- For the same named company; see The Walt Disney Company
Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901–December 15, 1966) was an American animated film producer and animator. He was also the creator of an American-based theme park called Disneyland, and the founder of the highly profitable corporation, now known as The Walt Disney Company.
Note: There is currently an alternative writing of this article at Walt Disney/temp.
Childhood
Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois to Elias Disney and Flora Call. He was named after his father and after his father's close friend Walter Parr, the minister at St. Paul Congregational Church. In 1906, his family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri. The family sold the farm in 1909 and lived in a rented house until 1910, when they moved to Kansas City. Disney was nine years old at the time.
According to the Kansas City, Missouri, Public School District records, Disney began attending the Benton Grammar School 1911, and continued his formal education there until he graduated on June 8, 1917. During this time, Disney also enrolled in classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. In the fall of 1917, Disney rejoined his family. He left school at the age sixteen and became a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I, after he changed his birth certificate to show his year of birth as 1900 in order to be able to enlist in the service. He served as a member of the American Red Cross Ambulance Force in France till 1919.
Origins of the studio Disney returned to the USA, moved to Kansas City and started looking for a job. He was also interested in becoming a political cartoonist but after some time of being unemployed he had to settle for a job in Posman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. In his new job Disney met and befriended Ubbe Ert Iwerks, later known as Ub Iwerks. The two friends were interested in creating their own company and in January, 1920 they formed "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists".
In 1922 Disney started making longer shorts based on well known fairy-tales like "Cinderella". In 1923 Disney also started experimenting with shorts combining live-action and animation. Few of the shorts that Disney worked on during these years have survived but they were locally successful at the time and Disney was getting ambitious.
Disney was now working on his own company again along with Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and Carmen Maxwell but the Laugh-O-Grams weren't satisfying him any more. Though reasonably popular near Kansas City they weren't truly financially successful.
Mixing live action and animation His next attempt at success would involve the combination of live-action and animation. This was already the basis of the moderately successful series Out of the Inkwell by Max Fleischer and his brother Dave Fleischer that had begun in 1918 and was still running. However, the Fleischer brothers had their animated star Koko the Clown interacting with a live-action setting. Disney wanted to create a series of cartoons, called the Alice Comedies in which a live action little girl interacted with animated characters. The idea would be used successfully much later in Roger Rabbit cartoons but was quite original for its time.
Disney and his team put all their efforts on creating Alice's Wonderland. The young actress playing Alice in this film was Virginia Davis, who had worked for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. Unfortunately for them, their profits from Laugh-O-Graphs weren't enough to cover the expenses and the company went bankrupt in July, 1923. But Disney had his finished project in his hand and he left for Hollywood in hopes of finding interested distributors. Reportedly he had only 40 dollars left at this point. Ub followed him. But Ising, Harman and Maxwell decided to follow their own separate path. They would form Arabian Nights Cartoon Studio and later Harman-Ising Studio.
Contract and new studio In Hollywood Disney found the interested distributors he was looking for, Margaret Winkler and her fiancee (and soon husband), Charles Mintz. They were already distributing the Felix the Cat series by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer. On October 16 they signed a contract for twelve films. However Disney, at this point, had no studio, artists or actors while the contract asked for the participation of Virginia Davis, still living in Kansas. But Disney was enthusiastic and started working on his problems.
He enlisted the help of his older brother Roy Oliver Disney who became his new partner. They established a small studio at 4651 Kingswell Avenue and started working. Although they only managed to make ten films during 1924 they were successful enough. The two brothers were able to move to a larger studio at 4649 Kingswell and hire more staff. Besides artists (including Disney's later wife), more child actors were hired, playing secondary roles. Disney convinced Virginia Davis and her family to move to Hollywood. At the distributors' suggestion a recurring animated character was added to the series, Alice's cat Julius. He first appeared in Alice's Spooky Adventure released on April 1, 1924 and originally Disney didn't intended to use him again. But the distributors were familiar with animated cats and insisted that the cat would join the cast permanently. In Julius they formed a copy of Felix.
