Walt Disney was a cartoonist and producer of
animated films. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in the year 1901. He left
school at age 16; he then studied briefly at art school in Chicago and in Kansas
City, Missouri. He started to produce animated films in partnership with his
brother Roy in 1923.
He produced a cartoon series call Oswald the Rabbit for Universal Pictures. It
was later taken from him when he refused to go to work for Universal. On the
train ride home from New York he was doodling and stumbled upon his creation
Mickey named by his wife Lilly. In the following months Donald, Goofy and Pluto
followed.
Steamboat Willie (1928) produced by his company used synchronized sound for the
first time. He first used color in the series Flowers and Trees (1932) for which
he won 2 Academy Awards. The first original full-length feature cartoon Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). For the making of Fantasia Walt wanted to use
new sound techniques. However the government felt that the supplies needed would
serve better to protect our nation.
In the 1950's and 60's Walt Disney Productions, Ltd., was a major producer of
film for television and theater. On July 16, 1955 opened Disneyland with a
castle, jungle, riverboat, railroad line, restaurants, walkways, ticket booths
and rest rooms. It was not the traditional amusement park with not any Ferris
wheels. Walt lived in an apartment above the firehouse. He was recognized
everywhere he went due to television and the Mickey Mouse Club. It debuted on
ABC October 3, 1955 to compete with Howdy Doody.
Walt wanted to expand Disneyland but the land around it had been bought. He did
not like seeing cheap motels just down the street from his park. So he looked
for land elsewhere and ended up settling on Orlando, Florida. He bought 43
square miles (150 times bigger than Disneyland) for $5 million.
In November of 1966 Walt found out he had cancer, a lump on his left lung due to
smoking for 41 years. A couple of days latter he went for the operation. The
doctor had to take out his left lung because the cancer had spread. He went to
the set and to the office. He then returned to the hospital and died on the
morning of December 15, 1966.
Walt Disney World was finished in October of 1971, after his death due to his
brother/partner Roy who died 2 months after the completion.
Bibliography:
1. Greene, Katherine and Richard. The Man Behind the Magic. New York. Viking
Penguin, 1991.
2 Walt Disney, 4.0, World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1998
Walter E. Disney student publishing site - A Stan Klos Corporation
DISNEY, WALTER E. & DISNEY, ROY O. Signed Stock Certificate, being
an 8 x 7 in. certificate signed by both Roy and Walt Disney and dated December
1, 1945. The signed certificate approves the sale and transfer of 6,666 shares
of Voting Trust Certificates of the Walt Disney Productions Voting Trust
to the Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association. Signed in blue ink
and black ink respectively, “Walter E Disney” and “Roy O. Disney.”
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an
American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator,
entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist.
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December
5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director,
screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international
icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of
entertainment during the 20th 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 and his staff
created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters including
Mickey Mouse, a character for which Disney himself was the original voice. He
has won 26 Academy Awards out of 59 nominations, including a record four in one
year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual. He also
won seven Emmy Awards. He is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World
Resort theme parks in the United States, as well as the international resorts in
Japan, France, and China.
Disney died of lung cancer in Burbank, California, on December 15, 1966. The
following year, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His
brother Roy Disney inaugurated The Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.
CHILDHOOD
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, to Elias
Disney, of Irish-Canadian descent, and Flora Call Disney, of German-American
descent, in Chicago's Hermosa community area at 2156 N. Tripp Ave. Walt Disney's
ancestors had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny in Ireland. Arundel Elias
Disney, great-grandfather of Walt Disney, was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1801
and was a descendant of Robert d'Isigny, originally of France but who traveled
to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. The d'Isigny name became
anglicized as Disney and the family settled in the village now known as Norton
Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.
His father, Elias Disney, moved from Huron County, Ontario, to the United States
in 1878, seeking first for gold in California but finally farming with his
parents near Ellis, Kansas, until 1884. He worked for Union Pacific Railroad and
married Flora Call on January 1, 1888, in Acron, Florida. The family moved to
Chicago, Illinois, in 1890, where his brother Robert lived. For most of his
early life, Robert helped Elias financially. In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias
and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his brother Roy had
recently purchased farmland. While in Marceline, Disney developed his love for
drawing. One of their neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paid him
to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert. He also developed his love for
trains in Marceline, which owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railway which ran through town. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in
anticipation of the coming train. Then he would look for his uncle, engineer
Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years, before moving to Kansas City
in 1911.There, Walt and his younger 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. During this time he attended
Saturday courses as a child at the Kansas City Art Institute While they were
living in Kansas City, Walt and Ruth Disney were also regular visitors of
Electric Park, 15 blocks from their home (Disney would later acknowledge the
amusement park as a major influence of his design of Disneyland).
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. Soon after he joined The Red Cross, Walt was sent to France for a
year, where he drove an ambulance, but not before the armistice was signed on
November 11, 1918.
