Walter Elias "
Walt"
Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American
film producer,
director,
screenwriter,
voice actor,
animator,
entrepreneur,
entertainer,
international icon,
[2] and
philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother
Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as
The Walt Disney Company and had an annual revenue of approximately
US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year.
[3] The year after his December 15, 1966 death from lung cancer in
Burbank, California, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the
Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.
1901–1937: Beginnings
Childhood
Walt’s parents, Elias and Flora (Call) Disney
Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 2156 N. Tripp Avenue in Chicago's
Hermosa community area to
Irish-Canadian father
Elias Disney and
German-American mother
Flora Call Disney.
[5][6] His great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney, had emigrated from
Gowran,
County Kilkenny, Ireland where he was born in 1801. Arundel Disney was a descendant of Robert d'
Isigny, a Frenchman who had travelled to England with
William the Conqueror in 1066.
[7] With the d'Isigny name
anglicised as "Disney", the family settled in a village now known as
Norton Disney, south of the city of
Lincoln, in the county of
Lincolnshire.
In 1878, Disney's father Elias had moved from
Huron County, Ontario, Canada to the United States at first seeking gold in
California before finally settling down to farm with his parents near
Ellis, Kansas, until 1884. Elias worked for the
Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888, in
Acron, Florida. The family moved to
Chicago, Illinois, in 1890,
[8] hometown of his brother Robert
[8] who helped Elias financially for most of his early life.
[8] In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in
Marceline, Missouri,
[9] where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland.
[9] In Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing
[10] with one of the family's neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paying him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert.
[10] His interest in trains also developed in Marceline, a town that owed its existence to the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railwaywhich ran through it. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train
[6] then try and spot his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running
[driving?] the train.
10-year old Walt Disney (center right) at a gathering of Kansas City newsboys in 1912.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years,
[11] before moving to
Kansas City in 1911
[12] where Walt and his younger sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School. At school he met Walter Pfeiffer who came from a family of theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long Walt was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.
[13] As well as attending Saturday courses at the
Kansas City Art Institute,
[14] Walt often took Ruth to
Electric Park, 15 blocks from their home, which Disney would later acknowledge as a major influence of his design of
Disneyland).
[citation needed]Teenage years
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory in Chicago and moved his family back to the city,
[15] where in the fall Disney began his freshman year at
McKinley High School and took night courses at the
Chicago Art Institute.
[16] He became the cartoonist for the school newspaper, drawing patriotic topics and focusing on
World War I. Despite dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen to join the
army, Disney was rejected for being underage.
[17]After his rejection by the army, Walt and a friend decided to join the
Red Cross.
[18] Soon after joining he was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance, but only after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
[19]Hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory,
[20] in 1919 Walt moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career.
[21] After considering whether to become an actor or a newspaper artist, he decided on a career as a newspaper artist, 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, then working in a local bank, got Walt a temporary job through a bank colleague at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio
[21] where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters.
[22] At Pesmen-Rubin he met cartoonist
Ubbe Iwerks[23] and when their time at the studio expired, they decided to start their own commercial company together.
[24]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 the Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon joined by Iwerks who was not able to run their business alone.
[25] While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on
cutout animations, Disney became interested in animation, and decided to become an animator.
[26] The owner of the Ad Company, A.V. Cauger, allowed him to borrow a camera from work to experiment with at home. After reading the Edwin G. Lutz book
Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, Disney considered
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,
[27] and recruited a fellow co-worker at the Kansas City Film Ad Company,
Fred Harman, as his first employee.
[27] 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,
[28] to screen their cartoons at his local theater, which they titled
Laugh-O-Grams.
[28]Laugh-O-Gram Studio
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams",
[28] Disney's cartoons became widely popular in the Kansas City area
[29] and through their success, he was able to acquire his own studio, also called
Laugh-O-Gram,
[30] for which he hired a vast number of additional animators, including Fred Harman's brother
Hugh Harman,
Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks.
[31] Unfortunately, studio profits were insufficient to cover the high salaries paid to employees. Unable to successfully manage money,
[32] Disney's studio became loaded with debt
[32] and wound up bankrupt
[33] whereupon he decided to set up a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.
[34]Hollywood
Disney and his brother Roy pooled their money and set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood
[35] where they needed to find a distributor for Walt's new
Alice Comedies, which he had started making while in Kansas City
[33] but never got to distribute. Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor
Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him that she was keen on a distribution deal for more live-action/animated shorts based upon
Alice's Wonderland.
