DISNEY, Walt

Animator. Nationality: American. Born: Walter Elias Disney in Chicago, 5 December 1901. Education: Attended McKinley High School, Chicago; Kansas City Art Institute, 1915. Family: Married Lillian Bounds, 1925; children: Diane, Sharon. Career: 1918—in France with Red Cross Ambulance Corps, arriving just after Armistice; 1919—returned to Kansas, became commercial art studio apprentice, met Ub Iwerks; with Iwerks briefly in business, doing illustrations and ads; 1920—joined Kansas City Film Ad Co., making cartoon commercials for local businesses; 1922—incorporated Laugh-o-Gram Films, first studio, went bankrupt; 1923—to Hollywood, contract with M. J. Winkler, began Alice in Cartoonland series; soon joined by Iwerks; 1927—ended Alice series, began Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series; salary dispute with Winkler; formed Walt Disney Productions; 1928—Steamboat Willie released, first synchronized sound cartoon, featuring Mickey Mouse; made deal with Pat Powers for independent distribution; 1930—began distributing through Columbia; 1932—Flowers and Trees, first cartoon in Technicolor and first to win an Academy Award; released through United Artists; 1937—Snow White, first feature-length cartoon, marked innovative use of multi-plane camera, developed by Disney Studios; began releasing through RKO; 1941—strike by Disney staff belonging to Cartoonists Guild; Art Babbitt fired, later rehired; changes introduced included credit titles on cartoon shorts; 1944—"Mickey Mouse" is password on D-Day invasion of Europe; 1945—"True Life Adventure" series began, Disney's first live-action films; 1951–60—Disney developed several television programs; 1954—formed Buena Vista Distributing Co. for release of Disneyand occasionally other films; hosting Disneyland TV series (later Walt Disney Presents, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, The Wonderful World of Disney); 1955—Disneyland opened, Anaheim, California; The Mickey Mouse Club premiered on TV; 1960—Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color premiered on television; 1971—Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida. Awards: Special Academy Award, 1932; Special Academy Award for contributions to sound, with William Garity and John N.A. Hawkins, 1941; Irving G. Thalberg Award, 1941; Best Director for his work as a whole, Cannes Film Festival, 1953. Died: California, 15 December 1966.

Films as Director, Animator and Producer:

1920

Newman Laugh-O-Grams series

1922

Cinderella; The Four Musicians of Bremen; Goldie Locks and the Three Bears; Jack and the Beanstalk; Little Red Riding Hood; Puss in Boots

1923

Alice's Wonderland; Tommy Tucker's Tooth; Martha

(Alice Series)

1924

Alice and the Dog Catcher; Alice and the Three Bears; Alice Cans the Cannibals; Alice Gets in Dutch; Alice Hunting in Africa; Alice's Day at Sea; Alice's Fishy Story; Alice's Spooky Adventure; Alice's Wild West Show; Alice the Peacemaker; Alice the Piper; Alice the Toreador

1925

Alice Chops the Suey; Alice Gets Stung; Alice in the Jungle; Alice Loses Out; Alice on the Farm; Alice Picks the Champ; Alice Plays Cupid; Alice Rattled by Rats; Alice's Balloon Race; Alice's Egg Plant; Alice's Little Parade; Alice's Mysterious Mystery; Alice Solves the Puzzle; Alice's Ornery Orphan; Alice Stage Struck; Alice's Tin Pony; Alice the Jail Bird; Alice Wins the Derby

1926

Alice Charms the Fish; Alice's Monkey Business; Alice in the Wooly West; Alice the Fire Fighter; Alice Cuts the Ice; Alice Helps the Romance; Alice's Spanish Guitar; Alice's Brown Derby; Clara Cleans Her Teeth

1927

Alice the Golf Bag; Alice Foils the Pirates; Alice at the Carnival; Alice's Rodeo (Alice at the Rodeo); Alice the Collegiate; Alice in the Alps; Alice's Auto Race; Alice's Circus Daze; Alice's Knaughty Knight; Alice's Three Bad Eggs; Alice's Picnic; Alice's Channel Swim; Alice in the Klondike; Alice's Medicine Show; Alice the Whaler; Alice the Beach Nut; Alice in the Big League

(Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Series)

1927

Trolley Troubles; Oh, Teacher; The Ocean Hop; All Wet; The Mechanical Cow; The Banker's Daughter; Great Guns; Rickety Gin; Empty Socks; Harem Scarem; Neck 'n Neck

1928

The Ol' Swimmin' 'ole; Africa Before Dark; Rival Romeos; Bright Lights; Sagebrush Sadie; Ozzie of the Mounted; Ride 'em Plow Boy!; Hungry Hoboes; Oh, What a Knight; Sky Scrappers; Poor Papa; The Fox Chase; Tall Timber; Sleigh Bells; Hot Dog

Films as Head of Walt Disney Productions, co-d with Ub Iwerks:

(Mickey Mouse Series)

1928

Steamboat Willie

1929

Plane Crazy (made as silent, 1928, but released with synch sound); The Gallopin' Gaucho (made as silent, 1928, but released with synch sound); The Barn Dance; The Opry House; When the Cat's Away; The Barnyard Battle; The Plow Boy; The Karnival Kid; Mickey's Choo Choo; The Jazz Fool; Jungle Rhythm; The Haunted House

1930

The Barnyard Concert (sole director); Just Mickey (Fiddling Around) (sole director); The Cactus Kid (sole director)

(Silly Symphonies Series)

1929

The Skeleton Dance; E1 Terrible Toreador; The Merry Dwarfs (sole director)

1930

Night (sole director)

1935

The Golden Touch (sole director)

Other Films as Head of Walt Disney Productions:

1937

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand)

1940

Pinocchio (Sharpsteen); Fantasia (Sharps teen)

1941

The Reluctant Dragon (Luske, Handley, Beebe, Verity, Blystone and Werker) (+ ro); Dumbo (Sharpsteen)

1942

Bambi (Hand); Saludos Amigos (Ferguson) (+ ro)

1943

Victory through Air Power (Hand and Potter)

1944

The Three Caballeros (Ferguson)

1946

Make Mine Music (Grant); Song of the South (Jackson and Foster)

1947

Fun and Fancy Free (Sharpsteen)

1948

Melody Time (Sharpsteen); So Dear to My Heart (Luske and Schuster)

1949

Ichabod and Mr. Toad (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) (Sharpsteen)

1950

Cinderella (Sharpsteen); Treasure Island (Haskin)

1951

Alice in Wonderland (Sharpsteen)

1952

The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (Annakin)

1953

Peter Pan (Luske, Geronimi, and Jackson); The Sword and the Rose (Annakin); Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (French)

1954

20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Fleischer); The Littlest Outlaw (E1 pequino proscrito) (Gavaldon)

1955

Lady and the Tramp (Luske, Geronimi and Jackson); Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