The budding mogul Disney married a female artist under his employ, Lillian Marie Bounds, on July 13, 1925 and became the father of two children: Meanwhile, the Alice series was becoming successful and Disney had his contract renewed, this time asking for eighteen more films. But the distributors asked for a reduction in the production costs. Disney decided to reduce Virginia Davis's regular monthly salary to a daily-rate pay. The Davis family refused and Virginia continued her career as a child actress elsewhere. She was replaced by Dawn Paris under the stage name Dawn O'Day (she would later use the stage name; Anne Shirley). But Dawn's payment wasn't enough as the only source of income for her family and she quit, too. She was replaced by Margie Gay. Despite these problems, fifteen films of the Alice series were released during 1925. Walt Disney's statue at Disneyland. In 1926, Margaret Winkler married Charles Mintz and retired from business. Disney now had to deal with one distributor who felt that the series was declining. By this time Ub Iwerks was in charge of the animated films and Disney just supervised and dropped some ideas. The animation was getting better, the gags increased, but the live-action sequences were becoming less important and the scenarios tended to be repetitive. But the series was still successful enough. During the year, the name of the company changed from "The Disney Brothers Studio" to "The Walt Disney Studio". From then on Roy would still play an important part in the Company's financial department but had little to do with the films. Disney was now the head of the Studio, which moved to Hyperion Avenue. Disney felt that his youthful appearance (he was 25 years old) worked against him during contract negotiations and grew a mustache in an attempt to look older and more serious.
The end of Alice, the start of Oswald In 1927 Winkler Pictures ceased ordering cartoons for the Alice series. It had reached its limitations and with Alice in the Big League released on August 27, 1927 it was over. Besides Black Pete, none of the series characters would appear again.
But Disney had other plans. Charles Mintz's own employer Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios was interested in a new animated series starring a rabbit. Mintz assigned this to Disney and his company. They developed the new character and named him: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Poor Papa was produced by Spring of this year but Laemmle was less than pleased with the character. They wanted a likeable character like Charlie Chaplin's Tramp, Felix the Cat or even Julius from the Alice Comedies. What they got was a rabbit looking old, fat, sloppy and scruffy with a hooligan's personality.
Poor Papa would be released on August 6, 1928 when the character's popularity was at its height but this wasn't the introduction of the character to the public that Universal wanted. The Disney studio had to redesign the character. But the next short they produced was what Universal wanted. Trolley Troubles featured a younger, slimmer, better Oswald with the personality of a naughty young boy. The film's release on September 5, 1927 made the character instantly successful.
Nine shorts featuring Oswald were released during the year and the character became popular. Oswald merchandise appeared though Disney had nothing to do with it. Black Pete was now used as a recurring antagonist to Oswald. Disney had success at his hands... or so he thought.
One of the more famous Disney quotes has been, "Remember, it all started with a mouse." But it more likely started with the Rabbit. Disney was successful enough to be able to hire his old colleagues Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, who hadn't been so successful on their own but had improved in skills. Seventeen of Disney's Oswald cartoons were released during 1928, the final being Hot Dog, released on August 20, 1928.
Oswald moves on Disney was quite confident when he went to negotiate with Charles Mintz in New York. He wanted his fee to increase from 2250 dollars per short to 2500 dollars per short. Instead Mintz wanted Disney's fee to decrease to 2000 dollars per short. When Disney refused, Mintz had some announcements to make. He didn't need Disney anymore. He had secretly met with a number of Disney's employees including Harman and Ising and had signed them on contracts of their own. As the distributor Universal held the rights to Oswald and they could make their own cartoons with him if they wanted to, Disney returned to his Studio in defeat and along with Ub Iwerks and the remaining employees he started working on a new project to replace Oswald as Disney's star.
This meeting was very important for the history of animation because of its consequences in the long run. It is well known that Disney's next project was Mickey Mouse but there were other developments spawned from the meeting. Charles Mintz wasn't idle either. He continued to provide Universal with Oswald cartoons, produced now in a new Studio under his brother-in-law George Winkler. Thanks to Harman and Ising, now chief animators, the 25 shorts produced till mid-1929 were of the same quality as those produced by Disney's Studio.
But then Carl Laemmle decided to create an animation department for Universal and hand the rights to Oswald to it. The new Studio would be run by Walter Lantz and would later spawn even more famous characters like Woody Woodpecker. Ozzie of the Circus, released on January 5, 1929 was the first in a long series of shorts produced by Lantz' Studio. As for Mintz and Winkler, their Studio and their careers were over.
But Harman and Ising weren't even started yet. They found employment again creating a partnership with producer Leon Schlesinger. Together they created an animation Studio on behalf of Warner Bros.. The short Sinkin' in the Bathtub, released on April 19, 1930 was the first of a long series of cartoons called Looney Tunes that would spawn more famous characters like Bugs Bunny.
Ironically enough, Oswald, the reason for these developments, has long been obscured by characters later created by the Studios formed as a result of his creation.
