walt disney entrepreneur biography

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Walt Disney, Entrepreneur: The Man Behind the Magic

Walt Disney turned a love of art into a successful company that continues to delight children and adults.

Walt Disney. Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Co.

One of the most well-known brands in history, The Walt Disney Co. ( DIS 0.14% ) , has been a delight for both consumers and investors for much of the last century. But to really understand the company's unique past and its future opportunities, it's important to know the story behind the entrepreneur who made it all happen.

How the entrepreneur got his start Elias Walt Disney was not only the film producer that he is most famous for being, but was also a director, screenwriter, actor and voice actor, animator, and also quite a major philanthropist. But it all started with a love of character art.

Walt was born in 1901 near Chicago, and as a child developed a passion for art and drawing that he cultivated in high school. After attending art college (as well as spending a year in France with the Red Cross) he decided to turn his passion into a business, and his first noteworthy success in the entertainment industry came when he created "Laugh-o-grams," animated shorts that he could sell.

Even though this first company ended up going bankrupt, the ideas and experience would eventually lead to Walt's next success. He moved to California with the help of his brother and started creating and selling animated features. Walt would eventually hire an ink artist, Lillian Bounds, who would later become his wife. This group of animators would eventually become the basis of the Disney we know and love today. 

The House of Mouse grows One of Walt Disney's first characters was called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unfortunately, the character was taken from Disney after some copyright oversights on Disney's part. However this led Walt to create a new and even better character, and inspiration came from the rodent that lived in his office in Kansas city.

Mickey Mouse eventually came to life; that was the name Walt's wife got him to agree to over Mortimer Mouse. Disney would go on to create Silly Symphonies in 1929, including the rest of the gang like Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. The Mouse empire was born. 

Shortly thereafter his studio received its first Oscar award, and by 1937 it created the first ever full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , earning an incredible $1.5 million (very large at the time despite the depression) and winning 8 Oscars.  

Walt Disney's key innovations While Disney's huge industry first successes might seem to have come from artistry alone, that was only half of the battle. Walt Disney was also an incredible entrepreneur. Here are just a few of his biggest innovations:

• First to make a feature length animated film -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length film of its kind and would start a chain of incredibly successful movies. 
• Color technology -- Disney's technology putting color in its films was far ahead of the industry at that time. 
• Better sound -- The robust sound and synchronization helped to further develop sound in movies  
• Making TV its own medium -- Zorro and Davy Crockett TV series were among the first widely successful shows, but it was The Mickey Mouse Club that set Disney apart. 
• Creating technologically innovative theme parks -- Disney created his first park, Disneyland, back in 1955 and it quickly became the most popular theme park in the world. 

One of the most successful companies of the 21 st century Walt Disney had a widely successful career. He died of lung cancer in 1966 at the age of 65, but he left behind a beloved legacy as well as a company that continues to flourish and innovate. 

Disney's movies, TV media segment, theme parks, and consumer products are all leading to even more massive profits today than Walt himself probably ever imagined. Through his pioneering vision, innovations, management, and the characters he created, The Walt Disney Co. has continued to grow to nearly $200 billion market cap.   

Bradley Seth McNew owns shares of Apple and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Walt Disney. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

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• AllMusic - Biography of Walt Disney
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• Walt Disney - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
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• Table Of Contents
• Who was Walt Disney and what was his role in the American film industry?
• What were some of Walt Disney's most significant contributions to animation and filmmaking?
• How did Walt Disney's theme parks revolutionize the entertainment industry?
• What technological innovations did Walt Disney introduce to the film industry?
• How did Walt Disney's approach to storytelling differ from other filmmakers of his time?
• What was the significance of Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney's career?
• How did Walt Disney's vision for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) differ from what it became?

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Walt Disney (born December 5, 1901, Chicago , Illinois , U.S.—died December 15, 1966, Burbank , California) was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck . He also planned and built Disneyland , a huge amusement park that opened near Los Angeles in 1955, and before his death he had begun building a second such park, Walt Disney World , near Orlando , Florida. The Disney Company he founded has become one of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates.

Walter Elias Disney was the fourth son of Elias Disney, a peripatetic carpenter, farmer, and building contractor, and his wife, Flora Call, who had been a public school teacher. When Walt was little more than an infant, the family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, a typical small Midwestern town, which is said to have furnished the inspiration and model for the Main Street, U.S.A., of Disneyland. There Walt began his schooling and first showed a taste and aptitude for drawing and painting with crayons and watercolours.

His restless father soon abandoned his efforts at farming and moved the family to Kansas City , Missouri, where he bought a morning newspaper route and compelled his young sons to assist him in delivering papers. Walt later said that many of the habits and compulsions of his adult life stemmed from the disciplines and discomforts of helping his father with the paper route. In Kansas City the young Walt began to study cartooning with a correspondence school and later took classes at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design.

In 1917 the Disneys moved back to Chicago, and Walt entered McKinley High School, where he took photographs, made drawings for the school paper, and studied cartooning on the side, for he was hopeful of eventually achieving a job as a newspaper cartoonist. His progress was interrupted by World War I , in which he participated as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in France and Germany.

Returning to Kansas City in 1919, he found occasional employment as a draftsman and inker in commercial art studios, where he met Ub Iwerks , a young artist whose talents contributed greatly to Walt’s early success.

Dissatisfied with their progress, Disney and Iwerks started a small studio of their own in 1922 and acquired a secondhand movie camera with which they made one and two-minute animated advertising films for distribution to local movie theatres. They also did a series of animated cartoon sketches called Laugh-O-grams and the pilot film for a series of seven-minute fairy tales that combined both live action and animation , Alice in Cartoonland . A New York film distributor cheated the young producers, and Disney was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1923. He moved to California to pursue a career as a cinematographer, but the surprise success of the first Alice film compelled Disney and his brother Roy —a lifelong business partner—to reopen shop in Hollywood.

With Roy as business manager, Disney resumed the Alice series, persuading Iwerks to join him and assist with the drawing of the cartoons. They invented a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit , contracted for distribution of the films at $1,500 each, and propitiously launched their small enterprise. In 1927, just before the transition to sound in motion pictures, Disney and Iwerks experimented with a new character—a cheerful, energetic, and mischievous mouse called Mickey. They had planned two shorts, called Plane Crazy and Gallopin’ Gaucho , that were to introduce Mickey Mouse when The Jazz Singer , a motion picture with the popular singer Al Jolson , brought the novelty of sound to the movies. Fully recognizing the possibilities for sound in animated-cartoon films, Disney quickly produced a third Mickey Mouse cartoon equipped with voices and music, entitled Steamboat Willie , and cast aside the other two soundless cartoon films. When it appeared in 1928, Steamboat Willie was a sensation.

The following year Disney started a new series called Silly Symphonies with a picture entitled The Skeleton Dance , in which a skeleton rises from the graveyard and does a grotesque , clattering dance set to music based on classical themes. Original and briskly syncopated, the film ensured popular acclaim for the series, but, with costs mounting because of the more complicated drawing and technical work, Disney’s operation was continually in peril.

The growing popularity of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend, Minnie, however, attested to the public’s taste for the fantasy of little creatures with the speech, skills, and personality traits of human beings. (Disney himself provided the voice for Mickey until 1947.) This popularity led to the invention of other animal characters, such as Donald Duck and the dogs Pluto and Goofy. In 1933 Disney produced a short, The Three Little Pigs , which arrived in the midst of the Great Depression and took the country by storm. Its treatment of the fairy tale of the little pig who works hard and builds his house of brick against the huffing and puffing of a threatening wolf suited the need for fortitude in the face of economic disaster, and its song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”was a happy taunting of adversity. It was in this period of economic hard times in the early 1930s that Disney fully endeared himself and his cartoons to audiences all over the world, and his operation began making money in spite of the Depression.

Disney had by that time gathered a staff of creative young people, who were headed by Iwerks. Colour was introduced in the Academy Award-winning Silly Symphonies film Flowers and Trees (1932), while other animal characters came and went in films such as The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934) and The Tortoise and the Hare (1935). Roy franchised tie-in sales with the cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck—watches, dolls , shirts, and tops—and reaped more wealth for the company.

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Walt Disney, a Visionary Who Was Crazy Like a Mouse

By Neal Gabler

• Sept. 12, 2015

Here is something that might surprise you: Walt Disney, that icon of American ingenuity, was in financial straits through most of his career. You probably thought he would have been a business genius — a model for others to study. But Disney was an atrocious businessman, constantly running his company into the ground. At the same time, though, he was a corporate visionary whose aversion to typical business practices led to the colossus that the Walt Disney Company became.

Before he was even old enough to legally sign the incorporation papers, Disney wrangled a few friends together, raised some cash and started Laugh-o-Gram, a studio in Kansas City, Mo., that made comic cartoon shorts based on fairy tales. But he seemed less interested in making money than in having fun, and the company promptly went bankrupt, sending Disney, by then 21, to Los Angeles to look for work in the film industry.

He was saved when a New York distributor picked up a short he had made, featuring a real-life girl named Alice who lived in a cartoon world. Things went swimmingly for a while, even when the Alice films ran their course and Disney had to invent a new hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. But Disney was both financially reckless and egotistic. His distributor doubled-crossed him, surreptitiously poaching his animators, who bristled at his highhandedness. Since the distributor owned the rights to Oswald, Disney, then 27, had to start from scratch again.

He replaced Oswald with a new invention: Mickey Mouse, an instant success. But as his creativity continued to flourish, his business acumen flagged. Even Disney’s older brother Roy O. Disney, who oversaw the infant studio’s finances, said his brother would have been constantly fleeced were it not for him. In the case of Mickey Mouse, he was. A New York businessman named Pat Powers finagled Disney into contracting for his sound services — with onerous terms. Even though the Mickey Mouse cartoons did well, by the time Disney paid Powers his enormous cut and the studio’s expenses, there was very little left. Only when Disney persuaded Columbia Pictures to buy the distribution rights for a second series of cartoons called “Silly Symphonies” did he get a steady cash flow. In time, Columbia also secured from Powers the rights to the Mickey cartoons.

Disney could have expanded the company steadily, building on the success of Mickey Mouse. Instead, he placed a huge and highly risky bet on feature animation. “Snow White” was four years in production and cost over $2 million ($33.5 million in today’s dollars), most of it borrowed from Bank of America against the receipts of the cartoon shorts. The gamble paid off. “Snow White” earned nearly $7 million ($117 million today), most of which he immediately sank into a new studio headquarters in Burbank, Calif., and a slate of features.

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Walt Disney

• Occupation: Entrepreneur
• Born: December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois
• Died: December 15, 1966 in Burbank, California
• Best known for: Disney animated movies and theme parks
• Nickname: Uncle Walt

• Tom Hanks played the role of Walt Disney in the 2013 movie Saving Mr. Banks .
• The original name for Mickey Mouse was Mortimer, but his wife didn't like the name and suggested Mickey.
• He won 22 Academy Awards and received 59 nominations.
• His last written words were "Kurt Russell." No one, not even Kurt Russell, knows why he wrote this.
• He was married to Lillian Bounds in 1925. They had a daughter, Diane, in 1933 and later adopted another daughter, Sharon.
• The robot from Wall-E was named after Walter Elias Disney.
• The sorcerer from Fantasia is named "Yen Sid", or "Disney" spelled backwards.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

Walt Disney: Entrepreneur without Peer

by Gary Hoover | Aug 13, 2020 | Articles , Biographies , Media & Entertainment , Newsletters

This article first appeared  in the Archbridge Institute’s  American Originals Series.

Preface: A Most Controversial Man

In this story, we address the life and work of Walter Elias Disney, one of the most famous men in the world. Telling this story brings special challenges.

Over the last two years, we at the Archbridge Institute have written the life stories of more than twenty “American Originals.” These men and women overcame great obstacles, including impoverished and troubled beginnings, to rise to “success.” They changed the world of their times and shaped the world that we live in today.

We estimate that several times as many books and articles have been written about Walt Disney as about any other American businessperson or entrepreneur. Libraries can be filled with the thousands of books and many biographies about him, which continue to be published over forty years after his death. Those books and articles each attempt to provide a different take on the man—from idolization to vilification. Was he one of the greatest geniuses our nation has ever created, or a soul warped by his abusive father, troubled by alcohol and other evils? Did he raise the standards of American media or did he damage our culture, promoting an unrealistic ideal of singing animals and happy families? Thousands of authors, scholars, and critics have waded into these waters.

Our research into his life and perusal of dozens of those books and articles is here joined with whatever wisdom and insight we’ve gained from our previous studies of great men and women. Other writers give great emphasis to his father, a strict disciplinarian and tough taskmaster who was quick to whip his four sons, of which Walt was the youngest. Yet we see this as a common pattern among great men one hundred years ago. For example, John D. Rockefeller’s father was an alcoholic. One author even wrote  a book  about the lives of great people, concluding that abusive or absent fathers were more the norm than the exception. We believe that Walt’s childhood challenges led him to a breadth of youthful experiences that many would treasure and that served the man well throughout his life.

From this complex family, Walt also received what may have been his “secret sauce”—an element that differentiated him from so many other great people—his loving, protective older brother Roy. Roy served Walt well, even beyond Walt’s death.

Walt Disney’s impact on American and world culture is another aspect that has motivated a great deal of “scholarly” studies and debate among critics. Many of those writers have a political viewpoint to express or a distrust of the tastes of the public. Had Disney and his productions not been so successful, most of those studies and books would never have been written. In contrast, few worry so deeply about the impact on society of Steven Spielberg or Warner Brothers.

Walt Disney from the outset only had one goal in mind: to entertain and engage the public, occasionally with a dose of education. He was clear that he created entertainment, not art. Walt Disney competed for the public’s approval with giant movie studios and, later, the powerful television networks.

No one was ever forced to watch what Walt produced, yet millions did and continue to do so. The astounding results speak for themselves. Walt’s DNA lives on today in the Walt Disney Company, by far the largest company in the media content-creation industry.

As we survey the great American entrepreneurs, Walt Disney stands out in interesting ways. If Henry Ford had not invented the affordable automobile, someone else would have. If  Jim Casey  had not developed accessible national package delivery at UPS, someone else would have. If  George Eastman  had not pioneered popular photography at Kodak, it would have nevertheless come along sooner or later. These and most other inventions were ones that society clearly needed. In most such cases, others around the world were already working on similar ideas and inventions.

But did the world desperately need a feature-length cartoon? Might the world have gone on for decades or centuries without the idea of the theme park? Those questions are unanswerable, but we think that Walt Disney’s dreams and visions were of a different nature than those of most entrepreneurs. He saw a world which no one else saw, and he made those dreams come true—for billions of people around the world. Thus, the title of this article: “Entrepreneur without Peer.”

With that context in mind, in the following paragraphs we try to answer the big questions: Who was Walt Disney? What was truly different about this man, whose name is likely to remain famous for generations to come? How did he evolve? What were his priorities and thought processes?

The Experiences of a Curious Young Man

On New Year’s Day, 1888, twenty-eight-year-old farmer Elias Disney married nineteen-year-old Flora Call in Akron, Florida. Elias, ever (and unsuccessfully) in search of riches, sold his farm and bought a hotel in Daytona Beach. Their first son, Herbert, was born that December. But the hotel failed, and after other abortive attempts at prosperity, in 1899 the small family moved to Chicago, a booming city of 1.2 million. Elias, a good carpenter, started building and selling homes, but this, too, failed, so he took a job as a carpenter on the construction of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, one of the greatest and most attended World’s Fairs ever. Elias was later to tell his son Walter stories about the fair, known as “the White City,” perhaps inspiring dreams of Disneyland.

The family grew, adding Raymond in 1890, Roy in 1893, Walter on December 5, 1901, and Ruth in 1903. Elias, a strict, traditional man, came to believe that the big city was no place to raise a family. In 1906, when Walt was five, they moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, along the Santa Fe Railway line to California. While the family only stayed in Marceline for four years (until failure again forced the family to move on), those few years had an enormous impact on young Walt.

Walt was mesmerized by the countryside, the animals, and watching the powerful steam locomotives come and go. He loved to ride the backs of the pigs, a spectacle his father and neighbors enjoyed. Walt began to draw, his aunt bringing crayons and paper pads on her visits. Roy was protective of his younger brother; the two were always together.

Elias worked his sons hard. When they made any money on their own, he seized it from them, saying the family needed it. This was too much for the eldest sons, Herb and Ray, and they hopped a night train and fled from home. Elias also developed strong socialist beliefs, and became active in politics, ideas Walt ultimately rejected. After four years of effort, Elias fell ill and the family had to auction off the farm.

The next stop in Walt’s life was Kansas City, where the family arrived in 1910. Elias took on a newspaper route, but Roy and Walt did much of the work, delivering papers before school and collecting payments after. Eight-year-old Walt learned the streets of the city. He appreciated the warmth of apartment buildings in the winter. It was hard work, but Elias was relentless. He didn’t pay his sons for their efforts, telling them that their room and board was enough pay. Elias also had a quick temper. Finally, Roy had enough, and upon graduating from high school, left town like his older brothers.

Walt’s mother, Flora, made butter and sold the excess to neighbors. Walt was embarrassed when they went door-to-door selling to the families of his more affluent schoolmates. Stingy Elias, who would walk miles to save a nickel on trolley fare, told Flora not to use any butter at home, to sell all of it. So she buttered the children’s bread on the bottom side so Elias would not see it.  

Despite his long hours of work, Walt found time to play with friends and to develop skits to entertain everyone he knew. He appeared at his own front door dressed in women’s clothes and even his mother did not at first recognize him. He created magic tricks, including an air-filled bladder that made dinner plates rise into the air. Walt and a friend developed songs and comic routines to amuse their schoolmates. The joy Walt got from performing, from making others smile, was a pleasant change from his sober, laborious home life.

In school, Walt was athletic, even winning a medal in track. But he wasn’t a very good student; the teachers said his “mind wandered.” He did love to read and spent much time at the library, devouring the works of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as the Horatio Alger and Tom Swift stories.

And Walt kept drawing. When a teacher assigned students to sketch the flowers on her desk, Walt got in trouble for putting faces on the flowers and arms where the leaves should be. He earned free haircuts by doing caricatures of the customers at the local barbershop. When he was fourteen, Walt enrolled in classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. He read every book about drawing and cartooning that he could get his hands on. He might not have been a great student in regular school, but he loved to learn about the things that interested him. 

Elias invested every penny in wild schemes, including a mining venture. None paid off. Frustrated, he and Flora moved back to Chicago where he invested in and worked in a jelly factory. Walt stayed in Kansas City to continue high school, living with his older brother Herbert, who had moved back to that city. Roy also returned to Kansas City and reunited with Walt.

The departure of their father gave the boys newfound freedom. Roy had previously worked as a “news butcher” on the Santa Fe railroad, selling soft drinks, popcorn, fruit, candy, newspapers, cigars, and tobacco on the trains. He suggested that Walt give it a try during the summer of 1917 and loaned Walt the required deposit of $15. Fifteen-year-old Walt said he was sixteen in order to meet the requirements of Kansas City’s Van Noy Interstate Company, which served several railroads.

Walt rode the trains of the Missouri Pacific, Kansas City Southern, and Katy railroads over a six-state area, reaching as far west as Colorado. In each town where the train stopped, Walt would get out and study the community. On long runs, he would stay overnight in hotels and boarding houses before returning to Kansas City. His greatest thrill was an occasional ride in the locomotive cab. He learned about the risks of business, losing money when customers threw his bottles out of the train windows. (Bottles were returnable for cash in those days.)

This must have been an extraordinary, eye-opening experience for the young explorer. But he never made any meaningful money, and at the end of the summer had to surrender the $15 deposit. (The Van Noy Company went on to become Host Marriott, today called HMSHost, which operates concessions in over one hundred US airports.)

That fall, in 1917, Walt decided to rejoin his family in Chicago and finish high school there.  This was a fervent period of hard work and more art education in his “spare time.” The young man must have had an incredible amount of energy.

In addition to going to school, where he became a photographer and cartoonist for the school paper, Walt worked long hours. Elias did not approve of Walt’s spending time entertaining—or his dreams of becoming a cartoonist—but agreed to pay for correspondence art courses if Walt contributed to the family income.

Between the ages of sixteen, when he graduated from school, and twenty-two, when he departed Kansas City for Los Angeles, Walt Disney had more diverse experiences than almost anyone we have studied in our American Originals series. Given his intense curiosity, he must have learned a great deal from each of these new experiences.

