Walt Disney
Encyclopedia
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
, 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.
Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation
and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse
, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Award
s and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort
theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney, Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong.
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.
community area
to Irish-Canadian father Elias Disney
and German-American mother Flora Call Disney
.
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. 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, hometown of his brother Robert who helped Elias financially for most of his early life. 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. In Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing with one of the family's neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paying him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert. His interest in trains also developed in Marceline, a town that owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
which ran through it. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train then try and spot his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years, before moving to Kansas City
in 1911 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. As well as attending Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute
, 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).
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory in Chicago and moved his family back to the city, where in the fall Disney began his freshman year at McKinley High School and took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute. 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.
After his rejection by the army, Walt and a friend decided to join the Red Cross. 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.
Hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory, in 1919 Walt moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career. 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 where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. At Pesmen-Rubin he met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks
and when their time at the studio expired, they decided to start their own commercial company together.
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. While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation
s, Disney became interested in animation, and decided to become an animator. 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, 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 at his local theater, which they titled Laugh-O-Grams.
, 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. Unfortunately, studio profits were insufficient to cover the high salaries paid to employees. Unable to successfully manage money, Disney's studio became loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt whereupon he decided to set up a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.
where they needed to find a distributor for Walt's new Alice Comedies
, which he had 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 that she was keen on a distribution deal for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.
, 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.
. 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.
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
.
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 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. 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. Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartoon character and by 1930, despite their having sound, cartoons featuring Felix had faded from the screen after failing to gain attention. Mickey's popularity would subsequently skyrocket in the early 1930s.
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, 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
.
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. 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. Fleischer, considered Disney's main rival in the 1930s, 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. In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus
, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera, approached Walt and convinced him to reshoot the black and white Flowers and Trees
in three-strip Technicolor
. 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, a period eventually extended to five years. Through Silly Symphonies, Disney also created his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs
(1933). 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".
, Goofy
, and Pluto. Pluto and Donald became standalone cartoons in 1937, with Goofy following in 1939. 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.
, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).
.jpg)
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. 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. 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
.
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. 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.
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. 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. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.
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.
, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie, Saludos Amigos
.
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.
In 1944, Encyclopædia Britannica
publisher William Benton, entered into unsuccessful negotiations with Disney to make six to twelve educational films per annum. Disney was asked by the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin
, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.
(1946), Melody Time
(1948), Fun and Fancy Free
(1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
(1949). The latter had only two sections, the first based on The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
, and the second on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving
. During this period, Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South
and So Dear to My Heart
. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade.
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. However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's, a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.
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.
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
. In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War
, Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman
and William Pomerance
, former animators and labor union
organizers, Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations and Sorrell went on to testify before the HUAC in 1946 when insufficient evidence was found to link him to the Communist Party.
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.
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
. 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 Imagineer
s.
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." 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 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:
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 feet (14 m) long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90 feet (27.4 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.
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. In 1955, the studio's first daily television show, Mickey Mouse Club
debuted and would continue in 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. Although he was spending less time supervising the production of the animated films, he was always present at story meetings.. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp
( the first animated film in CinemaScope
) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty
( the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians
(the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels
) in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone
in 1963.
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, 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. 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
.
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.
. 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.
, 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.
at the Riviera Club in Hollywood. 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
. Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung. After removal of the lung, doctors informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years. After several chemotherapy
sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California
. 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. 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.
Disney was cremated on December 17, 1966, and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale
, California
. Roy O. Disney continued out with the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World
in honor of his brother.
The final productions in which Disney played an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book
and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
, as well as the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire
, all released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman
recalled of the last time he saw Disney:
A long-standing urban legend
maintains that Disney was cryogenically frozen
, and his frozen corpse stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. However, the first known cryogenic freezing of a human corpse
did not occur until January 1967, more than a month after his death.
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. 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.
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.
. 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 1980's in a period known as the Disney Renaissance
. The most finacially 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" . With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful Traditional hand-drawn animated
features in the early 2000s 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.
, 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. He also donated 38 acre (0.15378068 km²) 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:
. Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including 248 awards that he received.
to Hollywood. 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:
Disney eventually distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance
in the 1950s.
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.
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.
Walt Disney received the Congressional Gold Medal on May 24, 1968 (P.L. 90-316, 82 Stat. 130–131) and the Légion d'Honneur
awarded by France in 1935. In 1935, Walt received a special medal from the League of Nations
for creation of Mickey Mouse, held to be Mickey Mouse award. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
on September 14, 1964. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
and First Lady Maria Shriver
inducted Walt Disney into the California Hall of Fame
located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
A minor planet
, 4017 Disneya
, discovered in 1980 by Soviet
astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
, is named after him.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall
in Los Angeles, California, opened in 2003, was named in his honor.
In 1993, HBO began development of a Walt Disney biopic
, directed by Frank Pierson and produced by Lawrence Turman
, but the project never materialized and was soon abandoned. However, Walt - The Man Behind the Myth, a biographical
documentary
about Disney, was later made.