Discovering Mickey Returning to Disney's new project, his company claimed that it was the blowing of a train's whistle that inspired him to create Mickey Mouse. Apparently the whistle blew "A moooouse! A mooouse!" It seems likely that Mickey evolved from a more pragmatic conversation between Disney and Iwerks. Mickey in fact was little more than a truncation of Oswald, round ears instead of long ones, and so forth. He was oriignally to be named Mortimer, but Walt's wife Lillian reportedly offered the more appealing sugestion of "Mickey". Walt Disney signs a drawing of Mickey Mouse. He continued this inventive film making with Mickey Mouse. Mickey's first cartoon was Plane Crazy, in a story inspired by Charles Lindbergh. The best-remembered today, however, was the first "talkie" cartoon, Steamboat Willie.
Disney found out that his distributor was stealing from him, so he broke away from them. Lessons learned from this experience would later prompt him to distribute his films with his own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution. But Disney's distributor persuaded Iwerks to leave Disney and work for them. Iwerks owned one third of the Walt Disney Studios. He eventually returned to Disney and worked for him in R & D creating such historic inventions as the multi-plane camera which created three dimensional backgrounds in animated films. But his choice back then to leave the studio and sacrifice his percentage of the company cost him countless millions of dollars. While Iwerks's contribution may be overlooked by most people, among Disney historians his name is as well known as any Disney character.
Mickey's films were successful, but it was in merchandising the studio became truly lucrative. Starting out with Mickey Mouse pencils and then expanding into watches, comics and toys, the Mouse created a true financial empire.
The shorts also had success with their musical scores. The Three Little Pigs was so successful when it was released in theaters that it was actually billed above the features. The title song, composed by Frank Churchill, was a huge popular hit, subsequently covered by other artists like Benny Goodman.
Risk and reward in feature films Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, was Disney's first feature-length animated film, as well as the first American animated feature in color. To acquire the funding to complete, Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America. A string of animated films, such as Fantasia (1940) and Pinocchio (1940), followed. Not all were commercial successes, and Disney's financial situation was at times threadbare. Disney's relationship with his animators was strained when they went on strike in 1941, almost crippling the studio.
To compensate for the diminished resources, Disney came out with movies like The Three Caballeros and Melody Time that were less complicated and relied upon short musical segments. Learning from the lack of success he had with Fantasia, Disney used music from artists like Dinah Shore and Nelson Riddle as opposed to Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky. There might have been even more of these films if not for World War II. The Army occupied part of Disney's studio. Perhaps the most important Disney film from this time would be Victory Through Air Power. Disney agreed to make training films for the United States Armed Forces. In these, the Seven Dwarfs would demonstrate how to set up camps and so forth. But Victory Through Air Power, in which an eagle defeats an octopus, was used by the military to explain the strategy behind D-Day.
A dark chapter During the dark early years of the Cold War, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he named several of his employees as Communist sympathizers. Some historians believe that the animosity from the 1941 strike of Disney Studio employees caused him to bear a grudge. His dislike and distrust of labor unions may have also led to his testimony.
Building the Disney empire
The need to diversify After World War II, the unfavorable economics of concentrating exclusively on animated movies finally caught up with Disney and his company, as they diversified into television and live-action movies, still retaining their family-friendly nature.
Carolwood Pacific Railroad In 1949, when Disney and his family moved to a new home on large piece of property in the in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California, with the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball, owners of their own backyard railroad, he developed the blueprints and immediately set to work creating his own miniature Carolwood Pacific Railroad in his backyard. The name originated from the address of his home which was located on Carolwood Drive. Disney's 1/2 mile long layout included a 46-foot-long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated dirt berm, and a 90-foot tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's flower bed. He even named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Roger E. Broggie of the Disney Studios Lilly Belle in his wife's honor.
Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his 1/2 mile-long miniature railroad led Walt Disney to include a railroad in the plans of his family-oriented Disneyland.
California On a business trip to Chicago in the late 1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for a park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. These ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise which was to become Disneyland.
Walt Disney opened Disneyland, a theme park located in Anaheim, California on July 17, 1955. Disneyland was an immediate success, and soon plans were underway to develop another similar park to be located at an east coast location.
Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland. When presenting his plan to the Imagineers (a small group of animators who swapped jobs to become Disneyland developers), he said "I want Disneyland to be the most amazing place on Earth, and I want a train circling it".
CalArts Disney devoted substantial time in his later years funding CalArts, a small organization for pursuing Californian talent and making it prosper. When he died, one fourth of his estate went towards CalArts which greatly helped the building of Disney campus which was in planning while Disney was still alive. Walt also donated 38 acres (154,000 m²) of the Golden Oaks ranch in what was the rural city of Valencia for the school to be built on. This site was a forested area for location shoots for the studio.
Lillian Disney devoted a lot of her time after Walt died to pursuing CalArts and organized hundreds of fund raising events for the university in her late husband's honour (as well as funding the Walt Disney Symphony Hall). After Lillian's passing, the legacy continued with daughter Diane and husband Ron continuing the tradition. CalArts is one of the largest independent universities in California today, mostly in fact to the Disneys.