Walt worked in the jelly factory where his father was a worker and investor, for seven dollars a week. He then took a better-paying job as a guard and watchman on Chicago’s elevated railroad. His first summer in Chicago (1918), Walt went to work at the giant Chicago Post Office. He was at first turned away because he was only sixteen, but when he drew lines on his face and returned in his father’s hat and suit, claiming he was eighteen, he was hired. At the post office, Walt worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, making deliveries and pick-ups, and driving trucks and horse-drawn wagons. It was hard work, but Walt loved seeing the city and working outdoors.

Even with his dedication to work, Walt found time to attend vaudeville and burlesque shows (which were “cleaner” then than they later became). He took notes on the jokes and gags, developing his own versions. He went to the movies and studied them. He watched the audiences’ reactions. Three nights a week he studied anatomy, pen technique, and cartooning in classes at the renowned Chicago Art Institute. His teachers included Chicago’s leading newspaper and political cartoonists.

By this time, World War I was raging in Europe. Walt’s brothers Ray and Roy were already in the military and Walt was eager to sign up, but at sixteen he was too young to enlist. He and a friend hatched a plot to run away and join the Canadian Army, which accepted younger men, but their plan was discovered and thwarted by their parents. Then the boys heard about the American Ambulance Corps, part of the Red Cross, which needed drivers. While this service also required recruits to be seventeen, the two lied and got in. Next, Walt needed a passport, which required his parents’ signature. Elias refused, saying it was a “death warrant” for Walt, but Flora forged Elias’s name, figuring that Walt was so determined that he’d run away if she didn’t.

Walt then got the influenza virus that killed millions around the world. Two of his friends died, but Walt recovered.

On December 4, 1918, Walt landed in France. A whole new world opened up to him as he explored the streets of tiny villages. He soon arrived in Paris. Walt drove ambulances but was also assigned to the motor pool—taxiing officers around Paris and later in a rural area. He learned every street and shortcut. As the war subsided, he worked alongside German prisoners, befriending some of them. Walt sold war souvenirs to make money to send home. He explored the countryside, drawing everything he saw. His year in France added immeasurably to his understanding of the world and to his maturity. (Ray Kroc, the man behind the rise of McDonald’s, also lied about his age, served in the ambulance service at the same time, and met Walt in France.)

In October of 1919, Walt returned home via New York City, his first visit to and exploration of the great city. In two months, he would turn eighteen. While the people we have covered in the American Originals series often had diverse experiences in their early years, none of them exceeded the lengths (literally) that Walt Disney went to in order to “see the world”—and to observe it, to learn.

With no desire to return to work in his father’s jelly factory (which ultimately failed) and no support from Elias for his dreams of becoming a cartoonist, Walt decided to return to Kansas City, rejoining brother Roy. This would be the turning point at which Walt began to earn a living from his drawing and his dreams.

The preceding long history of Walt Disney’s first eighteen years tells us several things about the man, both then and continuing throughout his life. He was tireless, always working and always learning, often in a difficult family environment. Setbacks did not stop him. He was curious about everything, from nature to trains, from travel to business. Above all else, he loved entertaining people; he loved drawing and cartooning. Such was the foundation for the stories that follow.

The Long Progression, Step by Step

The details of Walt’s evolution, and that of his businesses, have filled thousands of pages. Each major Disney achievement is the subject of numerous books. Here we sketch a brief outline of that evolution. Rather than aiming for the moon and dreaming of conquering the world, Walt Disney’s journey was taken one step at a time. While these steps may sound dramatic in hindsight, to Walt each step was the natural progression from the previous one.

The story of Walt Disney and his enterprises is one of continuous improvement, of never being satisfied, of always seeking something new and exciting to try. No matter the risks, Walt was always confident that “things will work out.” Even when few others did, he believed in himself. Equally important, so did Roy.

Stage 1: Making a Living (Almost) from Cartooning in Kansas City

When eighteen-year-old Walt returned to Kansas City, he was sure he could get a job at the top paper, the  Kansas City Star . He showed them his sketches of Paris and other work, but they had no openings for a cartoonist. The other paper, the  Journal , showed interest, but also had no openings. He finally landed a job at the Pesmin-Rubin commercial art studio for $50 a month.

At Pesmin-Rubin, he drew magazine and catalog ads. Going into the holiday selling season, he was kept busy drawing for department stores, farm implement makers, and many other clients. Posters for movie theaters were also part of his work. At the studio, he met fellow artist Ubbe (later shortened to Ub) Iwerks, son of Dutch immigrants and the same age as Walt. They became fast friends. When the Christmas ads were completed, both young men were laid off.

Walt and Ub then decided to go into business for themselves. They almost called their venture Disney-Iwerks but realized people would think they were caring for eyes, so Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists was formed. Their revenues were $135 the first month, a great start. Then they saw a help-wanted ad for a company that produced slides and cartoons for movie theaters, to be shown before the feature film. Ub urged Walt to take the job, saying he could continue their little business. Walt took the job. Ub proved a poor salesman, however, and soon the two gave up on the old business and were working together at the Kansas City Film Ad Company.

At the Film Ad Company, animations were made by cutting out pieces of paper shaped like arms and legs, pinning them on a sheet, moving them around, and photographing the images after each small movement. Walt, having studied the more natural cartoons coming out of New York animation studios, thought this could be improved. He read several books on how to draw animation, using celluloid rather than the cut-outs. He studied Eadweard Muybridge’s famous photos of animals and humans in motion, copying them at the library and keeping the copies beside his desk. Ub Iwerks was an even better artist than Walt, often taking Walt’s ideas and turning them into cartoons for the big screen. Walt’s pay rose to $60 a week.

Walt’s humorous “gags” were a hit at the local Newman theater chain and were soon named Newman Laugh-O-Grams. Walt tried to convince his bosses at the Film Ad Company to create more of these one-minute shorts to sell to theaters around the nation, to no avail. He started making the films on his own, in addition to working for Kansas City Film Ad. His first longer cartoon,  Little Red Riding Hood , can be seen  here . Thus began a long tradition of using stories already familiar to the public.

Walt also befriended the cameraman at the company, who usually kept his techniques to himself. Ultimately, Walt bought a camera for $300 and used his spare time and weekends to shoot footage for local theaters. He also shot footage for the national newsreel companies, whose news compilations were shown at theaters across America.

These efforts led to a second try at working on his own. He quit the Film Ad Company. On May 23, 1922, twenty-one-year-old Walt incorporated Laugh-O-Gram Films with $15,000 raised from investors at $250 to $500 each. Soon Walt was joined by Ub Iwerks, five other animators, a secretary, business manager, and “a girl to ink and paint the celluloids.” A New York film distributor sent a $100 deposit check and promised $11,000 in six months for six cartoons but went broke before making the payment.

Walt continued to shoot newsreels, even flying in an early airplane to film aerial acrobatics. He took baby pictures to add to the company’s cash flow. The company still struggled, borrowing another $2,500 to stay in business. Walt often slept in the office, with nowhere else to go after his brother’s house was sold.

Working for a dentist, Walt and Ub produced  Tommy Tucker’s Tooth . Walt’s first major technical innovation was presented in  Alice’s Wonderland , an amazing eight-minute combination of live action and cartoons that took great skill to create. Many inventions were to follow over the next forty years as Walt never stopped experimenting, trying to create more entertaining products.

Finally, even Walt’s strongest backers, including brother Roy, were unable to advance any more money, and Laugh-O-Gram Films went bankrupt. While many would have given up (and followed his father’s advice to choose a better career), not Walt. He went door-to-door selling baby pictures, then sold his camera, until he had enough money to buy a one-way train ticket to California. In 1923, he arrived in Los Angeles with the clothes on his back, a half-filled suitcase, some drawing materials, and $40 in his pocket.

Stage 2: First Steps in Hollywood

In Los Angeles, Walt lived with his uncle Robert, paying $5 a week for board, money he had to borrow from Roy. He did whatever it took to earn money, including acting as an extra in the movies. Walt applied to become a director at movie studios, with no luck. Roy, by then living in Los Angeles, suggested he give cartoons another try, but Walt was skeptical.

Eventually realizing cartoons were his best shot to get into the movie business, he went to the office of Los Angeles theater owner Alexander Pantages, hoping to sell him on cartoon shorts. Pantages’s secretary told Walt, “Mr. Pantages would not be interested.” A voice from behind a door said, “How do you know I wouldn’t?” Pantages said he would be interested in Walt’s product. Walt set up a cartoon production rig in his uncle’s garage.

At the same time, he sent  Alice’s Wonderland  off to a New York distributor, hoping to get a deal. Receiving a positive response, on October 16, 1923, Walt signed a contract with the distributor, MJ Winkler, for six  Alice  comedies at $1,500 each, followed by six more at $1,800 each. This seemed like a fortune to Walt. Unable to get a loan from a bank on such a risky venture, Roy financed Walt’s efforts and became his partner in the “Disney Brothers Studio,” a fraternal relationship that lasted beyond Walt’s death.

Walt rented a vacant lot in Hollywood for $10 a month, convinced his  Alice  actress (Virginia Davis) and her family to move from Kansas City to Los Angeles, and began producing the films. He attached a note to the first film he shipped to Winkler, stating, “I sincerely believe I have made a great deal of improvement on this subject in the line of humorous situations and I assure you that I will make it a point to inject as many funny gags and comical situations into future productions as possible.” Successive films in the series often included similar comments. Walt spent more money on each film than on the previous one, straining finances. He was never satisfied.

By the spring of 1924, the  Alice  comedies were showing in theaters. Things were looking up for the twenty-three-year-old entrepreneur and his thirty-one-year-old brother. That summer, Walt convinced Ub Iwerks to join him, moving from Kansas City. In December, their distributor signed up for eighteen more “ Alices ,” to be distributed to theaters through Universal Studios. More animators moved from Kansas City or were hired locally, including many who went on to fame on their own after working for Walt. In July 1925, the Disney brothers made a $400 down payment on a sixty-by-forty-foot lot on Hyperion Avenue, where they built a new studio in 1926.

Also in July of 1925, Walter Elias Disney married Lillian Bounds, an Idaho-raised woman who worked as an inker and painter in the Disney studios. They remained happily together for forty-one years, until death did them part, when Walt died.

By 1927, the brothers and their staff had produced fifty-six  Alice  comedies. The series had run its course, and Universal studios asked for a cartoon series using a rabbit. This request led Walt to create Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, his first major effort at an all-cartoon (with no live action) short. The first film released, the delightful  Trolley Troubles , was a hit with both theaters and critics. The Disneys bought more land next to their Hyperion studio and hired more people to meet the demand. Walt and Roy built $7,000 prefab houses next door to each other for themselves and their wives.

But Walt soon learned that his distributor was hiring away all of his animators except Ub Iwerks, planning on cutting the Disneys out of the profit stream on Oswald. Universal owned the rights to the popular rabbit. They thought Walt would fail without Oswald. The distributor offered Walt a handsome salary to work for him, but Walt knew he wanted to be independent, to have control over his product. So he turned them down. Walt was then stuck with no rabbit, no money, little staff, and no contract to make more cartoons.

Step 3: The Birth of Mickey Mouse; Struggles and a Breakdown

Stories abound about the birth of Mickey Mouse, but one thing is clear: twenty-six-year-old Walt needed a character to replace Oswald; he needed a character he controlled. So the Mouse was born. The first Mickey Mouse film was 1928’s silent  Plane Crazy  (the sound was added later), inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic. But Walt could not find any distributors to sell it to theaters.

Walt was very interested in adding sound to his cartoons, following the premiere of 1927’s huge sound hit  The Jazz Singer , starring Al Jolson. With great experimentation, time, money, and effort, he and his team finally figured it all out, with Walt voicing Mickey. Getting the expensive small orchestra to play in time to the cartoon and perfect the recording was especially difficult. Walt took the film to New York to show distributors, but none were interested. Finally, in desperation, he agreed to let a Broadway theater, which normally staged live plays, show the film, to give the public a chance to evaluate it. The result was  Steamboat Willie , the first Mickey Mouse film that the public had a chance to see, which premiered “on Broadway” on November 18, 1928. The public and the critics (even  The New York Times ) loved it.

Now distributors wanted it, too, but they offered to either hire Walt onto their payroll or buy the complete rights to future Mickey Mouse films. After his experience losing control of Oswald, Walt refused their offers. He finally signed with an independent distributor who wanted to promote his own sound system. Walt went back and added sound to  Plane Crazy  and did the same with another previously unreleased early Mickey Mouse film,  Gallopin’ Gaucho . In ensuing years, Walt and Roy changed distributors several times, often concerned that they were not getting equitable treatment in terms of theater access or receiving a fair share of the profits. They learned to be astute businessmen, with Roy overseeing the company’s finances and continuously borrowing more money.

While Ub Iwerks was still a critical part of the team, he and Walt began to quarrel. Ub insisted on doing all the drawings himself, rather than let a lesser-talented “in-betweener” draw the cels (celluloids) in between key character positions. This slowed down the production of the cartoons and added expense to the process.

Walt’s musical composer, Carl Stallings, suggested they create another series of cartoons in addition to the Mickey Mouse series. His idea was to combine classical and other music with the animation, making the films pure aural and visual delights. The first film of the new Silly Symphony series was  The Skeleton Dance , released in July 1929. The company now had multiple successes and was spending $5,000 to make each cartoon.

Walt led every story meeting, developed ideas and gags. When Mickey was angry, Walt chided the artists for having Mickey’s tail down when it should be up, in anger. No detail missed Walt’s eye for story and comedy. From watching audiences in theaters, he had developed a fine-tuned sense for “what worked.”

By 1929, Mickey Mouse had become a national craze, with Mickey Mouse Clubs springing up everywhere. At theaters, audiences would shout, “What? No Mickey Mouse?” if the little character did not appear before the film. While the company should have been profitable, checks from their New York distributor were slow to arrive. When Walt went to meet with the distributor, he was told that he could work for the distributor for a big paycheck ($2,500 per week) and that Ub Iwerks had signed on to leave Walt and work for the distributor. Once again, others were undercutting the Disney brothers and trying to deny them their fair share of the profits.

Walt and Ub signed an agreement in which Ub received $2,920 for his one-fifth ownership of the Disney company. (Years later, Ub returned to work for Walt.)

In 1929, the company was incorporated as Walt Disney Productions. Walt and Lilly owned 60 percent of the company; Roy and his wife, Edna, 40 percent.

Unwilling to work for others, in early 1930, Walt signed a distribution deal with Columbia Pictures under which he retained control and ownership of his product, at a price of $7,000 per cartoon. In 1930, Mickey Mouse comic strips began to appear in newspapers across the country. Nevertheless, the company struggled financially as Walt kept adding staff and spending more on each cartoon to make it better.

Losing Ub, fighting distributors, and money worries got to Walt. He began to lose sleep, to snap at employees, and to go into crying spells. In story meetings, his ever-alert mind sometimes went blank, losing track of the conversation. At the age of thirty, Walt Disney had what was termed “a nervous breakdown.” His doctor ordered him to take a complete rest. In 1931, Walt and wife Lilly took their first vacation in five years, traveling down the Mississippi River, visiting Washington, and then down the East Coast to Key West and Cuba. Returning to Los Angeles via a cruise through the Panama Canal, Walt was in good shape by the time he got back to work at the studio, which Roy had overseen in his absence.

Step 4: New Ideas, Innovations, and Success

By 1931, the Mickey Mouse Club had a million members and Mickey was known around the world. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a fan. Mickey appeared in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. In 1929, Walt and Roy had accepted $300 from a man who wanted to sell school writing tablets with Mickey on them because they needed the money. Now such licensing deals became a flood, which continue to this day. On toys, the company got a royalty of 2.5 percent on anything selling for under fifty cents; 5 percent on more expensive items.

Ten million Mickey Mouse ice cream cones were produced in 1932. The bankrupt Lionel model train company survived in large part due to the sales of 250,000 Mickey Mouse railcars. In a two-year period, 2.5 million Mickey Mouse watches were sold. Connecticut’s nearly bankrupt Ingersoll-Waterbury watch factory grew from three hundred employees to three thousand to meet the demand.

In many ways, Mickey  was  Walt. The man carefully guarded the integrity of the mouse, often telling his animators, “Mickey wouldn’t do that.” Walt used his histrionic skills to act out each role and each line of dialog. Studio crews filmed Walt when he voiced Mickey to improve the accuracy of their animations. 

Mickey’s success enabled Walt to continue to experiment, to progress in making better entertainments. More staff, more buildings were added at the Hyperion Avenue studios. In July 1932, he released a new Silly Symphony,  Flowers and Trees , the first color cartoon.  Flowers and Trees  became the first animated film to win an Oscar. Walt was thirty-one years old.

Each step in the development of the company required new techniques. Having struggled with visualizing the final product before spending countless hours making drawings, the company developed the idea of the storyboard, pinning preliminary sketches to a four-by-eight-foot fiber board. This and other innovations were copied by others and are used around the world today.

Walt had developed a knack for recognizing talent. While he was a demanding taskmaster, he provided an environment where artists and story writers could do their best work. He also believed in education, as he had proven since childhood. Walt paid employees’ tuition for night classes at Los Angeles’ Chouinard Art Institute, driving them to and from the classes. When he had more money to invest in education, he began holding the classes at the studio, assigning a full-time teacher. The students studied anatomy and human and animal movement, as Walt wanted to inject as much realism into his films as possible.  

The year 1933 saw the release of  Three Little Pigs , the second Silly Symphony to win an Oscar. The cartoon took character development to a higher level. The tune “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” became a hit and was played by orchestras across the nation, another first for a cartoon. Theaters put the film’s name above the name of the feature film on their marquees. Disney’s distributor and theaters clamored for more “Pigs” films, but Walt responded with his famous remark, “You can’t top pigs with pigs.” He did not like repeating past successes. He did not like sequels: he wanted to keep moving, keep growing.

In the six years since Walt “lost” Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, through 1934, Walt’s crew had grown from six people to 187. They included a dozen “story and gag men,” forty animators with forty-five assistants, thirty inkers and painters, a twenty-four-piece orchestra, and numerous camera, sound, and office workers. Some 150 employees were enrolled in the company’s ever-expanding internal school. Guest lecturers included famous authors and renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, making it a wonderful experience for the fortunate staff members.

New cartoons and better ways of making them continued to pour forth from the studio. This era saw the introduction of new characters, from Pluto to the ever-popular Donald Duck.

The most important development in 1934, and one of the most important in the history of Walt and the studio, was the idea of producing a feature-length cartoon. Walt thought it might cost $500,000, terrifying Roy (who had to raise the money) and even concerning the usually supportive Lilly. One evening, when the animators returned to the studio after dinner, Walt called them into the sound stage, saying, “I’ve got something to tell you.” He proceeded to lay out the story of  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , a project that was to consume Walt and almost consume the studio.

Producing short after short while working away on character development for  Snow White , Walt again approached burnout. So he, Roy, and their wives took an extended trip to Europe, his first return since the war. Their trip was interrupted by the press seeking the now world-famous Walt and by visits to royalty and heads of state, including Italy’s Mussolini. Still, Walt remembered every nook and cranny of the cities, giving driving directions to taxi drivers in Paris and London. Everywhere he went, Walt walked the streets, talked to shopkeepers, and kept learning, learning.

Once back in California, Walt focused on  Snow Whit e, years in the making, with an ever-increasing budget. He acted out every scene. He obsessed on the soundtrack. Having seen many musicals, he felt they often “just burst into song” without fitting into the story. He wanted the music to match the story at every point. He had a wire run from the soundstage to his office, so he could continually listen to what was being recorded.

In 1936, Walt attended a famous annual gathering of the powerful at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California. Leaders of business and government camped out in a serene forest. But Walt could not sleep due to the roar of awful snoring, and this gave him ideas for sounds for Snow White’s dwarfs. No idea or detail was too small for Walt to absorb and incorporate into his work.

The life of a true innovator is rarely easy. Selling the world on the idea of a feature-length cartoon was extremely difficult. Disney’s distributor expressed zero enthusiasm for the project. Industry people called it “Disney’s folly.” Even one of his employees wrote an anonymous note to him, “Stick to shorts,” galling Walt. As the years, experimentation, and cels flew by, the cost rose to $1.5 million, triple what Walt had estimated. The bankers refused to loan more money on the project, threatening the company’s existence. Ultimately, Roy convinced a reluctant Walt to show their banker some preliminary sketches. The banker responded with, “That thing is going to make a hatful of money,” and loaned them the needed funds.