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, voice actor, animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
, entertainer, international icon
Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...
, and philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney
Roy O. Disney
Roy Oliver Disney was, with his younger brother, Walt Disney, the co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company.-Early life:...
, 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
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year.
Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort , is the world's most-visited entertaimental resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida ; approximately southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels Walt...
theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney, Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong.
The year after his December 15, 1966 death from lung cancer in Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom Park is one of four theme parks at the Walt Disney World Resort located near Orlando, Florida. The first park built at the resort, Magic Kingdom opened Oct. 1, 1971. Designed and built by WED Enterprises, the park's layout and attractions are similar to Disneyland in Anaheim, California...
on October 1, 1971.
Childhood
Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 2156 N. Tripp Avenue in Chicago's HermosaHermosa, Chicago
Hermosa is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, . Originally called Kelvyn Grove, it was already called Hermosa, meaning "beautiful" in Spanish, when annexed to the city in 1889, prior to the founding of Hermosa Beach,...
community area
Community areas of Chicago
Community areas in Chicago refers to the work of the Social Science Research Committee at University of Chicago which has unofficially divided the City of Chicago into 77 community areas. These areas are well-defined and static...
to Irish-Canadian father Elias Disney
Elias Disney
Elias Disney was the Canadian father of Roy Disney and Walt Disney.-Early life:Disney was born in the rural village of Bluevale, Ontario, Canada, to Irish-born immigrant Kepple Elias Disney and Mary Richardson who was of English descent. He became a farmer and a businessman with little success...
and German-American mother Flora Call Disney
Flora Call Disney
Flora Call Disney was the mother of Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney.-Family:Call was born in Steuben, Ohio, the daughter of Henrietta , and Charles Call, who were neighbors of Kepple Disney, father of Elias Disney, her husband. Her family originated from Germany...
.
His great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney, had emigrated from Gowran
Gowran
Gowran is a village and former town in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Gowran Park race course is located nearby. Gowran is located on the N9 national primary road where it is crossed by the R702 regional road.-History:...
, County Kilkenny
County Kilkenny
County Kilkenny is a county in Ireland. It is part of the South-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. The territory of the county was the core part of the ancient Irish Kingdom of Osraige which in turn was the core of the Diocese of...
, Ireland where he was born in 1801. Arundel Disney was a descendant of Robert d'Isigny
Isigny-sur-Mer
Isigny-sur-Mer is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.-Geography:Positioned at the bottom of the baie des Veys, Isigny is an important milk production area, known for its AOC butter and cream, as well as its cheeses made by the Isigny Sainte...
, a Frenchman who had travelled to England with William the Conqueror
William I of England
William I , also known as William the Conqueror , was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from 3 July 1035 until his death, under the name William II...
in 1066. With the d'Isigny name anglicised as "Disney", the family settled in a village now known as Norton Disney
Norton Disney
Norton Disney is a small village on the western boundary of Lincolnshire. Situated between Lincoln and Newark, it is the seat of the Disney family , from whom American Walt Disney's family is descended.The Village has one pub, The Green Man, which was formally the St Vincent...
, south of the city of Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....
, in the county of Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
.
In 1878, Disney's father Elias had moved from Huron County, Ontario
Huron County, Ontario
Huron County is a census division and county of the province of Ontario, Canada. It is located on the southeast shore of its namesake, Lake Huron, in the southwest part of the province...
, Canada to the United States at first seeking gold in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
before finally settling down to farm with his parents near Ellis, Kansas
Ellis, Kansas
Ellis is a city in Ellis County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,062.- History :The Kansas Pacific Railway built a water station at the site of present-day Ellis in 1867 and then purchased the site under the Homestead Act. Three years later, in 1870, the U.S....
, until 1884. Elias worked for the Union Pacific Railroad
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888, in Acron, Florida
Acron, Florida
Acron [sic] was a town in eastern Lake County, Florida, established during the late 19th century, near Sorrento. It is best known as the town where Flora Call and Elias Disney, the parents of Walt Disney, lived for a short time after they were married in nearby Kismet on New Year's Day, 1888...
. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1890, hometown of his brother Robert who helped Elias financially for most of his early life. In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri
Marceline, Missouri
Marceline is a city in Chariton and Linn Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 2,221 at the 2010 census.-History:In 1887 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway began construction from Kansas City, Missouri to Chicago...
, where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland. In Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing with one of the family's neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paying him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert. His interest in trains also developed in Marceline, a town that owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859...
which ran through it. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train then try and spot his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years, before moving to Kansas City
Kansas City Metropolitan Area
The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is a fifteen-county metropolitan area that is anchored by Kansas City, Missouri and is bisected by the border between the states of Missouri and Kansas. As of the 2010 Census, the metropolitan area has a population of 2,035,334. The metropolitan area is the...
in 1911 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. As well as attending Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute
Kansas City Art Institute
The Kansas City Art Institute is a private, independent, four-year college of fine arts and design founded in 1885 in Kansas City, Missouri....
