Disney museum set for Presidio

Walt Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, and grandson Christopher Miller ride in an Autopia car at Disneyland. (Walt Disney Foundation)

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer

You know the name, the movies, the television shows, the theme parks.

Starting in October, Bay Area residents will have a chance to get to know Walt Disney the man.

A 77,000-square-foot museum complex built mostly in former Army barracks at San Francisco's Presidio is set to open Oct. 1 to illuminate the man who went from a modest Midwest beginning to define entertainment for generations.

It will be the world's only museum dedicated to the life of Disney, who besides creating Mickey Mouse and "Bambi," palled around with surrealist master Salvador Dali, designed futuristic theme parks and had a rideable miniature train behind his Los Angeles-area home.

"It's our turn to tell his story, to narrate the life of someone whose name is often confused with a brand," said Richard Benefield, the executive director of the soon-to-open Walt Disney Family Museum.

"It's a classic American story - the story about a boy from a farm who moved to the city and made it big," Benefield said at a luncheon Thursday offering a sneak peek at the Presidio's newest addition. The museum will include 10 galleries with interactive features, bits of family movies, early drawings and countless snippets of TV and film. There are audio recordings of Disney, including one of him recollecting his idea to name his signature character Mortimer Mouse.

His wife's response?

"Oh goodness, no," Disney recounts on the recording. "So I said, 'What about Mickey?' "

The museum chronicles Disney's life from his 1901 birth in Chicago to his death in 1966.

In between are layers of his work: animation, nature documentaries, television shows like "Zorro," World's Fair exhibits and a scale model of Disneyland.

There is also the miniature train he built behind his Holmby Hills home that presaged later rides at Disney theme parks.

"Perhaps my grandpa's greatest gift, and without question his greatest pleasure, was to bring imagination to life," said Disney's grandson, Walter Elias Disney Miller. "And he never lost that childhood sense of wonder and of curiosity."

A 123-seat, high-definition, surround-sound theater will screen Disney classics and host educational forums.

Separate tickets will be sold for the museum and screenings. Admission will range from about $20 for adults to free for children under 6. The museum is owned by the Walt Disney Family Foundation and is independent of Disney corporate entities.

Walt Disney didn't have an overwhelming connection to San Francisco, although he and his wife were awarded honorary citizenship and keys to the city in 1958. A bit of wining and feasting with members of the city's elite Bohemian Club at their exclusive Sonoma County grove in 1936 is also credited in author Bob Thomas' biography as the inspiration for the snoring scene in the dwarfs' cottage in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

The museum site is really a product of his eldest daughter, Diane Disney Miller, who lives in Northern California and thought the Presidio an ideal home for it.

It's just down the street from where Gap founder Don Fisher wants to build a contemporary art museum but saw little of the opposition that Fisher has faced.

The Disney museum mostly restores a historic brick barrack, with the addition of a glassed-in wing with beautiful Golden Gate Bridge views replacing what had been an open courtyard at the back of the building.