[36]Alice Comedies
Virginia Davis, the live-action star of
Alice’s Wonderland and her family relocated from Kansas City to Hollywood at Disney's request, as did Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the
Disney Brothers' Studio located on Hyperion Avenue in
the Silver Lake district, where it remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named
Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief courtship, the pair married that same year.
The new series,
Alice Comedies, proved reasonably successful, and featured both
Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice with Lois Hardwick also briefly assuming the role. By the time the series ended in 1927, its focus was more on the animated characters and in particular a cat named Julius who resembled
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. He then 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 re-hired Harman, Rudolph Ising,
Carman Maxwell, and
Friz Freleng from Kansas City.
Disney went to New York in February 1928 to negotiate a higher fee per short and was shocked when Mintz told him that not only did he want 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—but not 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 Walt. Disney declined Mintz's offer and as a result lost most of his animation staff whereupon he found himself on his own again.
[37]It subsequently took his company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character when in 2006 the
Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from
NBC Universal, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator
Al Michaels.
[38]Mickey Mouse
Main article:
Mickey MouseAfter losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him, which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City.
[39] Ub Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney to make the character easier to animate although Mickey's voice and personality were provided by Disney himself until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul."
[39] Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in the
Alice Comedies, which featured "Ike the Mouse". Moreover, the first
Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks showed a Mickey Mouse look-alike playing fiddle. The initial films were animated by Iwerks with his name prominently featured on the title cards. Originally named "Mortimer", the mouse was later re-christened "Mickey" by Lillian Disney who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for Minnie – taller than his renowned adversary and speaking with a Brooklyn accent.
The first animated short to feature Mickey,
Plane Crazy was a
silent film like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up,
The Gallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with
sound entitled
Steamboat Willie. A businessman named
Pat Powersprovided Disney with both distribution and
Cinephone, a sound-
synchronization process.
Steamboat Willie became an instant success,
[40] and
Plane Crazy,
The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks. After the release of
Steamboat Willie, Disney successfully used sound in all of his subsequent cartoons, and Cinephone also became the new distributor for Disney's early sound cartoons.
[41] Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartoon character
[39] and by 1930, despite their having sound, cartoons featuring Felix had faded from the screen after failing to gain attention.
[42] Mickey's popularity would subsequently skyrocket in the early 1930s.
[39]Silly Symphonies
Following in the footsteps of
Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts titled,
Silly Symphonies were released in 1929. The first,
The Skeleton Dance 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 thought it was not receiving its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers,
[43] and in 1930, Disney signed a new distribution deal with
Columbia Pictures. The original basis of the cartoons was their musical novelty with the first Silly Symphony cartoons featuring scores by
Carl Stalling.
[44]Iwerks was soon lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract, while Stalling would also later leave Disney to join Iwerks.
[45] Iwerks launched his
Flip the Frog series with the first voiced color cartoon
Fiddlesticks, filmed in two-strip
Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other cartoon series,
Willie Whopper and the
Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut down his
studio in order to work on various projects dealing with animation technology. He would return to Disney in 1940 and go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies in the studio's research and development department.
By 1932, although Mickey Mouse had become a relatively popular cinema character,
Silly Symphonies was not as successful. The same year also saw competition increase as
Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character,
Betty Boop, gained popularity among theater audiences.
[46] Fleischer, considered Disney's main rival in the 1930s,
[47] 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 to be replaced by United Artists.
[48] In late 1932,
Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera,
[49] approached Walt and convinced him to reshoot the black and white
Flowers and Trees in three-strip
Technicolor.
[50]Flowers and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first 1932
Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. After the release of
Flowers and Trees, all subsequent
Silly Symphony cartoons were in color while Disney was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use their three-strip process,
[51][52] a period eventually extended to five years.
[44] Through
Silly Symphonies, Disney also created his most successful cartoon short of all time,
The Three Little Pigs (1933).
[53] The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, featuring the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
[54]First Academy Award
In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of "Mickey Mouse", a series which switched to color in 1935 and soon launched spin-offs for supporting characters such as
Donald Duck,
Goofy, and
Pluto. Pluto and Donald became standalone cartoons in 1937,
[55] with Goofy following in 1939.
[56]Of all Mickey's partners, Donald Duck, who first teamed up with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon,
Orphan's Benefit, was arguably the most popular, going on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character of all time.
[57]Children
The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended when Lillian miscarried. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter,
Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted
Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).
[58]1937–1941: Golden age of animation
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Walt Disney introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937
Snow White theatrical trailer.
Following the creation of two cartoon series, in 1934 Disney began planning a full-length feature. The following year, opinion polls showed that another cartoon series,
Popeye the Sailor, produced by Max Fleischer, was more popular than Mickey Mouse.
