Everything about Walt Disney totally explained
Walter Elias Disney (
December 5 1901 –
December 15 1966) was a multiple
Academy Award-winning
American film producer,
director,
screenwriter,
voice actor,
animator,
entrepreneur, and
philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother
Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known
motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as
The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.
Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in
animation and
theme park design. He received fifty-nine
Academy Award nominations and won twenty-six Oscars, including a record four in one year. He holds the record for an individual with the most awards and the most nominations. He won seven
Emmy Awards. Disney and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's
alter ego,
Mickey Mouse. He is the namesake for
Disneyland and
Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, Japan, France, and China.
Disney died of
lung cancer on
December 15,
1966, a few years prior to the opening of his
Walt Disney World dream project in
Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
1901–1937: The beginnings
Childhood
Walt Disney was born to
Elias Disney an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, who was of
German-American descent. His father moved to the United States from Canada after his parents failed at farming there. After Walt's birth, Elias along with his family moved to
Marceline, Missouri. moving to
Kansas City in 1910. There, Walt and his sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School where he met Walter Pfeiffer. The Pfeiffers were theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Soon, Walt was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.
Teenage years
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory in
Chicago and moved his family back there. In the fall, Disney began his freshman year at
McKinley High School and began taking night courses at the
Chicago Art Institute. Disney became the cartoonist for the school newspaper. His cartoons were very patriotic, focusing on
World War I. Disney dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to join the
Army, but the army rejected him because he was underage.
After his rejection from the army, Walt and one of his friends decided to join the
Red Cross. Following his joining the The Red Cross, he was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance.
He then moved to Kansas City to begin his artistic career. His brother Roy worked at a bank in the area and got a job for him through a friend at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio. At Pesmen-Rubin, Disney created ads for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. It was here that he met a cartoonist named
Ubbe Iwerks. Both of them became close friends and decided to start their own art business.
In January 1920, Disney and Iwerks formed a company called, "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, Iwerks left temporarily to earn money at Kansas City Film Ad Company. Disney followed suit after the business venture was taken over by his New York financial backers Winkler and Mintz.
Hollywood
Together with his brother, Disney pooled in money to set up his first Hollywood cartoon studio in his uncle's garage. Ub Iwerks reworked on the sketches made by Disney so that it was easier to animate it. However, Mickey's voice and personality was provided by Disney. As many of the old animators have commented, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." Mickey's popularity would now skyrocket in the early 1930's.
Iwerks was soon lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract. Later, Carl Stalling would also leave Disney to join Iwerks' new studio. Iwerks launched his
Flip the Frog series with first voice cartoon in color, "Fiddlesticks," filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other series of cartoons, the
Willie Whopper and the
Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut his
studio to work on various projects dealing with animation technology. He would return to Disney in 1940 and, would go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies in the studio's research and development department.
By 1932, Mickey Mouse had become quite a popular cinema character, but
Silly Symphonies wasn't as successful. The same year also saw competition for Disney grow worse as
Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character,
Betty Boop would gain more popularity among theater audiences. Fleischer was considered to be Disney's main rival in the 1930's, and was also the father of
Richard Fleischer, whom Disney would later hire to direct his 1954 film
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of Disney cartoons and was replaced by United Artists. In late 1932,
Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera, approached Walt and convinced him to redo
Flowers and Trees, which was originally done in black and white, with three-strip
Technicolor.
Flowers and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first
Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons for 1932. After
Flowers and Trees was released, all future
Silly Symphony cartoons were done in color as well. Disney was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use three-strip Technicolor, which would also eventually be extended to five years as well. The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, and also featured the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
First Academy Award
In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of "Mickey Mouse", whose series was made into color in 1935 and soon launched
spinoff series for supporting characters such as
Donald Duck,
Goofy, and
Pluto; Pluto and Donald would immediately get their individual cartoons in 1937, and Goofy would get solo cartoons in 1939 as well. Of all of Mickey's partners, Donald Duck–who first teamed with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon,
Orphan's Benefit–was arguably the most popular, and went on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character of all time.
Children
Disney's first attempt at pregnancy ended up in Lilly having a miscarriage. When Lilly Disney became pregnant again, she gave birth to a daughter,
Diane Marie Disney, on
December 18 1933. A few years later, the Disneys adopted
Sharon Mae Disney, (born
December 21 1934) as their second child.
