WALT DISNEY (Merged Sources)

Early Life, Family, Growing Up:

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in the Hermosa section of Chicago,
Illinois. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney and Flora Disney of German, English
and Irish descent. Disney was one of five children, four boys and a girl who
were Herbert, Raymond, Roy, and Ruth. When Disney was four, the family
moved to a farm Marceline, Missouri. He spent most of his childhood in Missouri
where he developed his interest in drawing, painting and selling pictures to
neighbors and family friends.

In 1911, when Disney was around 10 years old the family moved to Kansas City,
Missouri. There, Elias had purchased a newspaper delivery route for the Kansas
City Star and Kansas City Times. Disney and his brother Roy woke up at 4:30
every morning to deliver the Times before school and repeated the round for
the evening Star after school. The schedule was exhausting and Disney often
Received poor grades after falling asleep in class, but he continued his paper
route for more than six years. Despite of his exhausting schedule of delivering
newspapers Disney also attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art
Institute. Later, Disney would work a summer job with the railroad selling candy
and newspapers on the train that traveled between Kansas City, Missouri and
Chicago, Illinois.

In 1917 the family moved back to Chicago, Illinois when Elias bought a stock in
a Chicago jelly producer. Disney attended McKinley High School where he
took drawing and photography classes and became the cartoonist for the
school newspaper. At night he also took courses and the Art Institute of
Chicago or Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

When Disney was 16 years old or in mid 1918, he dropped out of school and
attempted to join the United States Army to fight against the Germans but was
rejected for being underage. Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to
France in September 1918 to drive an ambulance. In October 1919 he moved
back to Kansas City

Early Career

In 1919, Disney’s brother Roy got him a job at the Pesmen Art Studio where he
was as an apprentice artist and worked as a commercial illustrator. There, he
drew commercial illustrations for advertising theater programs and catalogs. He
also met cartoonist Ub Iwerks. They started their own business, the short-lived
Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Failing to attract many customers Disney and
Iwerks agreed that Disney should leave temporarily to earn money. From there,
Disney worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made
commercials based on cutout animation. Disney became interested in
animation. With the assistance of a borrowed camera, and doing hand drawn
cel animation, he began experimenting at home.

Disney opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co (Kansas
Film Ad Company), Fred Harman. Disney and Harman made a deal with the
local Kansas City Theater to screen their cartoons, which they called Newman’s
Laugh-O-Grams. The cartoons were hugely popular and the success of the
Laugh-O-Grams lead to the establishment of his own studio upon which he
bestowed the same name. He hired more animators, including Fred Harman’s
brother Hugh, Rudolf Ising and Iwerks. They started the production of Alice’s
Wonderland – based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which combined
live action and animation. However, the popularity of his cartoons was not
matched by his ability to run a profitable business. With high labor costs and
debt, Disney went into bankruptcy in 1923.

After his first failure, he decided to move to Hollywood, California along with his
brother Roy and cartoonist Ub Iwerks in July 1923. Hollywood was the home to
the growing film industry in America, although New York was the center of the
cartoon industry. There the three began the Disney Brothers’ Cartoon Studio.
The company soon changed its name to Walt Disney Studios at Roy’s
Suggestion. Disney’s efforts to sell Alice’s Wonderland were in vain as they were
looking for a distributor until he heard from a New York film distributor Margaret
J. Winkler. The Walt Disney Studios’ first deal became true with Margaret
Winkler.

Disney grew tire of the Alice’s series and in 1927 the Disney studio was involved
in the successful production of Oswald The Lucky Rabbit distributed through
Universal Pictures. However, the team had discovered that Disney’s New York
distributor, Margaret Winkler, and her husband, Charles Mintz had stolen the
rights to the character Oswald and all of Disney’s animators except for Iwerks.

The studio broke from their distributors and to replace Oswald, Disney’s first
successful film starring Mortimer Mouse was a sound-and-music-equipped
animated short called Steamboat Willie. Disney’s wife Lillian (whom he had
married in 1925) suggested that Mickey sounded better. Iwerks drew Mickey,
and Walt gave a voice to the character. It opened at the Colony Theater in
New York November 18, 1928. Sound had just made its way into film. When the
animation was complete, Disney signed a contract with the former executive
of Universal Pictures, Pat Powers, to use the Powers Cinephone recording
system. Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney’s early sound
cartoons that soon became popular.

Disney asked Powers for an increase in payments for the cartoons. Powers
refused and signed Iwerks to work for him. Thinking that without Iwerks, the
Disney Studio would close. Disney had a nervous breakdown so he and Lillian
took an extended holiday to Cuba and a cruise to Panama to recover.

With the loss of Powers as distributor. Disney studios signed a contract with
Columbia Pictures to distribute the Mickey Mouse cartoons which became
increasingly popular internationally. In 1929, Disney created Silly Symphonies,
featuring Mickey’s newly created friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy
and Pluto.