[59] Nevertheless, Disney was able to put Mickey back on top as well as increase his popularity by colorizing and partially redesigning the character to become what was considered his most appealing design to date.
[39]When the film industry learned of Disney's plans to produce an
animated feature-length version of
Snow White, they were certain that the endeavor would destroy the Disney Studio and dubbed the project "Disney's Folly". Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature, employing
Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff. Disney then 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 – a new technique first used by Disney in the 1937
Silly Symphonies short
The Old Mill.
[60]All of this development and training was used to increase quality at the studio and to ensure that the feature film would match Disney's quality expectations. Entitled
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the feature went into full production in 1934 and continued until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To obtain 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 then gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21, 1937 and at its conclusion the audience gave
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation.
Snow White, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with
RKO Radio Pictures. RKO had been the distributor for Disney cartoons in 1936, after it closed down the Van Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution.
[61] The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million on its initial release. These initial release earnings for
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be the equivalent of $122,487,945 in 2010.
[62]Golden age of animation
Following the success of
Snow White, for which Disney received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes, he was able 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 also ushered in a period that would later be known as the Golden Age of Animation for the studio.
[63][64] Feature animation staff, having just completed
Pinocchio, continued work on
Fantasia and
Bambi as well as the early production stages of
Alice in Wonderland,
Peter Pan and
Wind in the Willows while the shorts staff carried on working on the
Mickey Mouse,
Donald Duck,
Goofy, and
Pluto cartoon series, ending the
Silly Symphonies at this time.
[clarification needed More info needed on end of the Silly Symphonies to make a new and separate sentence.] Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.
[65]Pinocchio and
Fantasia followed
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments. The inexpensive
Dumbo was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staff
went on strike, permanently straining relations between Disney and his artists.
1941–1945: World War II era
In 1941, the U.S. State Department sent Disney and a group of animators to South America as part of its
Good Neighbor policy, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie,
Saludos Amigos.
[66]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 where the staff created training and instruction films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as
Der Fuehrer's Face and the 1943 feature film
Victory Through Air Power. However, military films did not generate income, and the feature film
Bambi underperformed on its release in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued
Snow White in 1944, establishing a
seven-year re-release tradition for his features. In 1945,
The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.
1945–1955: Post-war period
By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features
Alice in Wonderland and
Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years. Work also began on
Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1948 the studio also initiated a series of live-action nature films, titled
True-Life Adventures, with
On Seal Island the first. Despite its resounding success with feature films, the studio's animation shorts were no longer as popular as they once were, with people paying more attention to Warner Bros. and their animation star
Bugs Bunny. By 1942,
Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country's most popular animation studio.
[73] However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's,
[74] a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.
[75]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.
Testimony before Congress
Disney also accused the
Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.
[76]1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond
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. The idea for a children's theme park came after a visit to
Children's Fairyland in
Oakland, California.It also said that Disney may have been inspired to create Disneyland in the park
Republic of the Children located in
Manuel B. Gonnet,
La Plata,
Argentina, and opened in 1951.
[1] This plan was originally intended to be built on a plot located across the street to the south of the studio. These original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that would become
Disneyland. Disney spent five years developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary company,
WED Enterprises, to carry out 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.
[citation needed]As Disney explained one of his earliest plans to
Herb Ryman, who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland presented to the
Bank of America during fund raising for the project, he said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train."
[79] 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.
Disneyland grand opening
Walt Disney giving the dedication day speech July 17, 1955.
Disneyland officially opened on July 18, 1955. On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland hosted a live TV preview, among the thousands of people in attendance were
Ronald Reagan,
Bob Cummings and
Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following dedication day speech:
| “ | To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past .... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America ... with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. | ” |
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
The Lilly Belle on display at Disneyland Main Station in 1993. The caboose's woodwork was done entirely by Walt himself.
During 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home on a large piece of land in the
Holmby Hills district of
Los Angeles, California. With the help of his friends
Ward and Betty Kimball, who already had 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, came from his home's location on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46-foot (14 m) long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90-foot (27 m) tunnel underneath his wife's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Disney Studios engineer
Roger E. Broggie Lilly Belle in his wife's honor and 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 of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property's title.
[clarification needed]Expansion 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, soon followed by
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in
CinemaScope, 1954),
Old Yeller (1957),
The Shaggy Dog (1959),
Pollyanna (1960),
Swiss Family Robinson (1960),
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and
The Parent Trap (1961). The studio produced its first TV special,
One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Disney began hosting a
weekly anthology series on
ABC entitled
Disneyland, after the park, on which he aired clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim. The show also featured a
Davy Crockett miniseries, which started the "Davy Crockett craze" among American youth, during which millions of coonskin caps and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country.