1956

The Great Locomotive Chase (Lyon); Westward Ho the Wagons! (Beaudine)

1957

Johnny Tremain (Stevenson); Old Yeller (Stevenson)

1958

The Light in the Forest (Daugherty); Sleeping Beauty (Geronimi); Tonka (L. Foster)

1959

The Shaggy Dog (Barton); Darby O'Gill and the Little People (Stevenson); Third Man on the Mountain (Annakin); Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus (Barton)

1960

Kidnapped (Stevenson); Pollyanna (Swift); Ten Who Dared (Beaudine); Swiss Family Robinson (Annakin); One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Reitherman, Luske and Geronimi); The Absent-Minded Professor (Stevenson)

1961

Moon Pilot (Neilson); In Search of the Castaways (Stevenson); Nikki, Wild Dog of the North (Couffer and Haldane); The Parent Trap (Swift); Greyfriars Bobby (Chaffey); Babes in Toyland (Donohue)

1962

Son of Flubber (Stevenson); The Miracle of the White Stallions (Flight of the White Stallions) (Hiller); Big Red (Tokar); Bon Voyage (Neilson); Almost Angels (Born to Sing) (Previn); The Legend of Lobo (Algar and Couffer)

1963

Savage Sam (Tokar); Summer Magic (Neilson); The Incredible Journey (Markle); The Sword in the Stone (Reitherman);The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (Stevenson); The Three Lives of Thomasina (Chaffey)

1964

A Tiger Walks (Tokar); The Moon-Spinners (Neilson); Mary Poppins (Stevenson); Emil and the Detectives (Tewksbury); Those Calloways (Tokar); The Monkey's Uncle (Stevenson)

1965

That Darn Cat (Stevenson)

1966

The Ugly Dachshund (Tokar); Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (Paul) (story under pseudonym Retlaw Yensid); The Fighting Prince of Donegal (O'Herlihy); Follow Me, Boys! (Tokar); Monkeys, Go Home! (McLaglen); The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (Neilson); The Gnome-Mobile (Stevenson)

1967

The Jungle Book (commentary) (Reitherman)

Publications

By DISNEY, book—

Sketch Book, Old Saybrook, CT, 1993.

By DISNEY: articles—

"What I've Learned from Animals," in American Magazine, February 1953.

"The Lurking Camera," in Atlantic Monthly (New York), August 1954.

"Too Long at the Sugar Bowls: Frances C. Sayers Raps with Disney," in Library Journal (New York), 15 October 1965.

On DISNEY: books—

Rotha, Paul, Celluloid, the Film Today, New York, 1931.

Bardeche, Maurice, and Robert Brasillach, Histoire du Cinéma, Paris, 1935.

Field, Robert D., The Art of Walt Disney, New York,1942.

Eisenstein, Sergei, Film Sense, translated and edited by Jay Leyda, New York, 1947.

Clair, René, Reflections on the Cinema, translated by Vera Traill, London, 1953.

Manvell, Roger, and J. Huntley, The Technique of Film Music, New York, 1957.

Martin, Pete, (ed.), The Story of Walt Disney, New York, 1957.McGowan, Kenneth, Behind the Screen: The History and Techniques of Motion Pictures, New York, 1965.

Stephenson, Ralph, Animation in the Cinema, New York, 1967.

Bessy, Maurice, Walt Disney, Paris, 1970.

Kurland, Gerald, Walt Disney: The Master of Animation, New York, 1971.

Maltin, Leonard, The Disney Films, New York, 1973, revised edition, 1984.

Thomas, Frank, and Ollie Johnston, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, New York, 1982.

Bruno, Eduardo, and Enrico Ghezzi, Walt Disney, Venice, 1985.

Mosley, Leonard, The Real Walt Disney, London, 1986.

Schickel, Richard, The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, London, 1986.

Culhane, Shamus, Talking Animals and Other People, New York, 1986 + filmo.

Taylor, John, Storming the Magic Kingdom, New York, 1987.

Grant, John, Encyclopaedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters, New York, 1987.

Thomas, Frank, and Ollie Johnston, Too Funny for Words, New York, 1987.

Holliss, Richard, and Brian Sibley, The Disney Studio Story, London, 1988.

Duchene, Alain, Walt Disney n'est pas mort!, Paris, 1989.

Ford, Barbara, Walt Disney, New York, 1989.

Grover, Ron, The Disney Touch, Homewood, Illinois, 1991.

Jackson, Kathy Merlock, Walt Disney: A Bio-bibliography, Westport, CT, 1993.

Merritt, Russell, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney, Gemona, 1993.

Fanning, Jim, Walt Disney, New York, 1994.

Smoodkin, Eric, (ed.), Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, New York, 1994.

Thomas, Bob, Walt Disney: An American Original, New York, 1994.

West, John G., Jr., The Disney Live-action Productions, Milton, WA, 1994.

Eliot, Marc, Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince, A Biography, Deutsch, 1995.

Finch, Christopher, The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdom, New York, 1995.

Bell, Elizabeth, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, editors, From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture, Bloomington, Indiana, 1995.

Cole, Michael D. Walt Disney: Creator of Mickey Mouse, Springfield, NJ, 1996.

Watts, Steven, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life, Boston, 1997.

Sherman, Robert B., and Richard M. Sherman, Walt's Time: From Before to Beyond, Santa Clarita, California, 1998.

On DISNEY: articles—

"The Mechanized Mouse," in The Saturday Review of Literature (New York), 11 November 1933.

Mann, Arthur, in Harper (New York), May 1934.

Bragdon, Claude, "Straws in the Wind," in Scribner's Magazine (New York), July 1934.

Boone, Andrew R., "A Famous Fairytale is Brought to the Screen as the Pioneer Feature Length Cartoon in Color," in Popular Science Monthly (New York), 1938.

Jeanne, René, "Comment naquirent les dessins animés," in Revue des Deux Mondes (Paris), 15 March 1938.

Moellenhoff, F., "Remarks on the Popularity of Mickey Mouse," in American Imago, (Detroit, Michigan) no. 3, 1940.

Boone, R., "Mickey Mouse Goes Classical," in Popular Science Monthly (New York), January 1941.

Ahl, Frances Norene, "Disney Techniques in Educational Film," in The Social Studies, December 1941.

"Walt Disney: Great Teacher," in Fortune (New York), August 1942.

"Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Work for Victory," in Popular Science Monthly (New York), September 1942.

Mosdell, D., "Film Review," in Canadian Forum, November 1946.

Wallace, Irving, "Mickey Mouse and How He Grew," in Colliers (New York), 9 April 1949.

"A Silver Anniversary for Walt and Mickey: Disney's Magic Wand Has Enriched the World with Birds, Beasts and Fairy Princesses," in Life (New York), 2 November 1953.

"Disney Comes to Television," in Newsweek (New York), 12 April 1954.

