By Michaela Gordoni
Former Disney Chairman Dick Cook gave a wonderful speech honoring Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr at the 2026 Movieguide® Faith & Values Awards Gala.
“I am privileged and honored to be with you tonight to introduce the recipient of the 2026 Visionary Award, Dr. Ted Bear,” Cook began.
Cook credited Dr. Baehr as one of the most intelligent humans anyone will ever know.
“That alone would qualify Ted for the Visionary Award this evening…All of these myriad of successes and honors would surely be enough to qualify Ted for this most prestigious award, and they all do. But that’s not why I’m here,” he explained.
“Ted Baehr is my trusted friend, a real friend, a dependable friend, a friend through thick and thin, a friend who will tell you when you are wrong, as well as when you are right.”
He recalled his challenges in 1998, when the Southern Baptist Convention called for a boycott of Disney.
“I talked to Ted, and he said he might be able to help and advised that we should not respond negatively and escalate the dialogue in very short order,” he explained. “Ted called and asked if I would invite the Baptist leadership to the studio for an all day meeting to show them what we were working on, the live action movies, the animated films that were in development and everything that went along with them.”
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Disney gave them many presentations and showed them all the different aspects of movie production.
“At the end of the day, there wasn’t very much that was said and everyone went home. The boycott just ended. No formal announcement, no trumpets. It just ended,” he said of the triumph.
“Ted had built a bridge, not a wall, not a fence, a bridge to bring people together. That was his magic,” Cook continued. “Ted had built a bridge, not a wall, not a fence, a bridge to bring people together. That was his magic.”
“That’s his power,” he said. “I guess you could call it leadership.”
He credits Dr. Baehr with creating an organization built on trust.
“Families trust what is being said is true and honest, just like its founder, Dr. Ted Bear,” he said.
“Throughout my years as the head of the Disney Studios, my friend Ted played an interesting role…Ted was my Jiminy Cricket, my North Star always pointing me in the right direction,” he explained.
Jiminy Cricket is known for his quote, “always let your conscience be your guide.” Dr. Baehr was that reminder for Cook.
“Oh, I strayed once in a while and got scolded admonished, but what really got me was that he was always right and I knew it,” Cook recalled. “My own personal Jiminy Cricket.”
He added, “Visionaries not so much…see the future, but…see what was possible. So it is with my friend Dr. Ted Baehr. He has the ability not to predict the future, but to understand human condition and see the enormous possibilities for greatness and optimism for our future.”
Dr. Baehr and Movieguide® commended Cook for his work at Disney when he retired.
Dr. Baehr said Cook was committed “to make movies with romance but no sex, action but no violence and dialogue but no foul language. He lifted the company out of the doldrums and presided over an incredible string of successes such as the Pixar movies, REMEMBER THE TITANS, SIGNS, LILO & STITCH, THE SANTA CLAUSE, THE PRINCESS DIARIES, TARZAN, BOLT, THE PIRATES OF THJE CARIBBEAN and THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.”
Another way Cook shaped Disney is banning smoking in Disney productions.
“It’s another signal to families that—if there’s any linkage at all, even the slightest, between seeing someone portrayed smoking and having a young person begin to smoke, we don’t want to be a part of that,” Cook explained in 2007. “It’s showing our social responsibility to families and individuals that [smoking is] a real scourge that kills people. If we can even do a small, tiny part of prohibiting that from starting, we’ve done a good thing.”
We were incredibly fortunate to have Cook present at this year’s Awards Gala. The ceremony will be available to watch on Great American Family, March 5, at 8 p.m. ET.
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