Walt Disney American Director (1901–1966)

Early life

Walter Elias Disney was born on 5 December 1901 in the Hermosa neighbourhood of Chicago, the fourth son of Elias Disney and Flora Call. When he was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. It was there that he began to draw, at first copying newspaper cartoons,. In 1911 the family moved to Kansas City, where he and his brother Roy delivered newspapers before school for more than six years.

The family returned to Chicago in 1917. Disney attended McKinley High School, drew cartoons for the school paper and took evening classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. The army turned him down in 1918 because of his age, so he joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. He reached France in November, after the armistice.

Career

Back in Kansas City in late 1919, Disney found work as an apprentice commercial artist and met Ub Iwerks. Both later worked at a film advertising company, where Disney became interested in animation. He made short cartoons called Laugh-O-Grams for a local theatre, and in 1921 he founded the Laugh-O-Gram Studio. The company went bankrupt in 1923, shortly after he completed a film combining live action and animation, Alice's Wonderland.

Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923, where his brother Roy was recovering from tuberculosis. A distributor, Margaret Winkler, agreed to a series of Alice comedies, and the brothers founded the Disney Brothers Studio, which later became the Walt Disney Company. In 1927 he and Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal. A dispute in early 1928 over budget and ownership left Disney without the character or most of his animators.

He and Iwerks then developed Mickey Mouse. Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho found no distributor, but Steamboat Willie (1928), with synchronised sound, was a success, and Disney voiced Mickey himself until 1947. The Silly Symphonies series began with The Skeleton Dance in 1929. Pluto, Goofy and Donald Duck were introduced in 1930, 1932 and 1934, and Flowers and Trees (1932) was made in three-strip Technicolor.

In 1934 the studio began work on a feature-length cartoon. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in December 1937, was the first animated feature in full colour and sound; the studio developed a multiplane camera for its production. Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942) followed. Financial strain led to a public stock offering in 1940 and a five-week animators' strike in 1941. During World War II the studio made training and propaganda films for the government.

After the war, Disney started the True-Life Adventures nature films in 1948 and produced Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Mary Poppins (1964). For television, he launched the anthology Walt Disney's Disneyland in 1954 and The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, in July 1955. He also worked on the 1960 Winter Olympics ceremonies and the 1964 New York World's Fair.

In 1965 he announced a second park near Orlando, Florida, at the centre of which he planned the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, known as EPCOT. Disney died on 15 December 1966, before it was built. His brother Roy took over the company and dedicated Walt Disney World to him when it opened in 1971.

Recognition

Disney holds the records for the most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22, and for nominations, with 59. His first came at the 1932 ceremony, when Flowers and Trees won for animated short film and he received an honorary award for creating Mickey Mouse. He won again for Three Little Pigs and The Old Mill, among other shorts, and received an honorary award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, presented as one full-size and seven miniature statuettes. The Academy also recognised his nature films and documentaries, and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day won posthumously in 1969.

He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award and two Special Achievement Awards from the Golden Globes, and an Emmy for his work as producer of the Disneyland series. He became a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour in 1935, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1968. He received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Personal life

Disney married Lillian Bounds, an ink artist at his studio, in July 1925. They remained married until his death in 1966. They had two daughters, Diane, later Diane Disney Miller, and Sharon, who was adopted. The family moved to Holmby Hills in Los Angeles in 1949.