Walter Elias Disney (/ˈdɪzni/; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer 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 Awards earned and nominations by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.
Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest
in drawing. He took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial
illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early 1920s and set
up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy. With Ub Iwerks, he
developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success;
he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio
grew, he became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound, full-color
three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons and technical developments in
cameras. The results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937), Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942),
furthered the development of animated film. New animated and live-action films
followed after World War II, including the critically successful Cinderella
(1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Mary Poppins (1964), the last of which
received five Academy Awards.
In the 1950s, Disney expanded into the amusement park
industry, and in July 1955 he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California. To fund
the project he diversified into television programs, such as Walt Disney's
Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club. He was also involved in planning the 1959
Moscow Fair, the 1960 Winter Olympics, and the 1964 New York World's Fair. In
1965, he began development of another theme park, Disney World, the heart of
which was to be a new type of city, the "Experimental
Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (EPCOT). Disney was a heavy smoker
throughout his life and died of lung cancer in December 1966 before either the
park or the EPCOT project was completed.
Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in
private but adopted a warm and outgoing public persona. He had high standards
and high expectations of those with whom he worked. Although there have been
accusations that he was racist or anti-Semitic, they have been contradicted by
many who knew him. Historiography of Disney has taken a variety of
perspectives, ranging from views of him as a purveyor of homely patriotic
values to being a representative of American imperialism. Widely considered to
be one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, Disney remains an
important presence in the history of animation and in the cultural history of
the United States, where he is acknowledged as a national cultural icon. His
film work continues to be shown and adapted, and the Disney theme parks have
grown in size and number to attract visitors in several countries.
Early life
Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue,
in Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney—born
in the Province of Canada, to Irish parents—and Flora (née Call), an American
of German and English descent. Aside from Walt, Elias and Flora's sons were
Herbert, Raymond and Roy; and the couple had a fifth child, Ruth, in December
1903. In 1906, when Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline,
Missouri, where his uncle Robert had just purchased land. In Marceline, Disney
developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a
retired neighborhood doctor. Elias was a subscriber to the Appeal to Reason
newspaper, and Disney practiced drawing by copying the front-page cartoons of
Ryan Walker. He also began to develop an ability to work with watercolors and
crayons. He lived near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line and became
enamored with trains. He and his younger sister Ruth started school at the same
time at the Park School in Marceline in late 1909. The Disney family was active
members of a Congregational church.
In 1911, the Disney’s moved to Kansas City, Missouri. There,
Disney attended the Benton Grammar School, where he met fellow-student Walter
Pfeiffer, who came from a family of theatre fans and introduced him to the
world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long, Disney was spending more
time at the Pfeiffers' house than at home. Elias had purchased a newspaper
delivery route for The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times. Disney and his
brother Roy woke up at 4:30 every morning to deliver the Times before school
and repeated the round for the evening Star after school. The schedule was
exhausting, and Disney often received poor grades after falling asleep in
class, but he continued his paper route for more than six years. He attended
Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute and also took a correspondence
course in cartooning.
In 1917, Elias bought stock in a Chicago jelly producer, the
O-Zell Company, and moved back to the city with his family. Disney enrolled at
McKinley High School and became the cartoonist of the school newspaper, drawing
patriotic pictures about World War I; he also took night courses at the Chicago
Academy of Fine Arts. In mid-1918, he attempted to join the United States Army
to fight the Germans, but he was rejected as too young. After forging the date
of birth on his birth certificate, he joined the Red Cross in September 1918 as
an ambulance driver. He was shipped to France but arrived in November, after
the armistice. He drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance for decoration and
had some of his work published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. He
returned to Kansas City in October 1919, where he worked as an apprentice
artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he drew commercial
illustrations for advertising, theater programs and catalogs, and befriended
fellow artist Ub Iwerks.
Career
Early career:
1920–1928
In January 1920, as Pesmen-Rubin's revenue declined after
Christmas, Disney, aged 18, and Iwerks were laid off. They started their own
business, the short-lived Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Failing to attract
many customers, Disney and Iwerks agreed that Disney should leave temporarily
to earn money at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, run by A. V. Cauger; the
following month Iwerks, who was not able to run their business alone, also
joined. The company produced commercials using the cutout animation technique. Disney
became interested in animation, although he preferred drawn cartoons such as
Mutt and Jeff and Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell. With the assistance of a
borrowed book on animation and a camera, he began experimenting at home. He
came to the conclusion that cel animation was more promising than the cutout
method. Unable to persuade Cauger to try cel animation at the company, Disney
opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co, Fred Harman. Their
main client was the local Newman Theater, and the short cartoons they produced
were sold as "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams".
Disney studied Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables as a model, and the first six "Laugh-O-Grams" were
modernized fairy tales.
