company as a team until Wells died in 1994.
During that time, Disney rejoined the board and rose to become the company's vice-chairman and chairman of its animation division, where he helped oversee the making of such hit films as 1994's The Lion King.
He also became a savvy investor over the years, forming Shamrock Holdings with his friend and fellow Disney board member Stanley Gold in 1978. The fund grew to become a major investor in California real estate, the state of Israel and other entertainment and media companies.
In 2007, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 754th richest person in the world and estimated his fortune at $1.3bn (£797m). He was not on the list in subsequent years.
Disney was also an active philanthropist, supporting the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, a school founded by his father and uncle.
In 1999, he matched a gift from The Walt Disney Company to establish an experimental theatre space as part of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The theatre was named the Roy and Edna Disney-CalArts Theatre or Redcat.
In 2005, he pledged $10m to establish the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Centre at Providence St Joseph Medical Centre in Burbank.