On December 21, 1937,  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  premiered in Los Angeles. The premiere was attended by “everyone who was anyone.” Some cried when Snow White went into her deathlike sleep. At the end of the film, the audience stood and cheered. The film generated two more hit songs, “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go,” and “Whistle While You Work.” All attendance records were broken in an unprecedented three-week run at the nation’s largest theater, New York’s Radio City Music Hall. In its first of many releases, Snow White generated $8 million in box office revenues, when the average ticket price was just thirty-eight cents. Adjusted for inflation, the film is still the highest grossing animated film of all time at over $1 billion, among the highest figures for any type of film. Walt’s grasp of what the public would like had once again been vindicated.

Money poured into the company. Walt had previously established a bonus system, but Snow White made those checks much bigger. As hard as he worked his employees (and as rarely as he complimented them), Walt appreciated their efforts.

At the same time, he came to realize that the company had a “brand,” a name that stood for something in the eyes of the public. And that brand was Walt Disney. While a few workers resented him getting so much of the credit, the vast majority loved the opportunity they were given to participate in producing quality, innovative films. Walt once told a new employee, “There’s just one thing we’re selling here, and that’s the name Walt Disney.” Walt Disney Productions was at the time tiny compared to the big studios: Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, and Fox. Yet none of them ever developed a true brand; their pictures varied in quality and audience appeal. You never knew exactly what to expect. Consumers came to know what they’d get when they saw the Walt Disney signature, a tradition that continues to this day.

Also in 1937, the studio released  The Old Mill , the first Silly Symphony using a Disney invention: the multiplane camera. By laying out cels one above another, spaced several inches apart, a better illusion of depth was created. This camera is considered one of the most important technical inventions to come out of the Disney studios in this period.

Walt’s understanding of the future was also indicated by his refusal to give his distributor the television rights to his cartoons, a decade before commercial television became a reality.

Despite all his energy, Walt had a shy streak. He did not enjoy speeches and public appearances. He and Lilly did not participate in the Hollywood party scene. Walt spent his free time with their two daughters, Diane (born in 1933) and Sharon (1936). When  Snow White  won an honorary Oscar, Shirley Temple presented it to the sweat-covered Walt, saying, “Don’t be nervous, Mr. Disney!” The Oscar was accompanied by seven dwarf Oscars.

Step 5: Risks, Struggles, Setbacks

With this success, Walt lost interest in the short animations, though the studio continued to produce them. He had “been there, done that.” He now focused on feature-length animations, adding new facilities for their production.

In 1940, the company, now with a thousand employees, moved into large new facilities in Burbank, costing $3 million. Designed as a “worker’s paradise,” the buildings were carefully set up to be a “factory” for producing animated films. Walt loved the planning process. He figured out every detail, even custom designing the best chairs for animators. He went so far as to bring in an experienced, eighty-year-old carpenter to oversee the other carpenters: his father, Elias.

Every time his company became prosperous and he and Roy could sleep well, with money in the bank, Walt would find new ways to spend money to make better pictures, landing them back into debt. Animation was (and is) a painstaking process, cel by cel. The costs were often far greater than making a live action picture of the same length.

As a result, Walt Disney Productions sold preferred stock to the public in 1940, beginning trading on the stock exchange. The transaction infused a badly needed $3.5 million into the company’s coffers. Walt and Roy retained voting control of the company.

Despite his efforts to create a great working environment, about three hundred of his employees went on strike in 1941. While quickly resolved, the experience disturbed Walt and may have led him to become a bit more personally distant. He later admitted that he missed the days when he had only a handful of close associates.

Walt used the multiplane camera and expensive special effects on his next feature,  Pinocchio , released in February 1940. Despite carrying the hit song, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the film did not cover its $2.6 million cost, almost double what Snow White had cost.

Pleased with the response to the music-filled Silly Symphony series, Walt decided to try a feature-length all-music film. The result was  Fantasia , released in November 1940. Walt worked with famous Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski and hired a full orchestra, using classical music for each scene. Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice became famous over the years. But the film took over twenty years of re-releases to break even and recoup the $2.3 million investment. In retrospect, it is considered a classic film.

August of 1942 witnessed the release of  Bambi . More serious in tone than the studio’s prior films, Bambi also brought new challenges. Walt wanted the all-animal feature to be as lifelike as possible. He sent a cameraman to Maine to film thousands of feet of film of life in the forests. He brought two deer and a host of other animals to the studio, where he created a small zoo for the artists to study. He brought in artists experienced in painting animal scenes to teach classes at the studio school. Again, no detail was left unexamined.

As hard as he tried to push, the creation of  Bambi  was time-consuming and thus expensive. Experienced artists could draw a cel of the fawn in forty-five minutes; newcomers took ninety. Daily output crept to eight drawings per artist per day, six inches of film, compared with prior averages of ten feet per day. Like  Pinocchio  and  Fantasia ,  Bambi  did not recover its costs in its first run at the box office, again straining the studio’s finances. One of the few money-makers during this period was 1941’s  Dumbo , made inexpensively for $600,000. The studio had not had a major hit since  Snow White .      

World War II brought both challenges and opportunities. On the income side, foreign markets, which had represented 45 percent of the company’s revenue, dried up. Royalties due them from overseas were frozen in bank accounts due to the war. On the other side, the government came to Walt and his team to produce propaganda and other war films. The company rose to the challenge.

Needless to say, the Disney films were effective. Adolph Hitler was particularly galled when Donald Duck appeared in  Der Fuehrer’s Face . (Note that Walt’s short animation competition in Hollywood also turned out films for the war effort, as exemplified by Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes film  The Ducktators , with music by former Disney employee Carl Stallings.)

Walt became interested in the work of Major Alexander de Seversky, a Russian aviator who had commanded squadrons in the First World War and invented bombsights and navigation controls. De Seversky was an advocate for using air power to win the war and had written a book,  Victory Through Air Power . Walt made  a film of the same title  (at a $400,000 loss) and tried to get it screened at the White House for President Roosevelt, who had been a navy man. But an admiral who wanted the bulk of military spending for the navy prevented the president from seeing it. Reportedly, Winston Churchill later asked FDR if he had seen the film, which he had not. A copy was flown to their meeting in a fighter aircraft; after FDR watched it, the US invested more in air power, helping to win the war.  

To meet the demand for war films, everyone at the studio worked six days and two nights a week. Prior to the war, Walt Disney Productions had produced about thirty thousand feet of film a year. During the war, this rose to three hundred thousand feet each year. The company had offered to donate the films to the war effort at cost, but government bookkeepers wrangled with Walt over every penny of expense, while Walt focused on making great films, spending what he felt was required.

Between the weak results of his new feature films and the profitless war films, the early 1940s were not good financially for the company. Borrowings from the Bank of America rose to $4 million, and the bank was nervous. Their banker asked Roy and Walt to meet with the bank’s board of directors in San Francisco. The bank’s founder and chairman, A.P. Giannini, in his mid-seventies, never took a seat, strolling around the room as the grim-faced bankers grilled Roy and Walt. At last, Giannini spoke. He asked his board members how many had seen Walt’s movies. Several had seen none.

“Well, I’ve seen them. I’ve been watching the Disney’s pictures quite closely, because I knew we were lending them money far beyond the financial risk . . . . [The pictures] are good this year, they’re good next year, and they’re good the year after . . . . You have to relax and give them time to market their product.” The smart old man stood behind the creative wizard; the bankers kept loaning money to Walt and Roy.

Step 6: Post-War Successes, Diversifying the Business

These financial challenges may have cost Walt some sleepless nights, but it never stopped him from dreaming, from moving on to the next challenge. But it was never easy. Even Roy challenged him. Walt wanted to move ahead on two feature-length animated films on which he had started working before the war,  Alice in Wonderland  (finally released in 1951) and  Peter Pan  (1953). Roy told him he was nuts and stormed out of the office. Neither brother slept that night; they made up the next morning.

In seeking the next challenge, Walt turned to live-action films. He later said, “I knew I must diversify.  Knew the diversifying of the business would be the salvation of it. I tried that in the beginning, because I didn’t want to be stuck with the Mouse. So I went into the Silly Symphonies. It did work out. The Symphonies led to the features; without the work I did on the Symphonies, I’d never have been prepared even to tackle  Snow White . A lot of the things I did in the Symphonies led to what I did in  Fantasia . I took care of talents I couldn’t use any other way. Now I wanted to go beyond even that; I wanted to go beyond the cartoon. Because the cartoon had narrowed itself down. I could make them either seven or eight minutes long—or eighty minutes long. I tried the package things, where I put five or six together to make an eighty-minute feature. Now I needed to diversify further, and that meant live action.”

Returning to the hybrid techniques of the old  Alice  comedies, but vastly improved, Walt and his people created  Song of the South  (1946), which was 70 percent live action and 30 percent cartoon. The film made a modest profit of $200,000 on an investment of $2 million. The 1950’s  Treasure Island  was the company’s first all live-action feature and less expensive to make. Walt followed this up with an additional sixty-two live-action features over the next sixteen years.

The film  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , released in 1954, was not one of those less expensive films. Due to the costs of building a huge 4,000-pound squid and a 165-foot-long tank for underwater scenes, the film cost over $4 million. In order to convince his bankers to loan more money, Walt successfully showed them early clips from the film, which turned into a huge success.

In 1955,  Lady and the Tramp , the first animated film presented in widescreen CinemaScope, premiered. This was also something of an innovation for the studio: it was not based on a traditional story that the public already knew. This gave Walt and his storytellers the chance to develop totally new characters, a process he enjoyed.

The company also began making nature films, starting with  The Living Desert  in 1953. Since their distributor did not believe in the film, Roy created a small distribution division, Buena Vista.  The Living Desert  made a profit of $4 million on a cost of just $300,000, proportionately one of the most profitable films the company ever made. Walt then spent substantial effort and sums sending cameramen around the globe for this successful series.

These films began to make money. Even  Pinocchio  and  Bambi  became highly profitable in periodic re-releases, a system that Disney established. Given the Disney brother’s contentious history with their distributors, they took a chance on distributing all of their own pictures, including  20,000 Leagues . This was a very disruptive and risky move in the traditional system of how movies moved from studios to theaters. Over time, Buena Vista became one of the largest and most successful of the film distribution companies.

Also worth noting is that Howard Hughes, owner of the struggling but still large RKO studio, offered to give it to the Disneys, along with a $10 million line-of-credit which would have solved all their money worries. But the Disney brothers turned him down, not wanting to take on RKO’s problems. Walt’s fertile imagination was enough to keep them busy.

These successes of the early 1950s led Walt to dream even bigger.

Step 7: From the Big Screen to the Small Screen and the Theme Park

Walt often took daughters Diane and Sharon to amusement parks. But he was disturbed by the slovenly and unfriendly staff and the filthy conditions. Why couldn’t there be a clean place, a nice place, to take a family? With his keen understanding of family entertainment, he began to think about the idea. What evolved was almost a walk-through version of what he had previously put on the big screen. (It is interesting to note that Walt always turned down any suggestion that he make films for children. His goal was to make things for the whole family, things that “brought out the child in every adult.”)

As always, Walt’s curiosity led him everywhere. He studied amusement parks and shopping malls across America. Walt visited the National Parks and every circus, zoo, carnival, state fair, and county fair that he could. He watched people—how they moved, whether they smiled or not. What was their total experience like? He ventured abroad. The only amusement park he found up to his standards of cleanliness was Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

Over time, Walt’s vision for an amusement park became more real and more expensive. He overcame resistance from everyone around him. What was to become Disneyland became an obsession with Walt. He sold his second home in Palm Springs and borrowed $100,000 to start a new company (later merged with the studio) to build the park. Like everything he touched, Walt never stopped believing in himself and what his studio could accomplish.

At the same time, television was rising rapidly. In 1945, there were fewer than ten thousand televisions in American homes and businesses. By 1950, this figure had soared to around 6 million; by 1960 more than 60 million televisions had been sold. The two big networks, NBC and CBS, were eager to bring the Walt Disney name into people’s homes. Most Hollywood moguls resisted television, seeing it as competition. They would not let a TV set appear in a movie and banned their actors from appearing on television. Theater owners said they would not show movies from any studio that allowed its movies to appear on television.

But Walt saw a big opportunity. He was tired of relying on distributors and theater owners to judge his product. He was tired of critics. He was only interested in what his ultimate viewers thought. He said, “Television is going to be my way of going direct to the public, bypassing the others who can sit there and be the judge on the bench.” In fact, he believed that if people liked what they saw on television, they’d want to see more in the theaters. As long as he produced a quality product, he knew the public would be loyal.

Walt also saw television as a chance to fund his amusement park dream. Roy traveled to New York and told the networks that they would provide TV programming if the rich networks would help finance the park. NBC’s chief and founder David Sarnoff expressed some interest, but negotiations bogged down when it came down to specifics. Frustrated, Roy called up the head of the much smaller, struggling ABC network,  Leonard Goldenson , who answered, “Where are you? I will be right over.” When the dust settled, the Disney brothers had agreed to a weekly program on ABC, and ABC had agreed to provide a $4.5 million bank loan to finance Disneyland. ABC also invested $500,000 for a 35 percent ownership in the company Walt had set up to build the park. (Five years later, ABC sold that interest back to Disney for $7.5 million, a nice return on a risky venture.)

After a great deal of research for the best location and a study of future freeway routes, booming Anaheim, California, was selected as the site for Disneyland.

On October 27, 1954, the  Disneyland  television program premiered on ABC. Despite his shyness, Walt introduced each show, further building the Walt Disney brand. The first episode was, in effect, a commercial for Walt’s forthcoming amusement park. In December, another episode told the “behind the scenes” story of the making of  20,000 Leagues . While it might have been a long trailer for a movie, it was so well-made and entertaining that it won an Emmy as the best show of the year.

The big hit of the first season of  Disneyland , the TV show, was Davy Crockett, which first appeared in December 1954. The theme song, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” was the number one song on  Hit Parade  for thirteen weeks, selling ten million records. Fess Parker played Davy and became a major star. Davy Crockett coonskin hats became all the rage: more than ten million were sold, driving the wholesale price of skins from fifty cents a dozen to five dollars. Costumes, coloring books, and toys of every kind poured forth. Walt Disney and his studio had created another national sensation. Walt’s prediction that television would help movies was proven out when the movie version of  Davy Crockett , which cost $700,000 to make, made a $2.5 million profit on “something ninety million people had already seen for free.”

Disneyland  quickly became the most-watched show on television. It made ABC a meaningful contender against NBC and CBS.

In the meanwhile, the planning and building of the Disneyland park moved ahead. Walt was obsessed, saying, “The park means a lot to me. It’s something that will never be finished, something I can keep developing, keep ‘plussing’ and adding to. It’s alive . . . . When you wrap up a picture and turn it over to Technicolor, you’re through.  Snow White  is a dead issue with me. It’s gone. I can’t touch it. There are things in it I don’t like, but I can’t do anything about it. I want something live, something that would grow.”

Walt described the park this way: “The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge . . . a place for parents and children to share pleasant times . . . for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education . . . the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America . . . and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with the accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make those wonders part of our own lives.”

When Walt’s board of directors resisted the park, he showed them his plans; tears welled in his eyes.

In short, nothing Walt had previously created reflected the man, his heart and soul, to the extent that Disneyland did.

As usual, Walt was into the details. He went to Southern California’s top tourist attraction, Knott’s Berry Farm, and observed the visitors. Where did they go, and in what order? How wide were the walkways? When the people had to wait in line, they grew frustrated, leading Walt to make sure his customers had something to watch, even while waiting in line. When his colleagues worried about vandalism to their expensive exhibits and rides, Walt said that if they kept the park spotlessly clean, the public would see that and respect the place. “Appeal to the best in people,” Walt said. He made sure every trash can was custom designed to match the theme of each area.

When other park owners told him he had to have multiple entrances, Walt would not budge from his idea of only one entrance. This was not going to be an ordinary park; this was going to be a show, with a clear introduction, a grand entrance. Walt had a berm built around the park so that no outside distractions would divert people’s eyes. He made his architects work overtime to create the right visuals. Every building appeared taller than it was by reducing the scale of the upper stories. Walt studied every sight line, moving trees around to perfect his vision. He rode every ride over and over. He squatted down to the ground to see the same views that small children would see.

Walt told his designers, “I want them (the visitors), when they leave, to have smiles on their faces. Just remember that; it’s all I ask of you as a designer.”

Walt went against the advice of every other amusement park owner when he created large public spaces and plenty of casual seating and meeting places, which the experts saw as an expensive waste of space. Walt Disney walked in his customers’ shoes to a degree that few businesspeople do.  

As opening day approached, Walt told his managers that they did not need a fancy administration building. “I don’t want you sitting behind desks. I want you out in the park.” He had an apartment above the firehouse so he could visit often and observe customers. Once the park opened, he took his family there every Saturday, always learning, always talking to workers and customers, forever tweaking and improving. Disneyland was, indeed, a living thing.

It goes without saying that Disneyland was a success from the instant it opened on July 17, 1955. Walt’s experts had predicted two to three million visitors in the first fifty-two weeks of operation, but one million came in the first seven weeks. In the first year, attendance beat projections by fifty percent and average spending per visitor was 30 percent higher than anticipated. In the first four years, fifteen million people came. Disneyland was a home run. And highly profitable.

The Final Step

In the following years, Walt and the company had success after success. The Mickey Mouse Club premiered on ABC, five days a week, on October 3, 1955. In developing this idea, Walt had carefully studied the behavior of children at recess. ABC sold $15 million worth of advertising in the first year (equal to $150 million in 2020). An astounding 75 percent of American households tuned in. Each day, American retailers sold twenty-four thousand mouse ear caps.

In 1961, Walt Disney’s  Wonderful World of Color  premiered on NBC, along with parent company RCA, the leader in color television. As demonstrated in his films, Walt had always believed in color. In fact, he had recorded all his shows for black-and-white TV in color, so they’d be ready to rebroadcast when color came along. To call Walt Disney a visionary would be an understatement.

At the same time that the company succeeded on television and at Disneyland, new movies kept coming.  Old Yeller  (1957),  The Shaggy Dog  (1959), and many other hits came along. The company continued to innovate:  One Hundred and One Dalmatians  in 1961 was the first animated film to use the Xerox process for drawings. The year 1964 witnessed the premiere of  Mary Poppins , again combining animation with live action. The movie was one of the company’s greatest commercial and critical triumphs.  Mary Poppins  is one of the few films about which another movie ( Saving Mr. Banks ) was made, starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.

Disneyland continued to be a living, breathing thing for Walt. Major new attractions were continually added. With great experimentation and effort, “animatronics” were added, allowing characters to speak, to seem more human. He made those working on the project watch TV without sound, so they would see how people’s mouths moved. Others said they could tell who was working on the animatronics project because they never looked you in the eyes; they just watched your mouth. (In contrast, Walt was famous for making eye contact, scolding anyone who did not look back with their eyes. By looking into their eyes, Walt could tell what people were really thinking.)

But one thing that bugged Walt was the proliferation of cheap motels and unsightly parasite businesses all around the park. He wished he had bought more land.

Walt was always very focused on the future. He believed that future was best developed and best predicted by science and by the great corporations of America. (Based on his experiences in both World Wars, he had a distrust of the effectiveness and efficiency of government.) Walt began to spend time visiting the laboratories of big companies like Westinghouse Electric, Ford, and General Electric, asking what they were up to. When he had the chance to design exhibits for the New York World’s Fair of 1964–65, he leapt at the opportunity. He knew he would learn things that could be used in Disneyland and that he could experiment with new ideas. Designed by Walt’s people, Pepsi’s “It’s a Small World” ride and the state of Illinois’s “Abraham Lincoln Animatronic” were among the hits of the fair. After the fair, Walt moved several exhibits to Disneyland.

The success of Disneyland, the experience of working on the fair, and Walt’s unending ambition led to what is in hindsight obvious: Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida. While Disneyland was a bold move for a company the size of Walt Disney Productions, Walt Disney World was truly a “bet the company” idea. As was true throughout his life, money meant nothing to Walt except what you could accomplish with it, and how you could use it to make life better and happier for others.

The massive project required the acquisition of thousands of acres of land, the creation of a new city with its own fire and police departments, and the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. Walt was totally engaged in the process, with his usual attention to detail. He even dreamed up an ideal city where people could live in a cleaner, better environment. While this vision was never fully realized, EPCOT, which opened in 1982, has served to replace the great World’s Fairs which have declined in popularity.

But Walt Disney, a lifelong chain smoker, died at the age of sixty-five on December 15, 1966, and never saw the opening of Walt Disney World.