In May 1921, the success of the "Laugh-O-Grams" led to the establishment of Laugh-O-Gram
Studio, for which he hired more animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh,
Rudolf Ising and Iwerks. The Laugh-O-Grams cartoons did not provide enough
income to keep the company solvent, so Disney started production of Alice's
Wonderland—based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—which combined live
action with animation; he cast Virginia Davis in the title role. The result, a
12-and-a-half-minute, one-reel film, was completed too late to save
Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which went into bankruptcy in 1923.
Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923 at 21 years old.
Although New York was the center of the cartoon industry, he was attracted to
Los Angeles because his brother Roy was convalescing from tuberculosis there,
and he hoped to become a live-action film director. Disney's efforts to sell
Alice's Wonderland were in vain until he heard from New York film distributor
Margaret J. Winkler. She was losing the rights to both the Out of the Inkwell
and Felix the Cat cartoons, and needed a new series. In October, they signed a
contract for six Alice comedies, with an option for two further series of six
episodes each. Disney and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers Studio—which
later became The Walt Disney Company—to produce the films; they persuaded
Davis and her family to relocate to Hollywood to continue production, with
Davis on contract at $100 a month. In July 1924, Disney also hired Iwerks,
persuading him to relocate to Hollywood from Kansas City. In 1926, the first
official Walt Disney Studio was established at 2725 Hyperion Avenue, demolished
in 1940.
By 1926, Winkler's role in the distribution of the Alice series
had been handed over to her husband, the film producer Charles Mintz, although
the relationship between him and Disney was sometimes strained. The series ran
until July 1927, by which time Disney had begun to tire of it and wanted to
move away from the mixed format to all animation. After Mintz requested new
material to distribute through Universal Pictures, Disney and Iwerks created
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character Disney wanted to be "peppy, alert, saucy and venturesome, keeping him also neat and
trim".
In February 1928, Disney hoped to negotiate a larger fee for
producing the Oswald series, but found Mintz wanting to reduce the payments.
Mintz had also persuaded many of the artists involved to work directly for him,
including Harman, Ising, Carman Maxwell and Friz Freleng. Disney also found out
that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald. Mintz
threatened to start his own studio and produce the series himself if Disney
refused to accept the reductions. Disney declined Mintz's ultimatum and lost
most of his animation staff, except Iwerks, who chose to remain with him.
Creation of Mickey
Mouse to the first Academy Awards: 1928–1934
To replace Oswald, Disney and Iwerks developed Mickey Mouse,
possibly inspired by a pet mouse that Disney had adopted while working in his
Laugh-O-Gram studio, although the origins of the character are unclear.
Disney's original choice of name was Mortimer Mouse, but his wife Lillian
thought it too pompous, and suggested Mickey instead. Iwerks revised Disney's
provisional sketches to make the character easier to animate. Disney, who had
begun to distance himself from the animation process, provided Mickey's voice
until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his
soul."
The first appearance
of Mickey Mouse, in Steamboat Willie (1928)
Mickey Mouse first appeared in May 1928 as a single test
screening of the short Plane Crazy, but it, and the second feature, The
Gallopin' Gaucho, failed to find a distributor. Following the 1927 sensation
The Jazz Singer, Disney used synchronized sound on the third short, Steamboat
Willie, to create the first post-produced sound cartoon. After the animation
was complete, Disney signed a contract with the former executive of Universal
Pictures, Pat Powers, to use the "Powers
Cinephone" recording system; Cinephone became the new distributor for
Disney's early sound cartoons, which soon became popular.
To improve the quality of the music, Disney hired the
professional composer and arranger Carl Stalling, on whose suggestion the Silly
Symphony series was developed, providing stories through the use of music; the
first in the series, The Skeleton Dance (1929), was drawn and animated entirely
by Iwerks. Also hired at this time were several local artists, some of whom
stayed with the company as core animators.[60] Both the Mickey Mouse and Silly
Symphonies series were successful, but Disney and his brother felt they were
not receiving their rightful share of profits from Powers. In 1930, Disney
tried to trim costs from the process by urging Iwerks to abandon the practice
of animating every separate cel in favor of the more efficient technique of
drawing key poses and letting assistants sketch the in-between poses. Disney
asked Powers for an increase in payments for the cartoons. Powers refused and
signed Iwerks to work for him; Stalling resigned shortly afterwards, thinking
that without Iwerks, the Disney Studio would close. Disney had a nervous
breakdown in October 1931—which he blamed on the machinations of Powers and
his own overwork—so he and Lillian took an extended holiday to Cuba and a cruise
to Panama to recover.