1937–1941: The Golden Age of Animation
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
After the creation of two cartoon series, Disney soon began plans for a full-length feature in 1934. In 1935, opinion polls showed that another cartoon series,
Popeye the Sailor, produced by Max Fleischer, was more popular than Mickey Mouse. Disney was, however, able to put Mickey back on top, and also increase Mickey's popularity further by colorizing him and partially redesigning him into what was considered to be his most appealing design up to this point in time.
All of this development and training was used to elevate the quality of the studio so that it would be able to give the feature film, the quality Disney desired.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the feature was named, was in full production from 1934 until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To acquire the funding to complete
Snow White, Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the
Bank of America, who gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The finished film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on
December 21 1937; at the conclusion of the film, the audience gave
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation.
Snow White, the first animated feature in English and Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with
RKO Radio Pictures; RKO had previously been the distributor for Disney cartoons in 1936, after it closed down the Van Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution. The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million in its original theatrical release. The success of
Snow White, (for which Disney received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes) allowed Disney to build a new campus for the
Walt Disney Studios in
Burbank, which opened for business on
December 24 1939;
Snow White wasn't only the peak of Disney's success, but it also ushered into what was known as the Golden Age of Animation for Disney. The feature animation staff, having just completed
Pinocchio, continued work on
Fantasia and
Bambi, while the shorts staff continued work on the
Mickey Mouse,
Donald Duck,
Goofy, and
Pluto cartoon series, ending the
Silly Symphonies at this time. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930's, when Donald Duck began to gain more popularity among theater audiences than Mickey Mouse.
During World War II
Pinocchio and
Fantasia followed
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both were financial disappointments. The inexpensive
Dumbo was planned as an income generator, but during production of the new film, most of the animation staff
went on strike, permanently straining the relationship between Disney and his artists.
Shortly after the release of
Dumbo in October 1941, the
United States entered
World War II. The
U.S. Army contracted most of the Disney studio's facilities and had the staff create training and instructional films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as
Der Fuehrer's Face and the feature film
Victory Through Air Power in 1943. However, the military films didn't generate income, and the feature film
Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued
Snow White in 1944, establishing a 7-year re-release tradition for Disney features.
The Disney studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. The most notable and successful of these were
Saludos Amigos (1942), its sequel
The Three Caballeros (1945),
Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections: the first based on
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by
Washington Irving, and the second based on
The Wind in the Willows by
Kenneth Grahame. During this period, Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including
Song of the South and
So Dear to My Heart. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade as well.
By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features,
Alice in Wonderland and
Peter Pan, which had been shelved during the war years, and began work on
Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The studio also began a series of live-action nature films, entitled
True-Life Adventures, in 1948 with
On Seal Island. Despite rebounding success through feature films, Disney's animation shorts were no longer as popular as they used to be, and people began to instead draw attention to Warner Bros and their animation star
Bugs Bunny; by 1942, Warner Bros'
Termite Terrace officially became the most popular animation studio. However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940's, so did Donald Duck's; Donald would also replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character in 1949.
Testimony before Congress
In 1947, during the early years of the
Cold War, Disney testified before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and
labor union organizers, as
Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations. Disney implicated the
Screen Actors Guild as a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood. However, no evidence has been discovered to support this.
1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
During 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home on a large piece of property 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, Disney developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature
live steam railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad,
Carolwood Pacific Railroad, originated from the address of his home that was located on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a -long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated dirt berm, and a tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by
Roger E. Broggie of the
Disney Studios Lilly Belle in his wife's honor. He had his attorney draw up right-of-way papers giving the railroad a permanent, legal easement through the garden areas, which his wife dutifully signed; However, there's no evidence of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property's title.
Planning Disneyland
On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an
amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. He got his idea for a children's theme park after visiting
Children's Fairyland in
Oakland, California. This plan was originally meant for a plot located south of the Studio, across the street. The original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that was to become Disneyland. Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called
WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed
Imagineers.
When describing one of his earliest plans to
Herb Ryman (who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland which was presented to the
Bank of America while requesting for funds), Disney said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train." Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his
Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
Expanding into new areas
As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950,
Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed by
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in
CinemaScope, 1954),
The Shaggy Dog (1959), and
The Parent Trap (1961). The Walt Disney Studio produced its first TV special,
One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Disney began hosting a
weekly anthology series on
ABC named
Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in
Anaheim,
California. The show also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started a craze among the American youth known as the Davy Crockett craze, in which millions of coonskin caps and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country. In 1955, the studio's first daily television show,
Mickey Mouse Club debuted, which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.