, Walt often took Ruth to Electric Park
Electric Park, Kansas City
Electric Park was the name shared by two amusement parks in Kansas City, Missouri, USA that were constructed by Joseph Heim and his brothers Michael and Ferdinand Jr. and run by them...
, 15 blocks from their home, which Disney would later acknowledge as a major influence of his design of Disneyland).
Teenage years
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Despite dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen to join the army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, Disney was rejected for being underage.
After his rejection by the army, Walt and a friend decided to join the Red Cross. 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.
Hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory, in 1919 Walt moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career. 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 where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. At Pesmen-Rubin he met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
and when their time at the studio expired, they decided to start their own commercial company together.
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. While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation
Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...
s, Disney became interested in animation, and decided to become an animator. 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
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
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
Fred Harman
Fred Harman was an American artist, best known for his popular Red Ryder comic strip, which he drew for 25 years, reaching 40 million readers through 750 newspapers. Harman sometimes used the pseudonym Ted Horn....
, 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 at his local theater, which they titled Laugh-O-Grams.
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams", Disney's cartoons became widely popular in the Kansas City area and through their success, he was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-GramLaugh-O-Gram Studio
Laugh-O-Gram Studio was a film studio located on the second floor of the McConahay Building at 1127 East 31st in Kansas City, Missouri.The studio played a role in the early years of animation: it was home to many of the pioneers of animation, brought there by Walt Disney, and is said to be the...
, 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. Unfortunately, studio profits were insufficient to cover the high salaries paid to employees. Unable to successfully manage money, Disney's studio became loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt whereupon he decided to set up a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.
Hollywood
Disney and his brother Roy pooled their money and set up a cartoon studio in Hollywoodwhere they needed to find a distributor for Walt's new Alice Comedies
Alice Comedies
The "Alice Comedies" are a series of animated cartoonscreated by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape....
, which he had 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 that she was keen on a distribution deal for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.
Alice Comedies
Virginia DavisVirginia Davis
Virginia Davis was an American movie child actor. She was born in Kansas City, Missouri.-Early career:Davis began working for Walt Disney's Kansas City company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, in the summer of 1924. She was hired to act in a film called Alice's Wonderland, which combined live action with...
, 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
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district
Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California
Silver Lake is a hilly neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California east of Hollywood and northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Silver Lake is inhabited by a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic groups, but it is best known as an eclectic gathering of hipsters and the creative class.The...
, where it remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds
Lillian Disney
Lillian Disney was the wife of Walt Disney. She was married to him from 1925 until his death in 1966.-Early years:...
to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief courtship, the pair married that same year.
The new series, Alice Comedies
Alice Comedies
The "Alice Comedies" are a series of animated cartoonscreated by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape....
, 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
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history...
, 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 PicturesUniversal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
. The new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s...
, 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
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
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.
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
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels
Al Michaels
Alan Richard "Al" Michaels is an American television sportscaster. Now employed by NBC Sports after nearly three decades with ABC Sports, Michaels is one of the most prominent members of his profession...
.
Mickey Mouse
After 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. 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." Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in the Alice Comedies, which featured "Ike the Mouse". Moreover, the first Flip the FrogFlip the Frog
Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933...
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
Plane Crazy
Plane Crazy is an American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The cartoon, produced in 1928 by The Walt Disney Studio, was the first to feature the character Mickey Mouse. It was made as a silent film and given a test screening to a theater audience on May 15, 1928, but...
was a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho
The Gallopin' Gaucho
The Gallopin' Gaucho was the second short film featuring Mickey Mouse to be produced, following Plane Crazy and preceding Steamboat Willie. The Walt Disney Company completed the silent version on August 2, 1928, but failed to distribute it widely...
, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound entitled Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...
. A businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization
Synchronization
Synchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....
process. Steamboat Willie became an instant success, 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. Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartoon character and by 1930, despite their having sound, cartoons featuring Felix had faded from the screen after failing to gain attention. Mickey's popularity would subsequently skyrocket in the early 1930s.
Silly Symphonies
Following in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly SymphoniesSilly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
were released in 1929. The first, The Skeleton Dance
The Skeleton Dance
The Skeleton Dance is a 1929 Silly Symphonies animated short subject produced and directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks. In the film, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard. It is the first entry in the Silly Symphonies series...
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, and in 1930, Disney signed a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
. The original basis of the cartoons was their musical novelty with the first Silly Symphony cartoons featuring scores by Carl Stalling
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...
.
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. Iwerks launched his Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933...
series with the first voiced color cartoon Fiddlesticks, filmed in two-strip Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
. Iwerks also created two other cartoon series, Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. The Whopper series was the second from the Iwerks studio to be produced by Pat Powers and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It lasted only two years; from 1933 to 1934.-History:Willie is a young lad who...
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
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
's flapper cartoon character, Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
, gained popularity among theater audiences. Fleischer, considered Disney's main rival in the 1930s, was also the father of Richard Fleischer
Richard Fleischer
-Early life:Fleischer was born in Brooklyn, the son of Essie and animator/producer Max Fleischer. He started in motion pictures as director of animated shorts produced by his father including entries in the Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman series.His live-action film career began in 1942 at the RKO...
