History of Disney…

Walt Disney was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of cartoon films and as the creator of Disneyland.

Walter Elias “Walt” Disney (/ˈdɪzni/)^[3] (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American business magnate, animator, producer,director, screenwriter, philanthropist, and voice actor. As a prominent figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, he is regarded as a cultural icon,^[4] known for his influence and contributions to entertainment during the 20th century. As a Hollywood business mogul, he and his brother Roy O. Disney co-founded The Walt Disney Company.^[5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnpGiEjxN0

As an animator and entrepreneur, Disney was particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created various fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. Disney himself was the original voice for Mickey. During his lifetime, he received four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record of four in one year,^[6] giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts, Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.

He died on December 15, 1966, from lung cancer in Burbank, California. He left behind a vast legacy, including numerous animated shorts and feature films produced during his lifetime; the company, parks, and animation studio that bear his name; and the California Institute of the Arts

First Academy Award and subsequent spin-offs

On November 18, 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of “Mickey Mouse”.^[76] The series, which switched to color in 1935, soon launched spin-offs for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. Of all Mickey’s partners, Donald Duck, who first teamed up with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan’s Benefit, was arguably the most popular, going on to become Disney’s second most successful cartoon character of all time.^[77]

Fatherhood

The Disneys’ first attempt at pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Lillian became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933.^[78] Later, the Disneys adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).^[79]

Diane married Ron Miller at the age of 20 and is known as Diane Disney Miller. The Millers established a winery called Silverado Vineyards in California.^[80] Diane and Ron Miller had seven children: Christopher, Joanna, Tamara, Jennifer, Walter, Ronald and Patrick.^[81] Years later, Diane went on to become the cofounder of The Walt Disney Family Museum, with the aid of her children. Diane died November 19, 2013, of complications from a fall at home.^[82]

Sharon Mae Disney was born December 31, 1936, in Los Angeles, California and was later adopted by the Disneys due to Lillian’s several birth complications.^[79] Sharon married Robert Brown on May 10, 1959,^[83] with whom she had one child.^[84] They remained married until his death in 1967. Sharon married William Lund in 1969 and had two children with him, but six years later they divorced.^[85] Sharon was a philanthropist and had contributed to charities such as the Marianne Frostig Center of Educational Therapy and the Curtis School foundation.^[86] In 1993, Sharon died at the age of 56.^[85] After Sharon’s death, her estate donated $11 million to the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where she was a member of the board of trustees for almost two decades.^[87] Sharon’s donation was commemorated by renaming the School of Dance the Sharon D. Lund School of Dance.^[88]

1937–1941: Golden age of animation

“Disney’s Folly”: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Following the creation of two cartoon series, in 1934 Disney began planning a full-length feature. When the film industry learned of Disney’s plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they were certain that the endeavor would destroy the Disney Studio and dubbed the project “Disney’s Folly”. Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature, employing Chouinard Art Instituteprofessor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff.^[89] Disney then used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus such as the multiplane camera – a new technique first used by Disney in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.^[90]

All of this development and training was used to increase quality at the studio and to ensure that the feature film would match Disney’s quality expectations. Entitled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the feature went into full production in 1934 and continued until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To obtain the funding to complete Snow White, Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21, 1937 and was praised by the audience. Snow White, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures. RKO had been the distributor for Disney cartoons in 1936, after it closed down the Van Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution.^[91] The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million on its initial release, the equivalent of $134,033,100 today.^[92]

Subsequent successes

Following the success of Snow White, for which Disney received one full-size and seven miniature Oscar statuettes, he was able to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939. Snow White began an era that would later be known as the ‘Golden Age of Animation’ for the studio.^[93][94] Feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi as well as the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Wind in the Willows. The shorts staff carried on working on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.^[95]

Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments.^[96][97] The inexpensive Dumbo was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staff went on strike, permanently straining relations between Disney and his artists.^[98]

1941–1945: World War II era

Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the US entered World War II. The U.S. Army and Navy Bureau of Aeronautics contracted most of the Disney studio’s facilities where the staff created training and instruction films for the military like Aircraft Carrier Landing Signals, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer’s Face,^[99] which won an Academy Award,^[100] and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power.^[101] Military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi underperformed on its release in April 1942.^[102] Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition for his features.^[102] In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.^[103]

In 1941, the U.S. State Department sent Disney and a group of animators to South America as part of its Good Neighbor policy, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie,Saludos Amigos.^[104] In addition, Disney was asked by the US Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.^{[105][106][107]}

Disney took up the work of making insignia for the soldiers as well. They were used to not only bring humor to military units but also be a way to boost morale. The first insignia was created as early as 1933 for a Naval Reserve Squadron stationed at Floyd Bennett Field in New York. Disney created his own insignia design unit with Hank Porter, at the helm, Roy Williams, Bill Justice, Van Kaufman, Ed Parks, and George Goepper. Together, these men created over 1200 unique insignia throughout the duration of World War II. All of the designs were created free-of-charge. “The insignia meant a lot to the men who were fighting … I had to do it … I owed it to them.” said Disney.^[99]