Brother Roy, eight years older, saw the project through to completion, opening in October 1971. The seventy-eight-year-old had wanted to retire several years before, but Walt kept him engaged as they moved from one project to the next. With Walt Disney World open, Roy finally was ready to relax, hoping to cut his workload in half and take a long vacation. He never got the chance. On December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

These two men, among the most unique “management teams” in American business history, both worked until the day they died. And loved every minute of it.

Disney since Disney

Over the following years, the Walt Disney Company has seen ups and downs, management conflict, and controversy. Some leaders have been brilliant; some less so. In 1996, the company bought ABC and along with it the Capital Cities Broadcasting TV chain and ESPN. With that acquisition, the company gained a talented young executive named Bob Iger. Leading the Disney company from 2005 to 2020, Iger took it to new heights. Today the company operates theme parks around the world and owns the powerful Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, Fox, and other movie brands.

When Walt Disney died, his company had just crossed the $100 million annual revenues mark. It would not have ranked among the Fortune 500 companies at that time. As of 2020, it is the largest and most valuable content-creation company in the world, with annual revenues of about $70 billion and a stock market valuation in excess of over $200 billion. The theme parks draw 150 million people a year, 427,000 a day, over one-third of them at Walt Disney World, one of the largest single business operations on earth. “Parks, Experiences, and Products” generate the most revenue of any part of the company and make annual operating profits exceeding $6 billion. One man’s ambition has come a long way!

What Can We Learn from the Life of Walt Disney?

Walt Disney’s life story provides an endless list of adjectives to apply to the man. Many are familiar to nearly every story of entrepreneurial success: hard work, persistence, overcoming obstacles, ignoring naysayers, innovation and experimentation, and driving his associates to achieve more than they ever dreamed they could.

But there is another layer to Walt. His absolute obsession on every detail, his driven curiosity about people and what they liked, and his ability to put himself in the shoes of his beloved public were exceptional. Walt Disney had an overwhelming desire to serve others, to make them laugh and smile. He achieved that to a greater degree than any human who has ever lived. To the extent that those values remain intact at the Walt Disney Company, its future success is assured. But even if it were to see hard times, it has  Snow White  and other great works of “entertainment” in the vault to fall back on.

In concluding this man’s story, we cannot help but return to some of the issues raised in the first paragraphs of this article. Was Walt Disney an evil or bizarre man? No, every indication is that he was a committed family man with simple values. Was he a unique genius or artist, another Da Vinci? Our answer would again be no; he was just a man who paid attention to details and to what the public wanted. He only wanted to entertain.

When considering this man in full, our assessment is that Walt Disney was, like all of us, an imperfect human being. Above all else, he was among the most normal of Americans, sharing their histories, their biases, their dreams, and their ambitions. Everything he achieved reflected his roots in the Midwest, both rural and urban. There is nothing in his story that could not be achieved by the next generation of American Originals, especially if they have an exceptional, supportive partner with different skills—perhaps even a brother like Roy.

Gary Hoover Executive Director American Business History Center

Please pass this along to anyone you think would find it interesting! We invite your comments here.

Sources:  As mentioned at the start of this article, there are thousands of books about Walt Disney, his films, the theme parks, and his companies. Often these books disagree on details and stories. We have opted to accept the facts as described in  Walt Disney: An American Original , by Bob Thomas (1976), one of the most popular of the many biographies of Walt.  The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life  (1997), by Steven Watts, and  Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination  (2006), by Neal Gabler, are comprehensive “balanced biographies.” The Gabler book, the longest and most detailed of them all, has been especially popular, though Walt’s daughter Diane took great exception to some of Gabler’s conclusions about her father and his personality. Yet another biography is  The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney , by Michael Barrier (2007). Each of these books dug deep into company archives and conversations with those who knew Walt, but only Bob Thomas actually knew the man. On the negative side,  Disney’s World: A Biography  by Leonard Mosley (1985) and especially  Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince  (1993) should be avoided if you are interested in reality. The first biography of Walt published in 1959,  The Story of Walt Disney , by his daughter Diane Disney Miller, “as told to Pete Martin” (who wrote most of the book), is obviously one-sided, but contains many insights into the man from one who knew him well.  Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire , also by Bob Thomas (1998), is a much-deserved biography of Roy. In researching this article, we found  Walt Disney: A Bio-Bibliography , by Kathy Jackson (1993), extremely helpful, with complete lists of every film and a very useful chronology. Among the thousands of other books about Walt and his projects, we especially enjoyed  Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers  by Harrison “Buzz” Price (2004), by the consultant who selected the Anaheim site for Disneyland and worked closely with Walt for years. For histories of each film and the parks, we suggest a search of any online bookselling sight. There are also many video collections available on those sites.

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Walt Disney's Rocky Road to Success

Disney had a strained relationship with his father

Born in Chicago in 1901 and raised in Missouri, Disney was the fourth son among five siblings. His father, Elias, was a domineering figure who was allegedly abusive as he tried, unsuccessfully, to make ends meet for the family. To escape from his stressful circumstances, Young Disney found solace in drawing. Still, he'd watch his older brothers, one by one, runoff from home to escape their father, and soon he'd follow suit by lying about his age to become an ambulance driver during World War I. (Years later when his father died, Disney reportedly refused to cut a business trip short and therefore missed his dad's funeral.)

READ MORE: Is Walt Disney's Body Frozen?

His first cartoon business went bankrupt

When he returned home from war, Disney became an apprentice at a Kansas City commercial art studio. Itching to set off on his own, he and his older brother Roy launched their own cartoon business, Laugh-O-Gram Studios, in 1920, but the company went bankrupt a couple of years later.

With the loss of his first business, Disney packed his bags, and with just $40 to his name, took off to Los Angeles to try his hand at acting. But he failed at that, too. Still, there was a silver lining to his move. Noticing there weren't any animations studios in California, Disney convinced Roy to join him out West so they could set up shop. Not so long after, Disney found his first major success with the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Disney's character Oswald was plenty lucky, becoming a huge star in one-reel animation, but Disney himself would find his luck had run out. Traveling to New York to renegotiate his contract, he discovered that his producer had taken his team of animators from under him and that he no longer had any legal rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

But instead of fighting the loss or plotting his revenge, Disney decided to walk away and start over again. It was on the train ride back to California that he created Mickey Mouse.

READ MORE: Walt Disney Building Disneyland: 8 Photos of the Theme Park Coming to Life

Disney had a nervous breakdown after creating Mickey Mouse

After years of eating beans and driving up his debts, Disney finally brought Mickey Mouse to life on film starting in the late 1920s and earned his way back to the top of his industry. But it wasn't easy. Bankers rejected the concept of his famous mouse over 300 times before one said yes.

Even with the success of Mickey Mouse, Disney still faced challenges in keeping his business afloat. Not only was he overworked, but tensions with his employer — who eventually stole his longtime and best animator from him — led to Disney having a nervous breakdown.

After taking some time off with his wife to recuperate, Disney returned with a bold new idea: He would develop a full-length animation feature, which he'd call Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). It would become a huge success at the box office, yet the films that followed — Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942) — would end up being duds.

His animators went on strike during World War II

If Disney didn't already have enough burdens to shoulder, more were on the way. His animators went on strike at the start of World War II and contributed to his mounting debt that ran upwards of $4 million dollars. After the war was over, his company was slow to rebuild, but during this time, Disney learned to diversify his business by turning to television, despite pressures from the film studios to stay on the big screen.

His gamble paid off. With the success of TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club and Davy Crockett , Disney was able to harness enough capital to launch his biggest venture yet: Disneyland.

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The opening of Disneyland was called 'Black Sunday'

Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, in Anaheim, California. Like most of Disney's enterprises, it got off to a rocky start. Forged tickets were bringing more visitors than anticipated, adding to a line that trailed seven miles long. With temps soaring up to 100 degrees, the new asphalt was melting women's high heels, drinking fountains were defunct (thanks to a plumber's strike) and some of the rides malfunctioned. Critics blasted the opening of Disneyland, calling it "Black Sunday."

But as always, Disney's tenacity and perseverance turned his latest endeavor around. Disneyland became a colossal success, clearing out his financial debts, and to this day, operates as an integral part of his business empire.

Commenting on the benefits of failure, Disney once said: "All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all the troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."

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Walt Disney Biography

Early Life – Walt Disney

Walt Disney was born on 5 December 1901, in Chicago. His parents were of German/English and Irish descent. As a child, the Disney family moved between Marceline in Missouri, Kansas City and back to Chicago. The young Walt Disney developed an interest in art and took lessons at the Kansas City Institute and later Chicago Art Institute. He became the cartoonist for the school magazine.

When America joined the First World War, Walt dropped out of school and tried to enlist in the army. He was rejected for being underage, but he was later able to join in the Red Cross and in late 1918 was sent to France to drive an ambulance.

In 1919, he moved back to Kansas City where he got a series of jobs, before finding employment in his area of greatest interest – the film industry. It was working for the Kansas City Film Ad company that he gained the opportunity to begin working in the relatively new field of animation. Walt used his talent as a cartoonist to start his first work.

The success of his early cartoons enabled him to set up his own studio called Laugh-O-Gram. However, the popularity of his cartoons was not matched by his ability to run a profitable business. With high labour costs, the firm went bankrupt. After his first failure, he decided to move to Hollywood, California which was home to the growing film industry in America. This ability to overcome adversity was a standard feature of Disney’s career.

“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

– The Story of Walt Disney (1957)

With his brother, Roy, Walt set up another company and sought to find a distributor for his new film – Alice Comedies – based on the adventures of Alice in Wonderland.

Mickey Mouse

In 1927, the Disney studio was involved in the successful production of ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’, distributed by Universal Pictures. However, with Universal Pictures controlling the rights to ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’, Walt was not able to profit from this success. He rejected an offer from Universal and went back to working on his own.

The Mickey Mouse cartoons with soundtracks became very popular and cemented the growing reputation and strength of Disney Productions. The skill of Walt Disney was to give his cartoons believable real-life characteristics. They were skillfully depicted and captured the imagination of the audience through his pioneering use of uplifting stories and moral characteristics.

In 1932, he received his first Academy Award for the Best Short Subject: Cartoons for the three coloured ‘Flowers and Trees’ He also won a special Academy Award for Mickey Mouse.

In 1933, he developed his most successful cartoon of all time ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (1933) with the famous song ‘Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”

In 1924, Walt Disney began his most ambitious project to date. He wished to make a full length animated feature film of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Many expected it to be a commercial failure. But, using new techniques of filming, the production was met with glowing reviews. It took nearly three years to film – coming out in 1937 after Disney had run out of money. But, the movie’s strong critical reception, made it the most successful film of 1938, earning $8 million on its first release. The film had very high production values but also captured the essence of a fairy tale on film for the first time. Walt Disney would later write that he never produced films for the critic, but the general public. Replying to criticism that his productions were somewhat corny, he replied:

“All right. I’m corny. But I think there’s just about a-hundred-and-forty-million people in this country that are just as corny as I am.” – Walt Disney

Disney always had a great ability to know what the public loved to see.

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the studio produced several other successful animations, such as ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Bambi’ and ‘The Wind in the Willows’. After America’s entry into the Second World War in 1941, this ‘golden age’ of animation faded and the studio struggled as it made unprofitable propaganda films.

Political and religious views

In 1941, Disney also had to deal with a major strike by his writers and animators. This strike left a strong impression on Disney. He would later become a leading member of the anti-Communist organisation ‘Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals’ (the right-wing organisation was also considered to be anti-semitic.) At one point, he (unsuccessfully) tried to brand his labour union organisers as Communist agitators.

However, in the 1950s, Disney distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. However, by associating with the organisation, he was often associated with the anti-labour and anti-semitic philosophy it expressed. Disney was a Republican, though was not particularly involved in politics. It is often asked whether Walt Disney was anti-semitic.

His biographer, Neal Gabler stated:

“…And though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not anti-semitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were anti-semitic, and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life.”

Walt Disney believed in the benefits of a religious approach to life, though he never went to church and disliked sanctimonious teachers.

“I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person’s whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.”

Ch. 15: Walt Lives!, p. 379

He respected other religions and retained a firm faith in God.

Post-war success

During the war, there was much less demand for cartoon animation. It took until the late 1940s, for Disney to recover some of its lustre and success. Disney finished production of Cinderella and also Peter Pan (which had been shelved during the war) In the 1950s, Walt Disney Productions also began expanding its operations into popular action films. They produced several successful films, such as ‘Treasure Island’ (1950), ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1954) and ‘Pollyanna’ (1960)

In another innovation, the studio created one of the first specifically children’s shows – The Mickey Mouse Club. Walt Disney even returned to the studio to provide the voice. In the 1960s, the Disney Empire continued to successfully expand. In 1964, they produced their most successful ever film ‘Mary Poppins.’

In the late 1940s, Walt Disney began building up plans for a massive Theme Park. Walt Disney wished the Theme Park to be like nothing ever created on earth. In particular, he wanted it to be a magical world for children and surrounded by a train. Disney had a great love of trains since his childhood when he regularly saw trains pass near his home. It was characteristic of Walt Disney that he was willing to take risks in trying something new.

“Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually, it implies some risk, especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.”

– The Disney Way Fieldbook (2000) by Bill Capodagli

After several years in the planning and building, Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955. Disney spoke at the address.

“To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past …. and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America … with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

The success of Disneyland encouraged Walt to consider another park in Orlando, Florida. In 1965, another theme park was planned.

Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966. He had been a chain smoker all his life. An internet myth suggested Walt Disney had his body cryonically frozen, but this is untrue. It seems to have been spread by his employers, looking for one last joke at the expense of their boss.

After his death, his brother Roy returned to lead The Disney Company, but the company missed the direction and genius of Walt Disney. The 1970s were a relatively fallow period for the company, before a renaissance in the 1980s, with a new generation of films, such as ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988) and ‘The Lion King’ (1994)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Walt Disney”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 8th August 2014. Last updated 1st March 2019.

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Walt Disney

• Born December 5 , 1901 · Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Died December 15 , 1966 · Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from lung cancer)
• Birth name Walter Elias Disney
• Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
• Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney , a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks . The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however. The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney , who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity. Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz , had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks . While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928) , and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas. In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932) , was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933) , was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular. In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940) , Dumbo (1941) , and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now. In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950) , Alice in Wonderland (1951) , and Peter Pan (1953) . In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950) . These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955) , Sleeping Beauty (1959) , and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) . In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957) . To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964) , which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida. He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tommy Peter
• Spouse Lillian Disney (July 13, 1925 - December 15, 1966) (his death, 2 children)
• Children Diane Disney
• Parents Flora Disney Elias Disney
• Relatives Robert Disney (Aunt or Uncle) Christopher Disney Miller (Grandchild) Tamara Scheer (Grandchild) Walter Elias Disney Miller (Grandchild) Joanna Miller (Grandchild) Ronald Miller (Grandchild) Abigail Disney (Niece or Nephew) Roy P. Disney (Niece or Nephew) Tim Disney (Niece or Nephew) Marjorie Sewell (Niece or Nephew) Roy O. Disney (Sibling) Herbert Disney (Sibling) Ruth Disney (Sibling) Raymond Disney (Sibling) Roy Edward Disney (Niece or Nephew) Victoria Brown (Grandchild) Jennifer Miller-Goff (Grandchild)
• Happy endings on all pictures produced by himself (also posthumous and actual works).
• Main characters using big white gloves (Example: Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Peter Pete, Jiminy Cricket, etc.)
• His moustache
• Animated Films
• Distinctive, deep voice
• Personally disliked Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953) because of the lack of "heart" and "warmth" in their main characters. Was very sad about the unfavorable reception of Fantasia (1940) as he was proud of the film. Ironically, the first re-issue of Fantasia (1940) after his death was the first time it turned a profit.
• Reports surfaced that shortly after his death, Disney Company executive board members were shown a short film that Disney had made before his death, where he addressed the board members by name, telling each of them what was expected of them. The film ended with Disney saying, "I'll be seeing you."
• Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, an Army draft notice, addressed to Mr. Donald Duck, was delivered to the Disney studios.
• Has a record of 59 Oscar-nominations.
• Before his 35th birthday, his brother Roy encouraged employees to throw the boss a surprise party. Two of the animators thought it would be hilarious to make a short movie of Mickey and Minnie Mouse "consummating their relationship." When Disney saw the animation at the party, he feigned laughter and playfully asked who made the film. As soon as the two animators came forward, he fired them on the spot and left.
• I don't make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.
• I'd rather entertain and hope that people learn, than teach and hope that people are entertained.
• I'm not interested in pleasing the critics. I'll take my chances pleasing the audiences.
• I hope we'll never lose sight of one thing--that it was all started by a mouse.
• I happen to be an inquisitive guy and when I see things I don't like, I start thinking why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them.
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - $5,166 /week
• Swiss Family Robinson (1960) - $3,000 /week

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What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn from Walt Disney

We can all learn from Walt Disney, the entrepreneur.

Hulton Deutsch/Getty Images 

• Entrepreneurship
• Small Business
• Online Business
• Home Business
• Operations & Success

Daniel Richards is an expert in entrepreneurship, business finance, and business strategy. 

Walt Disney is famous for creating one of the most recognized brands in the world, Disney , but few know as much about the man behind the Magic Kingdom, not to mention the hundreds of animated cartoons, countless feature films and endless toys that bear his name.

An influential innovator and entrepreneur in the mid 20th century, Walt Disney went from sketching a rabbit (yes, a rabbit) to running a multi-billion dollar empire.

Walt Disney's Early Years

Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago and was an avid artist from an early age. At 16, he enlisted in the Red Cross and served in World War I, driving an ambulance that he customized with his own cartoon drawings. Upon his return, he worked as an advertising cartoonist in Kansas City, Mo.

Disney then decided to move to California, where he began working with his brother, Roy. Walt handled the creative aspects of the partnership, while Roy focused on the business and financial end. The Disney brothers borrowed a little money, set up a studio in their uncle's garage, and made some noise with a series of black-and-white cartoons featuring a rabbit named Oswald, which was produced for Universal Studios. When Walt asked Universal for a raise, however, they balked. Since the studio retained the rights to the character, Disney quit drawing Oswald after 1928, although the series continued.

Walt Disney's Entrepreneurial Spirit

Disney went back to the drawing board, producing a silent cartoon called Plane Crazy that featured a new character named Mickey Mouse. But the advent of sound changed everything in Hollywood. To capitalize on the craze for "talkies," Disney delayed Plane Crazy and instead produced a second Mickey Mouse cartoon, this one with sound. Steamboat Willie , released in 1928, was the first animated film to feature synchronized sound. Despite the film's international success, Walt and Roy still needed cash, so they licensed Mickey Mouse's image for a fee of $300, to be used on a tablet of paper aimed at children.

Disney became fixated on using the newest technology for his films. He obtained exclusive rights to use Technicolor in animated films for two years, winning his first Academy Award in 1932 for the animated short Flowers and Trees , which was also the first full-color cartoon.

He would win 26 Oscars over the course of his career, the most awards given to any individual. During the next few years, Goofy, Donald Duck, and several other memorable characters joined Mickey. But Disney believed the future of the company was in feature-length films and released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. It was the first feature-length animated movie to be produced in Technicolor and cost nearly $1.5 million to make, an unheard of amount in Depression-era America.

Growth of the Company

Disney recognized his strength was in story design, not actually animating, and by the time the brothers built a studio in Burbank, Calif., they employed more than 1,000 people, including animators. Building on the success of Snow White , Disney released Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940, Dumbo in 1941, and Bambi in 1942. All became standout hits as Disney the entrepreneur grew into his role as a business owner.

But the late 1930s and early 1940s were tough times for American businesses. Disney made it through the Great Depression and World War II by dedicating much of his new studio to producing health, education, and propaganda films for the U.S. government. It also produced short comedies aimed at boosting national morale. To raise additional money, Disney took his operation public in 1940.

The company did not produce any new feature films during World War II, but in 1944 it did re-release Snow White into theaters, bringing in a significant amount of revenue for that year. This would begin a common strategy of re-releasing films about every 10 years, and later regulating the availability of Disney films on VHS and DVD. The next big animated film came in 1950, with the release of Cinderella .

Diversification

As the company grew, Disney diversified production beyond cartoons and animated movies. Treasure Island , released in 1950, was the studio’s first live-action film, and the company formed Buena Vista Distribution a few years later. With its own in-house distribution company, Disney could continue to churn out movies while significantly saving on distribution costs. Live-action hits such as Swiss Family Robinson in 1960 and Mary Poppins in 1964 followed.

Disney's TV debut came around the same time as Treasure Island , with the special One Hour in Wonderland . The popular Mickey Mouse Club debuted as a TV series in 1955.