With the loss of Powers as distributor, Disney studios
signed a contract with Columbia Pictures to distribute the Mickey Mouse
cartoons, which became increasingly popular, including internationally. Disney
and his crew also introduced new cartoon stars like Pluto in 1930, Goofy in 1932
and Donald Duck in 1934. Always keen to embrace new technology and encouraged
by his new contract with United Artists, Disney filmed Flowers and Trees (1932)
in full-color three-strip Technicolor; he was also able to negotiate a deal
giving him the sole right to use the three-strip process until August 31, 1935.
All subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were in color. Flowers and Trees was
popular with audiences and won the inaugural Academy Award for best Short
Subject (Cartoon) at the 1932 ceremony. Disney had been nominated for another
film in that category, Mickey's Orphans, and received an Honorary Award "for the creation of Mickey
Mouse".
In 1933, Disney produced The Three Little Pigs, a film
described by the media historian Adrian Danks as "the most successful short animation of all time". The
film won Disney another Academy Award in the Short Subject (Cartoon) category.
The film's success led to a further increase in the studio's staff, which
numbered nearly 200 by the end of the year. Disney realized the importance of
telling emotionally gripping stories that would interest the audience, and he
invested in a "story
department" separate from the animators, with storyboard artists who
would detail the plots of Disney's films.
Golden age of
animation: 1934–1941
By 1934, Disney had become dissatisfied with producing
formulaic cartoon shorts, and believed a feature-length cartoon would be more
profitable. The studio began the four-year production of Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, based on the fairy tale. When news leaked out about the project,
many in the film industry predicted it would bankrupt the company; industry
insiders nicknamed it "Disney's
Folly". The film, which was the first animated feature made in full
color and sound, cost $1.5 million to produce—three times over budget. To
ensure the animation was as realistic as possible, Disney sent his animators on
courses at the Chouinard Art Institute; he brought animals into the studio and
hired actors so that the animators could study realistic movement. To portray
the changing perspective of the background as a camera moved through a scene,
Disney's animators developed a multiplane camera which allowed drawings on
pieces of glass to be set at various distances from the camera, creating an
illusion of depth. The glass could be moved to create the impression of a
camera passing through the scene. The first work created on the camera—a
Silly Symphony called The Old Mill (1937)—won the Academy Award for Animated
Short Film because of its impressive visual power. Although Snow White had been
largely finished by the time the multiplane camera had been completed, Disney
ordered some scenes be re-drawn to use the new effects.
Snow White premiered in December 1937 to high praise from
critics and audiences. The film became the most successful motion picture of
1938 and by May 1939 its total gross of $6.5 million made it the most
successful sound film made to that date. Disney won another Honorary Academy
Award, which consisted of one full-sized and seven miniature Oscar statuettes.
The success of Snow White heralded one of the most productive eras for the
studio; the Walt Disney Family Museum calls the following years "the 'Golden Age of Animation' ".
With work on Snow White finished, the studio began producing Pinocchio in early
1938 and Fantasia in November of the same year. Both films were released in
1940, and neither performed well at the box office—partly because revenues
from Europe had dropped following the start of World War II in 1939. The studio
made a loss on both pictures and was deeply in debt by the end of February
1941.
In response to the financial crisis, Disney and his brother
Roy started the company's first public stock offering in 1940, and implemented
heavy salary cuts. The latter measure, and Disney's sometimes high-handed and
insensitive manner of dealing with staff, led to a 1941 animators' strike which
lasted five weeks. While a federal mediator from the National Labor Relations
Board negotiated with the two sides, Disney accepted an offer from the Office
of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make a goodwill trip to South
America, ensuring he was absent during a resolution he knew would be
unfavorable to the studio. As a result of the strike—and the financial state
of the company—several animators left the studio, and Disney's relationship
with other members of staff was permanently strained as a result. The strike
temporarily interrupted the studio's next production, Dumbo (1941), which
Disney produced in a simple and inexpensive manner; the film received a
positive reaction from audiences and critics alike.
World War II and
beyond: 1941–1950
Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the U.S.
entered World War II. Disney formed the Walt Disney Training Films Unit within
the company to produce instruction films for the military such as Four Methods
of Flush Riveting and Aircraft Production Methods. Disney also met with Henry
Morgenthau Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, and agreed to produce short
Donald Duck cartoons to promote war bonds. Disney also produced several
propaganda productions, including shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face—which won
an Academy Award—and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power.
The military films generated only enough revenue to cover
costs, and the feature film Bambi—which had been in production since 1937—underperformed
on its release in April 1942, and lost $200,000 at the box office. On top of
the low earnings from Pinocchio and Fantasia, the company had debts of $4
million with the Bank of America in 1944. At a meeting with Bank of America
executives to discuss the future of the company, the bank's chairman and
founder, Amadeo Giannini, told his executives, "I've been watching the Disneys' pictures quite closely because I
knew we were lending them money far above the financial risk. ... They're 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." Disney's
production of short films decreased in the late 1940s, coinciding with
increasing competition in the animation market from Warner Bros. and
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roy Disney, for financial reasons, suggested more combined
animation and live-action productions. In 1948, Disney initiated a series of
popular live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with Seal Island
the first; the film won the Academy Award in the Best Short Subject (Two-Reel)
category.