, whom Disney would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 adventure film starring Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason as Captain Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Pierre Aronnax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil. It was the first science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Productions, as well as the only science-fiction...
. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of Disney cartoons to be replaced by United Artists. In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus
Herbert Kalmus
Herbert Thomas Kalmus was an American scientist and engineer who played a key role in developing color motion picture film...
, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera, approached Walt and convinced him to reshoot the black and white Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932...
in three-strip Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
. 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
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
. 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, a period eventually extended to five years. Through Silly Symphonies, Disney also created his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs (film)
Three Little Pigs is an animated short film released on May 27, 1933 by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett. Based on a fairy tale of the same name, Three Little Pigs won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994, it was voted #11 of the 50...
(1933). 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".
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 DuckDonald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
, Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
, and Pluto. Pluto and Donald became standalone cartoons in 1937, with Goofy following in 1939. 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.
Children
The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended when Lillian miscarried. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie DisneyDiane Marie Disney
Diane Disney Miller is the elder daughter of Walt Disney and his wife Lillian Bounds Disney. She had a younger sister, Sharon Mae Disney, who was adopted by the Disneys in 1936, and who died in 1993. She and her husband, Ron W. Miller, have seven children.Ron W...
, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White
"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
, 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
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
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
Multiplane camera
The multiplane camera is a special motion picture camera used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another...
– a new technique first used by Disney in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill
The Old Mill
The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937...
.
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
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, 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
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
, 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. 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
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
would be the equivalent of $122,487,945 in 2010.
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 StudiosWalt Disney Studios (Burbank)
The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, United States, serve as the international headquarters for media conglomerate The Walt Disney Company. The Walt Disney Studio's house offices for each of the company's divisions along with creative spaces designed for movie production. The Walt Disney...
in Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, 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. Feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio
Pinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
, continued work on Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
and Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
as well as the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (1951 film)
Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney and based primarily on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with a few additional elements from Through the Looking-Glass. Thirteenth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was released in New...
, Peter Pan
Peter Pan (1953 film)
Peter Pan is a 1953 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by J. M. Barrie. It is the fourteenth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and was originally released on February 5, 1953 by RKO Pictures...
and Wind in the Willows
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated feature produced by Walt Disney. The film was released to theaters on October 5, 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures and is the eleventh animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
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. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.
Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo
Dumbo
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...
was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staff went on strike
Disney animators' strike
The Disney animators' strike was a labor strike by the animators of Walt Disney Studios in 1941.-History:The 1930s led to a rise of labor unions in motion pictures as in other industries such as The Screen Actors Guild which was formed in 1933. Animators of Fleischer Studios went on strike in 1937...
, 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 policyGood Neighbor policy
The Good Neighbor policy was the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt toward the countries of Latin America. Its main principle was that of non-intervention and non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin America...
, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie, Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos is a 1942 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is the 6th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It is the first of six package films made by the Disney studio in the 1940s...
.
Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the United States entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. 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
Der Fuehrer's Face
Der Fuehrer's Face is a 1943 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The cartoon, which features Donald Duck in a nightmare setting working at a factory in Nazi Germany, was made in an effort to sell war bonds and is an example of...
and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power
Victory Through Air Power (film)
Victory Through Air Power is a 1943 Walt Disney Technicolor animated feature film based on the 1942 book by Alexander P. de Seversky. De Seversky appeared in the film, an unusual departure from the Disney animated feature films of the time....
. However, military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
underperformed on its release in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition
Disney Vault
The "Disney Vault" is the term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated features on moratorium...
for his features. In 1945, The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros is a 1944 American animated feature film, produced by Walt Disney and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The film premiered in Mexico City on December 21, 1944. It was released in the United States on February 3, 1945...
was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.
In 1944, Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
publisher William Benton, entered into unsuccessful negotiations with Disney to make six to twelve educational films per annum. Disney was asked by the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was a United States agency promoting inter-American cooperation during the 1940s, especially in commercial and economic areas...
, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.
1945–1955: Post-war period
Disney studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. These included Make Mine MusicMake Mine Music
Make Mine Music is an animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on August 15, 1946. It is the eighth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series....
(1946), Melody Time
Melody Time
Melody Time is a 1948 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia Melody Time is a 1948...
(1948), Fun and Fancy Free
Fun and Fancy Free
Fun and Fancy Free is a 1947 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures on September 27, 1947. It was one of the "package films" that the studio produced in the 1940s...
(1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated feature produced by Walt Disney. The film was released to theaters on October 5, 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures and is the eleventh animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
(1949). The latter had only two sections, the first based on The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
by Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
, and the second on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820...
by Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
. During this period, Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...
and So Dear to My Heart
So Dear to My Heart
So Dear to My Heart is a 1948 feature film produced by Walt Disney, released in Chicago on November 29, 1948 and nationwide on January 19, 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. Like 1946's Song of the South, the film combines animation and live action...
. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade.
