Disney, Walt

Disney, Walt (Walter Elias Disney) (dĭz`nē), 1901–66, American movie producer and pioneer in animated cartoons, b. Chicago. He grew up in Missouri, in the small town of Marceline and in Kansas City. He moved to Chicago in 1917, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and began (1920) his career as a cartoonist making animated film advertisements. In 1928 Disney created the character Mickey Mouse in the silent film Plane Crazy. That same year Mickey also appeared in Steamboat Willie, a short that initiated the concept of making a separate cartoon for each animated movement. Instantly famous, the film was also Disney's first attempt to use sound (his own voice for Mickey), and it was followed by many other shorts starring Mickey and his animal sidekicks. An international success, by 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoons had been viewed by some 500 million moviegoers. Disney also experimented with the use of music (The Skeleton Dance), the portrayal of speed (The Tortoise and the Hare), three-dimensional effects (The Old Mill), and the use of color (one of the earliest color shorts was 1933's Three Little Pigs).

Disney produced the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), which took three years to complete. Additional features included Pinocchio (1939), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). In Song of the South (1946), he merged live actors and animated figures. During World War II, Disney's studio produced cartoons for the armed services as training tools and morale builders.

Beginning with Treasure Island in 1951, Disney added live-action movies to his output, while still producing such animated classics as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). Thereafter, his studio produced several animal stories (e.g., Greyfriars Bobby, 1960), musical fantasies (e.g., Mary Poppins, 1964), and television programs, beginning in the early 1950s with the weekly Disneyland and its famous Mouseketeers. Disney and his productions received numerous Academy and other awards during his lifetime. After his death, the Disney studios remained active, diversified, and ultimately became enormously successful. In the early 1980s, they began producing films for adults.

Disneyland, a huge theme park in Anaheim, Calif., which in part celebrates America's hometowns and small-town values, was opened by Disney in 1955. Disney's California Adventure, a second, smaller theme park in Anaheim, opened adjacent to Disneyland in 2001. An even bigger park, Walt Disney World, opened near Orlando, Fla., in 1971 as a theme park and resort, and Epcot Center, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom have since been added there. Disneyland parks have also opened near Tokyo (1983), in Marne-la-Vallée, near Paris (1992), and in Hong Kong (2005).

Bibliography

See biographies by D. D. Miller and P. Martin (1956), B. Thomas (1958), S. Watts (1998), and N. Gabler (2006); R. Schickel, The Disney Version (1968); C. Finch, The Art of Walt Disney (1973); M. Eliot, Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince (1993); R. Merritt and J. B. Kaufman, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1994); H. A. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (1999); D. Smith and S. Clark, Disney: The First 100 Years (1999).

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Disney, Walt(er Elias)

Walt Disney, 1950.

(credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

(born Dec. 5, 1901, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Dec. 15, 1966, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. animator and entertainment executive. In the 1920s he joined with his brother Roy and his friend Ub Iwerks (1901–71) to establish an animation studio. Together they created Mickey Mouse, the cheerful rodent—customarily drawn by Iwerks, with Disney providing the voice—that starred in the first animated film with sound, Steamboat Willie (1928). The brothers formed Walt Disney Productions (later the Disney Co.) in 1929. Mickey Mouse's instant popularity led them to invent other characters such as Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy and to make several short cartoon films, including The Three Little Pigs (1933). Their first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), was followed by classics such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Cinderella (1950). A perfectionist, an innovator, and a skilled businessman, Walt Disney maintained tight control over the company in both creative and business aspects. He oversaw the company's expansion into live-action films, television programming, theme parks, and mass merchandising. By his death in 1966, Disney had transformed the family entertainment industry and influenced more than one generation of American children.

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Disney, (Walter Elias) Walt (1901–66) movie animator, producer, showman; born in Chicago. He spent most of his boyhood on a farm in Missouri, and at age 16 went to Chicago to study art. From 1920–22 he was in Kansas City, Mo., where, under the pioneer animator Ub Iwerks, he made simple cartoon advertisements that were shown in movie theaters. He moved to Los Angeles in 1923 to open his own animated cartoon studio; very quickly, too, he found that his great talent lay in conceiving new images and projects and then directing others in bringing them into being—he actually did little of the animation. His first series—Alice in Cartoonland (1924–26) and Oswald the Rabbit (1926–28)—were not especially successful but in 1928 he introduced Mickey Mouse in the first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Always quick to adopt the latest technology, his Flowers and Trees (1932) was the first film of any kind made in complete Technicolor. From 1929–39, he produced a series of full-color animated cartoons, Silly Symphonies, that featured his soon-to-become famous characters, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. In 1937 he released the first full-length cartoon feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to enormous financial and critical success; it would be followed by others such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). During World War II his studio made educational films for the U.S. government. After the war, he began to produce True-Life Adventures, a series of short films showing hitherto unseen close-ups of animals in natural settings; his first full-length nature film was The Living Desert (1953). He also began to produce movies with live actors; his first was Treasure Island (1950), followed by others including Davy Crockett (1955) and Mary Poppins (1964). In 1954 he also launched a successful television series for children; it featured many of his studio's creations. In 1955 he opened Disneyland, in Anaheim, Calif., an amusement park heavily drawing on his studio's productions; Disney World, in Orlando, Fla., did not open until 1971. Greatly honored in his lifetime, with numerous Oscars—including a special award for Mickey Mouse in 1932—and an honorary degree from Harvard, he remains acknowledged as a true genius of popular entertainment.