The Walt Disney Studios In 1947, the Walt Disney Studios opened for business in Burbank, California, and exist to this day as the worldwide headquarters for The Walt Disney Company.
Florida
Buying the plot In 1964, the Walt Disney Company began quietly purchasing land in central Florida west of Orlando in a largely rural area of marginal orange groves for Disney's "Florida Project." After acquiring over 27,000 acres (109 km²) of land, and arranging favorable state legislation which would provide unprecedented quasi-governmental control over the area to be developed, in 1965, Walt and his brother Roy announced plans for what they called "Disney World."
His brother, Roy O. Disney, carried out the Florida project, insisting that the name become Walt Disney World in honor of his dead brother. Roy O. Disney died 3 months after the first portion, the Magic Kingdom, opened in 1971.
Phase two When the second phase of the Walt Disney World theme park was built, EPCOT was translated by Walt Disney's successors into the Epcot of today, (lower case letter intentional), which is essentially a living world's fair. The Epcot park that currently exists is a far cry from the actual living city that Disney envisioned. However, the Celebration, Florida new town built by Disney Corporation adjacent to Walt Disney World harkens back to the EPCOT vision.
Today Today, what was known as the Florida Project is now the largest and most popular private-run tourist destination on the planet, but the Walt Disney shine is still there. From the 'Partners' statue at the Magic Kingdom to the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom, Walt Disney is still remembered and is vision is still continued. His fascination with mass transportation lives in the Walt Disney World Monorail which runs through two theme parks and four hotels, and his dreams of the future live on at Epcot in ahead-of-their-time attractions and technological breakthroughs.
Disney and space exploration W educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: The films attracted the attention of not only the general public, but also the Soviet space program.
Trivia and rumors - In the fifth grade, Walt memorized the Gettysburg Address (for fun) and surprised everyone by arriving at school dressed as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. His costume consisted of his father's old coat and a homemade beard. He even pasted a putty wart to his cheek. His teacher was delighted. Little wonder that years later, when his studio created the first fully functioning audio-animatronic human figure for the 1964 New York World's Fair, it was Abraham Lincoln!
- Disney had very simple tastes in food. According to his daughter Diane, "He liked fried potatoes, hamburgers, western omelets, hotcakes, canned peas, hash, stew, roast beef sandwiches. He doesn't go for vegetables, but loves chicken livers or macaroni and cheese." Lillian Disney would complain, "Why should I plan a meal when all Disney really wants is a can of chili or a can of spaghetti?" [1] (http://www.jimhillmedia.com/articles/guest/korkis.05272003.1.htm)
- In the fall of 1963, while seeking the site for Disney's new "Florida Project", Walt and his brother Roy first flew over a coastal area of Florida, and then the forest and swamps near Orlando which were selected as the site to become Walt Disney World. Shortly later, their plane landed in New Orleans on the way back to California. There the Disney brothers learned of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States. He had been assassinated earlier that same afternoon in Dallas, Texas. The date was November 22, 1963.
- It is often stated that Disney had his body frozen and became a cryonics patient after his death. This is in fact an urban myth; Disney was cremated, and his remains lie in a family crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. [2] (http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/frozen.htm)
- It is rumoured that Disney's ghost can be seen in many associated buildings, such as the Disney Gallery at New Orleans Square in Disneyland, and in the old Sunkist bar also at Disneyland.
Legacy Today, Walt Disney's animation studios and theme park have developed into a multi-billion television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among others; - Five vacation resorts
- Eleven theme parks
- Two water parks
- Thirty two hotels
- Eight movie studios
- Six record labels
- Twelve television channels
Disneyland hasdeveloped from a cramped theme park to an open resort of two theme parks, three hotels and a large shopping complex. The Florida Project is the most popular destination in the world for vacations, and Tokyo Disneyland is the most visited theme park in the world (it's sister Tokyo Disneysea is the second). In September 2005, The Walt Disney Company will open Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in China.
Traditional animation no longer continues at the Studios. In a bid to keep up with the times, computer animation has replaced all traditional Disney-owned studios across the globe, and in 2004 Disney released their final (for the forseeable future) traditionally animated feature film, Home on the Range.
On May 5th, 2005, The Walt Disney Company will open the Happiest Homecoming on Earth celebration in front of Walt's Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, celebrating fifty years of the world's most famous theme park.
See also
Quotes - "I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
- "You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway."
External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: - Walt Disney (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000370/) at the Internet Movie Database
- Walt Disney Family Museum (http://www.waltdisney.com/)
- SaveDisney.com - Continue Walt's Traditions (http://www.savedisney.com/)
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