By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (1951 film)
Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney and based primarily on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with a few additional elements from Through the Looking-Glass. Thirteenth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was released in New...
and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years. Work also began on Cinderella
Cinderella (1950 film)
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "Cendrillon" by Charles Perrault. Twelfth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film had a limited release on February 15, 1950 by RKO Radio Pictures. Directing credits go to Clyde Geronimi,...
, 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
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
. By 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country's most popular animation studio. However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's, a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.
During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
rocket designer Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.
Testimony before Congress
Disney was a founding member of the anti-communistAnti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was an American organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry...
. In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman
David Hilberman
David Hilberman was an American cartoon animator and one of the founders of classic 1940s animation.Hilberman worked for Walt Disney Studios and helped animate Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi. His involvement in unionizing colleagues and organization of the 1941 Disney strike cost him...
and William Pomerance
William Pomerance
Mortimer William Pomerance was an animator who worked for Walt Disney Studios. He worked first as a business manager of cartoonists, and then was a business agent for the Screen Actors Guild...
, former animators and labor union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
organizers, Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations and Sorrell went on to testify before the HUAC in 1946 when insufficient evidence was found to link him to the Communist Party.
Disney also accused the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.
Planning Disneyland
Amusement park
thumb|Cinderella Castle in [[Magic Kingdom]], [[Disney World]]Amusement and theme parks are terms for a group of entertainment attractions and rides and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people...
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
Children's Fairyland
Children's Fairyland, U.S.A. was the first theme park in the United States created to cater to families with young children. Located in Oakland, California on the shore of Lake Merritt, Fairyland includes 10 acres of play sets, small rides, and animals...
in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
. 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
Disneyland Park (Anaheim)
Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company. Known as Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955, and still almost universally referred to by that name, it is the only theme park to be...
. 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 Imagineer
Walt Disney Imagineering
Walt Disney Imagineering is the design and development arm of the Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation and construction of Disney theme parks worldwide...
s.
As Disney explained one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman
Herbert Ryman
Herbert "Herbie" Dickens Ryman was a Disney imagineer, and fine art painter. His sister, Lucille Carroll helped fund the Ryman-Carroll Foundation....
, who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland presented to the Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
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." Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
The Carolwood Pacific Railroad was a live steam backyard railroad, built by the American animated film producer and animator, Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in California, USA....
had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
Disneyland grand opening
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter
Art Linkletter
Arthur Gordon "Art" Linkletter was a Canadian-born American radio and television personality. He was the host of House Party, which ran on CBS radio and television for 25 years, and People Are Funny, on NBC radio-TV for 19 years...
, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following dedication day speech:
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
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
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, California. With the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball
Ward Kimball
Ward Walrath Kimball was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as Disney's Nine Old Men.-Career:...
, who already had their own backyard railroad
Backyard railroad
A backyard railroad is a privately owned, outdoor railroad, most often in miniature, but large enough for one or several persons to ride on. The rail gauge can be anything from to or more. Smaller backyard or outdoor railroads that cannot be ridden are called garden railroads.Hundreds, even...
, Disney developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam
Live steam
Live steam is steam under pressure, obtained by heating water in a boiler. The steam is used to operate stationary or moving equipment.A live steam machine or device is one powered by steam, but the term is usually reserved for those that are replicas, scale models, toys, or otherwise used for...
railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
The Carolwood Pacific Railroad was a live steam backyard railroad, built by the American animated film producer and animator, Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in California, USA....
, came from his home's location on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46 feet (14 m) long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90 feet (27.4 m) tunnel underneath his wife's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie
Roger E. Broggie
Roger E. Broggie was an American mechanical engineer who worked with Walt Disney and the Walt Disney Company.-Early life:...
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.
Expansion into new areas
As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950, Treasure IslandTreasure Island (1950 film)
Treasure Island is a 1950 Disney adventure film, adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. It starred Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins, and Robert Newton as Long John Silver...
became the studio's first all-live-action feature, soon followed by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 adventure film starring Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason as Captain Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Pierre Aronnax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil. It was the first science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Productions, as well as the only science-fiction...
(in CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
, 1954), Old Yeller
Old Yeller (1957 film)
Old Yeller is a 1957 Walt Disney Productions film starring Tommy Kirk, Dorothy McGuire and Beverly Washburn, and directed by Robert Stevenson. It is about a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas. The story is based upon the 1956 Newbery Honor-winning book Old Yeller by Fred Gipson. Gipson...
(1957), The Shaggy Dog
The Shaggy Dog (1959 film)
The Shaggy Dog is a black and white 1959 Walt Disney film about Wilby Daniels, a teenage boy who is transformed into an Old English Sheepdog by an enchanted ring of the Borgias. The film was based on the story, The Hound of Florence by Felix Salten...
(1959), Pollyanna
Pollyanna (1960 film)
Pollyanna is a Walt Disney Productions feature film starring child actress Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden and Richard Egan in a story about a cheerful orphan changing the outlook of a small town. Based upon the novel Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter, the film was written and directed by David...