One of Disney Studio’s most popular cartoons, Flowers and Trees (1932), was
the first to be produced in color and won the Academy Award for Best Short
Subject Cartoon. In 1933, Disney produced The Three Little Pigs and its title song
“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”

GOLDEN AGE OF ANIMATION

By 1934, Disney began his first full-length animated production of Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs, based on the fairy tale. Many expected It to be a
commercial failure. It was to be the first animated feature film made in full color
and sound cost an unimaginable $1.5 million to produce. On December 21,
1937, it premiered in Los Angeles. The film became the most successful motion
picture of 1938 and by May 1939 its total gross of $6.5 million made it the most
successful sound film made to that date. The Walt Disney Family Museum calls
the following years the ‘Golden Age of Animation’

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the studio produced
several other successful animations, such as Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Bambi and
The Wind Willows.

As the ‘Golden Age of Animation’ faded, the studio encountered a financial

crisis due to the release of Pinocchio and Fantasia, both released in 1940. In
response to the financial crisis, Disney and His brother Roy started the
company’s first public stock offering in 1940, and implemented heavy salary
cuts. Due to Disney’s ‘high-handed and insensitive manner’ dealing with the
staff, lead to a major strike by his writers and animators by 1941 which lasted
five weeks. The strike temporarily interrupted the studio’s next production,
Dumbo in 1941.

In 1944 the Studio had debts of $4 million with the Bank of America. The bank
understood and gave them time to market their product.

POST WAR

It took until the late 1940’s for Disney to recover some of its success.
In the 1950’s, Disney produced Cinderella, his first animated feature in 8 years,
costing $2.2 million to produce, it earned nearly $8 million in its first year. In 1950
he was also involved in his first entirely live action-feature, Treasure Island, which
was shot in Britain. He continued to produce full-length animated features too,
including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). In 1964, He
produced Mary Poppins, which became the most successful Disney film in the
1960’s. The movie combined live action and animation into one film. Other films
worth mentioning include: Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Lady and the Tramp
(1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and 101 Dalmatians (1961).

DISNEY’S TELEVISION SERIES

Disney was also among the first people to use television as an entertainment
medium. In 1954, after the Disneyland funding had been agreed, ABC
broadcast Walt Disney’s Disneyland, an anthology consisting of animated
cartoons, live-action features and other material from the studio’s library. The
show was successful in terms of ratings and profits. ABC was pleased with the
ratings, leading to Disney’s first daily television program, The Mickey Mouse
Club, a variety show catering specifically to children.

THEME PARK
For several years Disney had been considering building a theme park. He
wanted the theme park to be in a clean unspoiled park, where both children
and their parents could have fun. In March 1952 he received zoning permission
to build a theme park in Burbank, near the Disney studios. During the process of
planning the theme park Disney used his own money to fund a group of
designers and animators to work on the plans. Those involved became
Imagineers. The construction work started in July 1954, and Disneyland opened
in 1955 and the opening ceremony was broadcast on ABC which reached 70
million viewers. The park was designed as a series of themed lands liked by the
central Main Street, U.S.A. – A replica of the main street in his hometown of
Marceline. The connected themed areas were Adventureland, Frontierland,
Fantasyland, and Tommorowland. The park also contained the narrow-gauge
Disneyland Railroad that linked the land. Although there were early minor
problems with the park, it was a success, and after a month’s operation,
Disneyland was receiving over 20,000 visitors a day and by the end of the year,
it attracted 3.6 million guests. Disneyland has expanded its rides overtime and
branched out globally in Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

In late 1965, he announced plans to develop another theme park to be called

“Disney World” (now Walt Disney World) a few miles southwest of Orlando,
Florida. Disney World was to include the “Magic Kingdom” – A larger and more
elaborate version of Disneyland, plus gold courses and resort hotels. The heart
of Disney World was to be the “Experimental Prototype Community of
Tomorrow (EPCOT), which he described as:

“an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from
the new ideas and new technologies. It will be the community of tomorrow that
will never be completed, but will always introducing and testing and
demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a
showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free
enterprise.

ILLNESS, DEATH AND AFTERMATH

Disney died in 1966, 10 days after his 65th birthday. Disney World was still under
construction when Disney died. He had been a heavy smoker since World War I
and was diagnosed with lung cancer and died of circulatory collapse by lung
cancer. Disney’s remains were cremated two days later and his ashes interred
at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California

Disney’s plans for the futuristic city of EPCOT did not come to fulfillment. After his
death, his brother Roy took control of the Disney companies. He changed the
focus from a town to an attraction. Roy dedicated Walt Disney World to his
brother. Walt Disney World expanded with the opening of Epcot Center in 1982.

In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum designed by Disney’s daughter Diane
and her son Walter E. D. Miller, opened in the Presidio of San Francisco.
Thousands of artifacts from Disney’s life and career are on display including
numerous awards that he received.

HONORS

Disney received 59 Academy Award nominations, including 22 awards: both

totals are records. He made more than 100 feature films. His first full length
animated film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.