biography of disney

Walt Disney

Walt Disney was an American motion picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of cartoon films, including Mickey Mouse, and as the creator of the amusement parks Disneyland and Disney World.

(1901-1966)

Who Was Walt Disney?

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney co-founded Walt Disney Productions with his brother Roy, which became one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world. Disney was an innovative animator and created the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He won 22 Academy Awards during his lifetime, and was the founder of theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney’s Parents and Siblings

Disney’s father was Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian. His mother, Flora Call Disney, was German-American. Disney was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Walt Disney’s Childhood

Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in the Hermosa section of Chicago, Illinois. He lived most of his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, where he began drawing, painting and selling pictures to neighbors and family friends.

In 1911, his family moved to Kansas City, where Disney developed a love for trains. His uncle, Mike Martin, was a train engineer who worked the route between Fort Madison, Iowa and Marceline. Later, Disney would work a summer job with the railroad, selling snacks and newspapers to travelers.

When Disney was 16, he dropped out of school to join the Army but was rejected for being underage. Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance. He moved back to the U.S. in 1919.

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Walt Disney’s First Cartoons

In 1919, Disney moved to Kansas City to pursue a career as a newspaper artist. His brother Roy got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met cartoonist Ubbe Eert Iwwerks, better known as Ub Iwerks. From there, Disney worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation.

Around this time, Disney began experimenting with a camera, doing hand-drawn cel animation. He decided to open his own animation business. From the ad company, he recruited Fred Harman as his first employee.

Disney and Harman made a deal with a local Kansas City theater to screen their cartoons, which they called Laugh-O-Grams . The cartoons were hugely popular, and Disney was able to acquire his own studio, upon which he bestowed the same name.

Laugh-O-Gram hired a number of employees, including Iwerks and Harman's brother Hugh. They did a series of seven-minute fairy tales that combined both live action and animation, which they called Alice in Cartoonland .

By 1923, however, the studio had become burdened with debt, and Disney was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Disney and his brother Roy moved to Hollywood with cartoonist Ub Iwerks in 1923, and there the three began the Disney Brothers' Cartoon Studio. The company soon changed its name to Walt Disney Studios, at Roy’s suggestion.

The Walt Disney Studios’ first deal was with New York distributor Margaret Winkler, to distribute their Alice cartoons. They also invented a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and contracted the shorts at $1,500 each. In the late 1920s, the studios broke from their distributors and created cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse and his friends.

In December 1939, a new campus for Walt Disney Animation Studios was opened in Burbank. In 1941 a setback for the company occurred when Disney animators went on strike. Many of them resigned. It would be years before the company fully recovered.

One of Disney Studio’s most popular cartoons, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first to be produced in color and to win an Oscar. In 1933, The Three Little Pigs and its title song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" became a theme for the country in the midst of the Great Depression .

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Other Characters

Disney’s first successful film starring Mickey Mouse was a sound-and-music-equipped animated short called Steamboat Willie . It opened at the Colony Theater in New York November 18, 1928. Sound had just made its way into film, and Disney was the voice of Mickey, a character he had developed and that was drawn by his chief animator, Ub Iwerks. The cartoon was an instant sensation.

The Disney brothers, their wives and Iwerks produced two earlier silent animated shorts starring Mickey Mouse, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho , out of necessity. The team had discovered that Disney’s New York distributor, Margaret Winkler, and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character Oswald and all of Disney’s animators except for Iwerks. The two earliest Mickey Mouse films failed to find distribution, as sound was already revolutionizing the movie industry.

In 1929, Disney created Silly Symphonies, featuring Mickey's newly created friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto.

Walt Disney Movies

Disney produced more than 100 feature films. His first full-length animated film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , which premiered in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. It produced an unimaginable $1.499 million, in spite of the Great Depression, and won eight Oscars. This led Walt Disney Studios to complete another string of full-length animated films over the next five years.

During the mid-1940s, Disney created "packaged features," groups of shorts strung together to run at feature length. By 1950, he was once again focusing on animated features.

Disney's last major success that he produced himself was the motion picture Mary Poppins , which came out in 1964 and mixed live action and animation.

A few other of Disney's most famous movies include:

• Pinocchio (1940)
• Fantasia (1940)
• Dumbo (1941)
• Bambi (1942)
• Cinderella (1950)
• Treasure Island (1950)
• Alice in Wonderland (1951)
• Peter Pan (1953)
• Lady and the Tramp (1955)
• Sleeping Beauty (1959)
• 101 Dalmatians (1961)

Disney’s Television Series

Disney was also among the first people to use television as an entertainment medium. The Zorro and Davy Crockett series were extremely popular with children, as was The Mickey Mouse Club , a variety show featuring a cast of teenagers known as the Mouseketeers. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was a popular Sunday night show, which Disney used to begin promoting his new theme park.

Walt Disney Parks

Disney's $17 million Disneyland theme park opened on July 17, 1955, in Anaheim, California, on what was once an orange grove. Actor (and future U.S. president) Ronald Reagan presided over the activities. After a tumultuous opening day involving several mishaps (including the distribution of thousands of counterfeit invitations), the site became known as a place where children and their families could explore, enjoy rides and meet the Disney characters.

In a very short time, the park had increased its investment tenfold, and was entertaining tourists from around the world.

The original site had attendance ups and downs over the years. Disneyland has expanded its rides over time and branched out globally with Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, and parks in Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Sister property California Adventure opened in Los Angeles in 2001.

Walt Disney World

Within a few years of Disneyland’s 1955 opening, Disney began plans for a new theme park and to develop Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) in Florida. It was still under construction when Disney died in 1966. After Disney’s death, his brother Roy carried on the plans to finish the Florida theme park, which opened in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney’s Wife, Children and Grandchildren

In 1925, Disney hired an ink-and-paint artist named Lillian Bounds. After a brief courtship, the couple married.

Disney and Lillian Bounds had two children. Diane Disney Miller, born in 1933, was the couple’s only biological daughter. They adopted Sharon Disney Lund shortly after her birth in 1936.

Diane and her husband, Ronald Miller, had seven children: Christopher, Joanna, Tamara, Walter, Jennifer, Patrick, and Ronald Miller Jr.

Sharon and her first husband, Robert Brown, adopted a daughter, Victoria Disney. Sharon’s second husband, Bill Lund, was a real estate developer who scouted the 27,000 acres in Orlando that became Disney World. Their twins, Brad and Michelle, were born in 1970.

