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Walt Disney




Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 - December 15, 1966) was an American
animated film producer and the creator of an American-based theme park
called Disneyland and the billion-dollar Walt Disney corporation.

Walt Disney was born in Chicago to Elias Disney and Flora Call. He was named
after his father and after his father's close friend Walter Parr, St Paul
Congregational Church's preacher. In 1906 his family moved to a farm near
Marceline, Missouri. The family sold the farm in 1909 and lived in a rented
house till 1910, when they moved to Kansas City. Walt was nine years old at
the time. Walt graduated from Benton School on June 18, 1917. He received
some education at the Kansas City Art Institute but he left school at age
sixteen and became a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I, giving his
year of birth as 1900 to be able to enlist. He served as a member of the
American Red Cross Ambulance Force in France till 1919.

Walt returned to the USA, moved to Kansas City and started looking for a
job. Disney had always wanted to be a film maker. He even once applied for a
job working for Charlie Chaplin and was turned down. He was also interested
in becoming a political cartoonist but after some time of being unemployed
he had to settle for a job in "Posman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio" for 50
dollars a month. In his new job Walt met and befriended Ubbe Ert Iwerks,
later known as Ub Iwerks. The two friends were interested in creating their
own company and on January, 1920 they formed "Iwerks-Disney Commercial
Artists". The company soon closed and the duo was hired by the "Kansas City
Film Ad Company".

Walt wasn't content with the animated ads they assigned him and started
making his own animated films on his spare time which he sold to the "Newman
Theater Company". The films were called Newman Laugh-O-Grams. They were
originally only about a minute long but they soon gained the interest of the
public by focusing on local problems and criticizing the local government.
Apparently Disney still wanted to be a political cartoonist. In 1922 Walt
started making longer shorts based on well known fairy-tales like
"Cinderella". In 1923 Walt also started experimenting with shorts combining
live-action and animation. Few of the shorts that Walt worked on during
these years have survived but they were locally successful at the time and
Walt was getting ambitious.

Walt was now working on his own company again along with Ub Iwerks, Hugh
Harman, Rudolf Ising and Carmen Maxwell but the Laugh-O-Grams weren't
satisfying him anymore. Though reasonably popular in Kansas they weren't
truly financially successful. His next attempt at success would involve the
combination of live-action and animation. This was already the basis of the
moderately successful series Out of the Inkwell by Max Fleischer and his
brother Dave Fleischer that had begun in 1918 and was still running. But the
Fleischer brothers had their animated star Koko the Clown interacting with a
live-action setting. Walt wanted to create a series of cartoons, called the
Alice Comedies in which a live action little girl interacted with animated
characters. The idea would be used successfully much later in Roger Rabbit
cartoons but was quite original for its time.

Walt and his team put all their efforts on creating Alice's Wonderland. The
young actress playing Alice in this film was Virginia Davis, who had worked
for the "Kansas City Film Ad Company". Unfortunately for them, their profits
from Laugh-O-Graphs weren't enough to cover the expenses and the company
went bankrupt in July, 1923. But Walt had his finished project in his hand
and he left for Hollywood in hopes of finding interested distributors.
Reportedly he had only 40 dollars left at this point. Ub followed him. But
Ising, Harman and Maxwell decided to follow their own separate path. They
would form "Arabian Nights Cartoon Studio" and later Harman-Ising Studio.

In Hollywood Walt found the interested distributors he was looking for,
Margaret Winkler and her fiancee (and soon husband), Charles Mintz. They
were already distributing the Felix the Cat series by Pat Sullivan and Otto
Messmer. On October 16 they signed a contract for twelve films. However Walt
, at this point, had no studio, artists or actors while the contract asked
for the participation of Virginia Davis, still living in Kansas. But Walt
was enthusiastic and started working on his problems.

He enlisted the help of his older brother Roy Oliver Disney who became his
new partner. They established a small studio at 4651 Kingswell Avenue and
started working. Although they only managed to make ten films during 1924
they were successful enough. The two brothers were able to move to a larger
studio at 4649 Kingswell and hire more staff. Besides artists (including
Walt's later wife), more child actors were hired , playing secondary roles.
Walt convinced Virginia Davis and her family to move to Hollywood. At the
distributors' suggestion a recurring animated character was added to the
series, Alice's cat Julius. He first appeared in Alice's Spooky Adventure
released on April 1, 1924 and originaly Walt didn't intended to use him
again. But the distributors were familiar with animated cats and insisted
that the cat would join the cast permanently. In Julius they formed a copy
of Felix.