But it was another TV program that began in 1954, called Disneyland , that showed Walt Disney had even bigger plans for the company. A few years earlier, Disney established WED Enterprises as a separate company and began drawing up plans for Disneyland, a giant theme park. Because the park was technically part of a separate corporation, Disney was able to develop it in secret, worrying about how shareholders would react to knowledge of the project's details. Disneyland opened in 1955 as a theme park unlike any other the world had seen.

Disney employed a unique strategy to make the theme park quickly successful. He solicited several corporate sponsorships to subsidize costs and outsourced food and merchandise within the park. Once Disneyland was earning revenue, the company repurchased those rights and kept the revenue internally. Plans for a second park, which ultimately became Walt Disney World, began with the acquisition of land in Florida in the 1960s. This second park would contain Disney's vision of what the future urban community would look like; he called it the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow," now commonly known as Epcot Center.

The Dream Lives On

Walt Disney died in 1966, five years before Disney World opened in Orlando, Fla., and 16 years before Epcot Center opened in 1981. Time Magazine named Disney one of the most important people of the 20th century in its Time 100 . In the profile, the magazine reveals a darker, unhappy side of the man who brought happiness to so many people.

But it's unfair to say that Walt Disney lost perspective during his ride to entrepreneurial success. He's cited frequently as saying, "I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing, that it was started by a mouse."

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Walt Disney

Walt Disney   Biography

Walter Elías Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, and died in Burbank, California, on December 15, 1966. Walter was a director, producer, animator, cartoonist and screenwriter from the United States, winner of the Oscar Award 22 times, plus 4 honorary awards of the Academy, and of the Emmy in 7 opportunities .

Walt Disney is known for his famous children’s characters such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck , and for founding one of the most important animations, film, and entertainment companies, Walt Disney Productions.

Walt Disney is the son of Elias Disney, a farmer of Irish ascendancy who had come from Canada, and Flora Call, a school teacher. Walt was the fourth of five children. When he was five years old, the family moved to Marceline, Missouri, where Walt spent a happy childhood drawing and playing with his sister Ruth. However, in 1909, his father became ill with typhoid fever and was unable to work in the field, so he had to sell the farm and go to Kansas City to work as a delivery boy for the Kansas City Star, with the help of his children Walt and Roy. Due to this work, Walt graduated from the Benton Grammar School in 1911. Then he did several jobs while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and at McKinley High School, where he was a school newspaper cartoonist.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” Walt Disney

During the First World War, Walt Disney wanted to imitate his brother, who was in the Navy, and he appeared in the army after leaving the Institute but was not admitted because of his age. Preventing the same thing happening, he presented himself to the Red Cross lying about his age, and this organization sent him to Europe when Germany had already signed the armistice. In Germany, he drove ambulances in which he drew and took some officers from one place to another until in 1919 he returned to America, to Kansas City.

While in Kansas City and thanks to his brother Roy, he got a job where he had to create ads for magazines, cinemas, and newspapers. In this job, he met Ubbe Iwerks, with whom he founded an advertising company in 1920, which they had to leave shortly afterward because of the lack of clients. Later, they both were hired at Kansas City Films Ad, where they learned basic animation techniques.

After studying anatomy and physics, and experimenting with his work team, Walt Disney started his own studio called Laugh-O-Gram Films. In it, he dedicated himself to producing animated short stories of popular stories , but that cost them more than they earned. This is why his studio went bankrupt in 1923 and Disney traveled to Hollywood in search of opportunities.

In Hollywood after knocking on doors looking for an opportunity without success , so he decided to send the last short film he had produced in his previous studio, Alice’s Wonderland , to the distributor Margaret Winkler, who hired him to make more films. To do this, Walt set up a studio in his uncle’s garage and entrusted his brother Roy with the financial issues , founding the Disney Brother’s Studio, which would be the beginning of Walt Disney Productions.

After successfully exhibiting nine Alice films, Disney created Oswald, a character whose show, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, quickly triumphed when it was distributed by Universal Pictures. Before this, the husband of Margaret Winkler asked Disney to continue working on this new series for a lower salary, and that it did not really matter if he refused because he and Universal Studios had the rights of the character. Walt Disney refused and preferred to create a new character, Mickey Mouse . This one appeared for the first time in 1928, but in its beginnings, it did not attract much attention . It was not until the implementation of sound that became a resounding success, having the voice of Walt Disney himself.

After 1930, there were already different products of Mickey Mouse, and several personalities had admitted their sympathy for the character, among which were politicians such as Jorge V, Roosevelt, and Mussolini. By 1935, all Disney short films already had sound and color image.

“Ask yourself if what you’re doing today will get you where you want to go tomorrow.” Walt Disney

After two years of production, from 1935 to 1937, Snow White was released, managing to raise more than six times the enormous sum that the production had cost. With the income, Disney opened some studios in Burbank and hired more employees. However, in 1941 several workers called a strike to complain about the poor salary and the lack of prominence they had in the credits. Disney, which refused to recognize the demands at the beginning, had to agree at the end because of the bad image that the strike was having on his name and his company.

In the forties, the company was economically affected by the World War II, but he was able to recover thanks to the adaptation he made of the market, which now asked for different formats than the short film. By the 50s, Disney was introduced in the market of the television and the action movies. In 1955, the Disneyland amusement park was completed. Already by the 1960’s, Walt Disney’s company was considered to be the most important family training company in the world and after receiving 26 Oscar Awards for his productions, 10 feature films, 12 short films and 4 honorary awards, one of them for having created Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, due to cardiorespiratory arrest.

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Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero Biography

Fernando Botero Angulo (April 19, 1932 – September 15, 2023) was a sculptor, painter, muralist, and draftsman, hailing from Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia. He was a Colombian artist known and celebrated for infusing a substantial volume to human and animal figures in his works.

Early Years and Beginnings

Fernando Botero was born into an affluent Paisa family , composed of his parents, David Botero and Flora Angulo, along with his older brother Juan David, who was four years his senior, and his younger brother, Rodrigo, who would be born four years after Fernando, in the same year that their father passed away. In 1938, he enrolled in primary school at the Ateneo Antioqueño and later entered the Bolivariana to continue his high school education. However, he was expelled from the institution due to an article he published in the newspaper El Colombiano about Picasso , as well as his drawings that were considered obscene. As a result, he graduated from high school at the Liceo of the University of Antioquia in 1950.

In parallel to his studies, Fernando attended a bullfighting school in La Macarena at the request of one of his uncles. However, due to an issue related to bullfighting, Botero left the bullring and embarked on a journey into painting. In 1948, he held his first exhibition in Medellín. Two years later, he traveled to Bogotá where he had two more exhibitions and had the opportunity to meet some intellectuals of the time. He then stayed at Isolina García’s boarding house in Tolú, which he paid for by painting a mural. Once again in Bogotá, he won the second prize at the IX National Artists Salon with his oil painting “Facing the Sea” .

“Ephemeral art is a lesser form of expression that cannot be compared to the concept of art conceived with the desire for perpetuity. What many people fail to understand is that Picasso is a traditional artist”- Fernando Botero

Due to the prize from the IX Salon and the sale of several of his works, Fernando Botero traveled to Spain in 1952 to enroll at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. There, he lived by selling drawings and paintings in the vicinity of the Prado Museum. In 1953, he went to Paris with filmmaker Ricardo Irrigarri, and later, they both traveled to Florence. Here, he entered the Academy of San Marco, where he was heavily influenced by Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca, Titian, and Paolo Uccello.

Career and Personal Life

In 1955, Botero returned to Colombia to hold an exhibition featuring several of his works created during his time in Europe, but it was met with a lukewarm reception from the public.

Woman With a Mirror / Foto:Luis García (Zaqarbal) / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Spain (CC BY-SA 3.0 ES)

In 1956, he married Gloria Zea, with whom he would later have three children: Fernando, Juan Carlos, and Lina. The couple traveled to Mexico City, where Fernando Botero was eager to see the works of Mexican muralists, but this experience left him disillusioned. Consequently, he began searching for his own artistic style, drawing influence from both the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo and the Colombian artist Alejandro Obregón . In this quest, he started experimenting with volume, initially in still lifes, and gradually extending this approach to other elements.

In 1957, he successfully exhibited in New York, showcasing his new artistic sensibility. The following year, he returned to Bogotá, where he was appointed as a professor at the School of Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia . He presented his work “La Camera Degli Sposi” at the X Colombian Artists Salon , winning the first prize and becoming the country’s most prominent painter. This piece sparked some controversy as it was initially censored for being almost a parody of Andrea Mantegna’s “La Cámara de los Esposos”. However, it was later reinstated in the exhibition on the advice of Marta Traba. Subsequently, Fernando Botero exhibited his works in various spaces in the United States, where a businessman from Chicago purchased “La Camera Degli Sposi” .

“Fernando Botero and his works are the finest ambassadors of our country in this land of navigators and discoverers, of poets and fado singers”- Juan Manuel Santos

In 1960, Botero separated from Gloria Zea and traveled to New York. He led a modest life here as the New York art scene was primarily inclined towards abstract expressionism. Consequently, Botero was influenced by artists like Pollock, which led him to experiment with color, brushwork, and format, to the point of nearly abandoning his distinctive style characterized by the manipulation of volume. Aware of this, Botero returned to his usual style of flat colors and figurative representations.

Starting in 1962, he began a series of exhibitions in both Europe and the United States, as well as in Colombia. By 1970, the year his son Pedro was born to his second wife, Cecilia Zambrano, Fernando Botero had already become the world’s most sought-after sculptor. However, in 1974, his son Pedro tragically died in a traffic accident, leading to his second divorce and leaving significant marks on his artistic endeavors.

In 1978, the Colombian painter married Sophia Vari , a renowned Greek artist with whom he shared a significant part of his life, until sadly, she passed away in May 2023.

Since 1983, Fernando Botero has been exhibiting his works and donating them to various cities around the world. As a result, we can find his pieces in the streets of Medellín, Barcelona, Oviedo, Singapore, and Madrid, among others. In 2008, the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Mexico conferred upon him an honorary Doctorate.

Renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero, died on September 15, 2023 , in Monaco at the age of 91 due to pneumonia . His artistic legacy will endure forever. In his hometown, seven days of mourning were declared.

Pedrito a Caballo, Fernando Botero (1975).

Top 10 Famous works by Fernando Botero

Some of the most recognized works by Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero:

• “Pedrito on Horseback” / “Pedrito a Caballo” (1974): This is an oil painting on canvas measuring 194.5 cm x 150.5 cm. For Botero, this work is his masterpiece and a refuge during a personal tragedy. The child depicted is Pedro, his son from his second marriage, who tragically passed away in an accident when he was young.
• “Mona Lisa at 12 Years Old” / “Mona lisa a los 12 años” (1978): This piece stands out as a unique version of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, the Mona Lisa . Painted in oil on canvas and measuring 183 cm x 166 cm, Botero incorporates his characteristic style of voluptuous and rounded figures into this work, which has become one of his most distinctive pieces.
• “Woman’s Torso” / “Torso de Mujer” (1986): It is a majestic bronze sculpture that rises to an impressive height of approximately 2.48 meters. It is often affectionately referred to as “La Gorda” (“The Fat One”). This artwork finds its home in Parque de Berrío, located in the captivating city of Medellín.
• “Woman with Mirror” / “Mujer con Espejo” (1987): An imposing bronze sculpture weighing 1000 kg. It is located in Plaza de Colón, in the heart of Madrid, Spain. The artwork captivates the gaze with the portrayal of a woman peacefully lying face down on the ground, holding a mirror in her hands. Her expression reflects deep introspection and enigmatic melancholy.
• “The Orchestra” / “La Orquesta” (1991): In this oil on canvas artwork, measuring 200 cm x 172 cm, Botero presents a band of musicians with a singer, all immersed in a spirit of celebration. The artist aims to convey a sense of harmony and joy through his portrayal.
• “Woman Smoking” / “Mujer Fumando” (1994): It is a creation executed in watercolor, spanning dimensions of 122 cm x 99 cm. In this work, Maestro Botero skillfully captures the essence of a woman elegantly holding a cigarette between her fingers. His meticulous focus on voluptuous forms, posture, and the serene expression of the figure masterfully combine to emphasize the sensuality and profound intimacy of the moment captured in the artwork.
• “Man on Horseback” / “Hombre a Caballo” (1996): This bronze sculpture is one of the most iconic works in the artist’s career. It depicts a rider in a majestic and proud posture. Over the years, this imposing work has been exhibited in multiple cities around the world, solidifying its place as a prominent piece in the sculptor’s body of work.
• “The Horse” / “El Caballo” (1997): This iconic sculpture showcases a horse of majestic presence and a distinctive rounded form, sculpted in bronze and measuring approximately 3 meters in height. This masterpiece reflects Botero’s profound passion for horses while also serving as a powerful representation of the mythical Trojan Horse.
• “The Death of Pablo Escobar” / “La muerte de Pablo Escobar” (1999): This artwork, created using the oil on canvas technique, has dimensions of 58 cm x 38 cm. While not considered a masterpiece, this artistic piece represents one of the most significant moments in Colombia’s history. Fernando Botero captures, in his distinctive style, the moment of the death of the drug lord Pablo Escobar , addressing issues related to violence and criminality that have marked the country’s history. An interesting detail is that, although Pablo Escobar admired Fernando Botero’s art, it cannot be said that the admiration was mutual. The painter created two works depicting the death of the drug trafficker.
• “Boterosutra Series” / “Serie Boterosutra” (2011): This work by Botero is part of an erotic art collection called Boterosutra , marking a milestone in the history of Colombian art as the first artistic representation of sexual intimacy between lovers. This series comprises around 70 small-sized pieces created using various techniques, including colored drawings, watercolors, brushstrokes, and also black and white, all of which constitute one of the most contemporary works by the painter.

Gustave Courbet

Biography of Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet, Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a painter. Courbet was born in the French town of Ornans. His parents and family were landowners in Ornans. Courbet was influenced by his parents to study law, but his true passion was drawing. Therefore, while studying law, he began drawing under the tutelage of a student named Flajoulot. When he turned 20, he withdrew from his law studies and moved to Paris to complete his artistic training with the teachings of Steuben, Bonvin, and Père Baud, a student of Gros. There he became interested in the works of Chardin, the Le Nain brothers, and the Spanish painters Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo, and Velázquez.

Based in Paris since 1839, he delved into the Realist painting trend of the 19th century. He studied at the Swiss Academy and extensively analyzed the works of some artists from the Flemish, Venetian, and Dutch schools of the 16th and 17th centuries. He achieved artistic maturity when he discovered the works of Rembrandt on a trip he took to the Netherlands in 1847. From then on, works such as L’après diner a Ornans (1849), El entierro en Ornans (1849) or Los paisanos de Flagey volviendo del campo (1850) emerged, where the characters are represented with all their vulgarity or a compromising sensuality.

Courbet’s works caused a stir and controversy because the public was faced with a new realistic vision of everyday events. Additionally, his style as a revolutionary and provocative man, follower of the anarchist philosophy of Proudhon, and participant in the 1871 Paris Commune, led to his imprisonment for six months, until he sought refuge in Switzerland in 1873. All of this scandalized the public, who often criticized him but also admired him. His self-portraits were based on Romanticism. In 1846, he wrote a manifesto against Romantic and neoclassical tendencies with Bouchon. Courbet’s realism was a protest against the sterile academic painting and exotic motifs of Romanticism. He focused on the revolutionary environments of the 19th century.

He traveled to Holland to study the works of Hals and Rembrandt and participated indirectly in the military uprising. During this period, two of his most important realist works were created: The Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers, this work was lost due to World War II. Courbet’s paintings elicited all types of comments due to their realistic portrayal of the lives of ordinary people. After the coup d’etat of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in 1852, the painter returned to his hometown.

While there, Courbet opened his own exhibition titled “Realism.” It was born as a protest against the rejection of his works at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1855. The central work was the enormous painting: “The Painter’s Studio” (1855). It was presented as a “realistic allegory.” Later, other figure and portrait paintings emerged: “Ladies by the Seine” (1857), the self-portrait “The Cellist” (1849) and “The Beautiful Irishwoman” (1866). The artist also created works related to the sea, landscapes of forests and mountains with their fauna, flowers and still lifes.

Courbet became a representative of the emerging realism of the time. Courbet was described as a conceited man, who claimed to be the most handsome and seductive of humans, due to his Assyrian profile, he boasted of his ability to illuminate new forms of truth and beauty to end the outdated trends of Paris. For this reason, we can understand why he was such a controversial painter and was often hated. Nevertheless, the magnificent works that this painter conceived during his life could not be denied.

Let’s return to The Burial at Ornans (1849), it is his work of greatest dimensions and complexity, he wanted to bring a huge fragment of rural reality from his land to the refined environment of Paris. This composition can be seen as disordered and with little hierarchy. Courbet manages to make the viewer sit at the same level as the villagers of Ornans and symbolically attend the funeral of a humble peasant. In addition, the diversity of individual expressions tries to make a critical description and a study of the social categories of a population. This work is admired for its formal and coloristic stylization, and its horizontal composition.

Another great work of this French painter is Bonjour, monsieur Courbet (1854). The painting shows in great detail the local environment, as well as the light and characters, reflecting a real event with great objectivity. This painting has become a kind of standard-bearer of realistic art for many artists in recent decades. Courbet broke the mold with the work Señoritas a orillas del Sena (1857), because the Parisian public was used to paintings on mythological or historical themes; on the contrary, in Courbet’s canvas, the two women represented in showy clothes are two prostitutes resting by the river.

Also impressive was the way it was painted, in opposition to the tastes and rules of the time; the thick brushstrokes, the color tones and the disregard for the canons of beauty. In that work both the composition and the color, want to reflect reality, each of the elements reflect the same importance, transmitting a certain sense of imperceptible objectivity. Courbet showed total uninhibitedness in front of the female sex. A reflection of this is the work The Origin of the World (1866), was made by order of Bey, this was the most transgressive painting of the 19th century.

Other paintings by this French painter include: Self-Portrait with Black Dog (1842), The Desperate Man (1845), The Meeting (1854), The Painter’s Studio (1855), Woman with Parrot (1866), The Trout (1871) among others. These are just a few of the many works that this artist left for posterity and for future generations interested in realistic art. Courbet’s radical stance, reflected in the realm of politics, specifically with the Paris Commune, led to him being accused of participating in the demolition of the Vendôme Column. He had to go into exile in 1875 in Switzerland, where he died two years later in solitude and poverty.

Anime history

Japanese anime or animation emerged at the beginning of the 20th century influenced by animation and the world of cinema developed in the United States, later it was modified and claimed Japanese culture. The anime-style as we know it began to develop in the late 1950s, when the production company Toei Studios and the different series based on short sleeves or cartoons, such as Tetsuwan Atomu, also known as Astro Boy. From the 1980s and 1990s, the anime became popular, appearing large cult series such as Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, Detective Conan, Rurouni Kenshin, and Cowboy Bebop, among others. In the new millennium, the Japanese animated industry has been booming, providing new content every season based on successful manga, light novels, video games, and music.

The earliest surviving Japanese animated short made for cinemas, produced in 1917

The first Japanese animations were small short films developed at the end of the 1910s, largely inspired by American animation, in these, folk and comic themes were addressed. The first short film was Namakura Gatana by Junichi Kouchi, it was two minutes long, the story told the story of a man with his katana (Japanese sword or saber) . In the following decade, the duration of the short films was extended to ten or fifteen minutes, in which typical oriental tales were represented. Among the pioneer artists of this era are Oten Shimokawa, Junichi Kouchi, Seitaro Kitayama and Sanae Yamamoto; by this time the short film Obasuteyama (The Mountain Where Old Women Are Abandoned) by Yamamoto was published.

During the 30s and 40s, the Japanese animated industry went through a series of changes, the stories were neglected and western stories were taken into account. A short time later the anime Norakuro (1934) of Mituyo Seo, one of the first animations based on a manga. Since then this became a frequent practice. By the end of the 1930s, World War II broke out, a warlike confrontation in which Japan was involved as a member of the Axis powers, at which time the animations became war propaganda. At the end of the war, the country was occupied by the allied powers led by the United States, which seriously affected the country that was going through a deep economic crisis.

