Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15,
1966), was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and
animator. One of the most well-known motion picture producers in the world,
Disney was also the cartoon artist of comic books and newspaper comic strips,
the creator of an American-based theme park called Disneyland, and is the
co-founder with his brother Roy O. Disney of Walt Disney Productions, the
corporation now known as The Walt Disney Company.
Walt Disney is particularly noted for being a successful storyteller, a hands-on
film producer, and a popular showman. He and his staff created a number of the
world's most popular animated properties, including the one many consider
Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse.
1901-1919: Childhood
Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois to Elias Disney and the former Flora Call.
Disney's paternal grandparents, Kepple Disney and Mary Richardson, were Irish
immigrants. Walt 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 Public School District records, Disney began
attending the Benton Grammar School in 1910, and graduated on June 8, 1911.
During this time, Disney also enrolled in classes at the Chicago Art Institute.
He left school at the age of 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 instead of 1901, in order to be able to enlist in the service. He served as
a member of the American Red Cross Ambulance Force in France until 1919.
1920-1936: Early years in animation
Kansas City animation studios
Disney returned to the USA, moved to Kansas City and, with Ub Iwerks, formed a
company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in January 1920. The company
faltered and Disney and Iwerks soon gained employment at the Kansas City Film Ad
Corporation, working on primitive animated advertisements for local movie
houses.
In 1922, Disney started Laugh-O-Grams, Inc., which produced short cartoons based
on popular fairy tales and children's stories. (See Laugh-O-Gram Studios) Among
his employees were Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carmen Maxwell, and Friz
Freleng. The shorts were popular in the local Kansas City area, but their costs
exceeded their returns. After creating one last short, the live-action/animation
Alice's Wonderland, the studio declared bankruptcy in July 1923. Disney's
brother Roy invited him to move to Hollywood, California, and Disney earned
enough money for a one-way train ticket to California, leaving his staff behind,
but taking the finished reel of Alice's Wonderland with him.
Alice Comedies: Contract and new California studio
Disney set up shop with his brother Roy, started the Disney Brothers Studio in
their Uncle Robert's garage, and got a distribution deal for the Alice Comedies
with New York City states-rights distributors Margaret Winkler and her fiancée
Charles Mintz. Virginia Davis, the live-action star of Alice's Wonderland, was
sequestered from Kansas, as was Ub Iwerks. By 1926, the Disney Brothers Studio
had been renamed as the Walt Disney Studio; the name Walt Disney Productions
would be adopted in 1928. One of the studio's employees, Lillian Bounds, became
Walt Disney's wife; they were married on July 13, 1925.
The Alice Comedies were reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day and
Margie Gay as Alice after Virginia Davis' parents pulled her out of the series
because of a pay cut. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role. By the time
the series ended in 1927, the focus was more on the animated characters, in
particular a cat named Julius who recalled Felix the Cat, rather than the
live-action Alice.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
By 1927, Charles Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her
business, and ordered a new all-animated series to be put into production for
distribution through Universal Pictures. The new series, Oswald the Lucky
Rabbit, was an almost instant success, and the Oswald character, first drawn and
created by Ub Iwerks, became a popular property. The Disney studio expanded, and
Walt hired Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng from Kansas City.
In February 1928, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short
from Mintz, but was shocked when Mintz announced that not only did he want to
reduce the fee he paid Disney per short, but that he had most of his main
animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng, but notably excepting
Ub Iwerks, under contract and would start his own studio if Disney did not
accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald
trademark, and could make the films without Disney. Disney declined, lost most
of his animation staff, and he, Iwerks, and the few non-defecting animators
secretly began work on a new mouse character to take Oswald's place. The
defectors became the nucleus of the Winkler Studio, run by Mintz and his
brother-in-law George Winkler. When that studio went under after Universal
assigned production of the Oswald shorts to an in-house division run by Walter
Lantz, Mintz focused his attentions on the studio making the Krazy Kat shorts,
which later became Screen Gems, and Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng marketed
an Oswald-like character named Bosko to Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros., and
began work on the first entries in the Looney Tunes series.