Fishwick, Marshall, "Aesop in Hollywood: The Man and the Mouse," in Saturday Review (New York), 10 July 1954.

"Cinema: Father Goose—Walt Disney: To Enchanted Worlds on Electronic Wings," in Time (New York), 27 December 1954.

McEvoy, J.P., "McEvoy in Disneyland: A Visit with the Wonderful Wizard of Filmdom," in Reader's Digest (Pleasantville, New York), February 1955.

"A Wonderful World: Growing Impact of the Disney Art," in Newsweek (New York), 18 April 1955.

Powell, Dilys, "Hayley Mills on the Pickford Path," in New York Times, 13 August 1961.

Sadoul, Georges, "Sur le 'huitième art'," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), June 1962.

Special Disney issue of National Geographic (Washington, D.C.), August 1963.

"The Wide World of Walt Disney," in Newsweek (New York), 31 December 1963.

Whitaker, Frederic, "A Day with Disney," in American Artist (New York), September 1965.

Aubriant, Michel, "Le vrai Walt Disney est mort il y a des années mais ne soyons pas injustes . . . ," in Paris Presse, 21 December 1966.

Comolii, Jean-Louis, and Michel Delahaye, "Le Cinéma à l'expo de Montréal," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), April 1967.

"Disney without Walt . . . Is Like a Fine Car without an Engine. Will the Great Entertainment Company Find a New Creative Boss? Or Will It Slowly Lose Momentum?," in Forbes (New York), 1 July 1967.

Tucker, N., "Who's Afraid of Walt Disney," in New Society, no.11, 1968.

Gessner, Robert, "Letters to the Editor: Class in Fantasia," in The Nation (New York), 30 November 1970.

"The Ten Greatest Men of American Business—As You Picked Them," in Nation's Business, March 1971.

Pérez, F., "Walt Disney, una pedagogía reaccionaria," in Cine Cubano (Havana), no. 81–83, 1973.

Murray, J.C., "Lest We Forget," in Lumiere (Melbourne), November 1973.

Stuart, A., "Decay of an American Dream," in Films and Filming (London), November 1973.

Special Disney issue of Kosmorama (Copenhagen), November 1973.

Canemaker, J., "A Visit to the Walt Disney Studio," in Filmmakers Newsletter (Ward Hill, Massachusetts), January 1974.

Sklar, Robert, in Movie Made America: A Social History of American Movies, New York, 1975.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan, "Dream Masters," in Film Comment (New York), January-February 1975.

Smith, D.R., "Ben Sharpsteen . . . 33 Years with Disney," in Millimeter (New York), April 1975.

Beckerman, H., "Animation Kit: Movies, Myth and Us," in Filmmakers Newsletter (Ward Hill, Massachusetts), September 1975.

Brody, M., "The Wonderful World of Disney: Its Psychological Appeal," in American Imago (Detroit, Michigan), no. 4, 1976.

"Disney Night at the A.S.C.," in American Cinematographer (Los Angeles), February 1977.

Paul, W., "Art, Music, Nature and Walt Disney," in Movie (London), Spring 1977.

Schupp, P., "Mickey a cinquante ans," in Sequences (Montreal), January 1979.

Canemaker, J., "Disney Animation: History and Technique," in Film News (NewYork), January-February 1979.

Hulett, S., "A Star Is Drawn," in Film Comment (New York), January-February 1979.

Canemaker, J., "Disney Design: 1928–1979," in Millimeter (New York), February 1979.

Barrier, M., "'Building a Better Mouse': Fifty Years of Disney Animation," in Funnyworld (New York), Summer 1979.

Smith, D.R., "Disney Before Burbank: The Kingswell and Hyperion Studios," in Funnyworld (New York), Summer 1979.

Cawley, J., Jr., "Disney Out-Foxed: The Tale of Reynard at the Disney Studio," in American Classic Screen (Shawnee Mission, Kansas), July-August 1979.

"Journals: Tom Allen from New York," in Film Comment (New York), September-October 1981.

Griffithiana (Gemona, Italy), no. 34, December 1988.

CinémAction (Conde-sur-Noireau), no. 51, April 1989.

Kosmorama (Copenhagen), vol. 35, no. 188, Summer 1989.

Animatrix, no. 6, 1990/1992.

Cineforum, no. 319, 1992.

Skoop, October 1992.

Plateau, no. 2, 1993.

The South Atlantic Quarterly, no. 1, 1993.

New York Times, 6 May 1993.

New York Times, 8 May 1993.

Positif, no. 388, June 1993.

New York Times, 13 July 1993.

New York Times, 18 July 1993.

Newsweek, 26 July 1993.

Before Walt Disney, there was Emile Cohl (the "first animator," who made over 250 films in the early years of the twentieth century); Winsor McCay (whose Gertie the Dinosaur, created in 1914, was the original animated personality); John Randolph Bray (the Henry Ford of animation, whose technological and organizational contributions revolutionized the art form); and Otto Messmer, inventor of Felix the Cat, the Charlie Chaplin of animated characters and the most popular cartoon creation of the 1920s, entertaining audiences before Mickey Mouse ever uttered a squeak.

So why is Walt Disney synonymous with animation? How could Fantasia, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Bambi have been re-released to theaters every few years and then marketed to home video, to delight generations of children? Simply because no other animator ever duplicated the Disney studio's appealingly lifelike cartoon characters and wonderful flair for storytelling.

First, Disney was an innovator, a perfectionist who was forever attempting to improve his product and explore the medium to its fullest potential. He was the first to utilize sound in animation, in Steamboat Willie, which was the third Mickey Mouse cartoon. The soundtrack here is more than just a gimmick: for example, in an animal concert, a cow's udder is played like a bagpipe and its teeth are transformed into a xylophone. The musical accompaniment thus emerges from the background, becoming an integral element in the film's structure.

In Flowers and Trees, Disney was the first to utilize three-strip Technicolor in animation, a process devised by Joseph Arthur Ball: three different negatives, each recording a primary color, replaced the single camera film previously used. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length cartoon feature: during the production, Disney staffers developed the multiplane method of realistically creating the illusion of perspective and depth. The camera, operated by several technicians, filled an entire room. A sequence was drawn and painted on several panes of glass, with each one carefully placed and rigidly held down. Cels of the animated characters were placed on the various planes, which would then be moved past the camera at varying speeds. Those close to the camera would go by rapidly; those in the rear would be moved more slowly.

