• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1262 0

I had heard for years from our girls that the ‘Big Mac’ was really something special, and while I’ve often credited Mrs. Nixon with making the best hamburgers in the world, we are both convinced that McDonald’s runs a close second… The next time the cook has a night off we will know where to go for fast service, cheerful hospitality — and probably one of the best food buys in America.” Other glass cases contain artifacts of Kroc’s life, mementos of his long years of struggle and his twilight as a billionaire. The museum is small and dimly lit, displaying each object with reverence. The day I visited, the place was empty and still. It didn’t feel like a traditional museum, where objects are coolly numbered, catalogued, and described. It felt more like a shrine.

Many of the exhibits at the Ray A. Kroc Museum incorporate neat technological tricks. Dioramas appear and then disappear when certain buttons are pushed. The voices of Kroc’s friends and coworkers — one of them identified as a McDonald’s “vice president of individuality” — boom from speakers at the appropriate cue. Darkened glass cases are suddenly illuminated from within, revealing their contents. An artwork on the wall, when viewed from the left, displays an image of Ray Kroc. Viewed from the right, it shows the letters QSC and V. The museum does not have a life-size, Audio-Animatronic version of McDonald’s founder telling jokes and anecdotes. But one wouldn’t be out of place. An interactive exhibit called “Talk to Ray” shows video clips of Kroc appearing on the Phil Donahue Show, being interviewed by Tom Snyder, and chatting with Reverend Robert Schuller at the altar of Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral. “Talk to Ray” permits the viewer to ask Kroc as many as thirty-six predetermined questions about various subjects; old videos of Kroc supply the answers. The exhibit wasn’t working properly the day of my visit. Ray wouldn’t take my questions, and so I just listened to him repeating the same speeches.

The Disneyesque tone of the museum reflects, among other things, many of the similarities between the McDonald’s Corporation and the Walt Disney Company. It also reflects the similar paths of the two men who founded these corporate giants. Ray Kroc and Walt Disney were both from Illinois; they were born a year apart, Disney in 1901, Kroc in 1902; they knew each other as young men, serving together in the same World War I ambulance corps; and they both fled the Midwest and settled in southern California, where they played central roles in the creation of new American industries. The film critic Richard Schickel has described Disney’s powerful inner need “to order, control, and keep clean any environment he inhabited.” The same could easily be said about Ray Kroc, whose obsession with cleanliness and control became one of the hallmarks of his restaurant chain. Kroc cleaned the holes in his mop wringer with a toothbrush.

Kroc and Disney both dropped out of high school and later added the trappings of formal education to their companies. The training school for Disney’s theme-park employees was named Disneyland University. More importantly, the two men shared the same vision of America, the same optimistic faith in technology, the same conservative political views. They were charismatic figures who provided an overall corporate vision and grasped the public mood, relying on others to handle the creative and financial details. Walt Disney neither wrote, nor drew the animated classics that bore his name. Ray Kroc’s attempts to add new dishes to McDonald’s menu — such as Kolacky, a Bohemian pastry, and the Hulaburger, a sandwich featuring grilled pineapple and cheese — were unsuccessful. Both men, however, knew how to find and motivate the right talent. While Disney was much more famous and achieved success sooner, Kroc may have been more influential. His company inspired more imitators, wielded more power over the American economy — and spawned a mascot even more famous than Mickey Mouse.

Despite all their success as businessmen and entrepreneurs, as cultural figures