(1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor
The Absent-Minded Professor
The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 black-and-white Walt Disney Productions film based on the short story A Situation of Gravity, by Samuel W. Taylor....
(1961), and The Parent Trap (1961). The studio produced its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland
One Hour in Wonderland
One Hour in Wonderland is a 1950 television special made by Walt Disney Productions. It was first seen on Christmas Day, 1950, over NBC for Coca-Cola, and was Walt Disney's first television production...
, in 1950. Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
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
Davy Crockett
David "Davy" Crockett was a celebrated 19th century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S...
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. In 1955, the studio's first daily television show, Mickey Mouse Club
Mickey Mouse Club
The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that began in 1955, produced by Walt Disney Productions and televised by the ABC, featuring a regular but ever-changing cast of teenage performers. The Mickey Mouse Club was created by Walt Disney...
debuted and would continue in 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. Although he was spending less time supervising the production of the animated films, he was always present at story meetings.. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp
Lady and the Tramp
Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released to theaters on June 22, 1955, by Buena Vista Distribution. The fifteenth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, it was the first animated feature filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen...
( the first animated film in CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault...
( the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians, often abbreviated as 101 Dalmatians, is a 1961 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith...
(the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
) in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone
The Sword in the Stone (film)
The Sword in the Stone is a 1963 American animated fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney and originally released to theaters on December 25, 1963...
in 1963.
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
Buena Vista Distribution
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is a motion picture and television feature distribution company owned by Disney Enterprises, Inc. Buena Vista International was the international distribution arm, Buena Vista Home Entertainment was the firm's video and DVD distribution arm, and Buena Vista...
, 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, 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. 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
Roger Mobley
Roger L. Mobley in Evansville, Indiana, is a former child actor in film and television, working primarily for Walt Disney Productions during the late 1950s and early 1960s...
with a plot based on the writings of Richard Harding Davis
Richard Harding Davis
Richard Harding Davis was a journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and the First World War. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt and he also played...
.
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
The Ballad of Davy Crockett
"The Ballad of Davy Crockett" is a song with music by George Bruns and lyrics by Thomas W. Blackburn.The first recording of the song was made by Fess Parker, quickly followed by versions by Bill Hayes and Tennessee Ernie Ford...
, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records
Disneyland Records
Disneyland Records is the original name of the Walt Disney Company's record company.After long associations with primarily RCA Victor Records, with a few select titles on Capitol, Disneyland Records was established by the Disney studio in 1956 with its first release entitled A Child's Garden of...
.
Early 1960s successes
1960 Winter Olympics
The 1960 Winter Olympics, officially known as the VIII Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event held between February 18 and 28, 1960 in Squaw Valley, California, United States. In 1955 at the 50th IOC meeting, the organizing committee made the surprise choice to award Squaw Valley as...
.
After decades of pursuit, Disney finally acquired the rights to P.L. Travers' books about a magical nanny. Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (film)
Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by...
, 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
Sherman Brothers
The Sherman Brothers are an American songwriting duo that specialize in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman ....
. The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World's Fair
1964 New York World's Fair
The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the third major world's fair to be held in New York City. Hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding," dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe";...
, 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
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
.
Although the studio would probably have proved major competition for Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
, 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, FloridaOrlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
. 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
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (concept)
The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was a concept developed by Walt Disney near the end of his lifetime. This planned city was his intended purpose for the property purchased near Orlando, Florida, that eventually became the Walt Disney World Resort...
for short.
Mineral King Ski Resort
During the early to mid 1960s, Walt Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral KingMineral King
Mineral King is a subalpine glacial valley located in the southern part of Sequoia National Park, in the U.S. state of California. The valley lies at the headwaters of the East Fork of the Kaweah River, which rises at the eastern part of the valley and flows northwest...
, 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
Willy Schaeffler
Wilhelm Josef "Willy" Schaeffler was a German-American skiing champion, winning coach and ski resort developer. He is best known to the public for his intensive training programs that led the US ski team to gold and bronze medals in the 1972 Winter Olympics...
, 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 caused by many years of playing poloPolo
Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called, "The Sport of Kings", it was highly popularized by the British. Players score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a...
at the Riviera Club in Hollywood. 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
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
. Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung. After removal of the lung, doctors informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years. After several chemotherapy
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with an antineoplastic drug or with a combination of such drugs into a standardized treatment regimen....
sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...
. 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. The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell
Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...
, the significance of which remains a mystery, even to Russell.
Disney was cremated on December 17, 1966, and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Roy O. Disney continued out with the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World
Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort , is the world's most-visited entertaimental resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida ; approximately southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels Walt...
in honor of his brother.
The final productions in which Disney played an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book (1967 film)
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Released on October 18, 1967, it is the 19th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was inspired by the stories about the feral child Mowgli from the book of the same name by...
and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is a 1968 animated featurette based on stories from the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. The featurette was produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution on December 20, 1968 before The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. This was...
, as well as the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire
The Happiest Millionaire
The Happiest Millionaire is a 1967 musical film starring Fred MacMurray and based upon the true story of Philadelphia millionaire Anthony J. Drexel Biddle. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Costume Design by Bill Thomas. The musical song score is by Robert and Richard Sherman...