Sharon’s side of the family became embroiled in a controversy after her death in 1993, when her trust became available to her three children. The trust included a caveat that allowed her ex-husband Bill Lund and sister Diane to withhold funds if they could show that Sharon’s children couldn’t properly manage the money. This led to accusations of conspiracy and mental incompetence, insinuations of incest, and an ugly two-week-long battle of a trial in December 2013.

READ MORE: Is Walt Disney's Body Frozen?

When and How Walt Disney Died

Disney was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1966 and died on December 15, 1966, at the age of 65. Disney was cremated, and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Walt Elias Disney
• Birth Year: 1901
• Birth date: December 5, 1901
• Birth State: Illinois
• Birth City: Chicago
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Walt Disney was an American motion picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of cartoon films, including Mickey Mouse, and as the creator of the amusement parks Disneyland and Disney World.
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design
• Chicago Art Institute
• McKinley High School
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• When Disney was just a teenager, he joined the Red Cross in 1918 and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance to help with the war effort.
• Disney experienced many failures — including filing for bankruptcy — before he became a hugely successful animator and amusement park creator.
• When Disneyland opened in 1955, it reportedly cost $17 million to make.
• Death Year: 1966
• Death date: December 15, 1966
• Death State: California
• Death City: Burbank
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Walt Disney Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/walt-disney
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 7, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Laughter is America's most important export.
• There's nothing funnier than the human animal.
• I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
• You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
• I don't believe in talking down to children. I don't believe in talking down to any certain segment. I like to kind of just talk in a general way to the audience. Children are always reaching.
• Money doesn't excite me–my ideas excite me.
• 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 the world.
• [Y]ou'll not find a single mousetrap around the house. I've never forgotten it was a mouse that made me what I am today.
• The age we're living in is the most extraordinary the world has ever seen. There are new concepts of things, and we now have the tools to change those concepts into realities. We are moving forward.
• Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows.
• I don't care about critics. Critics take themselves too seriously. They think the only way to be noticed and to be the smart guy is to pick and find fault with things. It's the public I'm making pictures for.
• For years afterward, I hated Snow White because every time I'd make a feature after that, they'd always compare it with Snow White, and it wasn't as good as Snow White.
• I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.
• All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.
• Never do anything that someone else can do better.
• Everybody in the world was once a child. We grow up. Our personalities change, but in every one of us something remains of our childhood.

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Walt Disney

• Born December 5 , 1901 · Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Died December 15 , 1966 · Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from lung cancer)
• Birth name Walter Elias Disney
• Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
• Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney , a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks . The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however. The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney , who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity. Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz , had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks . While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928) , and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas. In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932) , was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933) , was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular. In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940) , Dumbo (1941) , and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now. In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950) , Alice in Wonderland (1951) , and Peter Pan (1953) . In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950) . These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955) , Sleeping Beauty (1959) , and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) . In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957) . To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964) , which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida. He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tommy Peter
• Spouse Lillian Disney (July 13, 1925 - December 15, 1966) (his death, 2 children)
• Children Diane Disney
• Parents Flora Disney Elias Disney
• Relatives Robert Disney (Aunt or Uncle) Christopher Disney Miller (Grandchild) Tamara Scheer (Grandchild) Walter Elias Disney Miller (Grandchild) Joanna Miller (Grandchild) Ronald Miller (Grandchild) Abigail Disney (Niece or Nephew) Roy P. Disney (Niece or Nephew) Tim Disney (Niece or Nephew) Marjorie Sewell (Niece or Nephew) Roy O. Disney (Sibling) Herbert Disney (Sibling) Ruth Disney (Sibling) Raymond Disney (Sibling) Roy Edward Disney (Niece or Nephew) Victoria Brown (Grandchild) Jennifer Miller-Goff (Grandchild)
• Happy endings on all pictures produced by himself (also posthumous and actual works).
• Main characters using big white gloves (Example: Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Peter Pete, Jiminy Cricket, etc.)
• His moustache
• Animated Films
• Distinctive, deep voice
• Personally disliked Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953) because of the lack of "heart" and "warmth" in their main characters. Was very sad about the unfavorable reception of Fantasia (1940) as he was proud of the film. Ironically, the first re-issue of Fantasia (1940) after his death was the first time it turned a profit.
• Reports surfaced that shortly after his death, Disney Company executive board members were shown a short film that Disney had made before his death, where he addressed the board members by name, telling each of them what was expected of them. The film ended with Disney saying, "I'll be seeing you."
• Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, an Army draft notice, addressed to Mr. Donald Duck, was delivered to the Disney studios.
• Has a record of 59 Oscar-nominations.
• Before his 35th birthday, his brother Roy encouraged employees to throw the boss a surprise party. Two of the animators thought it would be hilarious to make a short movie of Mickey and Minnie Mouse "consummating their relationship." When Disney saw the animation at the party, he feigned laughter and playfully asked who made the film. As soon as the two animators came forward, he fired them on the spot and left.
• I don't make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.
• I'd rather entertain and hope that people learn, than teach and hope that people are entertained.
• I'm not interested in pleasing the critics. I'll take my chances pleasing the audiences.
• I hope we'll never lose sight of one thing--that it was all started by a mouse.
• I happen to be an inquisitive guy and when I see things I don't like, I start thinking why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them.
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - $5,166 /week
• Swiss Family Robinson (1960) - $3,000 /week

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Walt Disney

Walt Disney   Biography

Walter Elías Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, and died in Burbank, California, on December 15, 1966. Walter was a director, producer, animator, cartoonist and screenwriter from the United States, winner of the Oscar Award 22 times, plus 4 honorary awards of the Academy, and of the Emmy in 7 opportunities .

Walt Disney is known for his famous children’s characters such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck , and for founding one of the most important animations, film, and entertainment companies, Walt Disney Productions.

Walt Disney is the son of Elias Disney, a farmer of Irish ascendancy who had come from Canada, and Flora Call, a school teacher. Walt was the fourth of five children. When he was five years old, the family moved to Marceline, Missouri, where Walt spent a happy childhood drawing and playing with his sister Ruth. However, in 1909, his father became ill with typhoid fever and was unable to work in the field, so he had to sell the farm and go to Kansas City to work as a delivery boy for the Kansas City Star, with the help of his children Walt and Roy. Due to this work, Walt graduated from the Benton Grammar School in 1911. Then he did several jobs while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and at McKinley High School, where he was a school newspaper cartoonist.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” Walt Disney

During the First World War, Walt Disney wanted to imitate his brother, who was in the Navy, and he appeared in the army after leaving the Institute but was not admitted because of his age. Preventing the same thing happening, he presented himself to the Red Cross lying about his age, and this organization sent him to Europe when Germany had already signed the armistice. In Germany, he drove ambulances in which he drew and took some officers from one place to another until in 1919 he returned to America, to Kansas City.

