Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney, and a key figure in the Walt Disney Company for several decades, died December 16, 2009, in Newport Beach, Calif., after a bout with stomach cancer. He was 79.

His father, Roy O. Disney, and uncle, Walt, co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio before renaming it the Walt Disney Co. in the 1920s. Walt was the company’s creative visionary but Roy Disney’s father was a crucial figure on the business side of the studio.

Roy Disney never rose to lead the company, as his father and uncle had. But he had a significant influence on the company through his success as an investor. He grew his Disney stock into a substantial fortune, and formed Shamrock Holdings with his friend and fellow Disney board member Stanley Gold in 1978.

Although he largely eschewed the spotlight, Disney led a successful campaign in 1984 to remove Ron Miller, Walt Disney’s son-in-law, when he determined that Miller was leading the company in the wrong direction.

At the time, Disney resigned from the company’s board of directors and sought investors to back a bid to install new management.

His efforts resulted in the hiring of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, who led the company as a team until Wells’ death in 1994.

Disney joined the board and became the company’s vice chairman and chairman of its animation division. He helped to guide the division’s rebound through such hits as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King.

In 2003, after growing disenchanted with Eisner’s leadership and a dip in the stock price, Disney and Gold resigned their board seats and launched a highly publicized “Save Disney” shareholder revolt.

In his resignation letter, Disney called for Eisner’s ouster, complaining that on his watch, the company’s standards had declined, particularly at its theme parks, and citing the executive’s fractious relationship with Pixar Animation Studios’ Steve Jobs.

Despite initial resistance, Disney marshaled small investors and enthusiasts who responded to his old-guard complaints about peeling paint at the theme parks and his anger at being told he would have to leave the board because of his age.

Shareholders eventually opposed Eisner, withholding 45% of votes cast for his re-election to the board. The chief executive lost his role as board chairman and announced his retirement in 2005, a year before his contract was up.

Disney initially opposed Eisner’s successor, Robert Iger, but the men reconciled. In 2005, Iger named Disney a board member emeritus, a position he held until his death.

The only child of Roy and Edna Disney, Disney was born in Los Angeles on January 10, 1930.

He began his entertainment industry career in 1952, working as an assistant film editor on the television series Dragnet. He joined the Walt Disney Company in 1953 as an assistant film editor, and worked on numerous productions, including the Oscar-winning True-Life Adventures features, The Living Desert and The Vanishing Prairie.

As a writer and production associate, he received an Oscar nomination for his work on the short subject Mysteries of the Deep in 1959, and in 2003 as producer for Destino. From writing, Disney went on to produce and direct dozens of other television productions and feature films, including the acclaimed 1968 documentary Varda, the Peregrine Falcon, before leaving in 1977 to become an independent producer and investor.

An avid yachtsman, Disney set several speed records and regularly competed in the Transpacific Yacht Race between California and Hawaii.

In 1999, he matched a gift from the Walt Disney Co. to establish Redcat, the Roy and Edna Disney-CalArts Theater, an experimental theater space that is part of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. He also sponsored the Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2005, he pledged $10 million to establish the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Center at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, which is scheduled to open in the spring of 2010.

He was previously married to Patricia Daily for 52 years.

He is survived by his second wife, Leslie DeMeuse Disney, a television producer; two daughters, two sons and 16 grandchildren.

Roy E. Disney had the distinction of being interviewed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television. On November 5, 2007, in Burbank, California, he was interviewed for the Archive by Jennifer Howard.

During the discussion, which lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, Disney described the early history of the Disney company and the role that his father, Roy O. Disney, and uncle, Walt Disney, had in its creation and early years. He related his childhood recollections of some of Disney’s work, including the company’s first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

He also talked about his first job out of college, in guest relations at NBC. He then described his work as an editor, starting with his apprenticeship on the 1950s television police drama Dragnet. He chronicled his work from assistant editor to producer/director of Disney’s True-Life Adventures series, explaining the approach to these documentary films. He recalled the opening of the Disneyland theme park and its coverage for television.

He outlined Disney’s entrance into television series with Disneyland, on ABC, and touched on a number of the projects he worked on under the show’s banner. He described the turmoil in the executive suites at Disney in the 1980s and the company’s return to glory in animation movies, in which he played a large part. He talked about his efforts in 2003 to change the direction the studio was headed and the 2005 appointment of Robert A. Iger as President and CEO. Finally, he expressed his views of both his father and Walt Disney’s legacy to the Walt Disney Company.

The entire discussion is available here.