In 1919, Walt, hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory, left home
and moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career. After considering
becoming an actor or a newspaper artist, he decided he wanted to create a career
in the newspaper, drawing political caricatures or comic strips. But when nobody
wanted to hire him as either an artist or even as an ambulance driver, his
brother Roy, who worked at a bank in the area, got a temporary job for him at
the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio through a bank colleague .At Pesmen-Rubin, Disney
created ads for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. It was here that he
met a cartoonist named Ubbe Iwerks. When their time at the Pesmen-Rubin Art
Studio expired, they were both without a job, and they decided to start their
own commercial company.
In January 1920, Disney and Iwerks formed a short-lived company called,
"Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, Disney
left temporarily to earn money at Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon
joined by Iwerks who was not able to run the business alone. While working for
the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout
animation, Disney took up an interest in the field of animation, and decided to
become an animator.[24] He was allowed by the owner of the Ad Company, A.V.
Cauger, to borrow a camera from work, which he could use to experiment with at
home. After reading a book by Edwin G. Lutz, called Animated Cartoons: How They
Are Made, Their Origin and Development, he found cel animation to be much more
promising than the cutout animation he was doing for Cauger. Walt eventually
decided to open his own animation business, and recruited a fellow co-worker at
the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Fred Harman, as his first employee. Walt and
Harman then secured a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman — arguably
the most popular "showman" in the Kansas City area at the time — to screen their
cartoons — which they titled "Laugh-O-Grams" — at his local theater.
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams", Disney's cartoons became widely popular in
the Kansas City area. Through their success, Disney was able to acquire his own
studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram, and hire a vast number of additional
animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and his
close friend Ubbe Iwerks. Unfortunately, with all his high employee salaries
unable to make up for studio profits, Walt was unable to successfully manage
money. As a result, the studio became loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt.
Disney then set his sights on establishing a studio in the movie industry's
capital city, Hollywood, California.
Hollywood
Disney and his brother pooled their money to set up a cartoon studio in
Hollywood. Needing to find a distributor for his new Alice Comedies — which he
started making while in Kansas City, but never got to distribute — Disney sent
an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote
back to him. She was keen on a distribution deal with Disney for more
live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.
Alice Comedies
Virginia Davis (the live-action star of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were
relocated at Disney's request from Kansas City to Hollywood, as were Iwerks and
his family. This was the beginning of the Disney Brothers' Studio. It was
located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where the studio
remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to
ink and paint celluloid. After a brief period of dating her, the two got married
the same year.
The new series, Alice Comedies, was reasonably successful, and featured both
Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role
of Alice. By the time the series ended in 1927, the focus was more on the
animated characters, in particular a cat named Julius who resembled Felix the
Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.
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 character, Oswald — drawn and
created by Iwerks — became a popular figure. The Disney studio expanded, and
Walt hired back Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from
Kansas City.
In February 1928, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short
from Mintz. Disney was shocked when Mintz announced that not only he wanted to
reduce the fee he paid Disney per short but also that he had most of his main
animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng (notably, except
Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney) 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 Mintz's offer and lost most of his animation staff.
With most of his staff gone Disney now found himself on his own again. 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, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al
Michaels.
After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new
character to replace him. He based the character on a mouse he had adopted as a
pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City. 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. In the words of a Disney
employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his
soul." Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in Alice
Comedies which featured a mouse named Ike the Mouse, and the first Flip the Frog
cartoon called Fiddlesticks, which showed a Mickey Mouse look-alike playing
fiddle. The initial films were animated by Iwerks, his name was prominently
featured on the title cards. The mouse was originally named "Mortimer", but
later christened "Mickey Mouse" by Lillian Disney who thought that the name
Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for
Minnie, who was taller than his renowned adversary and had a Brooklyn accent.
The first animated short with Mickey in it was titled, Plane Crazy, which was,
like all of Disney's previous works, a silent film. After failing to find a
distributor for 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 Cinephone, a
sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became an instant 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 1946. After the
release of Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney would continue to successfully use
sound in all of his future cartoons, and Cinephone became the new distributor
for Disney's early sound cartoons as well. Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as
the world's most popular cartoon character. By 1930, Felix, now in sound, had
faded from the screen, as his sound cartoons failed to gain attention.[40]
Mickey's popularity would now skyrocket in the early 1930s.
Silly Symphonies
Following the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts
titled, Silly Symphonies was released in 1929. The first of these was titled The
Skeleton Dance and was entirely drawn and animated by Iwerks, who was also
responsible for drawing the majority of cartoons released by Disney in 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. The original basis of the cartoons
were musical novelty, and Carl Stalling wrote the score for the first Silly
Symphony cartoons as well.
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 was not 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 1930s, 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.
Through Silly Symphonies, Disney would also create his most successful cartoon
short of all time, The Three Little Pigs, in 1933. 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".
"Disney's Folly"
Walt Disney introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original
1937 Snow White theatrical trailer.
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 that point in
time. When the film industry came to know about 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 multi-plane camera; Disney would first use this new
technique in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.
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 America 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 Golden Age of Animation
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 was not only the peak of Disney's success, but it also ushered in a period
that would later be known as the Golden Age of Animation for Disney. The feature
animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and
Bambi and the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan 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 1930s, when Donald Duck began to
gain more popularity among theater audiences than Mickey Mouse.
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. --- From Wikipedia
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