[80] In 1955, the studio's first daily television show,
Mickey Mouse Club debuted and would continue in various incarnations into the 1990s.
Production of short cartoons kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the responsible division although special shorts projects would continue for the remainder of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary,
Buena Vista Distribution, which had taken over 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 on a number of successful Disney characters and films.
After 1955, the
Disneyland TV show was renamed
Walt Disney Presents. It switched from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, at the same time moving from ABC to NBC,
[82] and eventually evolving into its current form as
The Wonderful World of Disney. The series continued to air on NBC until 1981, when it was picked up by CBS.
[83] Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, the Hallmark Channel and the Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the Disney series offered some recurring characters, such as the newspaper reporter and sleuth "Gallegher" played by
Roger Mobley with a plot based on the writings of
Richard Harding Davis.
Disney had already formed his own music publishing division in 1949 and in 1956, partly inspired by the huge success of the television theme song
The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called
Disneyland Records.
Early 1960s successes
By the early 1960s, the Disney empire had become 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 pursuit, Disney finally acquired 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.
Although the studio would probably have proved major competition for
Hanna-Barbera, Disney decided not to enter the race and mimic Hanna-Barbera by producing Saturday morning TV cartoon series. With the expansion of Disney's empire and constant production of feature films, the financial burden involved in such a move would have proven too great.
Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
In early 1964, Disney announced plans to develop another theme park to be called Disney World a few miles west of
Orlando, Florida. Disney World was to include "the Magic Kingdom", a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland. 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, known as
EPCOT for short.
Mineral King Ski Resort
During the early-to-mid 1960s, Walt Disney developed plans for a ski resort in
Mineral King, a glacial valley in California's
Sierra Nevada mountain range. He brought in experts such as the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer
Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among the several bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid 1960s, but Walt died before the actual work started. Disney's death and opposition from conservationists ensured that the resort was never built.
Death
In 1966, Disney was scheduled to undergo surgery to repair an old neck injury
[84] caused by many years of playing
polo at the Riviera Club in Hollywood.
[85] On November 2, during pre-operative X-rays, doctors at
Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the Disney Studio, discovered a
tumor in his left lung.
[86] Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung.
[86] After removal of the lung, doctors informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years.
[86] After several
chemotherapy sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short amount of time in
Palm Springs, California.
[84] On November 30, Disney collapsed at his home. He was revived by fire department personnel and rushed to St. Joseph's where on December 15, 1966, at 9:30 a.m., ten days after his 65th birthday, Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer.
[84] The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor
Kurt Russell, the significance of which remains a mystery, even to Russell.
[87]
| “ | He was up in the third floor of the animation building after a run-through of The Happiest Millionaire. He usually held court in the hallway afterward for the people involved with the picture. And he started talking to them, telling them what he liked and what they should change, and then, when they were through, he turned to us and with a big smile, he said, 'Keep up the good work, boys.' And he walked to his office. It was the last we ever saw of him.[88] | ” |
Legacy: 1967–present
Continuing Disney Productions
Plaque at the entrance that embodies the intended spirit of Disneyland by Walt Disney: to leave reality and enter fantasy
After Walt Disney's death, Roy Disney returned from retirement to take full control of Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises. In October 1971, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of
Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt Disney World Resort.
After giving his dedication for Walt Disney World, Roy asked Lillian Disney to join him. As the orchestra played "
When You Wish Upon a Star", she stepped up to the podium accompanied by Mickey Mouse. He then said, "Lilly, you knew all of Walt's ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it [Walt Disney World]?". "I think Walt would have approved," she replied.
[90] 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 Disney's original ideas 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. However, the company later changed this policy and Disney characters can now be found throughout the park, often dressed in costumes reflecting the different pavilions.
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. Among other assets
The Walt Disney Company owns 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 had annual revenues of over U.S. $35 billion.
[91]Disney Animation
Walt Disney was a pioneer in
character animation. He was one of the first people to move away from basic cartoons with just
"impossible outlandish gags" and crudely drawn characters to an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience can connect to on an emotional level. The personality displayed in the characters of his films and the technological advancements remain influential when animating today. He was also considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his demise until the late 1980s in a period known as the
Disney Renaissance. The most financially and critically successful films produced during this time include
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988),
The Little Mermaid (1989),
Beauty and the Beast (1991),
Aladdin (1992) and
The Lion King (1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed
Pixar's
Toy Story, the first
computer animated feature film. Walt Disney's nephew
Roy E. Disney claimed that Walt would have loved
Toy Story and that it was
"his kind of movie".