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. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful
Lady and the Tramp (in
CinemaScope, 1955),
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961),
Sleeping Beauty (in
Super Technirama 70mm, 1959) and
The Sword in the Stone (1963).
Production on the short cartoons had kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary,
Buena Vista Distribution, which had assumed all distribution duties for Disney films from
RKO by 1955.
Disneyland, one of the world's first
theme parks, finally opened on
July 17 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful Disney properties and films. After 1955, the show,
Disneyland came to be known as
Walt Disney Presents. The show transformed from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, moving from ABC to NBC, and eventually evolving into its current form as
The Wonderful World of Disney. It continued to air on NBC until 1981, when CBS picked it up. Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, Hallmark Channel and Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals.
During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of
educational films on the space program in collaboration with
NASA rocket designer
Wernher von Braun:
Man in Space and
Man and the Moon in 1955, and
Mars and Beyond in 1957.
Early 1960s successes
By the early 1960s, the Disney empire was a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the
1960 Winter Olympics. After decades of pursuing, Disney finally procured the rights to
P.L. Travers' books about a magical nanny.
Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful Disney film of the 1960s and featured a memorable song score written by Disney favorites, the
Sherman Brothers. The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the
1964 New York World's Fair, including
Audio-
Animatronic figures, all of which were later integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project which was to be established on the
East Coast.
Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
Disney World was to include a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland which was to be called the Magic Kingdom. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, or
EPCOT for short. EPCOT was designed to be an operational city where residents would live, work, and interact using advanced and experimental technology, while scientists would develop and test new technologies to improve human life and health.
Death
Disney's involvement in Disney World ended in late 1966; after many years of
chain smoking cigarettes, he was diagnosed with
lung cancer. He was admitted to
Providence St. Joseph Medical Center across the street from the Disney Studio, where his health began to deteriorate, causing him to suffer cardiac arrest. Just before he was hospitalized, Disney was scheduled to undergo a neck surgery for an old polo injury; Disney was a frequent polo player at The Riveria Club in Hollywood, California for many years. On
November 2,
1966, during pre-surgery X-rays, doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital in Los Angeles discovered that Disney had an enormous tumor on his left lung. Five days later, Disney went back to hospital for surgery, but the tumor had spread to such great extent that doctors had to remove his entire left lung.}}
Shortly after the death of Walt Disney, satirist
Paul Krassner published
The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, a cartoon illustration portraying the liberated behavior of the Disney characters. A long-standing
urban legend maintains that Disney was
cryonically frozen, and his frozen corpse was stored underneath the
Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. However, this was discredited due to the fact that Disney was cremated, and the first known instance of Cryonic Freezing of a corpse (of
Dr. James Bedford) occurred a month later in January. Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the day he was due to open the Disneyland Christmas parade.
During the second phase of the "Walt Disney World" theme park, EPCOT was translated by Disney's successors into EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. As it currently exists, EPCOT is essentially a living
world's fair, different from the actual functional city that Disney had envisioned. In 1992, Walt Disney Imagineering took the step closer to Walt's vision and dedicated
Celebration,
Florida, a town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT. EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of Disney characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children but the company later changed this policy.
The Disney entertainment empire
Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carry his name.
The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network. As of 2007, the company has an annual revenue of over U.S. $35 billion.
Disney Animation today
Traditional hand-drawn animation, with which Walt Disney started his company, no longer continues at the
Walt Disney Feature Animation studio. After a stream of financially unsuccessful traditionally-animated features in the late-1990s and early 2000s, the two satellite studios in
Paris and
Orlando were closed, and the main studio in
Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film,
Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of
Pixar and the resulting rise of
John Lasseter to Chief Creative Officer, that position has changed, and the upcoming 2009 film
The Princess and the Frog will mark Disney's return to traditional 2-D animation.
CalArts
In his later years, Disney devoted substantial time towards funding
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). It was formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the
Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s. When Disney died, one-fourth of his estate went towards CalArts, which helped in building its campus. In his
will, Disney paved the way for creation of several charitable trusts which included one for the California Institute of the Arts and other for the Disney Foundation. He also donated of the Golden Oaks ranch in
Valencia for the school to be built on. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1971.
In an early admissions bulletin, Disney explained:
Academy Awards
Walt Disney holds the records for number of Academy Award nominations (with fifty-nine) and number of awarded Oscars (twenty-six, below). Four of his Oscars were special awards, and one, his last, was granted posthumously.