Just as significantly, however, Disney was a master organizer and administrator. As a result, from the 1930s on, the Disney Studio practically monopolized the animation industry. He established an industrialized assembly line, employing hundreds of animators and technicians who regularly churned out high-quality, Academy Award-caliber product. In the early 1930s, he opened distribution offices in London and Paris. He instigated large merchandising campaigns to reap additional profits via T-shirts, toys, and watches. Today, Disneyland and Disneyworld are living monuments to his memory. And it is not surprising that Disney eventually stretched his talents beyond pure animation, first combining cartoons with actors and, finally, producing live-action features, wildlife documentaries, and television series. In 1950, he produced Treasure Island, his first non-animated feature. In 1953, he made his first nature documentary, The Living Desert. The following year, he premiered his weekly television anthology series, which aired for decades. And he established the Buena Vista company as a distribution outlet for his films.

Yet Walt Disney's ultimate legacy remains his animated stories, and the narrative elements which lifted them above his competition. His characters are not just caricatures who insult each other, bash each other with baseball bats, or push each other off cliffs. They are lifelike, three-dimensional creatures with personalities all their own: they are simple, but never simplistic, and rarely, if ever, fail to thoroughly involve the viewer.

It is virtually impossible to rank the best of Disney's animated features in order of quality or popularity. Snow White, with its enchanting storyline and sweet humor, remains a joy for audiences many decades after its release. It is the perfect romantic fairy tale, with Snow White and her Prince Charming in a happy-ever-after ending, the comic relief of the lovable dwarfs, and the villainy of the evil Queen. The film's financial history is typical of most Disney features: originally budgeted at $250,000, it eventually cost $1,700,000 to produce. It earned $4.2 million in the United States and Canada alone when first released; by the mid-1990s, it had grossed over $175-million.

Jiminy Cricket singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" is the highlight of Pinocchio. Bambi is easily the most delicate of all Disney features. And there is Fantasia, a series of animated sequences set to musical classics conducted by Leopold Stokowski and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra: Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, and Beethoven's Symphony No.6 in F Major, among others. Fantasia is ambitious, innovative, controversial—how dare anyone attempt to visually interpret music?—and, ultimately, timeless.

Since Disney's death in 1966, his studio has had its failures and triumphs. After a dry spell in the late 1960s and 1970s, it established a subsidiary, Touchstone Pictures, which successfully debuted in 1984 with the PG-rated Splash. In the intervening years, the studio struck deals with the likes of Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films and Merchant-Ivory Productions, and marketed such traditionally un-Disney-like fare as Pulp Fiction, Kids, Pretty Woman, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. But the studio remains mostly synonymous with animation. In the 1990s, it produced a string of animated features which ranks with its classics of decades past: The Lion King, Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. As of 1996, The Lion King rated number five on Variety's list of all-time money-earning champs, taking in over $312 million. Also ranked in the top 50 were other animated and non-animated Disney fare, which certifies the studio's status as a major Hollywood player: Aladdin (number 16, $217-million); Toy Story (number 24, $182 million); Pretty Woman (number 26, $178 million); the previously mentioned Snow White (number 29); Three Men and a Baby (number 34, $167 million); Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (number 42, $154 million); Beauty and the Beast (number 49, $145 million); and The Santa Clause (number 50, $144 million).

In 1991, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. And in 1995 came Toy Story, a groundbreaking feature produced completely on computer.

An essay on Walt Disney would be incomplete without a note on Mickey Mouse, the most famous of all Disney creations and one of the world's most identifiable and best-loved characters. Appropriately, Disney himself was the voice of Mickey, who was originally named Mortimer. The filmmaker himself best explained the popularity of his mouse: ". . . Mickey is so simple and uncomplicated, so easy to understand, that you can't help liking him."

With pen, pencil, ink, and paint, Walt Disney created a unique, special world. Max and Dave Fleischer, Walter Lantz, Chuck Jones, and many others may all be great animators, but Disney is unarguably the most identifiable name in the art form.

—Rob Edelman

Disney, Walt 1901-1966

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walter Elias Disney and his brother Roy established the Walt Disney Company in the late 1920s to produce short animations. The company’s first synchronized-sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928), featured Mickey Mouse, a character that became one of the best-known icons in the world. In the wake of the nineteenth-century transformation of the oral tradition of fairy tales into a literary tradition by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others, Disney, in the early decades of the twentieth century, employed technological advances to turn literary fairy tales into animations. The first feature-length animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), paved the way for the Disney brand of family-oriented celluloid fantasies targeting children as their primary audience.

A 1941 strike by Disney animators seeking more recognition, along with economic hard times, crippled the company, but World War II (1939–1945) reenergized the Disney Company through government commissions. The Three Caballeros (1944) was made at the behest of Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to promote “Good Neighborliness” between North America and Latin America. The conservative Disney also served as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent from 1940 to his death in 1966. The public image of “Uncle Walt” with a gentle smile and with roots in rural small-town America is the result of mythmaking, which masks Walt Disney’s traumatic childhood and distrustful personality. Disney’s vendetta against striking employees of his studio in the 1940s betrays not only a suspicious and controlling character but an anticommunist obsession. His hidden career as a secret informant in the last two decades of his life gives a perverse twist to the family entertainment Disney has come to symbolize.

The Disney television show went on the air in 1954. Theme parks proved to be far more successful than animations and live-action films and television. Disneyland in Anaheim, California, opened in 1955, followed by Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in 1971. Tokyo saw the Japanese version of Disneyland in 1983, France in 1992, and Hong Kong in 2005. Having languished after Walt Disney’s death, the Disney Company resurged under Michael Eisner in the 1980s. Disney has now grown into a global business conglomerate of film studio, television network, cable company, magazine, merchandise bearing various Disney logos, theme parks and resorts, and other ventures, with revenues totaling over $25 billion around the turn of the century. Disney also works through the Touchstone label, Miramax Films, Buena Vista International, and other business entities to produce and distribute less family-oriented shows.

With its increasing monopoly of media and entertainment, Disney has given rise to the phenomenon of Disneyfication, that is, trivialization and sanitization. The key to the success of the “Magic Kingdom” is indeed carefully controlled, heavily edited images of childhood innocence and fun. Yet what appears to the child to be happy tunes and carefree joy often veils sexist, racist, ageist, and neo-imperialist reality. From Sleeping Beauty to the Little Mermaid to Mulan, every Disney female lead embodies idealized Euro-American beauty in facial features, balletic physique, and youth-culture obsessions. These Disney females, including the sword-wielding Mulan, ultimately derive their meaning in life through male characters. The blatant racism in the happy plantation African Americans in The Song of the South (1946) and the slant-eyed, buck-toothed, pidgin-speaking Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp (1955) and The Aristocats (1970) has gone underground, occasionally resurfacing in, for example, the cruel, hand-chopping Arabs in Aladdin (1992) and the stereotypical, “multicultural” duo of “kung fu” Mulan and her familiar, the blabbering Mushu dubbed by Eddie Murphy.

Theme parks best exemplify the Disney culture of control. The enclosed environment of these sites separates visitors from the outside world, encouraging consumption in the guise of family fun. Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland is, of course, a shopping mall. Various adventures at Disneyland are centrally themed to formulate a narrative and to shape consumer perception. Even Disney employees with smiling faces are trained in “performative labor”: they are not so much working as role-playing; they are cast members in the Disney discourse of happiness.