While in Kansas City and thanks to his brother Roy, he got a job where he had to create ads for magazines, cinemas, and newspapers. In this job, he met Ubbe Iwerks, with whom he founded an advertising company in 1920, which they had to leave shortly afterward because of the lack of clients. Later, they both were hired at Kansas City Films Ad, where they learned basic animation techniques.

After studying anatomy and physics, and experimenting with his work team, Walt Disney started his own studio called Laugh-O-Gram Films. In it, he dedicated himself to producing animated short stories of popular stories , but that cost them more than they earned. This is why his studio went bankrupt in 1923 and Disney traveled to Hollywood in search of opportunities.

In Hollywood after knocking on doors looking for an opportunity without success , so he decided to send the last short film he had produced in his previous studio, Alice’s Wonderland , to the distributor Margaret Winkler, who hired him to make more films. To do this, Walt set up a studio in his uncle’s garage and entrusted his brother Roy with the financial issues , founding the Disney Brother’s Studio, which would be the beginning of Walt Disney Productions.

After successfully exhibiting nine Alice films, Disney created Oswald, a character whose show, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, quickly triumphed when it was distributed by Universal Pictures. Before this, the husband of Margaret Winkler asked Disney to continue working on this new series for a lower salary, and that it did not really matter if he refused because he and Universal Studios had the rights of the character. Walt Disney refused and preferred to create a new character, Mickey Mouse . This one appeared for the first time in 1928, but in its beginnings, it did not attract much attention . It was not until the implementation of sound that became a resounding success, having the voice of Walt Disney himself.

After 1930, there were already different products of Mickey Mouse, and several personalities had admitted their sympathy for the character, among which were politicians such as Jorge V, Roosevelt, and Mussolini. By 1935, all Disney short films already had sound and color image.

“Ask yourself if what you’re doing today will get you where you want to go tomorrow.” Walt Disney

After two years of production, from 1935 to 1937, Snow White was released, managing to raise more than six times the enormous sum that the production had cost. With the income, Disney opened some studios in Burbank and hired more employees. However, in 1941 several workers called a strike to complain about the poor salary and the lack of prominence they had in the credits. Disney, which refused to recognize the demands at the beginning, had to agree at the end because of the bad image that the strike was having on his name and his company.

In the forties, the company was economically affected by the World War II, but he was able to recover thanks to the adaptation he made of the market, which now asked for different formats than the short film. By the 50s, Disney was introduced in the market of the television and the action movies. In 1955, the Disneyland amusement park was completed. Already by the 1960’s, Walt Disney’s company was considered to be the most important family training company in the world and after receiving 26 Oscar Awards for his productions, 10 feature films, 12 short films and 4 honorary awards, one of them for having created Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, due to cardiorespiratory arrest.

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Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero Biography

Fernando Botero Angulo (April 19, 1932 – September 15, 2023) was a sculptor, painter, muralist, and draftsman, hailing from Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia. He was a Colombian artist known and celebrated for infusing a substantial volume to human and animal figures in his works.

Early Years and Beginnings

Fernando Botero was born into an affluent Paisa family , composed of his parents, David Botero and Flora Angulo, along with his older brother Juan David, who was four years his senior, and his younger brother, Rodrigo, who would be born four years after Fernando, in the same year that their father passed away. In 1938, he enrolled in primary school at the Ateneo Antioqueño and later entered the Bolivariana to continue his high school education. However, he was expelled from the institution due to an article he published in the newspaper El Colombiano about Picasso , as well as his drawings that were considered obscene. As a result, he graduated from high school at the Liceo of the University of Antioquia in 1950.

In parallel to his studies, Fernando attended a bullfighting school in La Macarena at the request of one of his uncles. However, due to an issue related to bullfighting, Botero left the bullring and embarked on a journey into painting. In 1948, he held his first exhibition in Medellín. Two years later, he traveled to Bogotá where he had two more exhibitions and had the opportunity to meet some intellectuals of the time. He then stayed at Isolina García’s boarding house in Tolú, which he paid for by painting a mural. Once again in Bogotá, he won the second prize at the IX National Artists Salon with his oil painting “Facing the Sea” .

“Ephemeral art is a lesser form of expression that cannot be compared to the concept of art conceived with the desire for perpetuity. What many people fail to understand is that Picasso is a traditional artist”- Fernando Botero

Due to the prize from the IX Salon and the sale of several of his works, Fernando Botero traveled to Spain in 1952 to enroll at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. There, he lived by selling drawings and paintings in the vicinity of the Prado Museum. In 1953, he went to Paris with filmmaker Ricardo Irrigarri, and later, they both traveled to Florence. Here, he entered the Academy of San Marco, where he was heavily influenced by Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca, Titian, and Paolo Uccello.

Career and Personal Life

In 1955, Botero returned to Colombia to hold an exhibition featuring several of his works created during his time in Europe, but it was met with a lukewarm reception from the public.

Woman With a Mirror / Foto:Luis García (Zaqarbal) / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Spain (CC BY-SA 3.0 ES)

In 1956, he married Gloria Zea, with whom he would later have three children: Fernando, Juan Carlos, and Lina. The couple traveled to Mexico City, where Fernando Botero was eager to see the works of Mexican muralists, but this experience left him disillusioned. Consequently, he began searching for his own artistic style, drawing influence from both the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo and the Colombian artist Alejandro Obregón . In this quest, he started experimenting with volume, initially in still lifes, and gradually extending this approach to other elements.

In 1957, he successfully exhibited in New York, showcasing his new artistic sensibility. The following year, he returned to Bogotá, where he was appointed as a professor at the School of Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia . He presented his work “La Camera Degli Sposi” at the X Colombian Artists Salon , winning the first prize and becoming the country’s most prominent painter. This piece sparked some controversy as it was initially censored for being almost a parody of Andrea Mantegna’s “La Cámara de los Esposos”. However, it was later reinstated in the exhibition on the advice of Marta Traba. Subsequently, Fernando Botero exhibited his works in various spaces in the United States, where a businessman from Chicago purchased “La Camera Degli Sposi” .

