Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago (USA) in 1901 of an Irish-Canadian father and a German-American mother. He was a film-producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, entrepreneur, animator, entertainer and international icon. With his brother, Roy O. Disney, he was the co-founder of the Walt Disney Company which has to date received 59 Academy Award nominations and 22 Oscars. This is currently the World record.

Walt was of French descent, his family name originally being: D'Isigny, it was later anglicised to Disney. His ancestor Robert D'Isigny came over to England with William the Conquerer in 1066 and the family later moved to Ireland and then Disney's great-grandfather Arundel Disney emigrated to the USA during the potato famine.

During his childhood, Walt developed his drawing skills and then when he attended high school, he began taking night-classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He quickly became the official school cartoonist, illustrating for the school newspaper, but he dropped out of school at 16, with the intention of joining the army, from which he was rejected for being underage.

He then decided to enrol in the Red Cross and served as an ambulance driver in France before returning to the USA to become a newspaper artist. Disney was unsuccessful in this job and so his brother, Roy got him some work in an art studio, after creating advertisements for newspapers, theatres and cinemas there, he read a book on animation and decided to pursue a career in this area which he considered to present great potential. Walt then opened his own business and produced short animation clips called, Laugh-O-Grams. The company gained more and more debt and eventually Walt partnered up with his brother and they moved the studio to Hollywood and created a series of short animation sequences based on stories from Alice in Wonderland.

This enabled him to create various characters and animate them in ways that brought each one, its own personality. After losing the rights to his successful character, Oswald, Disney decided that he needed a new one to replace him, one that would be so famous, it would become the mascot of Disney himself. He chose to base the character on a pet mouse that he had adopted during his time working on the Laugh-O-Grams. Thus Mickey Mouse was born. The mouse may have been Disney's pet animal, but Mickey was undoubtedly his pet character. Until 1947, it was Walt himself who provided Mickey's voice and personality. The visual appearance of the character was modified by the artist, Ub Lwerks to make him easier to animate, but Disney definitely provided him with his inner appearance. Mickey Mouse appeared in various short animation sequences, but his first real success was as Steamboat Willie, this was Disney's first cartoon that actually used sound, but after this, all of his cartoons did.

After a fairly unsuccessful try at something called Silly Symphonies, Walt decided to make a feature-length film. His family and co-producers thought this idea to be pure madness and did everything they could to talk Disney out of the idea of animating the popular fairytale of Snow White. They were, however, unable to convince Walt that his plan was a bad idea, and he went ahead and did it. When the finished film was finally released in 1938, it quickly became the most successful motion-picture to date, winning a total of seven Oscars. This was the beginning of what was considered to be the Golden Age of Animation for Disney Studios. Walt then began projects to animate all of the popular fairytales as well as creating a host of characters to befriend Mickey Mouse, such as: Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy and Pluto. During WWII, the only animation film that was produced was Dumbo, but after the States entered the war, they requisitioned Disney Studios to produce propaganda and motivational films designed to encourage both the soldiers and their friends and families. As soon as the war had ended, Disney immediately began creating his cartoons once again, but this time they were not just aimed at children, he also started making films with real people in them. His animation shorts, however, began to lose their notoriety with new studios like Warner Brothers taking the lead with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and company.

During the last 10 years of his life, Disney began realising a vision he had been imagining for quite some time, he had been imagining a real-life world for his characters to dwell in, a place where children and adults could come and meet with them and experience for themselves the fantasy worlds that he had been creating through animation. Walt created Disneyland, an amusement park where people of all ages could come to enjoy themselves. Thus began a whole new realm to the wonderful world of Disney... Unfortunately he would not ever live to see it at its most successful as he died of lung cancer in 1966.