[92] With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful
Traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early years of the 2000s (decade) emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in
Paris and
Orlando were closed, and the main studio in
Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility, firing hundreds of people in the process. 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 with the largely successful 2009 film
The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation and the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today, Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.
CalArts
In his later years, Disney devoted substantial time to funding
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). 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 to CalArts, which helped in building its campus. In his will, Disney paved the way for the creation of several charitable trusts which included one for the California Institute of the Arts and other for the Disney Foundation.
[93] He also donated 38 acres (0.154 km
2) of the Golden Oaks ranch in
Valencia for construction of the school. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1972.
In an early admissions bulletin, Disney explained:
| “ | A hundred years ago, Wagner conceived of a perfect and all-embracing art, combining music, drama, painting, and the dance, but in his wildest imagination he had no hint what infinite possibilities were to become commonplace through the invention of recording, radio, cinema and television. There already have been geniuses combining the arts in the mass-communications media, and they have already given us powerful new art forms. The future holds bright promise for those who imaginations are trained to play on the vast orchestra of the art-in-combination. Such supermen will appear most certainly in those environments which provide contact with all the arts, but even those who devote themselves to a single phase of art will benefit from broadened horizons.[94] | ” |
Walt Disney Family Museum
Antisemitism accusations
Disney was long rumored to be
antisemitic during his lifetime, and such rumors have persisted after his death. Indeed, in the 1930s he welcomed German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist
Leni Riefenstahl to Hollywood.
[96] Disney biographer
Neal Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concluded in 2006 that available evidence does not support such accusations. In a CBS interview Gabler summarized his findings:
| “ | That's one of the questions everybody asks me... My answer to that is, not in the conventional sense that we think of someone as being an antisemite. But he got the reputation because, in the 1940s, he got himself allied with a group called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, which was an anti-Communist and antisemitic organization. And though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not antisemitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were antisemitic, and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life.[97] | ” |
The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that Disney did have "difficult relationships" with some Jewish individuals, and that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons, such as
Three Little Pigs. However, the museum points out that Disney employed Jews throughout his career and was named "1955 Man Of The Year" by the
B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills.
[99]Academy Awards
Walt Disney holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (59) and the number of Oscars awarded (22). He also earned four honorary Oscars while his last competitive Academy Award was posthumous.
[100]- 1932: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Flowers and Trees (1932)
- 1932: Honorary Award for: creation of Mickey Mouse.
- 1934: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Three Little Pigs (1933)
- 1935: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: The Tortoise and the Hare (1934)
- 1936: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Three Orphan Kittens (1935)
- 1937: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: The Country Cousin (1936)
- 1938: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: The Old Mill (1937)
- 1939: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Ferdinand the Bull (1938)
- 1939: Honorary Award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) The citation read: "For Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field" (the award was one statuette and seven miniature statuettes)[4]
- 1940: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Ugly Duckling (1939)
- 1941: Honorary Award for: Fantasia (1940), shared with: William E. Garity and J.N.A. Hawkins. The citation for the certificate of merit read: "For their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia"[4]
- 1942: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Lend a Paw (1941)
- 1943: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Der Fuehrer's Face (1942)
- 1949: Best Short Subject, Two-reel for: Seal Island (1948)
- 1949: Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (Honorary Award)
- 1951: Best Short Subject, Two-reel for: Beaver Valley (1950)
- 1952: Best Short Subject, Two-reel for: Nature's Half Acre (1951)
- 1953: Best Short Subject, Two-reel for: Water Birds (1952)
- 1954: Best Documentary, Features for: The Living Desert (1953)
- 1954: Best Documentary, Short Subjects for: The Alaskan Eskimo (1953)
- 1954: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (1953)
- 1954: Best Short Subject, Two-reel for: Bear Country (1953)
- 1955: Best Documentary, Features for: The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
- 1956: Best Documentary, Short Subjects for: Men Against the Arctic
- 1959: Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects for: Grand Canyon
- 1969: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
Other honors
Walt Disney was the inaugural recipient of a star on the
Anaheim walk of stars awarded in recognition of his significant contribution to the city of Anaheim and specifically Disneyland, which is now the
Disneyland Resort. The star is located at the pedestrian entrance to the Disneyland Resort on Harbor Boulevard. Disney has two stars on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and the other for his television work.
.jpg)