“Fernando Botero and his works are the finest ambassadors of our country in this land of navigators and discoverers, of poets and fado singers”- Juan Manuel Santos

In 1960, Botero separated from Gloria Zea and traveled to New York. He led a modest life here as the New York art scene was primarily inclined towards abstract expressionism. Consequently, Botero was influenced by artists like Pollock, which led him to experiment with color, brushwork, and format, to the point of nearly abandoning his distinctive style characterized by the manipulation of volume. Aware of this, Botero returned to his usual style of flat colors and figurative representations.

Starting in 1962, he began a series of exhibitions in both Europe and the United States, as well as in Colombia. By 1970, the year his son Pedro was born to his second wife, Cecilia Zambrano, Fernando Botero had already become the world’s most sought-after sculptor. However, in 1974, his son Pedro tragically died in a traffic accident, leading to his second divorce and leaving significant marks on his artistic endeavors.

In 1978, the Colombian painter married Sophia Vari , a renowned Greek artist with whom he shared a significant part of his life, until sadly, she passed away in May 2023.

Since 1983, Fernando Botero has been exhibiting his works and donating them to various cities around the world. As a result, we can find his pieces in the streets of Medellín, Barcelona, Oviedo, Singapore, and Madrid, among others. In 2008, the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Mexico conferred upon him an honorary Doctorate.

Renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero, died on September 15, 2023 , in Monaco at the age of 91 due to pneumonia . His artistic legacy will endure forever. In his hometown, seven days of mourning were declared.

Pedrito a Caballo, Fernando Botero (1975).

Top 10 Famous works by Fernando Botero

Some of the most recognized works by Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero:

• “Pedrito on Horseback” / “Pedrito a Caballo” (1974): This is an oil painting on canvas measuring 194.5 cm x 150.5 cm. For Botero, this work is his masterpiece and a refuge during a personal tragedy. The child depicted is Pedro, his son from his second marriage, who tragically passed away in an accident when he was young.
• “Mona Lisa at 12 Years Old” / “Mona lisa a los 12 años” (1978): This piece stands out as a unique version of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, the Mona Lisa . Painted in oil on canvas and measuring 183 cm x 166 cm, Botero incorporates his characteristic style of voluptuous and rounded figures into this work, which has become one of his most distinctive pieces.
• “Woman’s Torso” / “Torso de Mujer” (1986): It is a majestic bronze sculpture that rises to an impressive height of approximately 2.48 meters. It is often affectionately referred to as “La Gorda” (“The Fat One”). This artwork finds its home in Parque de Berrío, located in the captivating city of Medellín.
• “Woman with Mirror” / “Mujer con Espejo” (1987): An imposing bronze sculpture weighing 1000 kg. It is located in Plaza de Colón, in the heart of Madrid, Spain. The artwork captivates the gaze with the portrayal of a woman peacefully lying face down on the ground, holding a mirror in her hands. Her expression reflects deep introspection and enigmatic melancholy.
• “The Orchestra” / “La Orquesta” (1991): In this oil on canvas artwork, measuring 200 cm x 172 cm, Botero presents a band of musicians with a singer, all immersed in a spirit of celebration. The artist aims to convey a sense of harmony and joy through his portrayal.
• “Woman Smoking” / “Mujer Fumando” (1994): It is a creation executed in watercolor, spanning dimensions of 122 cm x 99 cm. In this work, Maestro Botero skillfully captures the essence of a woman elegantly holding a cigarette between her fingers. His meticulous focus on voluptuous forms, posture, and the serene expression of the figure masterfully combine to emphasize the sensuality and profound intimacy of the moment captured in the artwork.
• “Man on Horseback” / “Hombre a Caballo” (1996): This bronze sculpture is one of the most iconic works in the artist’s career. It depicts a rider in a majestic and proud posture. Over the years, this imposing work has been exhibited in multiple cities around the world, solidifying its place as a prominent piece in the sculptor’s body of work.
• “The Horse” / “El Caballo” (1997): This iconic sculpture showcases a horse of majestic presence and a distinctive rounded form, sculpted in bronze and measuring approximately 3 meters in height. This masterpiece reflects Botero’s profound passion for horses while also serving as a powerful representation of the mythical Trojan Horse.
• “The Death of Pablo Escobar” / “La muerte de Pablo Escobar” (1999): This artwork, created using the oil on canvas technique, has dimensions of 58 cm x 38 cm. While not considered a masterpiece, this artistic piece represents one of the most significant moments in Colombia’s history. Fernando Botero captures, in his distinctive style, the moment of the death of the drug lord Pablo Escobar , addressing issues related to violence and criminality that have marked the country’s history. An interesting detail is that, although Pablo Escobar admired Fernando Botero’s art, it cannot be said that the admiration was mutual. The painter created two works depicting the death of the drug trafficker.
• “Boterosutra Series” / “Serie Boterosutra” (2011): This work by Botero is part of an erotic art collection called Boterosutra , marking a milestone in the history of Colombian art as the first artistic representation of sexual intimacy between lovers. This series comprises around 70 small-sized pieces created using various techniques, including colored drawings, watercolors, brushstrokes, and also black and white, all of which constitute one of the most contemporary works by the painter.

Gustave Courbet

Biography of Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet, Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a painter. Courbet was born in the French town of Ornans. His parents and family were landowners in Ornans. Courbet was influenced by his parents to study law, but his true passion was drawing. Therefore, while studying law, he began drawing under the tutelage of a student named Flajoulot. When he turned 20, he withdrew from his law studies and moved to Paris to complete his artistic training with the teachings of Steuben, Bonvin, and Père Baud, a student of Gros. There he became interested in the works of Chardin, the Le Nain brothers, and the Spanish painters Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo, and Velázquez.

Based in Paris since 1839, he delved into the Realist painting trend of the 19th century. He studied at the Swiss Academy and extensively analyzed the works of some artists from the Flemish, Venetian, and Dutch schools of the 16th and 17th centuries. He achieved artistic maturity when he discovered the works of Rembrandt on a trip he took to the Netherlands in 1847. From then on, works such as L’après diner a Ornans (1849), El entierro en Ornans (1849) or Los paisanos de Flagey volviendo del campo (1850) emerged, where the characters are represented with all their vulgarity or a compromising sensuality.

Courbet’s works caused a stir and controversy because the public was faced with a new realistic vision of everyday events. Additionally, his style as a revolutionary and provocative man, follower of the anarchist philosophy of Proudhon, and participant in the 1871 Paris Commune, led to his imprisonment for six months, until he sought refuge in Switzerland in 1873. All of this scandalized the public, who often criticized him but also admired him. His self-portraits were based on Romanticism. In 1846, he wrote a manifesto against Romantic and neoclassical tendencies with Bouchon. Courbet’s realism was a protest against the sterile academic painting and exotic motifs of Romanticism. He focused on the revolutionary environments of the 19th century.