Walt married a female artist under his employ Lillian Marie Bounds on July
13, 1925 and became the father of two children:

   * Diane Marie Disney, born on December 18, 1933.
   * Sharon Mae Disney, born on December 21, 1936.

Meanwhile the Alice series was becoming successful and Walt had his contract
renewed this time asking for eighteen more films. But the distributors asked
for a reduction in the production costs. Walt decided to reduce Virginia
Davis's regular monthly salary to a daily-rate pay. The Davis family refused
and Virginia continued her career as a child actress elsewhere. She was
replaced by Dawn Paris under the stage name Dawn O'Day(she would later use
the stage nameAnne Shirley). But Dawn's payment wasn't enough as the only
source of income for her family and she quit too. She was replaced by Margie
Gay. Despite these problems, fifteen films of the Alice series were released
during 1925.

In 1926 Margaret Winkler married Charles Mintz and retired from business.
Walt now had to deal with one distributor who felt that the series was
declining. By this time Ub Iwerks was in charge of the animated films and
Walt just supervised and dropped some ideas. The animation was getting
better , the gags increased but the live-action sequences were becoming less
important and the scenarios tended to be repetitive. But the series was
still successful enough. During the year the name of the company changed
from "The Disney Brothers Studio" to "The Walt Disney Studio". From then on
Roy would still play an important part in the Company's financial department
but had now little to do with the films. Walt was now the head of the Studio
which moved to Hyperion Avenue. Walt felt that his youthful appearance (he
was 25 year old) worked against him during contract negotiations and grew a
mustache in an attempt to look older and more serious.

In 1927 the end came for the Alice series. It had reached its limitations
and with Alice in the Big League released on August 27, 1927 it was over.
Besides Black Pete, none of the series characters would appear again. But
Walt had other plans. Charles Mintz's own employer Carl Laemmle, the head of
Universal Studios was interested in a new animated series starring a rabbit.
Mintz assigned this to Walt and his company. They developed the new
character and named him: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Poor Papa was produced by
Spring of this year but Laemmle was less than pleased with the character.
They wanted a likeable character like Charlie Chaplin's Tramp, Felix the Cat
or even Julius from the Alice Comedies. What they got was a rabbit looking
old, fat, sloppy and scruffy with a hooligan's personality. Poor Papa would
be released on August 6, 1928 when the character's popularity was at its
height but this wasn't the introduction of the character to the public that
Universal wanted. The Disney studio had to redesign the character. But the
next short they produced was what Universal wanted. Trolley Troubles
featured a younger, slimmer,better Oswald with the personality of a naughty
young boy. The film's release on September 5, 1927 made the character
instantly successful. Nine shorts featuring Oswald were released during the
year and the character became popular. Oswald merchandise appeared though
Walt had nothing to do with it. Black Pete was now used as a recurring
antagonist to Oswald. Walt had success at his hands... or so he thought.

One of the more famous Disney quotes has been, "Remember, it all started
with a mouse". But it more likely started with the Rabbit. Walt was
successful enough to be able to hire his old colleagues Hugh Harman and
Rudolf Ising, who hadn't been so successful on their own but had improved in
skills. Seventeen of Disney's Oswald cartoons were released during 1928, the
final being Hot Dog, released on August 20, 1928.

Walt was quite confident when he went to negotiate with Charles Mintz in New
York. He wanted his fee to increase from 2250 dollars per short to 2500
dollars per short. Instead Mintz wanted Walt's fee to decrease to 2000
dollars per short. When Walt refused, Mintz had some announcements to make.
He didn't need Walt anymore. He had secretly met with a number of Walt's
employees including Harman and Ising and had signed them on contracts of
their own. As the distributor Universal held the rights to Oswald and they
could make their own cartoons with him if they wanted to, Walt returned to
his Studio in defeat and along with Ub Iwerks and the remaining employees he
started working on a new project to replace Oswald as Disney's star.

This meeting was very important for the history of animation because of its
consequences in the long run. It is well known that Walt's next project was
Mickey Mouse but there were other developments spawned from the meeting.
Charles Mintz wasn't idle either. He continued to provide Universal with
Oswald cartoons, produced now in a new Studio under his brother-in-law
George Winkler. Thanks to Harman and Ising, now chief animators, the 25
shorts produced till mid-1929 were of the same quality as those produced by
Walt's Studio. But then Carl Laemmle decided to create an animation
department for Universal and hand the rights to Oswald to it. The new Studio
would be run by Walter Lantz and would later spawn even more famous
characters like Woody Woodpecker. Ozzie of the Circus, released on January
5,1929 was the first in a long series of shorts produced by Lant'z Studio.
As for Mintz and Winkler their Studio and their careers were over. But
Harman and Ising weren't even started yet. They found employment again
creating a partnership with producer Leon Schlesinger. Together they created
an animation Studio on behalf of Warner Bros.. The short Sinkin' in the
Bathtub , released on April 19, 1930 was the first of a long series of
cartoons called Looney Tunes that would spawn more famous characters like
Bugs Bunny.