Any critique of Disneyfication faces the challenge that animated fantasy is customarily regarded as devoid of ideology, notwithstanding the fact that the racial, gender, national, and capitalist undertones of Disney have repeatedly been the subject of study. Adults’ nostalgia for childlike simplicity and pleasure further leads to an acquiescence to Disney’s ahistorical and apolitical universe. Assuredly, growing up anywhere in the world, one is invariably nurtured on Disney’s breast milk of superior quality in terms of ingenuity and craftsmanship. To contend that consumers have been fed with something aesthetically refined but culturally suspect is likely to provoke vigorous opposition. Yet the 1995 defeat of the proposed 3,000-acre Disney theme park in Virginia’s Civil War battlegrounds signals the potential of grassroots resistance to corporate greed and expansionism. With the shadows of the omnivorous, lawsuit-happy Disney Company looming over the twenty-first century, new battles will be fought far away from Virginia. Globalization has brought Disney to every corner of the world. In the company of giants such as McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, Disney’s transnational operations will continue to perpetuate Americanization globally, but it remains a severely constricted vision of America, one enjoyed principally by middle-class visitors to Disney World and passive consumers of Disney culture.

SEE ALSO Children; Culture; Racism; Sexism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, Elizabeth, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, eds. 1995. From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Giroux, Henry A. 1999. The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Smoodin, Eric, ed. 1994. Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. New York: Routledge.

Sheng-mei Ma

Disney

Walt Disney's name has not always been synonymous with childhood. In the 1930s his work was seen as populist and avant-garde. It was considered populist because, three decades earlier, he had been born into poverty, and his cartoons had the simple outlines of folk art. (They were seen as "his" cartoons even though, as the story goes, one of his animators had to teach him to draw his signature Mickey Mouse.) Disney's cartoons were considered avant-garde because the cinema was a new art form, and at this time when photography still had only dubious claims to artistry and live-action motion pictures could be seen merely as moving photographs, animated cartoons could make a greater claim to artistry. The preeminent name in the art of animation–thanks to Mickey Mouse, the Silly Symphonies, and "The Three Little Pigs"–was Walt Disney.

Early in his career Disney was both a popular success and the darling of intellectuals. Between 1932 and 1941 his work won thirteen Academy Awards, and he was granted honorary degrees by Yale and Harvard. The philosopher Mortimer

Adler rhapsodized about Disney's greatness, as did the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein; the French filmmaker René Clair called his artistry sublime; the artist David Low called him the most significant graphic artist since Leonardo. The film historian Lewis Jacobs referred to Disney as the most acclaimed of current directors: Disney's willingness to plow profits into new technology and to take financial risks to achieve desired effects was, for Jacobs, a sign of artistic integrity–not, as it would later be construed, entrepreneurial savvy.

Disney's audience included both young and old. Critics often praised his films for addressing the young, the old, indeed "artists, intellectuals, children, workers, and everyday people the world over," to quote the Atlantic Monthly in 1940. Consider the Disney merchandise of the 1930s, which included not just Mickey Mouse dolls but also ashtrays, beer trays, negligees, and Donald Duck Coffee. (Disney pioneered tieins and cross-merchandising, and the corporation is now the industry leader in cross-promotion.)

Changing Attitudes

In the 1940s Disney's productions continued to be popular with the general public, but his reputation among critics and intellectuals waned. In the 1950s it plummeted. This shift may have resulted from Disney's decision to include human figures in his feature-length cartoons, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938, and that these figures imitated real life only imperfectly. Perhaps disenchantment derived from the bitter strike at Disney Brothers Studios in 1941, or from the experimentalism of The Three Caballeros in 1945. Perhaps, too, critics resented the fact that Disney simply did not focus as much on his cartoons as he had in the past, producing live-action films, nature documentaries, television programs, and theme parks, launching what has been called the first multimedia empire.

Disney's reputation continued to suffer in the 1950s. The reason may have had something to do with the advent of television. Previously cartoon shorts had been an expected part of an evening's entertainment at the movies, no matter how sophisticated the feature film. But in the decades following World War II, cartoons appeared less often in the theater and more often on Saturday morning television. Eventually, they were regarded as strictly for children.

In other words, once Disney's cartoons came to be seen as suitable only for children, and once he himself became Uncle Walt to millions of viewers, Disney's cartoons were no longer suitable for intellectuals. In a twentieth-century intellectual climate where anything considered juvenile was suspect (a very different climate from that of the nineteenth century) Disney's productions were devalued.

Some critics disapproved of Disney's works even in the 1930s. As a Mickey Mouse book was placed on the recommended reading list for New York City schools in 1938, Louise Seaman Bechtel, in the Saturday Review of Literature, regretted "the pressing semi-reality of all the hurrying scenes in color on the screen, the over-elaborated story and crowded canvas" of the film Snow White. In later decades one of the louder salvos was fired by the librarian Frances Clarke Sayers, who in a 1965 letter to the Los Angeles Times (later expanded into an article for the Horn Book Magazine ) made an often-quoted statement bemoaning the obviousness of Disney's work, particularly its violence, mediocrity, vulgarity, and its "pretending that everything is so sweet, so saccharine, so without any conflict except the obvious conflict of violence." Other critics include Richard Schickel, who in his The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (1968) lamented, "In this most childlike of our mass communicators I see what is most childish and therefore most dangerous in all of us who were his fellow Americans."

I'm Going to Disney World!

In recent years Disney's popularity with the general public has soared. Disney products are seen as cute, safe, and cheerful. The company's CEO Michael Eisner claimed, in the 2001 annual report, that Disney's various studios had been number one at the U.S. box office for six of the previous seven years and number one internationally for five of them.

He added that Disney was the largest publisher of children's books in the world and that more than a billion people worldwide had used a Disney product during the previous year. Giants slugger Barry Bonds exclaimed, upon hitting his record-breaking homerun in 2001, "I'm going to Disney World!," and in the wake of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush advised the American public, "Go down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed."

Yet cultural critics and film historians continue to accuse the entertainment company of reinforcing corporate, patriarchal, ethnocentric, and imperialistic values by modifying, for instance, traditional tales such as "Snow White," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Beauty and the Beast." Only in Disney's version is Snow White such a happy housewife for the dwarfs. While traditional tales with oral sources have been altered throughout their history to reflect the concerns and biases of individual tellers and transcribers, once Walt Disney Productions (as the company is now known) creates a version of a story–whether it is a traditional tale or a classic text such as Pinocchio or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Winnie-the-Pooh –Disney's version becomes the standard one for millions of children. The Little Mermaid 's underwater witch is now visualized around the world as a drag queen named Ursula, and the American Indian Pocahontas is a brunette Barbie.