He traveled to Holland to study the works of Hals and Rembrandt and participated indirectly in the military uprising. During this period, two of his most important realist works were created: The Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers, this work was lost due to World War II. Courbet’s paintings elicited all types of comments due to their realistic portrayal of the lives of ordinary people. After the coup d’etat of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in 1852, the painter returned to his hometown.

While there, Courbet opened his own exhibition titled “Realism.” It was born as a protest against the rejection of his works at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1855. The central work was the enormous painting: “The Painter’s Studio” (1855). It was presented as a “realistic allegory.” Later, other figure and portrait paintings emerged: “Ladies by the Seine” (1857), the self-portrait “The Cellist” (1849) and “The Beautiful Irishwoman” (1866). The artist also created works related to the sea, landscapes of forests and mountains with their fauna, flowers and still lifes.

Courbet became a representative of the emerging realism of the time. Courbet was described as a conceited man, who claimed to be the most handsome and seductive of humans, due to his Assyrian profile, he boasted of his ability to illuminate new forms of truth and beauty to end the outdated trends of Paris. For this reason, we can understand why he was such a controversial painter and was often hated. Nevertheless, the magnificent works that this painter conceived during his life could not be denied.

Let’s return to The Burial at Ornans (1849), it is his work of greatest dimensions and complexity, he wanted to bring a huge fragment of rural reality from his land to the refined environment of Paris. This composition can be seen as disordered and with little hierarchy. Courbet manages to make the viewer sit at the same level as the villagers of Ornans and symbolically attend the funeral of a humble peasant. In addition, the diversity of individual expressions tries to make a critical description and a study of the social categories of a population. This work is admired for its formal and coloristic stylization, and its horizontal composition.

Another great work of this French painter is Bonjour, monsieur Courbet (1854). The painting shows in great detail the local environment, as well as the light and characters, reflecting a real event with great objectivity. This painting has become a kind of standard-bearer of realistic art for many artists in recent decades. Courbet broke the mold with the work Señoritas a orillas del Sena (1857), because the Parisian public was used to paintings on mythological or historical themes; on the contrary, in Courbet’s canvas, the two women represented in showy clothes are two prostitutes resting by the river.

Also impressive was the way it was painted, in opposition to the tastes and rules of the time; the thick brushstrokes, the color tones and the disregard for the canons of beauty. In that work both the composition and the color, want to reflect reality, each of the elements reflect the same importance, transmitting a certain sense of imperceptible objectivity. Courbet showed total uninhibitedness in front of the female sex. A reflection of this is the work The Origin of the World (1866), was made by order of Bey, this was the most transgressive painting of the 19th century.

Other paintings by this French painter include: Self-Portrait with Black Dog (1842), The Desperate Man (1845), The Meeting (1854), The Painter’s Studio (1855), Woman with Parrot (1866), The Trout (1871) among others. These are just a few of the many works that this artist left for posterity and for future generations interested in realistic art. Courbet’s radical stance, reflected in the realm of politics, specifically with the Paris Commune, led to him being accused of participating in the demolition of the Vendôme Column. He had to go into exile in 1875 in Switzerland, where he died two years later in solitude and poverty.

Anime history

Japanese anime or animation emerged at the beginning of the 20th century influenced by animation and the world of cinema developed in the United States, later it was modified and claimed Japanese culture. The anime-style as we know it began to develop in the late 1950s, when the production company Toei Studios and the different series based on short sleeves or cartoons, such as Tetsuwan Atomu, also known as Astro Boy. From the 1980s and 1990s, the anime became popular, appearing large cult series such as Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, Detective Conan, Rurouni Kenshin, and Cowboy Bebop, among others. In the new millennium, the Japanese animated industry has been booming, providing new content every season based on successful manga, light novels, video games, and music.

The earliest surviving Japanese animated short made for cinemas, produced in 1917

The first Japanese animations were small short films developed at the end of the 1910s, largely inspired by American animation, in these, folk and comic themes were addressed. The first short film was Namakura Gatana by Junichi Kouchi, it was two minutes long, the story told the story of a man with his katana (Japanese sword or saber) . In the following decade, the duration of the short films was extended to ten or fifteen minutes, in which typical oriental tales were represented. Among the pioneer artists of this era are Oten Shimokawa, Junichi Kouchi, Seitaro Kitayama and Sanae Yamamoto; by this time the short film Obasuteyama (The Mountain Where Old Women Are Abandoned) by Yamamoto was published.

During the 30s and 40s, the Japanese animated industry went through a series of changes, the stories were neglected and western stories were taken into account. A short time later the anime Norakuro (1934) of Mituyo Seo, one of the first animations based on a manga. Since then this became a frequent practice. By the end of the 1930s, World War II broke out, a warlike confrontation in which Japan was involved as a member of the Axis powers, at which time the animations became war propaganda. At the end of the war, the country was occupied by the allied powers led by the United States, which seriously affected the country that was going through a deep economic crisis.

Industry development and international boom

In the course of the crisis, the manga and anime industry became popular in the country, thus establishing the basis for the development of the own animated style that occurred around the middle of the 20th century. It was around this time that Toei Studios, an animation film producer, emerged as one of the key figures in the history of anime. This company was a pioneer in the animation of Japan, provided various productions that allowed the advancement of animation in the country. The company’s first animation was Koneko no rakugaki, a short thirteen-minute film published in 1957. The following decade the company grew by focusing on the development of feature films. Other companies such as Mushi Pro, a producer that made the animation of Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) by Osamu Tezuka, mangaka and animator, one of the most relevant artists of the Japanese animated industry of the 20th century.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, the anime of robots (mecha) became popular appearing iconic series such as Tetsujin 28-gō and Mazinger Z or Gundam, for this same period the popular Doraemon series (1973), based on the homonymous anime, began to air Fujiko Fujio, a series that tells the story of a cosmic robot cat that has attached to its body a bag from which it subtracts various artifacts which are used in the adventures of Doraemon and his human friend Nobita. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese animation boomed internationally, which led to many series beginning to dub into English and Spanish, in these years cult series such as Dragon Ball, based on the manga of Akira Toriyama. Saint Seiya also known as The Knights of the Zodiac, Captain Tsubasa, exported as Super champions; Rurouni Kenshin, known in the west as Samurai X, Neon Genesis Evangelion of Hideaki Anno; Pokémon, Ranma ½, and Sakura Card Captor, among others.