Ironically enough Oswald, the reason for these developments, has long been
obscured by characters later created by the Studios formed as a result of
his creation. For more info on those Studios and their animated traditions:

   * The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts
   * The Walter Lantz Cartoon Encyclopedia
   * Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies-The Early Years
   * Looney Tunes Cartoon Checklist

Returning to Walt's new project, Disney claimed that it was the blowing of a
train's whistle that inspired him to create Mickey Mouse. Apparently the
whistle blowed "A moooouse! A mooouse!" It seems likely that Mickey evolved
from a more pragmatic conversation between Disney and Iwerks. Mickey in fact
was little more than a truncation of Oswald, round ears instead of long
ones, and so forth. It has also been said that the name Mickey came from
Disney's wife Lillian who disapproved of Disney's choice of Mortimer. And a
tall, strapping Mortimer would appear later in a Disney cartoon attempting
to woo Minnie away from Mickey.

He continued this inventive film making with Mickey Mouse. Mickey's first
cartoon was Plane Crazy, in a story inspired by Charles Lindbergh. The
best-remembered today, however, was the first "talkie" cartoon, Steamboat Willie.

Disney found out that his distributor was stealing from him, so he broke
away from them. Lessons learned from this experience would later prompt him
to distribute his films with his own distribution company, Buena Vista. But
Disney's distributor persuaded Iwerks to leave Disney and work for them.
Iwerks owned one third of the Walt Disney Studios. He eventually returned to
Disney and worked for him in R & D creating such historic inventions as the
multi-plane camera which created three dimensional backgrounds in animated
films. But his choice back then to leave the studio and sacrifice his
percentage of the company cost him countless millions of dollars. While
Iwerks's contribution may be overlooked by most people, among Disney
historians his name is as well known as any Disney character.

Mickey's films were successful, but it was in merchandising the studio
became truly lucrative. Starting out with Mickey Mouse pencils and then
expanding into watches, comics and toys, the Mouse created a true financial
empire.

The shorts also had success with their musical scores. The Three Little Pigs
was so successful when it was released in theaters that it was actually
billed above the features. The title song, composed by Frank Churchill, was
a huge popular hit, subsequently covered by other artists like Benny Goodman.

Snow White, released in 1937, was Disney's and the world's first
feature-length animated film. To acquire the funding to complete, Disney had
to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of
America. A string of animated films, such as Fantasia (1940) and Pinocchio
(1940), followed. Not all were commercial successes, and Disney's financial
situation was at times threadbare. Disney's relationship with his animators
was strained when they went on strike in 1941, almost crippling the studio.

To compensate for the diminished resources, Disney came out with movies like
The Three Caballeros and Melody Time that were less complicated and relied
upon short musical segments. Learning from the lack of success he had with
Fantasia, Disney used music from artists like Dinah Shore and Nelson Riddle
as opposed to Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky. There might have
been even more of these films if not for World War II. The Army occupied
part of Disney's studio. Perhaps the most important Disney film from this
time would be Victory Through Air Power. Disney agreed to make training
films for the United States Armed Forces. In these, the Seven Dwarfs would
demonstrate how to set up camps and so forth. But Victory Through Air Power,
in which an eagle defeats an octopus, was used by the military to explain
the strategy behind D-Day.

After the war, the unfavorable economics of concentrating exclusively on
animated movies finally caught up with Disney and his company, as they
diversified into television and live-action movies, still retaining their
family-friendly nature. However, 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
studio strike caused him to bear a grudge, along with his dislike and
distrust of worker's unions, leading to his testimony.

Disney opened Disneyland, a theme park located in Anaheim, California in 1955.

In the months before his death, Disney dreamed of building EPCOT, an
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. He passed away before he could
make that dream a reality. While the Walt Disney World theme park was built,
the EPCOT, also known as the "Florida Project," was translated by Disney's
sucessors into the EPCOT of today, essentially a living world's fair. The
Epcot park that currently exists is a far cry from the actual living city
that Walt Disney envisioned. However, the Celebration, Florida new town
built by Disney Corporation adjacent to Walt Disney World harkens back to
the EPCOT vision.

It is often stated that Walt Disney had his body cryogenically frozen after
his death. This is in fact an urban myth; Disney was cremated.

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