Other cultural critics and historians find points of contestation in Disney's films. In From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture Elizabeth Bell found visual images of strength and discipline in the fairy-tale heroines, whose bodies were modeled on those of classical dancers. Lori Kenschaft, in her essay "Just a Spoonful of Sugar? Anxieties of Gender and Class in Mary Poppins, " reminded us that not everyone experiences a film such as Disney's Mary Poppins in the same way, especially in this age of multimedia and fast-forwarding: whereas one individual might register the energy of the chimney sweeps in the film, another viewer might pick up on the film's intermittent critiques of class and gender.

The company struggled financially in the 1930s and 1940s, achieving stability only in the late 1950s, and since Walt Disney's death in 1966 the corporation has experienced a number of ups and downs. In 1999 and again in 2002 Fortune magazine called it the "world's most troubled entertainment giant." Nevertheless, it is one of the largest media corporations in the world, firmly ensconced in the Fortune 100, with annual revenues of more than twenty-five billion dollars. Its holdings include Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, the Disney Channel, Radio Disney, Hyperion Books, Hollywood Records, the various theme parks, and the television networks ABC and ESPN. It is arguably the most influential corporation in the world. For Disney gets us young and helps to shape our understanding of who we are, getting us to whistle while we work, to be unafraid of the big bad wolf, to wish upon a star that some day our prince will come, indeed to accept Disney products as the spoonful of sugar that helps any medicine go down, in this small world after all.

bibliography

Bell, Elizabeth, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, eds. 1995. From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kenschaft, Lori. 1999. "Just a Spoonful of Sugar? Anxieties of Gender and Class in Mary Poppins. " In Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children's Literature and Culture, ed. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Project on Disney. 1995. Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Sayers, Frances Clarke, and Charles M. Weisenberg. 1965. "Walt Disney Accused." Horn Book Magazine 40: 602–611.

Schickel, Richard. 1968. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Smoodin, Eric, ed. 1994. Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. New York: Routledge.

Watts, Steven. 1997. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Beverly Lyon Clark

Walt Disney

Born: December 5, 1901
Chicago, Illinois
Died: December 15, 1966
Burbank, California
Animator and cofounder, Walt Disney Company

During his career, Walt Disney found ways to make children of all ages believe in a certain kind of magic. His films brought talking animals to life. His theme parks transported people to distant lands or make-believe castles. And through Walt Disney Productions, the Disney name became one of the most famous and trusted brands in the world. His company promoted him as a carefree man whose only goal was to "bring happiness to the millions." In business, however, Disney was demanding, seeking perfection in his art and total control of his business.

"When does a person stop being a child? Can you say that a child is ever entirely eliminated from the adult? I believe that the right kind of entertainment can appeal to all persons, young or old."

Struggling Artist

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the fourth son of Elias and Mary Disney. He also had a younger sister. In 1905, the Disneys moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. Disney later recalled the small-town atmosphere of the town when he built Disneyland. His family moved again in 1911, settling in Kansas City. Mr. Disney began a successful paper route, and Walt and his brother Roy helped him. Walt also showed an early interest in art, copying a popular comic strip and making up his own.

By high school, with his family now living in Chicago, Disney was winning recognition for his art, publishing his cartoons in the school paper. In 1918, about a year after the United States entered World War I (1914-18), Disney lied about his age to volunteer as a Red Cross ambulance driver. He arrived in Europe shortly after the war ended and spent most of his time as a chauffeur for army officers. In his free time, he kept drawing cartoons.

When he returned to the United States in 1919, Disney settled in Kansas City and began his career as an artist. His first job was at a commercial art studio, drawing animals in farm-equipment catalogues. Disney later worked for the Kansas City Slide Company, which created advertising films for local companies. Disney began to study the new art of animation for the ads, then began experimenting with his own cartoon films. By 1921, he was working on his own on the side, making short cartoons he called Laugh-O-Grams. Disney officially incorporated the company in 1922 and produced cartoons of fairy tales. The next year, however, the company went bankrupt. Disney took a half-finished film of Alice's Wonderland, which combined live actors with cartoon figures, and headed for California.

Walt Disney's earliest animation may have been a flip book he made for his sister when he was nine years old. He drew a series of pictures on different pieces of paper. Flipping the pages made the figures appear to move.

The Daring Animator and His New Company

Disney set up a studio in his uncle's shop so he could finish Alice's Wonderland and make other films like it. His brother Roy was also in California, and he loaned Disney money to get his company off the ground. The two brothers went into business together, forming Disney Brothers Studio. By 1924, the "Alice" cartoons were playing in theaters on the East Coast and receiving positive reviews. Disney's personal life was also improving, as he started dating Lilly Bounds, a young woman he had hired to work at the studio. They were married in June 1925 and eventually had two daughters, one of them adopted.

Although Disney and his company struggled financially during the early years, he did well enough to buy a new studio and hire more workers. Disney was also constantly looking for new opportunities. In 1928, while coming home from a business trip in New York, he had an idea for a new cartoon creature, a mouse. Disney wanted to call him Mortimer Mouse; his wife suggested Mickey instead. Mickey became Disney's first cartoon star.

Around the same time, Disney saw that sound films, then a novelty, would change Hollywood. Matching music with cartoon action, however, was not easy, and Disney demanded perfection. At one point he sold his beloved car to finance a recording for one of his cartoons. Disney also worked hard, sometimes falling asleep in his studio after working late into the night.

After the success of Mickey Mouse and other short cartoons, Disney began planning his first full-length feature. In 1934, an excited Disney acted out the story of "Snow White" for his staff, playing all the roles. He was convinced the film would be a success. Once again, Disney was right in guessing what people would pay to see. As Time magazine wrote many years later, Disney had "a deep, intuitive identification with the common impulses of common people."

Building New Worlds

Creating animated films let Disney invent worlds that did not exist and gave him the control he craved. During the 1940s, he had an idea for a real world that he could also shape as he chose. Bob Thomas quotes him in Walt Disney: An American Original: The concept of Disneyland "started when my daughters were very young, and I took them to amusement parks on Sundays.… I said to myself… why can't there be a better place to take your children, where you can have fun together?"

At the new home Walt Disney built for his family during the 1940s, he included a half-mile railroad track for his own model train, which was large enough to carry several people at once.

In 1952, Disney formed a second company, Walt Disney Inc., to build his new theme park. He later changed the name to WED Enterprises. Out of WED came the Imagineers, the designers of new rides and new technologies that could make Disney's dreams come to life. One Disney idea was creating moving models of people that could talk. WED created these figures, called Audio-Animatronics.

Michael Eisner: The "Outsider" Who Saved Disney

In 1984, Michael Eisner became the first person with no personal connection to Walt Disney to lead Walt Disney Productions. And unlike most Americans, Eisner had never even grown up on Disney films as a child. He admitted that he first saw them with his own children. But like Disney, Eisner seemed to have a flair for the creative. And like the company's founder, Eisner could be difficult to work with, as he fought to have things done his way.