In 2000, the already booming anime is largely massified by the acceptance and the huge fan base that it had acquired at the time, these followers known as otakus, boosted the Japanese animated industry. Since then there have been numerous animated productions that have been distributed worldwide, among the most prominent series of the new millennium are One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Yu-Gi-Oh, Rozen Maiden, Kuroshitsuji, and Death Note, all are ace based on sleeves that when becoming successful, allowed the development of the animated series.

At present, any manga that has a large number of followers is very likely to have adapted in an animated series, such as Hunter x Hunter, Pandora Hearts, Ao no Exorcist, Mirai Nikki, Bakuman and Shingeki no Kyojin, among many others, light novels have been adapted that have become popular as Durarara!!, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Sword Art Online, and My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, among others. In recent years, the Yaoi and Yuri genres have been popularized in which romantic relationships between people of the same sex are addressed, among these series it is possible to rescue Junjō Romantica, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, No. 6, Aoi Hana, Sasameki Koto and Yagate Kimi ni Naru

At present, the Japanese animated industry produces numerous series, ova, and films per year, becoming one of the strongest industries in the world of animation. Among the most prominent people in this industry is Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Studio Ghibli, a studio where films such as My Neighbor Totoro, The Incredible Vagabond Castle, The Journey of Chihiro, and Ponyo, among others, likewise, stand out in the present, artist Makoto Shinkai, creator of 5 centimeters per second, Hoshi Wo Ou Kodomo, Kotonoha no Niwa and Kimi no Na Wa.

John Ruskin

John Ruskin Biography

John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) writer, painter, art critic, and reformer. He was born in London, England. His parents were Margaret Cox and John James Ruskin, a rich merchant who instilled in him a passion for art, literature, and adventure. He studied at the University of Oxford. In 1837, he entered the University of Oxford. Then, he founded a drawing school for students: the Company of St George, for social improvement, useful arts, and the defense of an ornamentalism linked to the reform of society.

He received socialist influences, especially from the group of “Sheffield socialists,” as did William Morris. He advanced a postulate regarding the relationship between art and morals, these dissertations appear in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), a work that provided an important place among art critics. Later, he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), where the moral, economic and political importance of architecture were analyzed. In 1851 he became interested in pre-Raphaelist painters such as Dante Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and John Everett Millais.

His ideas denounce the aesthetic numbness and the pernicious social effects of the Industrial Revolution. His work at Oxford ended in the rejection of the vivisection practices carried out in the laboratories of that institution. After marrying Effie Gray, he published Conferences on architecture and painting (1854), Conferences on the political economy of art (1858) and Fors Clavigera (1871-1884).

Ruskin suffered some psychiatric episodes and little by little he lost the sense of reality. Finally, he died in Lancashire on January 20, 1900. He aroused the admiration of generations of Victorian artists, especially as an introducer of the neo-Gothic taste in England, the greatest champion of pre-Raphaelism. Currently, part of his works is preserved between drawings of nature and different Gothic cathedrals at the University of Oxford.

• Modern painters
• The seven lamps of architecture
• The stones of Venice
• Conferences on architecture and painting
• The political economy of art
• Sesame and lilies
• The morale of dust
• The crown of wild olive
• Fors Clavigera
• The Amiens Bible

John Harvey McCracken

John Harvey McCracken Biography

John Harvey McCracken (December 9, 1934 – April 8, 2011) minimalist artist. He was born in Berkeley, California, United States. He excelled in sculpture and was a reference to the Minimalist Movement. He dedicated four years of his youth to serve in the United States Navy. Subsequently, he entered the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Obtaining a BFA in 1962 and completing most of the work for an MFA. Academic life allowed him to meet characters like Gordon Onslow Ford and Tony DeLap. He was hired at several recognized universities where he taught different art subjects, worked at the University of California, School of Visual Arts, University of Nevada, University of California, Santa Barbara, among others.

His first sculptural work was done with the minimalists John Slorp and Peter Schnore, and the painters Tom Nuzum, Vincent Perez, and Terry StJohn. Dennis also known Oppenheim, enrolled in the MFA program at Stanford. He began to experiment with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, McCracken began producing art objects made with industrial techniques and materials such as plywood, spray lacquer, pigmented resin, resulting in striking minimalist works with highly reflective and soft surfaces. He applied similar techniques in the construction of surfboards.

Later, McCracken was part of the Light and Space movement composed by artists such as James Turrell, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and others. The biggest influences of the art circle were Barnett Newman and the minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Carl Andre. Thanks to this space, his sculptural work began to walk between the material world and design. He was the first to conceive the idea of ​​the plank. The artist combined aspects of painting and sculpture in his work and many experimented with impersonal and elegant surfaces. In addition to the planks, the artist also created independent wall pieces and sculptures with different shapes and sizes, worked in highly polished stainless steel and bronze.

In McCracken’s work, it is usual to see solid colors in bold with its highly polished finish, it is a way that takes work to another dimension. His palette included pink gum, lemon yellow, deep sapphire and ebony, which he applied as a monochrome. He also made objects of stained wood, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel. For several years he relied on Hindu and Buddhist mandalas to make a series of paintings, they were exhibited at Castello di Rivoli in 2011.

His wife was the artist Gail Barringer, she revived to a certain extent her husband’s artistic career, and earned her the recognition of a younger generation of artists, merchants, and curators. Unfortunately, he died on April 8, 2011. Years before, his work had been honored in Documenta 12 in Kassel.

EXHIBITIONS

• “Primary structures” in the Jewish Museum (1966)
• “American sculpture of the sixties” at the Los Angeles County Museum (1967).
• “Inverleith House” at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2009)

His top ten auction prices exceed $ 200,000, including his high auction mark for a Black Plank, in polyester resin, fiberglass and plywood, which sold for $ 358,637 at Phillips de Pury & Company London in June 2007. More recently, Flash (2002), a red-board piece of firefighters, sold for $ 290,500 at Christie’s New York in 2010.

Nine Planks V, Blue column, Plank, Don’t tell me when to stop, Mykonos, Pyramid, Blue Post and Dintel I, Love in Italian, Right, Blue Post and Dintel, Yellow pyramid, The Absolutely Naked Fragrance, Violet Block in two parties, you won’t know which one until you’ve been to All of Them, Red Plank, Ala (Aile), among others.