Industry development and international boom

In the course of the crisis, the manga and anime industry became popular in the country, thus establishing the basis for the development of the own animated style that occurred around the middle of the 20th century. It was around this time that Toei Studios, an animation film producer, emerged as one of the key figures in the history of anime. This company was a pioneer in the animation of Japan, provided various productions that allowed the advancement of animation in the country. The company’s first animation was Koneko no rakugaki, a short thirteen-minute film published in 1957. The following decade the company grew by focusing on the development of feature films. Other companies such as Mushi Pro, a producer that made the animation of Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) by Osamu Tezuka, mangaka and animator, one of the most relevant artists of the Japanese animated industry of the 20th century.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, the anime of robots (mecha) became popular appearing iconic series such as Tetsujin 28-gō and Mazinger Z or Gundam, for this same period the popular Doraemon series (1973), based on the homonymous anime, began to air Fujiko Fujio, a series that tells the story of a cosmic robot cat that has attached to its body a bag from which it subtracts various artifacts which are used in the adventures of Doraemon and his human friend Nobita. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese animation boomed internationally, which led to many series beginning to dub into English and Spanish, in these years cult series such as Dragon Ball, based on the manga of Akira Toriyama. Saint Seiya also known as The Knights of the Zodiac, Captain Tsubasa, exported as Super champions; Rurouni Kenshin, known in the west as Samurai X, Neon Genesis Evangelion of Hideaki Anno; Pokémon, Ranma ½, and Sakura Card Captor, among others.

In 2000, the already booming anime is largely massified by the acceptance and the huge fan base that it had acquired at the time, these followers known as otakus, boosted the Japanese animated industry. Since then there have been numerous animated productions that have been distributed worldwide, among the most prominent series of the new millennium are One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Yu-Gi-Oh, Rozen Maiden, Kuroshitsuji, and Death Note, all are ace based on sleeves that when becoming successful, allowed the development of the animated series.

At present, any manga that has a large number of followers is very likely to have adapted in an animated series, such as Hunter x Hunter, Pandora Hearts, Ao no Exorcist, Mirai Nikki, Bakuman and Shingeki no Kyojin, among many others, light novels have been adapted that have become popular as Durarara!!, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Sword Art Online, and My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, among others. In recent years, the Yaoi and Yuri genres have been popularized in which romantic relationships between people of the same sex are addressed, among these series it is possible to rescue Junjō Romantica, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, No. 6, Aoi Hana, Sasameki Koto and Yagate Kimi ni Naru

At present, the Japanese animated industry produces numerous series, ova, and films per year, becoming one of the strongest industries in the world of animation. Among the most prominent people in this industry is Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Studio Ghibli, a studio where films such as My Neighbor Totoro, The Incredible Vagabond Castle, The Journey of Chihiro, and Ponyo, among others, likewise, stand out in the present, artist Makoto Shinkai, creator of 5 centimeters per second, Hoshi Wo Ou Kodomo, Kotonoha no Niwa and Kimi no Na Wa.

John Ruskin

John Ruskin Biography

John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) writer, painter, art critic, and reformer. He was born in London, England. His parents were Margaret Cox and John James Ruskin, a rich merchant who instilled in him a passion for art, literature, and adventure. He studied at the University of Oxford. In 1837, he entered the University of Oxford. Then, he founded a drawing school for students: the Company of St George, for social improvement, useful arts, and the defense of an ornamentalism linked to the reform of society.

He received socialist influences, especially from the group of “Sheffield socialists,” as did William Morris. He advanced a postulate regarding the relationship between art and morals, these dissertations appear in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), a work that provided an important place among art critics. Later, he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), where the moral, economic and political importance of architecture were analyzed. In 1851 he became interested in pre-Raphaelist painters such as Dante Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and John Everett Millais.

His ideas denounce the aesthetic numbness and the pernicious social effects of the Industrial Revolution. His work at Oxford ended in the rejection of the vivisection practices carried out in the laboratories of that institution. After marrying Effie Gray, he published Conferences on architecture and painting (1854), Conferences on the political economy of art (1858) and Fors Clavigera (1871-1884).

Ruskin suffered some psychiatric episodes and little by little he lost the sense of reality. Finally, he died in Lancashire on January 20, 1900. He aroused the admiration of generations of Victorian artists, especially as an introducer of the neo-Gothic taste in England, the greatest champion of pre-Raphaelism. Currently, part of his works is preserved between drawings of nature and different Gothic cathedrals at the University of Oxford.

• Modern painters
• The seven lamps of architecture
• The stones of Venice
• Conferences on architecture and painting
• The political economy of art
• Sesame and lilies
• The morale of dust
• The crown of wild olive
• Fors Clavigera
• The Amiens Bible

John Harvey McCracken

John Harvey McCracken Biography

John Harvey McCracken (December 9, 1934 – April 8, 2011) minimalist artist. He was born in Berkeley, California, United States. He excelled in sculpture and was a reference to the Minimalist Movement. He dedicated four years of his youth to serve in the United States Navy. Subsequently, he entered the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Obtaining a BFA in 1962 and completing most of the work for an MFA. Academic life allowed him to meet characters like Gordon Onslow Ford and Tony DeLap. He was hired at several recognized universities where he taught different art subjects, worked at the University of California, School of Visual Arts, University of Nevada, University of California, Santa Barbara, among others.

His first sculptural work was done with the minimalists John Slorp and Peter Schnore, and the painters Tom Nuzum, Vincent Perez, and Terry StJohn. Dennis also known Oppenheim, enrolled in the MFA program at Stanford. He began to experiment with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, McCracken began producing art objects made with industrial techniques and materials such as plywood, spray lacquer, pigmented resin, resulting in striking minimalist works with highly reflective and soft surfaces. He applied similar techniques in the construction of surfboards.

Later, McCracken was part of the Light and Space movement composed by artists such as James Turrell, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and others. The biggest influences of the art circle were Barnett Newman and the minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Carl Andre. Thanks to this space, his sculptural work began to walk between the material world and design. He was the first to conceive the idea of ​​the plank. The artist combined aspects of painting and sculpture in his work and many experimented with impersonal and elegant surfaces. In addition to the planks, the artist also created independent wall pieces and sculptures with different shapes and sizes, worked in highly polished stainless steel and bronze.

In McCracken’s work, it is usual to see solid colors in bold with its highly polished finish, it is a way that takes work to another dimension. His palette included pink gum, lemon yellow, deep sapphire and ebony, which he applied as a monochrome. He also made objects of stained wood, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel. For several years he relied on Hindu and Buddhist mandalas to make a series of paintings, they were exhibited at Castello di Rivoli in 2011.

His wife was the artist Gail Barringer, she revived to a certain extent her husband’s artistic career, and earned her the recognition of a younger generation of artists, merchants, and curators. Unfortunately, he died on April 8, 2011. Years before, his work had been honored in Documenta 12 in Kassel.

EXHIBITIONS

• “Primary structures” in the Jewish Museum (1966)
• “American sculpture of the sixties” at the Los Angeles County Museum (1967).
• “Inverleith House” at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2009)

His top ten auction prices exceed $ 200,000, including his high auction mark for a Black Plank, in polyester resin, fiberglass and plywood, which sold for $ 358,637 at Phillips de Pury & Company London in June 2007. More recently, Flash (2002), a red-board piece of firefighters, sold for $ 290,500 at Christie’s New York in 2010.

Nine Planks V, Blue column, Plank, Don’t tell me when to stop, Mykonos, Pyramid, Blue Post and Dintel I, Love in Italian, Right, Blue Post and Dintel, Yellow pyramid, The Absolutely Naked Fragrance, Violet Block in two parties, you won’t know which one until you’ve been to All of Them, Red Plank, Ala (Aile), among others.

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Walt Disney: The Creative Genius Behind the Magic

The World of Walt Disney: A Journey Through the Life of a Visionary

Walt Disney was a pioneering American animator and entrepreneur who created some of the world’s most beloved characters and theme parks, forever changing the entertainment industry.

Raise your hands if you grew up watching Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Pluto cartoons!

If you didn’t see these productions, you probably watched Cinderella, Bambi, or Pinocchio. The man behind these animated films goes by the name of Walt Disney.

He founded Walt Disney Productions and the Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney

Looking at the Life of Walt Disney.

Let’s dig into his life story to discover how he went into film and founded one of the best motion picture companies in the world.

“Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever.” – Walt Disney

Birth and Early Childhood

Walt Disney, known officially as Walter Elias Disney, came to this world on December 5th, 1901, in the Hermosa side of Chicago, Illinois.

He was the fourth son in a family of five children. His father, Elias Disney, was of Irish-Canadian descent, while his mother, Flora Call Disney, was a German American.

“Ideas come from curiosity.”- Walt Disney

Disney grew up in Marceline, Missouri, and developed an early interest in art. His imagination often ran so wild that he began painting and drawing, then selling the pictures to family, friends, and neighbors.

His father relocated the family to Kansas City in 1911, where he fostered a second passion for trains.

Disney worked a summer job for a railroad company in Kansas City, thanks to his uncle, who worked as a train engineer. His role was to sell newspapers and food snacks to travelers.

Disney was already an avid painter when he started school at the Park School in Marceline. After the family relocated, he transferred to Benton Grammar School in Kansas City, Missouri.

Disney’s first exposure to motion pictures and vaudeville occurred at the Park School when he became friends with Walter Pfeiffer, a fellow student whose parents worked in the theatre and film industry.

Disney became so engrossed with art and motion pictures that he preferred spending time in Pfeifer’s house rather than his own home.

“The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.” – Walt Disney

Disney took art and cartooning classes at the Kansas City Art Institute while still studying at the Park School. He moved to McKinley High School, where he took drawing and photography classes.

At night, Disney studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts while still working as a cartoonist for the school paper. He dropped out of school in 1918 to join the US Army, but they denied him as he was underage.

Upon being rejected by the US Army, Disney forged his age on his birth certificate and enrolled to join the Red Cross.

He was posted in France for a year to drive an ambulance. Ever the artist, Disney drew cartoons on the body of his ambulance to make it more alluring. He returned to the United States in 1919 and got a job, never attending college or university.

Early Career

After the war, Disney settled in Kansas City and began working as an advertising cartoonist. His role was to create and market original animated cartoons.

He worked in this role until 1923 while training in animation and live-motion films on the side.

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

Disney later left for Hollywood with $40 in cash, a complete animated motion picture film, and hopes to become an animation film director.

He teamed up with his brother, Roy Disney, who was already in Hollywood. The two pooled resources to open a production company in their uncle’s garage.

They named this company Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, later renamed The Walt Disney Company .

Founding Walt Disney Productions

Disney’s first successful film was Alice’s Wonderland which aired in New York through a contract with Universal Pictures. The short Alice comedy film aired until 1927.

Charles Mintz, Universal Pictures’ film producer, requested new animation content.

Walt and Roy worked on their second animated series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and aired it for close to a year before losing the ownership rights to Universal Pictures.

Disney and Roy replaced the Oswald series with Mickey Mouse in 1928 and created three short films.

The first two didn’t sell, but the third short became a success after Walt added synchronized sound to the film. Walt Disney became the voice behind Mickey Mouse while working on other animations.

His next creation was Silly Symphonies in 1929, followed by Pluto (1930), Flowers and Trees (1932), Goofy (1932), Three Little Pigs (1933), and Donald Duck (1934).

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Walt Disney

In 1934, Disney transitioned from producing cartoon shorts to focusing on lengthy films based on fairy stories.

This shift marked the golden age of fairy tale animations that many still watch today. It marked the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).

Disney also produced other packaged animations in the late 1940s, starting with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

Achievements Outside of Walt Disney Productions

Walt Disney opened the Disneyland theme park in 1955.

He made it a place where parents could take their children to explore, enjoy rides, and bond with their favorite animated characters.

Disneyland became an immediate success.

At a Time, Walt Disney Almost Made His Living Selling Vacuum Cleaners.

Disney also ventured into television film production. He played a role in the production of The Magical World of Disney (1954), Zorro (1957), The Mickey Mouse Club (1955), and Mary Poppins (1964).

He later began building a new theme park, Walt Disney World but did not live to see his plans come to fruition.

Personal Life

Walt Disney married Lillian Bounds, one of his early employees, in 1925.

The couple had two daughters, Diane (born 1933) and Sharon Disney Lund (adopted 1936). The family lived in Lewiston, Idaho, but moved to the Holmby Hills district, Los Angeles, in 1949.

Walt Disney Didn’t Draw Mickey Mouse.

The Death of Walt Disney

Walt Disney died of lung cancer in 1966 at 65 years. His family cremated and buried him at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Walt Disney Company now has more than 200,000 employees and a market cap value of $203.92 billion.

Disneyland Had a Secret Apartment Where Walt Disney Lived.

Final Remarks

Walt Disney’s dream to become a painter, drawer, and cartoonist started when he was still in elementary school.

His interest quickly became a passion, skill, and, finally, a business that made him and his brother millionaires. Walt Disney inspires entrepreneurs to dream, more importantly, to pursue their visions.

Timeline of Walt Disney

Walt Disney came to the world in the Hermosa side of Chicago, Illinois.

The Disney family relocates to Marceline, Missouri, where Walt develops an interest in painting and drawing.

The Disney family moves to Kansas City, Missouri.

Walt joins the Red Cross and gets positioned in France to drive an ambulance.

Walt Disney returns to Kansas City and works as an advertising cartoonist.

Disney teams up with his brother, Roy, and establishes Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

Disney marries Lillian Bounds.

Walt and Roy Disney rename their company Walt Disney Studios and relocate to a new premise.

Walt and Roy Disney develop a new animation series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Walt and Roy develop Mickey Mouse. Walt becomes the voice of Mickey.

Disney launches Silly Symphonies cartoon series.

Disney and Roy develop Pluto animation shorts.

Disney develops Goofy.

Walt and Lillian get their first child, Diane Disney.

Walt and Lillian adopt Sharon.

Walt develops Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Walt Disney creates Fantasia.

Disney releases Dumbo.

Disney produces Bambi.

Disney releases Cinderella.

Walt and Roy establish the Disneyland Theme Park.

Walt and Roy create Mary Poppins.

Walt and Roy begin plans for Walt Disney World.

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3 Lessons From Walt Disney

There are many lessons we can learn from Walt Disney. However, I chose three that stood out to me. See the lessons below and my take.

Chase Your Dream

Walt Disney’s first lesson is to chase your dreams.

A dream is a part of you, and ignoring it is ignoring a part of yourself.

As you know, following your dreams is easier said than done. It is very difficult to drop everything in your life and start over.

The best way to do this is to follow your dreams before you choose your career! Nevertheless, it is not too late to make your dreams a reality.

If you want to follow your dreams, you can’t just drop everything and do it! But you can plan for it now!

Plan your transition from where you are now regarding your career and responsibilities to where you want to be.

You don’t have to work alone to achieve your dream.

So why not talk to people that can help you get from where you are now to where you want to be?

They can offer insights and tips and help you plan to achieve your goal.

Believe in Yourself

Walt Disney’s second piece of advice is to believe in yourself. I could not agree more. When you believe in yourself and your abilities, you function differently than when you don’t.

For example, let’s say you’re starting your own business and have everything you need except believing in yourself.

In this situation, you’ll be second-guessing every move.

You’ll be focused on failure, so you think, instead of thinking that you can do it, can I do it? This will affect your behavior, and your behavior will affect your outcome.

It’s important to believe in yourself to succeed in a project. If you don’t believe in yourself, resolve that issue before moving on.

Don’t Lose Sight of What You Are

Walt Disney’s third lesson is never to lose sight of who you are.

You may lose who you are if you become extremely successful because you will have more freedom to do whatever you wish and because you will have forgotten the struggles you had to overcome to get to where you are.

For example, imagine someone being discovered as a singer and becoming an instant celebrity. They have people catering to their every need.

They have people fighting for their attention, and their life has changed with more opportunity to do almost anything they want.

If you haven’t already set your values, it is important, so you don’t lose track of who you are.

When you have a strong set of values, even with temptation, you’ll be able to stay true to your values because you have set them ahead of time.

When you start a company and it becomes successful, you don’t want to change the mission for profit.

Instead, you want to do what you set out to do as your original goal, and instead of looking at only the finances, look at improving what you set out to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

The information in this post answers many of the questions about Walt Disney.

This section provides a summary and any additional information.

1. How much was Walt Disney worth at his death?

Walt Disney was worth between $100 and $150 million when he died, equivalent to $1.1 billion today.

2. Was Walt Disney the first CEO of the Walt Disney Company?

Walt Disney served as president of his company. His brother, Roy Disney, became the company’s first CEO.

3. How many siblings did Walt Disney have?

Walt Disney had four siblings, three brothers and a sister.

4. Does the Disney family still own the Walt Disney Company?

The Disney family today owns less than 3%. Walt and Roy owned roughly 20% of their company.

5. Who owns Disney today?

Disney’s three primary shareholders include Berkshire Hathaway, Cadbury, and the descendants of Walt and Roy Disney.

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Walt Disney: Biography of an American Entrepreneur Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Few people have had such a massive impact on society, culture, and the Western world as Walt Disney. Over the course of his life, he built a vast entertainment empire that has become a cultural icon and persists long after the man himself left it behind. The parks, movies, and characters he envisaged have left a profound mark on our culture and the childhoods of millions.

Now, in this biography, you’ll get a glimpse into the incredible life of the man behind it all. From the early days of Walt Disney and his company’s shaky start to his time in Hollywood and contributions to America during World War 2, no other man has been so influential yet humble - from Walt’s daily routines and habits to the caring attitude he brought with him to all of his projects.

Walt Disney: Biography of an American Entrepreneur examines his life, his legacy, and the sea of successful movies that came in his wake.

Buy now to hear about Walt Disney’s life like never before.

• Listening Length 3 hours and 14 minutes
• Author Graham Stephenson
• Narrator Kevin Theis
• Audible release date August 22, 2019
• Language English
• Publisher FH Publishing
• ASIN B07WSY673F
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

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Dickinson Law's Inside Entrepreneurship Law Blog

Entrepreneur from History | Walt Disney – America’s Pioneer of Animation

By cassidy eckrote.

Early life 

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. Despite the empire he left behind, Disney came from humble beginnings. He was one of five children and had his first job at eight years old as a paperboy. Disney dropped out of school at age 16 and joined the American Red Cross where he drove an ambulance in France during World War I.

Once the war was over, Disney returned home and began taking classes at the Kansas Art Institute. His talent and passion for animation continued to grow. In 1922, Disney started his first business—a film studio called Laugh-O-Gram. However, Disney was an inexperienced businessman and the studio faced financial troubles. After just one year, Laugh-O-Gram Studios went bankrupt and closed.

persistence

In 1924, Disney partnered up with his brother Roy to open the Disney Brothers Studio, now known as The Walt Disney Company. There, he created a short series called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Despite the series’ success, the character was not copyrighted under Disney’s name, and he lost the rights to his work. His distributor, who owned the rights to Oswald, opened his own studio and recruited Disney’s animators to work for him.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” Walt Disney

Expanding the empire

As Mickey Mouse’s popularity grew, so did the Disney brand. Disney expanded his character base, creating Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy to coincide in Mickey’s world. But he didn’t stop there. In 1937, amid the Great Depression, Disney created his first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He then went on to create more classic movies, such as Dumbo and Bambi.

To fund the company’s rapid growth, Disney began selling over-the-counter stock in 1940 for $5 per share. On November 12, 1957, Walt Disney Productions undertook its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. At that time, investors could purchase a share of the company for $13.88. Today, a share of The Walt Disney Company sells for $109.54.

Walt Disney was a man who wore many hats. He was not only a businessman and entrepreneur, but he was a husband and father. Disney and his family would often visit amusement parks and were unsatisfied with the cleanliness of the parks and the unfriendly staff. He knew he could make it better. The first Disneyland theme park opened in California in 1955, and it was unlike any other amusement park. Disney’s attention to detail set him apart from competitors—even the trash cans were designed to match the theme of the park.

In 1965, Walt Disney began designing Disney World, a theme park located in Orlando, Florida. However, Disney died in 1966 prior to the opening of the new park. Disney’s business partner and brother, Roy, carried out his plans, and Magic Kingdom opened in 1971. To date, there are twelve Disney parks in six locations worldwide.

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Walt Disney

https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1957-disney-ipo.html#:~:text=Although%20Disney%20issued%20over%2Dthe,the%20New%20York%20Stock%20Exchange.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walt-Disney/Legacy

https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-might-not-know-about-walt-disney

https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/walter-elias-disney/197528

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000370/bio

https://web.archive.org/web/20160421084237/https://d23.com/about-walt-disney/

Author: Prof Prince

Professor Samantha Prince is an Associate Professor of Lawyering Skills and Entrepreneurship at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center, and was a partner in a regional law firm where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly-traded company. Most of her clients were small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. An expert in entrepreneurship law, she established the Penn State Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program, is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students, and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog. View all posts by Prof Prince

Walt Disney

This article is about the real person. For the character in the movie, see Walt Disney (Saving Mr. Banks character) .