Theme parks,
television and other interests: 1950–1966
In early 1950, Disney produced Cinderella, his studio's
first animated feature in eight years. It was popular with critics and theater
audiences. Costing $2.2 million to produce, it earned nearly $8 million in its
first year. Disney was less involved than he had been with previous pictures
because of his involvement in his first entirely live-action feature, Treasure
Island (1950), which was shot in Britain, as was The Story of Robin Hood and His
Merrie Men (1952). Other all-live-action features followed, many of which had
patriotic themes. He continued to produce full-length animated features too,
including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). From the early to
mid-1950s, Disney began to devote less attention to the animation department,
entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, the Nine Old Men,
although he was always present at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating
on other ventures. Around the same time, Disney established his own film
distribution division Buena Vista, replacing his most recent distributor RKO
Pictures.
For several years Disney had been considering building a
theme park. When he visited Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters, he
wanted to be in a clean, unspoiled park, where both children and their parents could
have fun. He visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was heavily
influenced by the cleanliness and layout of the park. In March 1952 he received
zoning permission to build a theme park in Burbank, near the Disney studios.
This site proved too small, and a larger plot in Anaheim, 35 miles (56 km)
south of the studio, was purchased. To distance the project from the studio—which
might attract the criticism of shareholders—Disney formed WED Enterprises
(now Walt Disney Imagineering) and used his own money to fund a group of
designers and animators to work on the plans; those involved became known as "Imagineers". After obtaining
bank funding he invited other stockholders, American Broadcasting-Paramount
Theatres—part of American Broadcasting Company (ABC)—and Western Printing
and Lithographing Company. In mid-1954, Disney sent his Imagineers to every
amusement park in the U.S. to analyze what worked and what pitfalls or problems
there were in the various locations and incorporated their findings into his
design. Construction work started in July 1954, and Disneyland opened in July
1955; the opening ceremony was broadcast on ABC, which reached 70 million
viewers. The park was designed as a series of themed lands, linked by the
central Main Street, U.S.A.—a replica of the main street in his hometown of
Marceline. The connected themed areas were Adventureland, Frontierland,
Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. The park also contained the narrow gauge
Disneyland Railroad that linked the lands; around the outside of the park was a
high berm to separate the park from the outside world. An editorial in The New
York Times considered that Disney had "tastefully
combined some of the pleasant things of yesterday with fantasy and dreams of
tomorrow". Although there were early minor problems with the park, it
was a success, and after a month's operation, Disneyland was receiving over
20,000 visitors a day; by the end of its first year, it attracted 3.6 million
guests.
The money from ABC was contingent on Disney television
programs. The studio had been involved in a successful television special on
Christmas Day 1950 about the making of Alice in Wonderland. Roy believed the
program added millions to the box office takings. In a March 1951 letter to
shareholders, he wrote that "television
can be a most powerful selling aid for us, as well as a source of revenue. It
will probably be on this premise that we enter television when we do".
In 1954, after the Disneyland funding had been agreed, ABC broadcast Walt
Disney's Disneyland, an anthology consisting of animated cartoons, live-action
features and other material from the studio's library. The show was successful
in terms of ratings and profits, earning an audience share of over 50%. In
April 1955, Newsweek called the series an "American
institution". ABC was pleased with the ratings, leading to Disney's
first daily television program, The Mickey Mouse Club, a variety show catering
specifically to children. The program was accompanied by merchandising through
various companies (Western Printing, for example, had been producing coloring
books and comics for over 20 years, and produced several items connected to the
show). One of the segments of Disneyland consisted of the five-part miniseries
Davy Crockett which, according to Gabler,
"became an overnight sensation". The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", became
internationally popular, and ten million records were sold. As a result, Disney
formed his own record production and distribution entity, Disneyland Records.
As well as the construction of Disneyland, Disney worked on
other projects away from the studio. He was consultant to the 1959 American
National Exhibition in Moscow; Disney Studios' contribution was America the
Beautiful, a 19-minute film in the 360-degree Circarama theater that was one of
the most popular attractions. The following year he acted as the chairman of
the Pageantry Committee for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California,
where he designed the opening, closing and medal ceremonies. He was one of
twelve investors in the Celebrity Sports Center, which opened in 1960 in
Glendale, Colorado; he and Roy bought out the others in 1962, making the Disney
company the sole owner.
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