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Biography of Walt Disney, Animator and Film Producer

Love of drawing, laugh-o-gram films, mickey mouse, sound and color, feature-length cartoons, union strikes, world war ii, more movies, plans for disneyland, disneyland opens, plans for walt disney world, florida.

Walt Disney (born Walter Elias Disney; December 5, 1901–December 15, 1966) was a cartoonist and entrepreneur who developed a multibillion-dollar family entertainment empire. Disney was the renowned creator of Mickey Mouse, the first sound cartoon, the first Technicolor cartoon, and the first feature-length cartoon. In addition to winning 22 Academy Awards in his lifetime, Disney also created the first major theme park: Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Fast Facts: Walt Disney

• Known For: Disney was a pioneering animator and film producer who won 22 Academy Awards and built one of the largest media empires in the world.
• Born: December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois
• Parents: Elias and Flora Disney
• Died: December 15, 1966 in Burbank, California
• Awards and Honors: 22 Academy Awards, Cecil B. DeMille Award, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal
• Spouse: Lillian Bounds (m. 1925-1966)
• Children: Diane, Sharon

Walt Disney was born the fourth son of Elias Disney and Flora Disney (née Call) in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901. By 1903, Elias, a handyman and carpenter, had grown weary of crime in Chicago; thus, he moved his family to a 45-acre farm he purchased in Marceline, Missouri. Elias was a stern man who administered “corrective” beatings to his five children; Flora soothed the children with nightly readings of fairy tales.

After the two eldest sons grew up and left home, Walt Disney and his older brother Roy worked on the farm with their father. In his free time, Disney made up games and sketched the farm animals. In 1909, Elias sold the farm and purchased an established newspaper route in Kansas City, where he moved his remaining family.

It was in Kansas City that Disney developed a love for an amusement park called Electric Park, which featured 100,000 electric lights illuminating a roller coaster, a dime museum, penny arcade, swimming pool, and a colorful fountain light show.

Rising at 3:30 a.m. seven days a week, 8-year-old Walt Disney and brother Roy delivered the newspapers, taking quick naps in alleyways before heading to Benton Grammar School. In school, Disney excelled in reading; his favorite authors were Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.

In art class, Disney surprised his teacher with original sketches of flowers with human hands and faces. After stepping on a nail on his newspaper route, Disney had to spend two weeks in bed recuperating. He spent his time reading and drawing newspaper-style cartoons.

Elias sold the newspaper route in 1917 and bought a partnership in the O-Zell Jelly factory in Chicago, moving Flora and Walt with him (Roy had enlisted in the U.S. Navy). Sixteen-year-old Walt Disney attended McKinley High School, where he became the school newspaper’s junior art editor. To pay for evening art classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, he washed jars in his father’s jelly factory.

Wanting to join Roy, who was fighting in World War I, Disney tried to join the Army but at age 16 he was too young. Undeterred, he joined the Red Cross’ Ambulance Corps, which took him to France and Germany.

After spending 10 months in Europe, Disney returned to the U.S. In October 1919, he got a job as a commercial artist at the Pressman-Rubin Studio in Kansas City. Disney met and became friends with fellow artist Ub Iwerks at the studio.

When Disney and Iwerks were laid off in January 1920, they formed Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Due to a lack of clients, however, the duo only survived for about a month. After getting jobs at the Kansas City Film Ad Company as cartoonists, Disney and Iwerks began making commercials for movie theaters.

Disney borrowed a camera from the studio and began experimenting with stop-action animation in his garage. He shot footage of his animal drawings using different techniques until the pictures actually “moved” in fast and slow motion. His cartoons (which he called Laugh-O-Grams) eventually became superior to the ones he was working on at the studio; he even figured out a way to merge live action with animation. Disney suggested to his boss that they make cartoons, but his boss flatly turned down the idea, content with making commercials.

In 1922, Disney quit the Kansas City Film Ad Company and opened a studio in Kansas City called Laugh-O-Gram Films. He hired a few employees, including Iwerks, and sold a series of fairy tale cartoons to Pictorial Films in Tennessee.

Disney and his staff began work on six cartoons, each one a seven-minute fairy tale that combined live action and animation. Unfortunately, Pictorial Films went bankrupt in July 1923; as a result, so did Laugh-O-Gram Films.

Next, Disney decided he would try his luck at working in a Hollywood studio as a director and joined his brother Roy in Los Angeles, where Roy was recovering from tuberculosis.

Having no luck getting a job at any of the studios, Disney sent a letter to Margaret J. Winkler, a New York cartoon distributor, to see if she had any interest in distributing his Laugh-O-Grams. After Winkler viewed the cartoons, she and Disney signed a contract.

On October 16, 1923, Disney and Roy rented a room at the back of a real estate office in Hollywood. Roy took on the role of accountant and cameraman of the live action; a little girl was hired to act in the cartoons; two women were hired to ink and paint the celluloid, and Disney wrote the stories and drew and filmed the animation.

By February 1924, Disney had hired his first animator, Rollin Hamilton, and moved into a small storefront with a window bearing the sign “Disney Bros. Studio.” Disney’s "Alice in Cartoonland" reached theaters in June 1924.

In early 1925, Disney moved his growing staff to a one-story, stucco building and renamed his business “Walt Disney Studio.” Disney hired Lillian Bounds, an ink artist, and began dating her. On July 13, 1925, the couple married in her hometown of Spalding, Idaho. Disney was 24; Lillian was 26.

Meanwhile, Margaret Winkler also married, and her new husband, Charles Mintz, took over her cartoon distribution business. In 1927, Mintz asked Disney to rival the popular “Felix the Cat” series. Mintz suggested the name “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” and Disney created the character and made the series.

In 1928, when costs became increasingly high, Disney and Lillian took a train trip to New York to renegotiate the contract for the popular Oswald series. Mintz countered with even less money than he was currently paying, informing Disney that he owned the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and that he had lured most of Disney’s animators to come work for him.

Shocked, shaken, and saddened, Disney boarded the train for the long ride back. In a depressed state, he sketched a character and named him Mortimer Mouse. Lillian suggested the name Mickey Mouse instead.

Back in Los Angeles, Disney copyrighted Mickey Mouse and, along with Iwerks, created new cartoons with Mickey Mouse as the star. Without a distributor, though, Disney could not sell the silent Mickey Mouse cartoons.

In 1928, sound became the latest in film technology. Disney pursued several New York film companies to record his cartoons with this new novelty. He struck a deal with Pat Powers of Cinephone. Disney provided the voice of Mickey Mouse and Powers added sound effects and music.