The product of a wealthy New York family, Eisner was born in 1942. He originally planned to study medicine, but found himself drawn to entertainment. After college, Eisner took a job at NBC, then moved over to ABC, where he worked with Barry Diller, one of the rising young television executives of the 1960s. During the 1970s, Eisner scheduled such hit shows as Happy Days and Welcome Back, Kotter. From television he moved to motion pictures, working for Diller at Paramount Pictures. Eisner, as president, helped Paramount regain its position as one of the top studios in Hollywood.

When Disney Productions first considered hiring Eisner, some important investors questioned if he was the right person to run the company. As he wrote in his autobiography Work in Progress, Eisner told them they needed someone with creativity to keep the company growing. "In a creative business," he said, "you … have to be willing to take chances and even to fail sometimes, because otherwise nothing innovative is ever going to happen." When Eisner got the job, he found ways to make money from old Disney products and created new animated classics to revive the Disney image.

During the 1990s, Eisner's moves made Disney one of the most successful stocks in the United States. But Eisner's personal style, considered arrogant by some, did not please everyone who worked for him. Disney developed a reputation as the cheapest film studio in Hollywood. And Disney's movement away from strict family entertainment into more "adult" content upset some people who felt Eisner was betraying Disney's wholesome image.

Disney under Eisner was also criticized for being too concerned with making money and controlling markets, instead of offering good entertainment. But in 2002, Eisner insisted to Fortune that he and the Disney company were still committed to quality. "There are two ways to make money in entertainment," he said, "the high road or the low road. The low road is a road that I don't choose to be on."

Disney, however, was not content with just building theme parks. He wanted to create a whole town. In the early 1960s, Disney's company began buying thousands of acres in central Florida. Part of the land would become a second theme park—Disney World—but Disney wanted to use some of it for a planned community, the "City of Tomorrow." In October 1966, Disney gave an interview describing his vision.

Bob Thomas quotes him as saying, "It's like the city of tomorrow ought to be.… It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities."

Disney called his idea the Environmental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). Today's EPCOT features exhibits on science and technology, along with tributes to several foreign countries, but it is not the town Disney envisioned. Celebration, a nearby planned community the company opened in 1998, is probably closer to what Disney had in mind.

Disney's comments on EPCOT were some of the last public statements he ever made. A lifelong smoker, he died of lung cancer just a few months later, on December 15, 1966. Newspapers around the world mourned the loss of a man who had brought so much happiness to children and adults.

For many years, people spread a rumor that Walt Disney had ordered his body frozen after his death, hoping it could be unfrozen years later when doctors had a cure for cancer. The rumor was untrue.

For More Information

Books

Eisner, Michael, with Tony Schwartz. Work in Progress. New York: Random House, 1998.

Masters, Kim. The Keys to the Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip. New York: William Morrow, 2000.

Schweizer, Peter, and Rochelle Schweizer. Disney: The Mouse Betrayed. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc. 1998.

Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney: An American Original. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976.

Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Periodicals

Boroughs, Don, et al. "Disney's All Smiles." U.S. News & World Report (August 14, 1995): p. 32.

"From the Archives." Time (December 28, 1998): p. 14.

Gabor, Andrea, and Steve Hawkins. "Of Mice and Money in the Magic Kingdom." U.S. News & World Report (December 22, 1986): p. 44.

Gunther, Marc. "Has Eisner Lost the Disney Magic?" Fortune (January 7, 2002): p. 64.

Huey, John. "Eisner Explains Everything." Fortune (April 17, 1995): p. 44.

Koepp, Stephen. "Do You Believe in Magic." Time (April 25, 1988): p. 66.

Koselka, Rita. "Mickey's Midlife Crisis." Forbes (May 13, 1991): p. 42.

Schickel, Richard. "Walt Disney." Time (December 7, 1998): p. 124.

Streisand, Betty. "Shareholders Smell a Rat." U.S. News & World Report (March 3, 1997): p. 59.

Vinzant, Carol. "Eisner's Mousetrap." Fortune (September 6,1999): p. 106. Wiegner, Kathleen K. "The Tinker Bell Principle." Forbes (December 2,1985): p. 102.

Web Sites

Buena Vista Online Entertainment. [On-line] http://www.bventertainment.go.com (accessed on August 16, 2002).

Disney Online. [On-line] http://www.disney.go.com (accessed on August 16, 2002).

Disney, Walt

(1901-1966)
The Walt Disney Company

Overview

Walt Disney was one of the great pioneers of filmmaking and the creator of several classic films, most notably his feature-length animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Disney, who grew up almost without a childhood, found a way to amuse himself as an adult by making cartoons and filling them with characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Creator of cartoons, live-action movies, theme parks, and television programs for the whole family, Disney introduced wholesome family entertainment on a world scale, and was one of the major entertainment forces of the twentieth century.

Personal Life

Walter Elias Disney, known throughout most of his life as Walt Disney, was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. He had three older brothers and a younger sister. He and one of his older brothers remained especially close throughout Disney's lifetime and pursued the same business together.

Disney's parents, Elias and Flora Disney, came from farming backgrounds, Elias from Canada and Flora from Ohio. Walt's father was a strong influence on the entire family. A stern religious fundamentalist, he readily disciplined his children with his belt. He also denied the children toys, games, and sporting equipment associated with childhood, and this experience may have had some impact on Disney's later passion for the entertainment of children.

Growing up in the Disney family was further complicated by the father's pro-union activism and his political support of the socialist presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, as well as his tendency to change jobs frequently. The family was forced to move to both rural and urban areas all over the Midwest, from Chicago to Marceline, Missouri, to Kansas City, Missouri, and back to Chicago. Disney's father worked in farming, railway shops, carpentry and contracting work, and newspaper distribution. The family was always on the verge of financial collapse, and everyone in the family who could do some kind of work, like deliver newspapers, did.

Disney, according to his brother and lifelong business partner Roy, always enjoyed country life. He loved the animals he encountered, some of which may have inspired him to create cartoon animals in his later career in filmmaking.

Disney had a difficult time gaining an education because of his family's constant moving and his need to work to help support the family. When he was 16, though, he was able to join an art class at the Chicago Academy and Fine Arts, where he developed his modest drawing skills.

Disney dropped out of high school at age 17 to serve in World War I. He had tried to follow his brother Roy into the Navy but was rejected because he was underage. He was accepted as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross after altering the birthdate on his application. He served in France for a short time and returned to the United States in 1919. After returning from the war, he moved on his own to Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked a variety of jobs as a commercial artist and cartoonist.