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American entrepreneur, business magnate, animator, voice actor, producer, director, writer, and the eponymous founder of The Walt Disney Company . One of the most famous and well-known motion picture producers in the world, and a pioneer of the animation and entertainment industries, Walt co-founded his namesake company, Walt Disney Productions , with his brother, Roy in 1923 .

Walt Disney is in particular noted for being a successful storyteller, a hands-on film producer, and a popular showman. He and his staff created a number of the world's most popular animated properties; including the one creation that many consider Disney's alter-ego, Mickey Mouse .

Walt Disney was also the original voice of Mickey Mouse from 1928 to 1947 and again from 1955 and 1962 . He also did the original voices of Minnie Mouse and Pete as well.

• 1 1901-1919: Childhood
• 2.1 Kansas City animation studios
• 2.2 Alice Comedies: Contract and new California studio
• 2.3 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
• 2.4 The Creation of Mickey Mouse
• 2.5 Disney's daughters
• 3.1 Disney's Folly: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• 3.2 Wartime troubles
• 3.3 A dark chapter
• 4.1 Carolwood Pacific Railroad
• 4.2 Planning Disneyland
• 4.3 Expanding into new areas
• 4.4 Early 1960s successes
• 4.5 Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
• 5.1 The Epcot theme park
• 5.2 The Disney entertainment empire
• 5.3 Disney theme parks today
• 5.4 Disney animation today
• 5.5 CalArts
• 9 References
• 10 See also
• 11 External links

1901-1919: Childhood [ ]

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois to Elias Disney and Flora Call. He was named after his father's close friend, Walter Parr, a minister at St. Paul Congregational Church. In 1906, his family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri. The family sold the farm in 1909 and lived in a rented house until 1910 when they moved to Kansas City. Disney was nine years old at the time.

According to the Kansas City Public School District records, Disney began attending the Benton Grammar School in 1911, and graduated on June 8, 1917 . During this time, Disney also enrolled in classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He left school at the age of sixteen and became a volunteer ambulance driver in The Red Cross during World War I after he changed his birth certificate to show his year of birth as 1900 in order to be able to enlist in The Red Cross. He set sail for France in November but when he came, the fighting was over. He stayed in France until 1919.

1920-1936: Early years in animation [ ]

Kansas city animation studios [ ].

Disney returned to the USA, moved to Kansas City and, with Ub Iwerks , formed a company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in January 1920 . The company faltered and Disney and Iwerks soon gained employment at the Kansas City Film Ad Corporation, working on primitive animated advertisements for local movie houses.

In 1921 , Disney started Laugh-O-grams, Inc ., which produced short cartoons based on popular fairytales and children's stories. Among his employees were Iwerks, Hugh Harman , Rudolf Ising , Carman Maxwell , and Friz Freleng . The shorts were popular in the local Kansas City area, but their costs exceeded their returns. After creating one last short, the live-action/animation Alice's Wonderland , the studio declared bankruptcy in July 1923 . Two of Disney's brothers, Roy Oliver Disney and Raymond Arnold Disney, were employed as bank tellers in the First National Bank in downtown Kansas City during this time when Walt was developing his Laugh-O-grams, Inc. Studio. Roy later invited Walt to move to Hollywood, California, and Disney earned enough money for a one-way train ticket to California, leaving his staff behind, but taking the finished reel of Alice's Wonderland with him.

Alice Comedies: Contract and new California studio [ ]

Disney set up shop with his brother Roy, started the Disney Brothers Studio in their Uncle Robert's garage, and got a distribution deal with New York City states-rights distributors Margaret J. Winkler and her fiancé Charles Mintz (via Winkler Pictures ). Virginia Davis , the live-action star of Alice's Wonderland , was sequestered from Kansas, as was Ub Iwerks. By 1926 , the Disney Brothers Studio had its name changed to Walt Disney Studio ; the name Walt Disney Productions would be adopted in 1929 . One of the studio's employees, Lillian Bounds, became Walt Disney's wife; they married on July 13, 1925 .

The Alice Comedies were reasonably successful and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice after Virginia Davis' parents pulled her out of the series because of a pay cut. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role. By the time the series ended in 1927 , the focus was more on the animated characters, in particular, a cat named Julius who recalled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit [ ]

In January 1927, Mintz told Disney to create a cartoon character they could sell to Universal Pictures - Universal wanted to re-enter the cartoon business and needed a character of its own. Disney had Iwerks design a rabbit character, and when Universal approved the design, their publicity department named it Oswald.

In January 1928, Iwerks warned Walt that several of the animators at his studio were signing contracts with Winkler Pictures. George Winkler, one of the Winkler heads, had been talking with the animators during pick-up runs of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In the following month, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz. Mintz announced that not only did he want to reduce the fee he paid Disney per short, but that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng under contract. Mintz' final deal was for Walt and Roy become his employees. Disney declined, and it resulted in his contract for the Oswald series not being renewed. Disney, Iwerks, and the few non-defecting animators secretly began work on a new mouse character during the production of the last contracted Oswald cartoons.

The Creation of Mickey Mouse [ ]

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.

Christened by Lillian Disney, Mickey Mouse made his film debut in a short called Plane Crazy , which was, like all of Disney's previous works, a silent film. After failing to find distributor interest in Plane Crazy or its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho , Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound called Steamboat Willie . A businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and the Cinephone, a bootlegged sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became a success, and Plane Crazy , The Galloping Gaucho , and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks. Disney himself provided the vocal effects for the earliest cartoons and performed as the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947 and replaced by sound effects technician Jimmy MacDonald .

Joining the Mickey Mouse series in 1929 were a series of musical shorts called Silly Symphonies , which began with The Skeleton Dance . Although both series were successful, the Disney studio was not seeing its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers, and in 1930 , Disney signed a new distribution deal with Sony/Columbia Pictures, leaving behind Powers and Ub Iwerks, who had been lured into an exclusive contract with Powers. After heading the only mildly successful Ub Iwerks Studio, Iwerks would return to Disney in 1940 and, in the studio's research and development department, pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies.

By 1932 , Mickey Mouse became the most popular cartoon character on the screen, and many competing studios, such as Van Beuren and Screen Gems created Mickey Mouse clones in hopes of cashing in on Disney's success. After moving from Sony/Columbia to MGM/United Artists in 1932, Walt began producing the Silly Symphonies in the new three-strip Technicolor process, making them the first commercial films presented in a true-color process. The first color Symphony was Flowers and Trees , which won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1932. The same year, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of Mickey Mouse, whose series was moved into color in 1935 and soon launched spin-off series for supporting characters, such as Donald Duck , Goofy , and Pluto .

Disney's daughters [ ]

As Mickey's co-creator and producer, Disney was almost as famous as his mouse cartoon character but remained a largely private individual. His greatest hope was to give birth to a child — preferably a son — but he and Lillian tried with no luck. Lillian finally gave birth to a daughter, Diane Disney Miller , on December 18, 1933 ; and the couple would adopt a second, Sharon Mae Disney, who was born December 21 , 1936 . Walt loved both of his children.

1937-1954: Animated feature films [ ]

Disney's folly: snow white and the seven dwarfs [ ].

Walt Disney introduces each of the seven dwarfs.

Although his studio produced the two most successful cartoon series in the industry, the returns were still dissatisfying to Disney, and he began plans for a full-length feature in 1934 . When the rest of the film industry learned of Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White , they dubbed the project "Disney's Folly" and were certain that the project would destroy the Disney studio. Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature. He employed Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff, and used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus, such as the multiplane camera .

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This film was his studio's full-length feature production and the first commercially-successful animated feature film.

All of this development and training was used to elevate the quality of the studio so that it would be able to give the feature the quality Disney desired. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , as the feature was named, was in full production from 1935 until mid- 1937 , when the studio ran out of money. To acquire the funding to complete Snow White , Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America, who gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The finished film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21 , 1937 ; at the conclusion of the film the audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation. The very first animated feature in English and Technicolor, Snow White was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures. The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million (today $98 million) in its original theatrical release. The success of Snow White allowed Disney to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank , which opened for business on December 24, 1939 . The feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio , continued work on Fantasia and Bambi , while the shorts staff continued work on the Mickey Mouse , Donald Duck , Goofy , and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this time.

Wartime troubles [ ]

Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White into movie theaters in 1940 , but both were financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was planned as an income generator, but during the production of the new film, most of the animation staff went on strike, permanently straining the relationship between Disney and his artists.

Shortly after Dumbo was released in October 1941 and became a successful moneymaker, The United States entered World War II in December of that year. The U.S. Army took over most of the Disney studio's facilities and had the staff create training and instructional films for the military, as well as home-front propaganda, such as Der Fuehrer's Face and the feature film Victory Through Air Power in 1943 . The military films did not generate income, however, and Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942 . Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944 , establishing the seven-year re-release tradition for Disney features.

Inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, were created and issued to theaters during this period as well. The most notable and successful of these were Saludos Amigos ( 1942 ), its sequel The Three Caballeros ( 1945 ), Song of the South (the first Disney feature to feature dramatic actors, 1946 ), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections: the first based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and the second based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features: Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan , which had been shelved during the war years and began work on Cinderella . The studio also began a series of live-action nature films, entitled True-Life Adventures , in 1948 with On Seal Island .

A dark chapter [ ]

In 1947, during the dark early years of the Cold War, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he named several of his employees as Communist sympathizers. Some historians believe that the animosity from the 1941 strike of Disney Studio employees caused him to bear a grudge. His dislike and distrust of labor unions may have also led to his testimony.

1955-1966: Theme Parks and Beyond [ ]

Carolwood pacific railroad [ ].

In 1949, when Disney and his family moved to a new home on large piece of property in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California, with the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball , owners of their own backyard railroad, Disney developed the blueprints and immediately set to work creating his own miniature railroad in his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, originated from the address of his home which was located on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46-foot-long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated dirt berm, and a 90-foot tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's flower bed. He even named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Roger E. Broggie of the Disney Studios Lilly Belle in his wife's honor.

Planning Disneyland [ ]

Walt and his Animated Family.

On a business trip to Chicago in the late 1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. These ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise which was to become Disneyland . Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners and were dubbed Imagineers.

When presenting his plan to the Imagineers, Disney said: "I want Disneyland to be the most amazing place on Earth, and I want a train circling it". Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.

Expanding into new areas [ ]

As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. 1950 's Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed by successes, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954 ), The Shaggy Dog ( 1959 ), and The Parent Trap ( 1960 ). The Walt Disney Studio was one of the first to take full advantage of the then-new medium of television, producing its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Walt Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC named Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim , California . In 1955 , he debuted the studio's first daily television show, the popular Mickey Mouse Club , which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.

As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in CinemaScope, 1955 ) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians ( 1961 ) and the financially disappointing Sleeping Beauty (in Super Technirama 70 mm, 1959 ) and The Sword in the Stone ( 1963 ).

Production on the short cartoons had kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis.

The Disneyland Plaque.

These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary Buena Vista Distribution , which had assumed all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 1955 . Disneyland , one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17 , 1955 , and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful Disney properties and films. After 1955, the Disneyland TV show became known as Walt Disney Presents , went from black-and-white to color in 1961—changing its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color —and eventually evolved into what is today known as The Wonderful World of Disney , which continues to air on ABC as of 2005 .

During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955 , and Mars and Beyond in 1957. The films attracted the attention of not only the general public but also the Soviet Union’s space program.

Early 1960s successes [ ]

By the early 1960s, the Disney Empire was a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. After decades of trying, Disney finally procured the rights to P.L. Travers' books about a magical nanny . Mary Poppins , released in 1964, was the most successful Disney film of the 1960s, and many hailed the live-action/animation combination feature as his greatest achievement. The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World's Fair , including Audio-Animatronic figures, all of which later were integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project, to be established on the east coast, which Disney had been planning since Disneyland opened.

Plans for Disney World and EPCOT [ ]

In 1964 , Walt Disney Productions began quietly purchasing land in central Florida west of Orlando in a largely rural area of marginal orange groves for Disney's "Florida Project". The company acquired over 27,000 acres (109 square kilometers) of land and arranged favorable state legislation which would provide unprecedented quasi-governmental control over the area to be developed in 1966 , founding the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Disney and his brother Roy then announced plans for what they called "Disney World". Disney World was to include a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland to be called the Magic Kingdom, and would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, or EPCOT for short. EPCOT was designed to be an operational city where residents would live, work, and interact using advanced and experimental technology, while scientists would develop and test new technologies to improve human life and health.

However, Disney's involvement in Disney World ended in late 1966, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in his left lung, after a lifelong habit of chain-smoking (where his dreams of advancements in the improvement of human health would have come in handy) since World War 1. He was checked into the St. Joseph's Hospital across the street from the Disney Studio lot and his health eventually deteriorated. His dedication to his projects was still visible while lying in his deathbed. On the evening of December 14, Roy came to visit him. Here, Walt pointed up to the ceiling using the tiles as a grip map. He then signaled Roy about the roads and major places in EPCOT and Disney World. Even sick and near death, Walt's mind was clear, active, and vibrant; his imagination fully engaged and his voice enthusiastic.

It came as a complete shock to the Disney Family and to the whole world when Walt passed away the next morning. He was pronounced dead at 9:35 AM PST on December 15, 1966 having just celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday two weeks earlier. The official cause of death was "acute circulatory collapse." His heart simply stopped beating.

Contrary to urban legend, he was not cryogenically frozen. He was cremated and his ashes were interred in the Disney family garden in the Court of Freedom section of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

It was truly unthinkable. Walt Disney was dead. Roy, who had always been supportive to Walt, looking for and helping him, had lost his reason for living. After an hour or so, Walt's foot was sticking out from under the blanket. Roy was by the bed, gently rubbing Walt's foot and said "Well kid, it looks like the end of the road." Roy was still the older brother to the end.

Roy Disney carried out the Florida project, insisting that the name becomes Walt Disney World in honor of his little brother. Roy O. Disney died only three months after that resort's opening in 1971.

The Epcot theme park [ ]

When the second phase of the Walt Disney World theme park was built, EPCOT was translated by Walt Disney's successors into the Epcot theme park, which opened in 1982 . The Epcot Park that currently exists is essentially a living world's fair, a far cry from the actual functional city that Disney had envisioned. However, the Celebration, Florida town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World harkens back to the EPCOT vision that Walt would have wanted.

The Disney entertainment empire [ ]

The famous "Partners" featuring Walt and Mickey at the Magic Kingdom park.

Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme park have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, four vacation resorts, nine theme parks, two water parks, thirty-two hotels (and counting), eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network.

Disney theme parks today [ ]

Today, what was known as the Florida Project is now the largest and most popular private-run tourist destination on the planet, but Walt Disney's spirit and shine is still there. From the 'Partners' statue at the Magic Kingdom to the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom , Walt Disney is still remembered and loved by guests, Theme Park Characters and Cast Members alike, and his vision is largely still continued. His fascination with mass transportation lives in the Walt Disney World Monorail which runs through two theme parks and four hotels, and his dreams of the future live on at Epcot in ahead-of-their-time attractions and technological breakthroughs. His Skyway, long since closed, is now reborn as the Disney Skyliner gondola system.

Disneyland has developed from a cramped theme park to an open resort of two theme parks (with the upcoming "Disneyland Forward" expansion on the way), three hotels with more on the way, and a large shopping complex. Walt Disney World is a popular destination for vacations by tourists worldwide, and Tokyo Disneyland is the most visited theme park in the world (its sister park Tokyo Disneysea is the second). In September 2005, The Walt Disney Company opened Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in China, with another Chinese theme park followed— Shanghai Disneyland .

On May 5 , 2005 , the Walt Disney Company kicked off the Happiest Homecoming on Earth celebration in front of Walt's Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland , celebrating fifty years of the world's most famous theme park. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts are renowned over the world for their attentions to detail, hygiene and standards, all set by Walt Disney at Disneyland.

Disney animation today [ ]

Traditional hand-drawn animation , with which Walt Disney started his company, was, for a time, no longer produced at the Walt Disney Animation Studios . After a stream of financially unsuccessful traditionally animated features in the early 2000s, the two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility. 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, and the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog has marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation.

CalArts [ ]

Disney devoted substantial time in his later years funding The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), which was formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s. When he died, one-fourth of his estate went towards CalArts, which greatly helped the building of its campus. Walt also donated 38 acres (154,000 m²) of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia for the school to be built on. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1971 .

Lillian Disney devoted a lot of her time after Walt died to pursuing CalArts and organized hundreds of fundraising events for the university in her late husband's honor (as well as funding the Walt Disney Symphony Hall ). After Lillian's passing, the legacy continued with daughter Diane and husband Ron continuing the tradition. CalArts is one of the largest independent universities in California today, mostly because of the contributions of the Disneys.

Gallery [ ]

• The phrase "keep moving forward" is constantly used during the film in reference to Walt Disney's quote.
• In the ABC television series Once Upon a Time , August Booth reveals to them that the fairy tale storybook was created by a series of authors and names one past author as "Walt". The implication that Disney himself is an author is further proved in a flashback to 1966 when the sorcerer 's Apprentice approaches Isaac Heller and offers him the position of author, citing that the previous author had passed away; 1966 is the year that Walt passed away, and his death date of December 15 was written on a letter from the Apprentice to Isaac.
• Disney had very simple tastes in food. According to his daughter Diane , "He liked fried potatoes, hamburgers, western omelets, hotcakes, canned peas, hash, stew, roast beef sandwiches. He doesn't go for vegetables, but loves chicken livers or macaroni and cheese." Lillian Disney would complain, "Why should I plan a meal when all Disney really wants is a can of chili or a can of spaghetti?" [1]
• Hell's Bells ( November 11 , 1929 ) features Satan.
• Father Noah's Ark ( April 8 , 1933 ) features Noah, Ham, Japheth, Shem, and their respective wives.
• The Goddess of Spring ( November 3 , 1934 ) features Persephone and a version of her uncle/husband Hades / Pluto identified here with Satan.
• Noah's Ark ( November 10 , 1959 ) features Noah, Ham, Japheth, Shem, and their respective wives; not officially released as a Silly Symphony , but very similar to them.
• Several of the films he produced have also been noted for characters praying to God, such as Swiss Family Robinson and in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , where Snow White is seen in one scene praying beside her bed, representing Christianity as a religion; the same for Geppetto wishing upon the wishing star in Pinocchio , not to mention the final segment of the Fantasia musical Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria , a clear homage to Christianity.
• In 1940 , the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), recruited Disney as an official informant. He was later designated as a special agent in charge contact. He testified against employees of his company that he took issue with, alleging them to be communists.
• "Uncle Walt" could be seen around Disneyland in the 1950s doing menial chores, such as getting strollers for people, tinkering under the hood of a car on Main Street, U.S.A. , fishing in Rivers of America or piloting the Mark Twain Riverboat .
• One of the audio animatronic pirates on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride introduced in 1967 has Walt Disney's face. It was taken from the same life cast mold that was used in the "Partners" statue in Fantasyland in Disneyland.
• According to Richard Sherman , Walt would ask him how his progress on a week was then ask him to play the song " Feed the Birds ", his favorite song from Mary Poppins . After Walt passed away in 1966, Richard played the song frequently in his honor.
• Tom Hanks portrayed Walt in the 2013 live-action film Saving Mr. Banks . Hanks is a distant cousin of Walt Disney, but this marks the first time that Walt is portrayed in film.
• A cameo also appears in Ferdinand the Bull , wherein the bullring workers are based on Disney staffers, while the matador is based on Walt.
• In Epic Mickey , Oswald 's line: "I'm starting to see why he liked you more," is a clear reference to Walt.
• Howard Stark 's appearance in Iron Man 2 is a reference to Walt Disney.
• Amongst the detractors who kept this constantly debunked false rumor alive were Seth MacFarlane and Meryl Streep .
• Walt also made lots of anti-Nazi/Hitler/Axis propaganda through his cartoons.
• Disney's child daughter, Diane Disney-Miller, also passed away during the 2010s in November 2013 respectively.

References [ ]

• ↑ " Food for Thought ". Jim Hill Media ( Jul 16 , 2003 ).
• ↑ " The Gospel According to Walt ". Mouse Planet ( Feb 14 , 2007 ).
• ↑ " Walt Disney and Religion ". Mickey News ( Feb 13 , 2017 ).
• ↑ " How Walt Disney’s Faith Was Central to His Groundbreaking Career in Entertainment ". Movie Guide .