The creation of Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse was first drawn and created by Ub Iwerks. Christened by Lillian
Disney, Mickey Mouse made his film debut in a short called Plane Crazy, which
was, like all of Disney's previous works, a silent film. After failing to find
distributor interest in Plane Crazy or its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho,
Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound called Steamboat Willie. A
businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and the
Cinephone, a bootlegged sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became a
success, and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons
were released with soundtracks. Disney himself provided the vocal effects for
the earliest cartoons and performed as the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947.
Joining the Mickey Mouse series in 1929 were a series of musical shorts called
Silly Symphonies. The first of these was entitled The Skeleton Dance and was
entirely drawn and animated by Ub Iwerks. As a matter of fact, Ub Iwerks was
reponsible for drawing the majority of cartoons released by Disney in the years
1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the Disney studio was not
seeing its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers, and in 1930, Disney signed
a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. Ub Iwerks, who was growing tired
of the tempermental Disney, especially as he was doing the majority of the work,
was lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract.
Needless to say, Disney was devastated and despertately searched for someone who
could replace Iwerks as he was not able to draw himself. Meanwhile, Ub Iwerks
lauched his successful Flip the Frog series with the first sound cartoon in
color, which was entitled "Fiddlesticks." Ub Iwerks also created two other
series of cartoons, namely, the Willie Whopper and the Comicolor cartoon series.
Ub Iwerks closed his studio in 1936, the Ub Iwerks Studio, to work on various
projects dealing with animation technology. Iwerks would return to Disney in
1940 and, in the studio's research and development department, he pioneered a
number of film processes and specialized animation technologies.
Disney was able to eventually find a number of people to replace the work that
had previously been done solely by Iwerks. By 1932, Mickey Mouse had become
quite a popular cartoon character. The Van Beuren cartoon studio attempted to
cash in on this success by creating a character that was very similiar to Mickey
Mouse. A law suit by Disney quickly put an end to that. After moving from
Columbia to United Artists in 1932, Walt began producing the Silly Symphonies in
the new three strip Technicolor process, making them the first commercial films
presented in this new process. Ub Iwerks had previously released the first color
sound cartoon in 1930, which was a Flip the Frog cartoon entitled "Fiddlesticks"
and which had been filmed in two strip Techincolor. The first color Symphony was
Flowers and Trees, which won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject:
Cartoons in 1932. The same year, Disney received a special Academy Award for the
creation of Mickey Mouse, whose series was moved into color in 1935 and soon
launched spin-off series for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy,
and Pluto.
Disney's daughters
As Mickey's co-creator and producer, Disney was almost as famous as his mouse
cartoon character, but remained a largely private individual. His greatest hope
was to give birth to a child—preferably a son—but he and Lillian tried with no
luck. Lillian finally gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December
18, 1933; and the couple would adopt a second, Sharon Mae Disney, who was born
December 21, 1936.
1937-1954: Animated feature films
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Although his studio produced the two most successful cartoon series in the
industry, the returns were still dissatisfying to Disney, and he began plans for
a full-length feature in 1934. When the rest of the film industry learned of
Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they
dubbed the project "Disney's Folly" and were certain that the project would
destroy the Disney studio. Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the
project, but he continued plans for the feature. He employed Chouinard Art
Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio
staff, and used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic
human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use
of specialized processes and apparatus such as the multiplane camera.
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 the quality Disney desired.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the feature was named, was in full
production from 1935 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. The first animated
feature in English and Technicolor, Snow White was released in February 1938
under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures. The film became the most
successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over US$8 million (today US$98
million) in its original theatrical release, all the more amazing because
children were only charged a dime to watch it. The success of Snow White allowed
Disney to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which
opened for business on December 24, 1939. 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.