Disney met Lillian Bounds, one of the employees in his first cartoon-film studio in the early 1920s, and they married on July 13, 1925. The marriage lasted a lifetime, and they produced two daughters.

Disney was known as a perfectionist and a demanding man. Some people saw him as self-centered, and he seemed often baffled when people disagreed with him. He was described by friends and coworkers as a driven man, even "a workaholic." Disney's personal life was filled with paradoxes. He smoked constantly, yet seemed to dislike this bad habit in others. Politically, he was the total opposite of his father. Disney joined the Republican Party in California and remained a firm political conservative. Though he loved country life, he spent most of his life in cities. A complex man, he suffered two nervous breakdowns in his life, one at age 30, and another a decade later, after half the cartoonists of his company went out on strike against him in a dispute about his labor practices.

By 1960, Disney had become a wealthy man, despite many ups and downs in his career. Just as he neared the pinnacle of his career, after having won five Oscars for his production of the movie Mary Poppins, he learned that his lifetime of cigarette smoking was to have consequences. He had surgery for lung cancer in 1966. Though he appeared to be recovering, he had a relapse and died on December 15, 1966.

Disney received more than 700 awards for his creative achievements, including an honorary Academy Award in 1939, four Academy Awards in 1954, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to him by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. He was also honored with the Freedom Foundation Award later that same year.

Career Details

By 1922, Disney had set up his first small cartoon-production company in Kansas City with Ub Iwerks, whose drawing ability and technical inventiveness were prime factors in Disney's eventual success. Their business soon failed, though, and Disney took a job with an ad service that made cartoon advertisements to be shown between movies at the local theater. Disney gained a basic understanding of the medium and, anxious to get back out on his own, moved to Hollywood, California, in 1923 and started a business with his brother Roy. Out of his "garage" operation there, Disney filmed a live performance with cartoon figures from Alice in Wonderland. He expanded on this idea with the creation of a series called Alice in Cartoonland. He produced 56 of these cartoons in three years and in 1927 returned to a straight cartoon format with his Oswald the Rabbit series, producing 26 of these cartoons in less than two years.

By about 1927, Disney began looking for a new approach to his cartoons and a new character. He came up with a mouse character called Mortimer, but his wife Lilly thought the name was too stiff and convinced Disney to go with Mickey instead. Mickey Mouse came to life in 1928, first as a pilot, then as an adventurer, a sort of pirate-character. Late in 1928, after seeing the first sound movie, The Jazz Singer, Disney decided to make the first all-sound, talking-and-music cartoon, with Mickey Mouse starring as "Steamboat Willie."

By 1936, eight years later, critics and fans alike agreed that Mickey Mouse was the most recognized figure in the world. Songs were written about him. Watches had his face on them. He could be found everywhere. Disney was called "a genius."

During this time, Disney studios launched other successful cartoon characters, including Donald Duck and Pluto. Although he had stopped actually drawing the cartoons himself by 1927, and relied on a staff of animators to implement his ideas, Disney himself was the voice of Mickey Mouse in all the cartoons from 1928 to 1946. Disney's cartoons, both short and full-length features, won many awards. During the 1930s, the Disney cartoons were a phenomenon of worldwide success. This success led to the establishment of immensely profitable, Disney-controlled, sidelines in advertising, publishing, and franchised goods, which helped shape popular tastes for nearly 40 years.

Disney expanded his business rapidly, creating new studios and a training school for animators. It was these students, using state-of-the-art technology, who made possible the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Other costly animated features followed, including Pinocchio and Bambi.

In the 1940s, despite his many successes, Disney produced a series of financial "flops," including a film now regarded as a classic, the animated feature Fantasia. Fantasia did poorly at the box office, and Disney was devastated. Then half his artists went on strike against him, protesting his dictatorial style. Some say that if it were not for a government contract he obtained to produce service-related training films, Disney might have gone bankrupt by the end of World War II.

Luckily, he was able to reexamine his studio operations and pursue other directions successfully. During the 1950s he made a series of live-action feature movies, such as Treasure Island, and his favorite, So Dear To My Heart. With the advent of Seal Island, Disney moved into wildlife films, and expanded production of live-action pictures, which led to many other family films. His elaborate production of Mary Poppins, which won five Academy Awards two years before Disney's death, was one example of a successful family film that used occasional animation and plenty of music.

In 1954, Disney also began to do something revolutionary for the time: he began to produce for television, which had been the traditional "enemy" of the movie business. During the 1950s, Disney joined with American Broadcasting Company TV productions and made a fortune producing Davy Crockett and The Mickey Mouse Club for television exclusively. By the time of his death, Disney had more than 280 television shows to his name.

Disney also began to develop his famous Disneyland theme parks, the first opening in 1957 in Anaheim, California. Disney World, in Orlando, Florida, was not completed until after his death, in 1971. Disney's vision was to interconnect all his many business ventures so that one would help the other; in other words, seeing his work on TV would cause people to want to go to Disneyland, and going to Disneyland would cause people to want to see family-oriented Disney movies.

Disney's dream of creating a city of the future was realized in 1982 with the opening of EPCOT, which stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a real-life community of the future. Disney theme parks have continued to expand with the opening of Disney-MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom.

Chronology: Walt Disney

1901: Born.

1923: Produced his first cartoon series, "Alice in Cartoonland."

1928: Created Mickey Mouse.

1937: Produced first great critical and financial success, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs.

1941: Began making training and instructional films for the armed forces.

1954: Appearance of the television show, Disneyland.

1954: Received four Academy Awards.

1955: Opened Disneyland theme park.

1966: Died.

By the 1960s, Disney had created a diversified empire, founded on the animal icons, like Mickey Mouse, that had first brought him such fame. The Disney empire is noted for its traditional family values, wholesome middle-class productions, and high level of quality control. Today, the Walt Disney Company, with the creation of Touchstone Pictures, has branched out to a broader range of films. Disney also owns Hollywood Records, and even has its own cruise line. It is a multibillion-dollar enterprise with undertakings all over the world.

Social and Economic Impact

The impact of Walt Disney's career has been felt throughout much of the twentieth century. His creation of wholesome cartoon characters and first-rate animation made Disney what British cartoonist David Low called "the most significant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo." After Disney's death, his classic films continue to be shown, the TV Disney Channel broadcasts his work to TV audiences 24 hours a day, and his theme parks in America and elsewhere (including Tokyo and Paris) sell his wholesome vision of America as a mecca. Disney's impact on childhood entertainment is almost immeasurably great and, at the time of his death, Disney's business empire was estimated to be worth over $100 million a year. In addition, Disney created a new university, the California Institute of the Arts. Disney once said, "If I can help provide a place to develop the talent of the future, I think I will have accomplished something." "Walt Disney" continues to be a household name in American homes.

Sources of Information

Contact at: The Walt Disney Company
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521
Business Phone: (818)560-1000
URL: http://www.disney.com

Bibliography

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