, all released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman
Robert B. Sherman
Robert Bernard Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman...
recalled of the last time he saw Disney:
A long-standing urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
maintains that Disney was cryogenically frozen
Cryopreservation
Cryopreservation is a process where cells or whole tissues are preserved by cooling to low sub-zero temperatures, such as 77 K or −196 °C . At these low temperatures, any biological activity, including the biochemical reactions that would lead to cell death, is effectively stopped...
, and his frozen corpse stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. However, the first known cryogenic freezing of a human corpse
James Bedford
James Hiram Bedford was a University of California psychology professor who had written several books on occupational counseling. He is the first person whose body was cryonically preserved after legal death, and who remains cryopreserved...
did not occur until January 1967, more than a month after his death.
Continuing Disney Productions
Cinderella Castle
Cinderella Castle is the fairy tale castle at the center of two Disney theme parks: the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort, and Tokyo Disneyland at the Tokyo Disney Resort. Both serve as worldwide recognized icons and the flagship attraction for their respective theme parks.-Inspiration...
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
When You Wish upon a Star
"When You Wish upon a Star" is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. The original version of the song was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket, and is heard over the opening credits and again in the final scene of the...
", 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. Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the day he was due to open the Disneyland Christmas parade.
World's Fair
World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...
, 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
Celebration, Florida
Celebration is a census-designated place and a master-planned community in Osceola County, Florida, United States, located near Walt Disney World Resort and originally developed by The Walt Disney Company...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, 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 CompanyThe Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
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.
Disney Animation
Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animationCharacter animation
Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production and often made to enhance voice acting. The primary role of a Character Animator is to be the...
. 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 1980's in a period known as the Disney Renaissance
Disney Renaissance
The Disney Renaissance refers to an era beginning roughly in the late 1980s and ending in the late 1990s, during which Walt Disney Animation Studios returned to making successful animated films mostly based on stories that were known to many, restoring public and critical interest in Disney.The...
. The most finacially and critically successful films produced during this time include Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
(1988), The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
(1989), Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirtieth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance period...
(1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
(1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
's Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
, the first computer animated
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
feature film. Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney
Roy E. Disney
Roy Edward Disney, KCSG was a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded. At the time of his death he was a shareholder , and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board of Directors...
claimed that Walt would have loved Toy Story and that it was "his kind of movie" . With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful Traditional hand-drawn animated
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
features in the early 2000s emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
were closed, and the main studio in Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
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
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter
John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....
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 InstituteChouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
, 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. He also donated 38 acre (0.15378068 km²) of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia
Valencia, California
Valencia is an affluent planned community located in the City of Santa Clarita, California and Los Angeles County, California, U.S. in the northwestern corner of the Santa Clarita Valley, adjacent to Interstate 5. In 1987, it was one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the...
for construction of the school. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1972.
In an early admissions bulletin, Disney explained:
Walt Disney Family Museum
In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum opened in the Presidio of San FranciscoPresidio of San Francisco
The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
. Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including 248 awards that he received.
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 RiefenstahlLeni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...
to Hollywood. Disney biographer Neal Gabler
Neal Gabler
Neal Gabler is a professor, journalist, author, film critic and political commentator.He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan and holds advanced degrees in film and American culture.-Journalist:...
, 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:
Disney eventually distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was an American organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry...
in the 1950s.
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
Three Little Pigs (film)
Three Little Pigs is an animated short film released on May 27, 1933 by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett. Based on a fairy tale of the same name, Three Little Pigs won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994, it was voted #11 of the 50...
. 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
B'nai B'rith
B'nai B'rith International |Covenant]]" is the oldest continually operating Jewish service organization in the world. It was initially founded as the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith in New York City, on , 1843, by Henry Jones and 11 others....
chapter in Beverly Hills.
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.- 1932: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Flowers and TreesFlowers and TreesFlowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932...
(1932) - 1932: Honorary Award for: creation of Mickey MouseMickey MouseMickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
. - 1934: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Three Little PigsThree Little PigsThree Little Pigs is a fairy tale featuring anthropomorphic animals. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older...
(1933) - 1935: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: The Tortoise and the HareThe Tortoise and the HareThe Tortoise and the Hare is a fable attributed to Aesop and is number 226 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise and is challenged by him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, decides to take a nap midway through...
(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 DwarfsSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
(1937) The citation read: "For Snow White and the Seven DwarfsSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, 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) - 1940: Best Short Subject, Cartoons for: Ugly Duckling (1939)
- 1941: Honorary Award for: FantasiaFantasia (film)Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
(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" - 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 starsAnaheim Walk of Stars
The Anaheim Walk of Stars is a venue in Anaheim, California which honors those who have made significant contributions to Anaheim's and Orange County's national and international prominence. Recipients are honored with granite stars on sidewalks in the Anaheim Resort area, similar to the well-known...
awarded in recognition of his significant contribution to the city of Anaheim and specifically Disneyland, which is now the Disneyland Resort
Disneyland Resort
The Disneyland Resort is a recreational resort in Anaheim, California. The resort is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks and Resorts division and is home to two theme parks, three hotels and a shopping, dining, and entertainment area known as Downtown Disney.The area now...
