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Walt Disney
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them" Walter Elias Disney (12/5/1901 12/15/1966) was a director, producer, screenwriter, developer, entrepreneur, incredible animator and a giving philanthropist. The first and greatest of the Disney Imagineers, Disney is known as one of the most creative influences in the entertainment industry during the twentieth century. As the co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, Walt became one of the best-known movie producers in the world. Walt Disney, along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from every nation in the world, including 48 Academy Awards and 7 Emmys in his lifetime. Sadly, Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15th, 1966. Walt may have passed on, but his dream lives on. The Walt Disney Company today continues to thrive and has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $30 billion. Walt was an innovator in animation and theme park design. He received twenty two Academy Awards and forty eight nominations. He still holds the records for the most awards and nominations within the Academy. Walt also won 7 Emmy Awards. He created the world s most recognizable animated character, Mickey Mouse. Did you know that he was originally named "Mortimer"? His theme parks have spread from the US, to France, Japan and China.
Walt was born in Chicago on December 5th, 1901. After getting tired of the violence in Chicago, his father, Elias Disney moved his family to a 45 acre farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his brother owned property. It was in Marceline where Disney developed his love for drawing. His neighbor, "Doc" Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of his horse Rupert . He also developed his love for trains. The Santa Fe railroad ran through his home town and his uncle, Michael Martin was an engineer. In 1910 the Disney family moved to Kansas City. Walt and his sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School. It is there that Walt met Walter Pfeiffer. The Pfeiffers were theatre people. The introduced Walt to the wonderful world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Walt became very close with the Pfeiffers and spent as much time as he could with them learning about the world of entertainment. In 1917 the Disney family moved back to Chicago after Elias Disney bought an interest in the O-Zell jelly factory. Wlat attended McKinley High School and took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute. Disney was the cartoonist for his school newspaper. He drew mostly patriotic cartoons about World War I. Walt dropped out of HighSchool at 16 to join the Army, but they wouldn t let him join because he was too young. Against his father s will, his forged Walt s birth certificate to show he was 17 so he could join the Red Cross with his friend. He was accepted into the Red Cross and spent a year in France as an ambulance driver. His ambulance was not covered in regulation camouflage, but cartoon characters from front to back. After leaving th Red Cross, Walt moved to Kansas City to focus on art. His brother Roy lived in Kansas City and got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio. At Pesmen-Rubin, Disney created ads for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. While working at Pesmen-Rubin, Walt met another cartoonist named Ubbe Iwerks. They became best friends and later decided to start an art business together. In January of 1920, Disney and Iwerks formed a company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". Although abitious, they had very few clients willing to hire them due to their inexperience. Their company was later taken over by his New York financial backers Winkler and Mintz. Disney then moved to Hollywood. All he had to his name was $40 and an unfinished cartoon. His goal was to become a director. He approached every studio in Hollywood and was turned down. He decided to turn his focus back to animation. His first animation studio was his Uncle Robert s garage. His first animation job came after sending some unfinished prints to New York distributor, Margaret Winkler. She liked his work so much that she approached Walt about a distribution deal for live action and animation shorts based on Alice s Wonderland.
Because of the lack of success in live-action film, Disney turned back to animation. His first Hollywood cartoon studio was a garage in his uncle Robert's house. Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him. She wanted a distribution deal with Disney for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland. Walt enlisted the help of his brother Roy to help him with his fledgling studio. Roy invested $250 and they borrowed and addditional $500. They then constructed a camera stand in Uncle Robert s garage. The studio was later moved from Uncle Robert s garage to Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake District and became Disney Brother s Studios. The studio remained there until 1939. UB Iwerks returned to work with Walt as an animator.
