"I believe totally in a Capitalist System, I only wish that someone would try it,"

Frank smiled. "Mr. Wright, I have tried and have succeeded."
 

"Here, here! Indeed you have Walt. I am happy for your success and I am happy that I am a quarter century older than you. It gives me the right to talk to you as a predecessor, a mentor, more like an uncle, perhaps." 

Walt shifted in the round orange seat. The back curved around the orange but it extruded straight up from the floor. The circular arm rests didn't fit the straight of his arms. 

"I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too many intimate contacts with my own furniture," mused the architect, "and at times I feel coming on a strange disease - humility."
 
"For seventy years, Walter, may I call you that? I have carried my architectural thoughts consistently through the interiors, through the gardens, through the detailing of everything, and, perhaps I have well made my point, that everything in a design must relate, must be part of the whole. But my long formed habits of total control are now cast in concrete and difficult to change." 
 
Walt looked up at the triangular light fixtures, the triangulated wood mullions of the stained glass windows, even the obtuse and acute crossings of colors in the carpet, followed the superimposition of two floor plates. 
 
"Yes. I know. Perfection has its price. But I enjoy the dividends."
 
Walt's animated film, Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, finished ten years earlier, superimposing two strong characters, the wicked step mother and the innocent child and everything in the creation of that film, like the lobby of the Price Tower, held together, the scenes, the colors, the moods and the music.
 
Disney understood why the chair's design trumped the need for comfort.
 
"Less is only more where more is no good," offered Wright, "but sometimes, I think, we carry our ideals a bit too far." 

"But Walter, you are something unique. You are what you are. I think that you happened to stumble upon the future development of the cinema. I don't think it was your fault. You happened in on it with this peculiar gift of yours, which I think is precious. It shouldn't be violated.You shouldn't become too art conscious."

"All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable,"he said. "A physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."

"Walter, you cannot plant vines over the eyes of your audience. You would be surprised and I have been continually surprised, at the amount of intelligence possessed by people you wouldn't think had it. You would be surprised how 'almost as intelligent as we are' most people are. I have great faith in that."

Walt sat erect in Wright's half cylinder. He pulled absently on his mustache.

 "Why have you got modern architecture today? It isn't an accident. Somebody stood there. Somebody asserted the fact of the thing. It's no different from you, Walter. We're all alike. Our reactions would be very similar to almost anything."

"It takes a little character and guts and a stand-by to see it through. That's all."

Disney enjoyed Wright. He wondered how he would draw a cartoon of the famous architect. White, waving hair, small, kind, inquisitive and critical eyes, a small frame but well proportioned. "Good bones," as the architect would describe a house.

Disney had asked to meet at Wright's already famous Price Tower. Here, the rising star of animated film and the most famous architect in America, could visit quietly. Disney liked the intimacy of the tall backed chairs if even somewhat uncomfortable.

Disney wanted to thank the man for having visited his studios, his hour and a half presentation to his staff of illustrators but he also wanted to visit with Frank about something that had been bothering him.

"Mr. Wright, with all respect, you seem to make no compromise. I, on the other hand, live in a world of compromise. Some of the things you shared with my crew, well, I am bothered."

"It's the statement you made about sensuality. True, I tip the hat to the good ol' girl but it's only a tip. You must certainly consider your architecture, sensual."

"There's one thing that distresses me in your productions Walter and I think people think the same about it-one can emphasize the senses quite with impunity. It's desirable. The moment you emphasize sensuality it becomes disagreeable. There is a touch of what I would call vulgarity that creeps into your films sometimes. I guess it's box office and it gets a horse laugh from the worst element in the audience. I think you should be a little shy of that. Old Grey Head speaking, of course."

"I am not speaking of the sensuality of design. I am speaking of, as you put it, your tipping of the hat to what you think the audience wants. You have earned the right not to have to tip your hat."

"Walter, young man, your fellows-there has never been anything like this. You've got a clean spread. If you get it all mixed up with these sentimentalities, God help us. The more nearly you can strip the things you're doing clean, and establish this simple child-like correlation between things and make a child-like thing out of it and not get too sentimental about it, the better, I think."

Walt thought Wright was liberal in his religious leanings. He had read the newspaper account of his Unity Church and Wright's position.

"God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

 "The thing you are in is as fresh as a daisy. Don't let it get bawled up with those sentimentalists. Tell Stokowski if he can't come in and write music for you that has the proper quality and appropriate to the thing you're doing you don't want him at all. Stokowski isn't running the show, is he? Put him on the spot. When you take music as one thing, your animation is another, your story is another thing, there you've got a division that is fatal right at the beginning. It's unison between the three and making those three one that is the only road to anything you might call worth the name of art or worth the name of entertainment.

 "Wherever you're playing best together-having fun and putting in the music where it belongs in the picture-getting the effect, you ring the bell. That's what is going to make your success. Where you're trying to be artistic and thinking of the fellow in front and trying to please him you're going to lose out. I'll bet my head on it. I know from my own experience. It's a veteran sitting here talking to you. I've been there."

Walt leaned forward, knees almost touching Wright's black trousers. "Mr. Wright,"

"Frank, please, Walter."

"Yes, Frank. Thank you. I understand."

"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him. Don't let the big boys, the major studios, cheapen what you are doing, Walter. They are like New York City, a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent."
 
"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change."
 
Disney patted Wright's knee before standing to leave. He smiled as he realized that Wright's chairs were just like their creator, not perfectly created for the masses but perfect in their commitment to a perfect ideal.
 
"Good day, Mr. Wright, Frank. I'll see you at the movies."

Mike Wallace interviews Frank Lloyd Wright