1945–1955: Post-war period

By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years. Work also began on Cinderella, which became Disney’s most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1948 the studio also initiated a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with On Seal Island the first. Despite its resounding success with feature films, the studio’s animation shorts were no longer as popular as they once were, with people paying more attention to Warner Bros. and their animation star Bugs Bunny. By 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country’s most popular animation studio.^[108] However, while Bugs Bunny’s popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck’s,^[109] a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney’s star character by 1949.^[110]

Meanwhile, Disney studios created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. These included Make Mine Music (1946), Melody Time (1948), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections, the first based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and the second on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. During this period, Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. After the war ended, Mickey’s popularity faded again.^[110]

During the mid-1950s, Disney produced educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Spaceand Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.^[111] Man in Space was nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject – 1956 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[112]

Disney and the Second Red Scare

Disney was a founding member of the anti-communist group Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.^[113] In 1947, during the Second Red Scare,^[114] Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers as Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations and Sorrell went on to testify before the HUAC in 1946 when insufficient evidence was found to link him to the Communist Party.^[115][116] Disney also accused the Screen Cartoonists Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.^[114] On January 12, 1955, Disney was approved from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an official SAC (special agent in charge). The title was used in-house by the Bureau for a trusted person they could contact for information or further assistance. Memos indicate that he remained a source of information to his death.^[117]

1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond

Carolwood Pacific Railroad

During 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home on a large piece of land in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. With the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball, who already had their own backyard railroad, Disney developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, came from his home’s location on Carolwood Drive.^[118] The railroad’s half-mile long layout included a 46-foot (14 m) long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90-foot (27 m) tunnel underneath his wife’s flowerbed.^[119] He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie Lilly Belle in his wife’s honor and had his attorney draw up right-of-way papers giving the railroad a permanent, legal easement through the garden areas, which his wife dutifully signed; however, there is no evidence of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property’s title.^[120]

Planning Disneyland

On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children.^[121] The idea for a children’s theme park came after a visit to Children’s Fairyland inOakland, California.^[122] It also said that Disney may have been inspired to create Disneyland in the park Republic of the Children located in Manuel B. Gonnet, La Plata, Argentina, and opened in 1951.^[123] This plan was originally intended to be built on a plot located across the street to the south of the studio. These original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that would become Disneyland.^[121][122] Disney spent five years developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary company, WED Enterprises, to carry out planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.^[124]

As Disney explained one of his earliest plans to Herbert Ryman, who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland presented to the Bank of Americaduring fund raising for the project, he said, “Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train.”^[125]According to Disney’s own account, entertaining his daughters and their friends on the Carolwood Pacific Railroad inspired him to include a railroad in Disneyland.^[126]

Disneyland grand opening

On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland hosted a live TV preview, among the thousands of people in attendance were Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummingsand Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Disney gave the following dedication day speech:

“

To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past … and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America … with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.[127]

”

Disney patrolled around the place, introducing one land after another. At Fantasyland, he said, “Fantasyland is dedicated to the young and the young in heart, to those who believe when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.”^[128]

Expansion into new areas

Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, as well as expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950, Treasure Island became the studio’s first all-live-action feature,^[129] soon followed by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog(1959), Pollyanna (1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and The Parent Trap (1961). The studio produced its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950.^[130] Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC entitled Disneyland, after the park, on which he aired clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim.^[131] The show also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started the “Davy Crockett craze” among American youth, during which millions of coonskin caps and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country.^[132] In 1955, the studio’s first daily television show, Mickey Mouse Club debuted on ABC. It was a groundbreaking comedy/variety show catered specifically for children. Disney took a strong personal interest in the show and even returned to the animation studio to voice Mickey Mouse in its animated segments during its original 1955–59 production run.^[133] The Mickey Mouse Club continued in various incarnations in syndication and on the Disney Channel into the 1990s.^[134]

As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed theNine Old Men.^[135] Although he was spending less time supervising the production of the animated films, he was always present at story meetings.^[136] During Disney’s lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (the first animated film in CinemaScope) in 1955,^[137] Sleeping Beauty (the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm) in 1959,^[138]One Hundred and One Dalmatians (the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels) in 1961,^[139] and The Sword in the Stone in 1963.^[140]

Production of short cartoons kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the responsible division though special shorts projects continued for the remainder of the studio’s duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed by Disney’s new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had taken over all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 1955.^[141]Disneyland, one of the world’s first theme parks, finally opened on July 17, 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based on a number of successful Disney characters and films.^[128]

After 1955, the Disneyland TV show was renamed Walt Disney Presents. It switched from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, at the same time moving from ABC to NBC,^[142] and eventually evolving into its current form as The Wonderful World of Disney.Since then, it has aired on ABC,CBS, NBC, the Hallmark Channel and the Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the Disney series offered some recurring characters, such as the newspaper reporter and sleuth “Gallegher” played by Roger Mobley with a plot based on the writings of Richard Harding Davis.^[143]