Wartime troubles
Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White into movie theatres 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 Dumbo was released in October 1941 and became a successful
moneymaker, the United States entered World War II. The U.S. Army contracted for
most of the Disney studio's facilities and had the staff create training and
instructional films for the military, as well as home-front morale such as Der
Fuehrer's Face and the feature film Victory Through Air Power in 1943. The
military films did not generate income, however, and Bambi underperformed when
it was released in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944,
establishing the seven-year re-release tradition for Disney features.
Inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, were
created and issued to theaters during this period as well. The most notable and
successful of these were Saludos Amigos (1942), its sequel The Three Caballeros
(1945), Song of the South (the first Disney feature to feature dramatic actors,
(1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
(1949). The later 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.
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. The studio also began a
series of live-action nature films, entitled True-Life Adventures, in 1948 with
On Seal Island.
Testimony Before Congress
In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War, Walt Disney testified before
the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he named one of his employees as
a communist. 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.
Chairman of the Board
Preceded by:
(was the company's first chairman) Disney Chairman
1929–1966 Succeeded by:
Roy O. Disney
1955-1966: Theme Parks and Beyond
Walt Disney showing the concepts of Disneyland[edit]
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
Main article: Carolwood Pacific Railroad
In 1949, when Disney and his family moved to a new home on 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 the blueprints and immediately set to work creating his own
miniature Live steam railroad in 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
46-foot-long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated dirt berm, and a
90-foot 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 is no evidence the documents were 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. These 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 presenting his plan to the Imagineers, Disney said, "I want Disneyland to
be the most amazing place on Earth, and I want a train circling it".
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. 1950's Treasure Island became the studio's first
all-live-action feature, and was soon followed by such successes as 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), The Shaggy Dog (1959), and The
Parent Trap (1960). The Walt Disney Studio was one of the first to take full
advantage of the then-new medium of television, producing its first TV special,
One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Walt 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. In 1955, he
debuted the studio's first daily television show, the popular Mickey Mouse Club,
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 life time,
the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in
CinemaScope, 1955) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and the financially
disappointing 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 Disneyland TV show
became known as Walt Disney Presents, went from black-and-white to color in
1961--changing its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color--and
eventually evolved into what is today known as The Wonderful World of Disney,
which continues to air on ABC as of 2005.
Walt Disney meets with Wernher von Braun.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. The films attracted the attention of not only the
general public, but also the Soviet space program.
The TV series and book Our Friend the Atom (1956, together with Heinz Haber)
were produced in an effort of the Eisenhower administration to enhance the image
of nuclear energy.
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. After decades of trying, 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 many hailed the
live-action/animation combination feature as his greatest achievement. The same
year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World's Fair,
including Audio-Animatronic figures, all of which later were integrated into
attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project, to be established on the
east coast, which Disney had been planning since Disneyland opened.
"The Florida Project"
In 1964, Walt Disney Productions began quietly purchasing land in central
Florida west of Orlando in a largely rural area of marginal orange groves for
Disney's "Florida Project." The company acquired over 27,000 acres (109 km²) of
land, and arranged favorable state legislation which would provide unprecedented
quasi-governmental control over the area to be developed in 1966, founding the
Reedy Creek Improvement District. Disney and his brother Roy then announced
plans for what they called "Disney World."
Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
Disney World was to include a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland to be
called the Magic Kingdom, and 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 of Walt Disney
However, Disney's involvement in Disney World ended in late 1966, when he was
diagnosed with lung cancer in his left lung, after a life-long habit of chain
smoking. He was checked into the St. Joseph's Hospital across the street from
the Disney Studio lot and his health eventually deteriorated. He was pronounced
dead at 3 AM PST on December 15, 1966, having just celebrated his 65th birthday
ten days earlier.
Roy Disney carried out the Florida project, insisting that the name become Walt
Disney World in honor of his brother. Roy O. Disney died three months after the
Magic Kingdom opened for business in 1971.
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