. 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
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
, one for motion pictures and the other for his television work.
Walt Disney received the Congressional Gold Medal on May 24, 1968 (P.L. 90-316, 82 Stat. 130–131) and the Légion d'Honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
awarded by France in 1935. In 1935, Walt received a special medal from the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
for creation of Mickey Mouse, held to be Mickey Mouse award. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
on September 14, 1964. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
and First Lady Maria Shriver
Maria Shriver
Maria Owings Shriver is an American journalist and author of six best-selling books. She has received a Peabody Award, and was co-anchor for NBC's Emmy-winning coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics. As executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project, Shriver earned two Emmy Awards and an Academy of...
inducted Walt Disney into the California Hall of Fame
California Hall of Fame
Conceived by First Lady Maria Shriver, the California Hall of Fame was established at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts to honor individuals and families who embody California’s innovative spirit and have made their mark on history...
located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
A minor planet
Minor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
, 4017 Disneya
4017 Disneya
4017 Disneya is a main-belt asteroid discovered on February 21, 1980 by Karachkina, L. G. at Nauchnyj. It was named after Walt Disney.- External links :...
, discovered in 1980 by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina is a Soviet and Ukrainian astronomer.Working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory since 1978, she has discovered a number of asteroids, including the Amor asteroid 5324 Lyapunov and the Trojan asteroid 3063 Makhaon. She has received a Ph.D. in astronomy from I. I...
, is named after him.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall
Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, 1st and 2nd Streets, it seats 2,265 people and serves as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the...
in Los Angeles, California, opened in 2003, was named in his honor.
In 1993, HBO began development of a Walt Disney biopic
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
, directed by Frank Pierson and produced by Lawrence Turman
Lawrence Turman
Lawrence Turman is a film producer who presently serves as the director of The Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California. He was nominated for an Academy Award for The Graduate...
, but the project never materialized and was soon abandoned. However, Walt - The Man Behind the Myth, a biographical
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
about Disney, was later made.
See also
- Disney familyDisney familyThis page describes the family of Elias Disney , the father of Walter Elias "Walt" Disney.The family name, originally d'Isigny , is of Norman French derivation, coming from the canton of Isigny-sur-Mer. The Disneys, among others, descended from Normans who settled in Normandy around the 11th century...
- The Mickey Mouse Club
- The Walt Disney Family MuseumThe Walt Disney Family MuseumThe Walt Disney Family Museum is an American museum that features the life and legacy of Walt Disney. The museum is located in The Presidio of San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. The Museum retrofitted and expanded three existing historic buildings on...
- Walt Disney anthology television series
Further reading
- Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516729-5.
- Broggie, MichaelMichael BroggieMichael Broggie is an historian and author who has researched the life and legacy of Walt Disney. As a public speaker, he toured the country lecturing on his first-person experiences with Walt Disney and many of the Disney Legends, including his father, the late Roger E...
(1997, 1998, 2005). Walt Disney's Railroad Story. Virginia Beach, Virginia. Donning Publishers. ISBN 1-56342-009-0 - Eliot, Marc (1993). Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark PrinceWalt Disney: Hollywood's Dark PrinceWalt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince is a biography by Marc Eliot, presenting a darker picture of entertainer Walt Disney than his popular perception...
. Carol. ISBN 1-55972-174-X - Mosley, LeonardLeonard MosleyLeonard Mosley was a British journalist, historian, biographer and novelist. His works include five novels and biographies of General George Marshall, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Walt Disney, Charles Lindbergh, Du Pont family, Eleanor Dulles, Allen Welsh Dulles, John Foster Dulles and Darryl...
. Disney's World: A Biography (1985, 2002). Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House. ISBN 0-8128-8514-7. - Gabler, NealNeal GablerNeal Gabler is a professor, journalist, author, film critic and political commentator.He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan and holds advanced degrees in film and American culture.-Journalist:...
. Walt Disney: The Triumph of American Imagination (2006). New York, NY. Random House. ISBN 0-679-43822-X - Schickel, RichardRichard SchickelRichard Warren Schickel is an American author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review....
, and Dee, Ivan R. (1967, 1985, 1997). The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. ISBN 1-56663-158-0. - Sherman, Robert B.Robert B. ShermanRobert Bernard Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman...
and Sherman, Richard M.Richard M. ShermanRichard Morton Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical film with his brother Robert Bernard Sherman....
(1998) "Walt's Time: From Before to Beyond" ISBN 0-9646059-3-7 - Watts, Steven, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of LifeThe Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of LifeThe Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life is a non-fiction book by Steven Watts.-Book summary:Walt Disney was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901 and lived in Marceline, Missouri from 1905 to 1910. When he was young, he had a talent for drawing and he earned money doing...
, University of Missouri Press, 2001, ISBN 0826213790