Disney had already formed his own music publishing division in 1949 and in 1956. Partly inspired by the huge success of the television theme song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records.^[144]

Early 1960s successes

By the early 1960s, the Disney empire had become a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world’s leading producer of family entertainment. Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.^[145] After decades of pursuit, Disney acquired the rights to P. L. Travers‘ books about a magical nanny.^[146] Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful Disney film of the 1960s and featured a song score written by Disney favorites, the Sherman Brothers.^[147][148] The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World’s Fair,^[149] including Audio–Animatronic figures, all of which were later integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project which was to be established on the East Coast.^[150]

Plans for Disney World and EPCOT

In late 1965, Disney announced plans to develop another theme park to be called Disney World a few miles southwest of Orlando.^[151] Disney World was to include “the Magic Kingdom”, a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, known as EPCOT for short.^[152][153]

Mineral King Ski Resort

During the early to mid-1960s, Walt Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral King, a glacial valley in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. He brought in experts such as the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among the several bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid-1960s, but Walt died before the actual work started. Disney’s death and opposition from conservationists stopped the building of the resort.^[154]

Illness and death

Walt Disney was a chain smoker his entire adult life, although he made sure he was not seen smoking around children.^[155] In 1966, Disney was scheduled to undergo surgery to repair an old neck injury caused by many years of playing polo at the Riviera Club in Hollywood.^[156][157] On November 2, during pre-operative X-rays, doctors at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the Disney Studio, discovered a tumor in his left lung.^[156] Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung.^[156] After removing the lung on November 11, the surgeons informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years.^[158] After several cobalt therapy sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short time in Palm Springs, California.^[158] On November 30, Disney collapsed at his home. He was revived by fire department personnel and rushed to St. Joseph’s. Disney’s spokesman said he was there for a “postoperative checkup.”^[159] Ten days after his 65th birthday, on December 15, 1966, at 9:30 a.m., Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer.^[156]

The final productions in which Disney played an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book and the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire, both released in 1967, as well as the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, released in 1968. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman recalled of the last time he saw Disney:

“

He was up in the third floor of the animation building after a run-through of The Happiest Millionaire. He usually held court in the hallway afterward for the people involved with the picture. And he started talking to them, telling them what he liked and what they should change, and then, when they were through, he turned to us and with a big smile, he said, ‘Keep up the good work, boys.’ And he walked to his office. It was the last we ever saw of him.[160]

Legacy

Continuing Disney Productions

After Walt Disney’s death, Roy Disney returned from retirement to take full control of Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises. In October 1971, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt Disney World Resort.^[163] There he gave a speech about the park’s dedication:

“

Walt Disney World is a tribute to the philosophy and life of Walter Elias Disney…and to the talents, the dedication,and the loyalty of the entire Disney organization that made Walt Disney’s dream come true. May Walt Disney World bring Joy and Inspiration and New Knowledge to all who come to this happy place… a Magic Kingdom where the young at heart of all ages can laugh and play and learn — together.[164]

”

During the second phase of the “Walt Disney World” theme park, EPCOT was translated by Disney’s successors intoEPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. As it currently exists, EPCOT is essentially a living world’s fair, different from the functional city that Disney had envisioned.^[165] In 1992, Walt Disney Imagineering took the step closer to Disney’s original ideas and dedicated Celebration, Florida, a town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT.^[166][167] EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of Disney characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children.^[152] The company later changed this policy and Disney characters can now be found throughout the park, often dressed in costumes reflecting the different cultural origins.^[168]

Disney entertainment empire

Walt Disney’s animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carry his name. Among other assets The Walt Disney Company owns five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network. As of 2007, the company had annual revenues of over U.S. $35 billion.^[169]

Disney Animation

Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animation. He was one of the first people to move animation away from basic cartoons with just “impossible outlandish gags” and crudely drawn characters, and towards elevating the field into an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience could connect to on an emotional level. As noted above, this culminated in his creation of a separate story department where storyboard artists would specialize in story development. The personality displayed in the characters of his films as well as the great technological advancements they represented remain influential today. He was considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his death until the period from 1989 to 1999 which is now known as the Disney Renaissance.^[170] The most financially and critically successful films produced during this time include Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar‘sToy Story, the first computer animated feature film. Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney claimed that Walt would have loved Toy Story and that it was “his kind of movie”.^[171]

With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early years of the 2000s (decade) emerged. This led to the company’s controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility, firing hundreds of people in the process. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final “traditionally animated” feature film, Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to chief creative officer at Disney Animation, that position has changed with the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney’s return to traditional hand-drawn animation, as the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today, Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.^[172]

Help Me… Help U… Donate Today…

Cheers, The Foxy Lady!!!