In 1925 Walt hired Lillian Bounds to paint and ink cells for their animated features. They both became very fond of each other, fell in love and they were married that same year on July 13. The new series Alice Comedies was very successful. The series ended in 1927. The focus switched from the live action Alice to an animated cat called Julius. Margaret Winkler had since married Charles B. Mintz, who had taken over her business. He ordered a new animated series from the Disney brothers to be distributed through Universal Pictures. The series was to be Oswald The Lucky Rabbit The Oswald Character was created and drawn by UB Iwerks and became very popular. In February of 1928, Disney went to New York to meet with Mintz to negotiatite a higher fee for each of the popular shorts. He was surprised to find that not only would they not increase the fees for the popular shorts, but they wanted to decrease the fees. He was also informed that Mintz had most of his main animators under contract and that Mintz would start his own studio if Disney declined to accept the new fees. Universal owned the Oswald trademark and could therefore make the films without Disney. Disney refused and lost most of his animation staff to Universal. Iwerks, however, remained with Disney. It took Disney's company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character. The Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal in 2006. After leaving New York, Walt had to create a new animated character to focus on. It is said that Mickey Mouse, originally dubbed Mortimer, was created on the train home from New York. Lillian Disney thought that Moritmer was not fitting of the new character and he was later Christened Mickey Mouse. The first Mickey Mouse films were animated by Iwerks. Mortimer later bacem the name of Mickey s adversary and rival for Minnie and had a Brooklyn accent. Walt and Iwerks created the first animated short feature Mickey Mouse, it was Plane Crazy. However, that short and its follow-up, The Gallopin Goucho failed at finding a distributor. Walt did not give up. He met a business man named Pat Powers who introduced him to the Cinephone, sound-synchronization process. Walt would use this process to create the first animated Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound. Steamboat Willie premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on November 18, 1928 and was a resounding success. He later added sound tracks to Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho which then became successes. Walt himself provided the vocal effects and the voice for Mickey Mouse until 1946. Mickey Mouse s popularity skyrocketed in the 30s. Walt created a series of shorts in 1929 called Silly Symphonies. These shorts were drawn entirely by Iwerks. Iwekrs was responsible for drawing nearly all of the shorts created in 1929 and 1929. Disney signed a new distribution deal with Columbia pictures in 1930. Mickey Mouse continued to grow in popularity, but the musical Silly Symphonies were not as successful as the Mickey Mouse shorts. Iworks later left the Disney company to start his own studio with Pat Powers. Walt was faced with finding someone to replace Iwerks. Not an easy tasks as Iwerks was reported to be drawing an average of 700 drawings a day for the Mickey Mouse shorts. Walt was able to hire a number of people to replace Iwerks to handle the animation. Iwerks returned to Disney in 1940. Iwerks then worked in the research and development department where he pioneered new innovations in animation processes. In 1932 United Artists replaced Columbia Pictures as the distributor for Disney cartoons. In 1932, Herbert Kalmus, approached Walt about redoing an earlier animation short entitled Flowers and Trees. Flowers and Trees was originally done in black and white and Herbet thought it might be successful if done in color with three-strip Technicolor. Walt agreed and Flowers and Trees went on to become a huge success. All following cartoons would be done in Technicolor. Walt negotiated a deal with Technicolor, so that no other animation company could use technicolor for three years. This gave Disney a huge advantage in the animation industry over the next three years. Flowers and Trees went on to win Walt Disney his first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1932. In 1933 Disney created his most successful short of all time, The Three Little which featured the hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", that became the anthem of the Great Depression. In 1932 Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. In 1935 Mickey Mouse was then created in Color. Along with the change to color came the introduction of several new characters in the Dsney line-up: Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy. Each of these characters became popular and went on to headline in their own films. Donald Duck became the second most popular of the Disney characters. Disney now had two of the most popular cartoon series in the industry, yet his desire to succeed led him to be dissatisfied. In 1934 he began plans for the first full-length animated motion picture: Snow White. The rest of the film industry, and even his own family, expected failure and dubbed it Disney s Folly and expected it to ruin Disney Studios. Production of Snow White involved new processes and the multiplane camera and took 3 years to complete. The production of Snow White cost over $1,499,000, unheard of during the depths of the Depression The finished film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21, the awe stuck audience gave it a standing ovation. The film is still credited as one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. In 1940, Disney opened their Burbank studio and employed more than 1,000 artists, animators, story writers and technicians. During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work, developing training and propaganda films for the war effort. The Animated Features Created by Walt Disney during his lifetime include:
In all, 81 features were released by the studio during his lifetime.
Disney first drew sketches of his idea for an amusement park on a business trip to Chicago in the 1940s. He envisioned a park across the street from the studio where his employees could bring their families. The concept grew and later became the start of the Disneyland project. Walt started a subsidiary company called WED Enterprises and spent 5 years working in the development of Disneyland. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and became the first Disney Imagineers.
Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955 at a cost of $17 Million. It was an immediate and huge success. People came from all over the world to visit Disneyland, including presidents, kings and queens and other royalty. Most of the attractions were based on the popular Disney films and characters. As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men
Disney expanded into new areas buy creating the following Live Action Movies:
In that same year, Walt Disney productions began buying up swamp land in central Florida for the Florida Project . The land was purchased under fake companies, such as M. T. Lott, in order to keep the price of land as low as possible. Once word got out that Disney was purchasing property, prices shot right up. They acquired 43 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan Island, for what is now known as Disney World. Disney World was based on Disney land but would bee larger and have more attractions. The center of Disney World was to be EPCOT, which stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. It was designed to be an experimental community where people live, work and play using advanced technologies.
After more than seven years of master planning and preparation, including 52 months of actual construction, Walt Disney World opened to the public as scheduled on October 1, 1971. Epcot Center opened on October 1, 1982. Walt Disney was diagnosed with lunch cancer, due to the many years of chain smoking. He suffered cardiac arrest at 9:30 AM on December 15th, 1966. He was cremated 2 days later and his ashes reside at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. He was not cryonically frozen as many believe. Walt s brother Roy took over the Florida Project and renamed it Walt Disney World in honor of his brother. Walt Disney dreams and passion continue to live on and he is still responsible for bringing joy to millions of people around the globe every year. Walt Disney, a true visionary and incredible entrepreneur.
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