See also [ ]

• List of Disney animated features
• Walt Disney Quotes Video

External links [ ]

• The Walt Disney Family Museum

• Genealogy of Walt Disney on WikiTree

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Disney holds a legendary status in America’s national culture because the animation studio – The Walt Disney Company – he co-founded went on to become a multinational giant in the industry. He also created numerous beloved cartoon characters such as Goofy and Mickey Mouse. Classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) fetched him numerous Academy Awards and honors across the globe. Accomplishments of Walt Disney Here are 9 major things Walt Disney accomplished: Disney is credited with popularizing the Cel animation technique After getting laid off by Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, Disney and his friend artist Fred Harman started their own animation business. They duo sold their short cartoons, titled “Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams”, to the Newman Theater. The technique they used in creating the cartoons was different from the typical cutout animation technique. The animation technique was the cel animation, which gave better results than the cutout method. Buoyed on by the business success, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio was established. Disney and his animation team even branched into other productions, producing the likes of Alice’s Wonderland , which saw them cast Virginia Davis . Co-founded the Disney Brothers Studio In a bid to develop Alice’s Wonderland even further, Disney and his brother Roy foundered the Disney Brothers Studio in 1923. Established in Los Angeles, the studio brought in very good animators, ink artists, and story tellers, including Ub Iwerks, Disney’s friend from his previously defunct company, Iwekrs-Disney Commercial Artists. The Alice series went on to be a big hit, staying until 1927, when they started developing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Walt Disney quotes Co-developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928 After a few disagreements with the distributor of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit , Disney and Iwerks moved on to another project. The duo started working on a cartoon character that revolutionized the animation industry. The character was none other than Mickey Mouse. Although Mickey Mouse’s origin story remains a bit murky; however, what is known is that – the inspiration to build the character came from the pet mouse Disney had during his spell at Laugh-O-Gram studio. The name “Mickey Mouse” was chosen by Disney’s wife, Lillian. Disney had earlier wanted to name the character “Mortimer Mouse”; however, Lillian felt that name was a bit ostentatious. And the rest they say is history. Disney and Iwerks laid the foundation that would later make Mickey Mouse a household name across the globe. At the initial stages, Disney himself lent his voice to the character while Iwerks modified the character’s appearance to make it more easier to produce. Did you know : Disney’s cartoon character Mickey Mouse was given a star in 1978 to honor his enormous contributions to motion pictures? Brought in a number of innovative techniques in the animation industry In production of cartoons, Disney was always on the lookout for new and improved ways, be it from voicing, sketching, to sound. He incorporated synchronized sounds into his Mickey Mouse cartoon, becoming the first animator to make a post-produced sound cartoon. He also relied heavily on film executive Pat Powers’ recording studio (i.e. the “Powers Cinephone”). A number of professional composers were brought on board in order to get better music quality for the cartoons; this included composer Carl Stalling. The burgeoning production team of composers and artists would later come to be known as the Nine Old Men. In producing the film Flowers and Trees (1932), Disney used a technique known as full-color three-strip. And from the mid-1930s, his Silly Symphony cartoons appeared in color. Helped the United States Army during World War II He used his expertise in film making to aid the U.S. during WWII. For example, the Walt Disney Training Films Unit helped the U.S. Army in producing instruction films for the troops, such as Four Methods of Flush Riveting and Aircraft Production Methods. Disney also used Donald Duck cartoons to boost sales of war bonds. And in some cases, he was involved in the producing propaganda animations ( Der Fuehrer’s Face ) to prop up support for the U.S. participation in WWII . Read More: Timeline of Important Events in World War II Made a total of 81 feature films Disney revolutionized animation and the entertainment industry with his innovative ideas, storytelling techniques, and technological advancements, setting the standard for family entertainment.| Image: Walt Disney Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Walt Disney is credited with being involved in over 80 films. Many of those films turned out to be extremely successful, fetching him numerous accolades and honors. For his 1932 cartoon titled Flowers and Trees, Disney won the Academy Award for best Short Subject (Cartoon) in 1932. The following year, he again picked up the award for his animation The Three Little Pigs (1933). Other successful films of Walt Disney include: Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), True-Life Adventures (1948), Mary Poppins (1964), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1967). True-Life Adventures (1948) won Walt Disney an Academy Award in the Best Short Subject (Two-Reel) category. Similarly, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1967) earned him an Academy Award in the Short Subject (Cartoon). Did you know : Mary Poppins (1964) was the most successful Disney film in the 1960s? Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was a big game changer Around the mid-1930s, he came to the conclusion that emotionally charged stories were what the public desired. He proceeded to bolster the story department by separating it from the animation department. He brought on board several storyboard artists to come up with very impactful stories. It was also around this time that he ventured into feature-length cartoons. In December 1937, Disney’s film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered and went on to receive glorious approvals from critics and the public. The film was the most successful motion picture of 1938, grossing about $6.5 million. Up to that time, no other film had grossed up to that amount. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is also credited with bringing in the “Golden Age of Animation”, according to the Walt Disney Family Museum. Prior to its production, Walt Disney sent his animators to Chouinard Art Institute to prep up. The animators were exposed to animals in the class in order to incorporate more realistic movements into their production. The team also used innovative production techniques such as the “multiplane camera”, which allowed them to move through perspectives while shooting. Many critics expected Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to bankrupt Disney as the production ate more than three times the budget. He won a ton load of awards and honors With all those hit animations and films he produced, it was only natural that he would receive a ton of awards and honors. Walt Disney status as an important figure in the history of animation in America is cemented by the fact that he earned 26 Academy Awards, including 4 honorary awards. His Golden Globe Awards stand at two – for his films for Bambi (1942) and The Living Desert (1953). In terms of Emmy Awards, he chalked four nominations, wining the Best Producer for the Disneyland television series. For his role in marketing American traditional values of individualism, respect and tolerance, and fair play across the globe, he was awarded our nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom , on September 14, 1964. The National Film Registry, which is run by the Library of Congress, has a number of his films stored in its registry for them being “Culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Those films are – The Three Little Pigs (1933), Bambi (1942), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo and Mary Poppins (1964). Did you know : Walt Disney has two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars – one for his contribution to motion pictures, and the other for his television work? Walt Disney accomplishments | Mickey Mouse Hollywood Walk of Fame Walt Disney revolutionized the amusement park business Prior to building his famous Disney theme park, Walt Disney took a trip to Tivoli Gardens in Denmark. He was very much impressed by what the Danes were doing in terms of layout and park ambiance. Disney’s long-held ambition of building a theme park materialized when he obtained funding from a number of corporations. He acquired a land in Anaheim, California and tasked his engineers to begin designing the park. Before construction started in 1954, Walt Disney asked the engineers to visit as many theme parks in the United States in order to pick the positives from those facilities. After its completion, the park received stellar reviews, attracting more than 20,000 daily visitors. By the close of that 1955, it had successfully drawn in close to 4 million visitors. With very good partnership with American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Disneyland received the coverage it rightly deserved. For example, the opening ceremony of Disneyland, which was broadcast on ABC, was watched by tens of millions of people across the country. It’s themed areas such as Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland quickly became fan favorites. Other accomplishments of Walt Disney Walt Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and entrepreneur, best known for his creation of the Disney entertainment empire | Achievements of Walt Disney | Walt Disney (1935) Here are some more remarkable feats chalked by Walt Disney, one of America’s greatest national and cultural icons: Walt Disney received the Légion d’Honneur by France and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1935 and 1964 respectively. He helped plan the 1959 Moscow Fair as well as the 1964 New York World’s Fair. He was also a lead member of the opening and closing ceremonies at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. Frequently asked questions about Walt Disney Below are some of the internet’s most asked questions about Walt Disney: When and where was Walt Disney born? Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. What was Walt Disney’s first successful character? Before Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, Mickey Mouse, created in 1928, was Disney’s breakout success. How did Walt Disney revolutionize animation? Disney introduced synchronized sound in the short film “Steamboat Willie” and later pioneered the first feature-length animated film with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” What is Walt Disney known for? Disney is best known for creating the Disney entertainment empire, which includes animated films, theme parks, and a range of related merchandise. When and where did Walt Disney die? Disney passed away on December 15, 1966, in Burbank, California. What are some of Walt Disney’s most iconic movies? Some iconic Disney movies include “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Cinderella,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “The Lion King,” among others. Did Walt Disney ever win an Oscar? Yes, Walt Disney won 22 Academy Awards from 59 nominations, making him the individual with the most Academy Award wins in history. Is it true that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen? No, this is a popular myth. Walt Disney was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Mickey Mouse, created in 1928, was one of Disney’s earliest and most iconic characters. He symbolized the Disney brand and was a revolutionary figure in animation. What was Walt Disney’s vision for Disneyland and later Disney World? Disney envisioned Disneyland as a place where families could enjoy rides and meet characters from his movies. Later, his vision for Disney World expanded to include not just a theme park, but an entire resort complex. How did Walt Disney’s early failures shape his success? Before his significant success with Mickey Mouse, Disney faced multiple setbacks, including the loss of the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. These failures instilled in him a determination and drive to innovate and succeed. Who succeeded Walt Disney in running the Disney company after his death? After Walt Disney’s death, his brother Roy O. Disney postponed his retirement to take over the construction of the Florida project, which he later named Walt Disney World. 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You can navigate days by using left and right arrows Walt Disney Company is founded On October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood , California . The studio, now known as the Walt Disney Company , has had an oversized impact on the entertainment industry and is now one of the largest media companies in the world. A talented artist from a young age, Walt Disney drew cartoons for various publications and became interested in cel animation while working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. After his Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in 1923, Walt moved to Los Angeles , where Roy was recovering from tuberculosis. While there, he finally sold a short film produced by Laugh-O-Gram, Alice’s Wonderland , and signed a contract to make six more such films. In order to produce the series, the brothers founded their company and persuaded both Virginia Davis, who played Alice, and their collaborator Ub Iwerks to join them in Hollywood. After the success of the Alice Comedies and a series based on a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney began work on his most famous creation. With the 1928 release of Steamboat Willie , the world was introduced to Mickey Mouse. The character would go on to become one of, if not the most recognizable cartoons in history. The popularity of the Mickey Mouse shorts convinced Disney his studio could produce a feature film, which he began to do in 1934. The project, which some dubbed “Disney’s Folly,” went 400 percent over budget and required over 300 animators, artists, and assistants, but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a smash hit when it debuted just before Christmas 1937. Since then, the Walt Disney Company has produced dozens of groundbreaking and acclaimed films. It has evolved into a holding company for all manner of media and entertainment properties, opening theme parks across the world beginning in 1955 and acquiring dozens of companies in the '90s and 2000s. Disney now owns and operates ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm.  What began with a handful of animators producing short children’s cartoons is today one of the most iconic companies in the world. Disney original cartoons and feature films constitute some of the most popular and enduring entries in the American canon. Disneyland’s Glitch‑Filled Opening Day Look back at the problem‑plagued unveiling that some park employees dubbed “Black Sunday.” 7 Things You May Not Know About Walt Disney From the business setback that spurred him to develop Mickey Mouse to that persistent cryogenics myth, discover seven fascinating facts about this entertainment legend. 6 Early Amusement Parks Take a trip through six of history’s most enchanting and influential amusement parks. Also on This Day in History October | 16 Million Man March Tommie smith and john carlos raise their fists at the 1968 olympics. This Day in History Video: What Happened on October 16 Baby jessica rescued from a well as the world watches, nazi war criminals executed, marie antoinette is beheaded. Wake Up to This Day in History Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Get all of today's events in just one email featuring a range of topics. By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States. More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us The Long March Henry kissinger and le duc tho awarded nobel peace prize, abraham lincoln speaks out against slavery, celebrated writer oscar wilde is born, charlotte brontë's “jane eyre” is published in london, stampede kills 84 at world cup match, twenty‑three diners massacred at texas restaurant, china joins a‑bomb club, john brown’s raid on harpers ferry. Starting a Business Growing a Business Small Business Guide Business News Science & Technology Money & Finance For Subscribers Write for Entrepreneur Tips White Papers Entrepreneur Store United States Asia Pacific Middle East United Kingdom South Africa Copyright © 2024 Entrepreneur Media, LLC All rights reserved. Entrepreneur® and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media LLC Walt Disney Billionaire investor nelson peltz sells disney stock after losing board battle — and makes $1 billion. Peltz once wanted a seat on Disney's board of directors but was unsuccessful after a multi-year effort. This Highly-Anticipated Disney World Ride Finally Has a Reopening Date: 'Like the Animation Came to Life' Tiana's Bayou Adventure is replacing Splash Mountain at Disney World and Disneyland. Man Successfully Gets Into Disney World Using 46-Year-Old Ticket: 'It's Been Collecting Dust Since Before I Was Born' The ticket cost $8 at the time of purchase nearly five decades ago. Tras pasar a ser parte del domino público, Mickey Mouse se torna oscuro en dos películas de terror Los directores de ambos filmes aprovecharon que el personaje del ratón ya es parte del dominio público. Disney's Earliest Version of Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willie, Is Now in the Public Domain. Here's What That Means. The "Steamboat Willie" copyright was lifted after 95 years under U.S. copyright law. Mickey Mouse será de dominio público, ¿qué significa eso? De acuerdo con Walt Disney, la empresa sigue siendo dueña de todas las versiones modernas del popular personaje. What BlackRock's Earnings Tell You About The Stock Market Tide BlackRock's earnings can often act as a proxy for economic and market outlooks, arm yourself witht he right knowledge to beat the market this quarter Ir a Disney con tu familia se acaba de volver mucho más barato; Disneyland y Disney World han reducido los precios de los boletos para niños Los descuentos podrán utilizarse a partir de principios de 2024. Who Came Up With the Brilliant Idea to Call May 4th Star Wars Day? Over the years, May 4th has become known as Star Wars Day, thanks to a clever pun involving the franchise's most iconic line. Lo que Walt Disney, Thomas Edison y Dr. Seuss pueden enseñarte sobre la longevidad empresarial Descubre los secretos de tres de los emprendedores más experimentados de la historia y crea un legado duradero. Get Customers to Fall in Love With Your Company With These 3 Disney Marketing Tactics For startups struggling to capture the attention of potential customers, connect with them and build credibility in today's fast-paced business world, Disney's marketing can teach you a few valuable lessons. Ready to join this rollercoaster ride? What Walt Disney, Thomas Edison and Dr. Seuss Can Teach You About Entrepreneurial Longevity Uncover the secrets of three of the most experienced entrepreneurs in history and create your lasting legacy. Bob Iger, CEO de Disney, quiere que sus empleados regresen a la oficina 4 días a la semana En un memorándum, Iger escribió que "le habían recordado el tremendo valor de estar junto a las personas con las que trabajas". Disney World Fines Woman $20 for 'Inappropriate' Top, Forces Her to Change Into Free T-Shirt: 'Disney Doesn't Like Backs' The woman detailed her experience on TikTok, garnering 4 million views so far. Conoce a FRAN, la herramienta de Disney para envejecer a sus actores y actrices por medio de la inteligencia artificial El software promete revolucionar la industria cinematográfica al hacer en segundos lo que antes tomaba meses. 419 COMMENTS Walt Disney Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Other Characters. Disney's first successful film starring Mickey Mouse was a sound-and-music-equipped animated short called Steamboat Willie. It opened at the ... Walt Disney Walt Disney. Walter Elias Disney (/ ˈdɪzni / DIZ-nee; [2] December 5, 1901 - December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy ... Walt Disney, Entrepreneur: The Man Behind the Magic How the entrepreneur got his start Elias Walt Disney was not only the film producer that he is most famous for being, but was also a director, screenwriter, actor and voice actor, animator, and ... Walt Disney Walt Disney (born December 5, 1901, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died December 15, 1966, Burbank, California) was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.He also planned and built Disneyland, a huge amusement park that opened near Los Angeles in 1955 ... Walter Elias Disney Walter Elias Disney. Founder of Walt Disney Co. Founded: 1923. " If you can dream it, you can do it ." -Walter Elias Disney. Few individuals have had a greater impact on both the entertainment ... Biography of Walt Disney, Animator and Film Producer Biography of Walt Disney, Animator and Film Producer. Walt Disney (born Walter Elias Disney; December 5, 1901-December 15, 1966) was a cartoonist and entrepreneur who developed a multibillion-dollar family entertainment empire. Disney was the renowned creator of Mickey Mouse, the first sound cartoon, the first Technicolor cartoon, and the ... Walt Disney, a Visionary Who Was Crazy Like a Mouse He replaced Oswald with a new invention: Mickey Mouse, an instant success. But as his creativity continued to flourish, his business acumen flagged. Even Disney's older brother Roy O. Disney ... Walt Disney: Entrepreneur & Producer Watch a short biography video on Walt Disney, including his early love of drawing, the debut of Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie," his feature films "Snow W... Biography for Kids: Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 5, 1901. When he was four years old his parents, Elias and Flora, moved the family to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. Walt enjoyed living on the farm with his three older brothers (Herbert, Raymond, and Roy) and his younger sister (Ruth). It was in Marceline that Walt first developed ... Walt Disney: Entrepreneur without Peer The Experiences of a Curious Young Man. On New Year's Day, 1888, twenty-eight-year-old farmer Elias Disney married nineteen-year-old Flora Call in Akron, Florida. Elias, ever (and unsuccessfully) in search of riches, sold his farm and bought a hotel in Daytona Beach. Their first son, Herbert, was born that December. Walt Disney's Rocky Road to Success Disney had a nervous breakdown after creating Mickey Mouse. After years of eating beans and driving up his debts, Disney finally brought Mickey Mouse to life on film starting in the late 1920s and ... Walt Disney Biography Walt Disney (1901 - 1966) was a film producer, media magnate and co-founder of the Walt Disney Company. He was an iconic figure in the Twentieth Century media and entertainment industry, helping to produce many films. With his staff, he created famous cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; his name was also used for the ... Walt Disney Walt Disney. Producer: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World ... What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn from Walt Disney Walt Disney's Entrepreneurial Spirit. Disney went back to the drawing board, producing a silent cartoon called Plane Crazy that featured a new character named Mickey Mouse. But the advent of sound changed everything in Hollywood. To capitalize on the craze for "talkies," Disney delayed Plane Crazy and instead produced a second Mickey Mouse ... Walt Disney Walt Disney Biography. Walter Elías Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, and died in Burbank, California, on December 15, 1966.Walter was a director, producer, animator, cartoonist and screenwriter from the United States, winner of the Oscar Award 22 times, plus 4 honorary awards of the Academy, and of the Emmy in 7 opportunities. Walt Disney: From Humble Beginnings to a Global Icon Walt Disney's dream to become a painter, drawer, and cartoonist started when he was still in elementary school. His interest quickly became a passion, skill, and, finally, a business that made him and his brother millionaires. Walt Disney inspires entrepreneurs to dream, more importantly, to pursue their visions. Walt Disney: Biography of an American Entrepreneur Walt Disney: Biography of an American Entrepreneur Audible Audiobook - Unabridged Graham Stephenson (Author), Kevin Theis (Narrator), FH Publishing (Publisher) & 0 more 3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 5 ratings Entrepreneur from History In 1965, Walt Disney began designing Disney World, a theme park located in Orlando, Florida. However, Disney died in 1966 prior to the opening of the new park. Disney's business partner and brother, Roy, carried out his plans, and Magic Kingdom opened in 1971. To date, there are twelve Disney parks in six locations worldwide. "It's kind ... 100 years of Disney: The businessman behind the magic factory Since then, The Walt Disney Company has never again been led by a member of the Disney family. The entertainment giant it has since grown into was worth $203.63 billion in 2022 (€191.6 million). Walt Disney Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American entrepreneur, business magnate, animator, voice actor, producer, director, writer, and the eponymous founder of The Walt Disney Company.One of the most famous and well-known motion picture producers in the world, and a pioneer of the animation and entertainment industries, Walt co-founded his namesake company, Walt Disney Productions, with his brother ... Walt Disney: 9 Major Accomplishments The following year, he again picked up the award for his animation The Three Little Pigs (1933). Other successful films of Walt Disney include: Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), True-Life Adventures (1948), Mary Poppins (1964), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1967). Walt Disney Company is founded On October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, California.The studio, now known as the Walt Disney Company, has had an oversized impact ... Walt Disney What Walt Disney, Thomas Edison and Dr. Seuss Can Teach You About Entrepreneurial Longevity Uncover the secrets of three of the most experienced entrepreneurs in history and create your lasting ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech study thesis