Powers became the distributor of the cartoons and on November 18, 1928, "Steamboat Willie" opened at the Colon Theater in New York. It was Disney’s (and the world’s) first cartoon with sound. "Steamboat Willie" received rave reviews and audiences everywhere adored Mickey Mouse.

In 1929, Disney began making “Silly Symphonies,” a series of cartoons that included dancing skeletons, the Three Little Pigs, and characters other than Mickey Mouse, including Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.

In 1931, a new film-coloring technique known as Technicolor became the latest in film technology. Until then, everything had been filmed in black and white. To hold off the competition, Disney paid to hold the rights to Technicolor for two years. He filmed a Silly Symphony titled "Flowers and Trees" in Technicolor, showing colorful nature with human faces, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon of 1932.

On December 18, 1933, Lillian gave birth to Diane Marie Disney, and on December 21, 1936, Lillian and Walt Disney adopted Sharon Mae Disney.

Disney decided to add dramatic storytelling to his cartoons, but making a feature-length cartoon had everyone (including Roy and Lillian) saying it would never work; they believed audiences just wouldn’t sit that long through a dramatic cartoon.

Despite the naysayers, Disney, ever the experimenter, went to work on the feature-length fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Production of the cartoon cost $1.4 million (a massive sum in 1937) and was soon dubbed “Disney’s Folly.”

When it premiered in theaters on December 21, 1937, though, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was a box office sensation. Despite the Great Depression, it earned $416 million.

A notable achievement in cinema, the movie won Disney an Honorary Academy Award. The citation read, "For 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field."

After the success of "Snow White," Disney constructed his state-of-the-art Burbank Studio, deemed a worker’s paradise for a staff of about 1,000 workers. The studio, with animation buildings, sound stages, and recording rooms, produced "Pinocchio" (1940), "Fantasia" (1940), "Dumbo" (1941), and "Bambi" (1942).

Unfortunately, these feature-length cartoons lost money worldwide due to the start of World War II. Along with the cost of the new studio, Disney found himself in debt. He offered 600,000 shares of common stock, sold at five dollars apiece. The stock offerings sold out quickly and erased the debt.

Between 1940 and 1941, movie studios began unionizing; it wasn’t long before Disney’s workers wanted to unionize as well. While his workers demanded better pay and working conditions, Disney believed that his company had been infiltrated by communists.

After numerous and heated meetings, strikes, and lengthy negotiations, Disney finally became unionized. However, the whole process left Disney feeling disillusioned and discouraged.

With the union question finally settled, Disney was able to turn his attention back to his cartoons; this time for the U.S. government. The United States had joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it was sending millions of young men overseas to fight.

The U.S. government wanted Disney to produce training films using his popular characters ; Disney obliged, creating more than 400,000 feet of film (about 68 hours).

After the war, Disney returned to his own agenda and made "Song of the South" (1946), a movie that was 30 percent animation and 70 percent live action. "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" was named the best movie song of 1946 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, while James Baskett, who played the character of Uncle Remus in the movie, won an Oscar.

In 1947, Disney decided to make a documentary about Alaskan seals titled "Seal Island" (1948). It won an Academy Award for best two-reel documentary. Disney then assigned his top talent to make "Cinderella" (1950), "Alice in Wonderland" (1951), and "Peter Pan" (1953).

After building a train to ride his two daughters around his new home in Holmby Hills, California, Disney began formulating a dream in 1948 to build Mickey Mouse Amusement Park across the street from his studio. He visited fairs, carnivals, and parks around the world to study the choreography of people and attractions.

Disney borrowed on his life insurance policy and created WED Enterprises to organize his amusement park idea, which he was now referring to as Disneyland. Disney and Herb Ryman drew out the plans for the park in one weekend. The plan included an entrance gate to "Main Street" that would lead to Cinderella’s Castle and off to different lands of interest, including Frontier Land, Fantasy Land, Tomorrow Land, and Adventure Land.

The park would be clean and innovative, a place where parents and children could have fun together on rides and attractions; they would be entertained by Disney characters in the “happiest place on earth.”

Roy visited New York to seek a contract with a television network. Roy and Leonard Goldman reached an agreement where ABC would give Disney a $500,000 investment in Disneyland in exchange for a weekly Disney television series.

ABC became a 35 percent owner of Disneyland and guaranteed loans up to $4.5 million. In July 1953, Disney commissioned the Stanford Research Institute to find a location for his (and the world’s) first major theme park. Anaheim, California, was selected since it could easily be reached by freeway from Los Angeles.

Previous movie profits were not enough to cover the cost of building Disneyland, which took about a year to build at a cost of $17 million. Roy made numerous visits to the Bank of America's headquarters to secure more funding.

On July 13, 1955, Disney sent out 6,000 exclusive guest invitations, including to Hollywood movie stars, to enjoy the opening of Disneyland. ABC sent cameramen to film the opening. However, many tickets were counterfeited and 28,000 people showed up.

Rides broke down, food stands ran out of food, a heat wave caused freshly poured asphalt to capture shoes, and a gas leak caused temporary closings in a few themed areas.

Despite the newspapers referring to this cartoon-ish day as "Black Sunday," guests from all over the world loved it and the park became a major success. Ninety days later, the one-millionth guest passed through the park's turnstile.

In 1964, Disney’s "Mary Poppins" premiered; the film was nominated for 13 Academy Awards. With this success, Disney sent Roy and a few other Disney executives to Florida in 1965 to purchase land for another theme park.

In October 1966, Disney gave a press conference to describe his plans for building an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) in Florida. The new park would be five times the size of Disneyland, and it would include shopping, entertainment venues, and hotels.

The new Disney World development would not be completed, however, until five years after Disney’s death. The new Magic Kingdom (which included Main Street USA; Cinderella's Castle leading to Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland) opened on October 1, 1971, along with Disney's Contemporary Resort, Disney's Polynesian Resort, and Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground. EPCOT, Walt Disney’s second theme park vision, which featured a future world of innovation and a showcase of other countries, opened in 1982.

In 1966, doctors informed Disney that he had lung cancer. After having a lung removed and several chemotherapy sessions, Disney collapsed in his home and was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital on December 15, 1966. He died at 9:35 a.m. from an acute circulatory collapse and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Disney left behind one of the largest media empires in the world. Since his death, the Walt Disney Company has only grown; today, it employs more than 200,000 people and generates billions in revenue each year. For his artistic achievements, Disney amassed 22 Oscars and numerous other honors. In 1960, he was given two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one for his film and one for his television work).

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Read more stories about Walt Disney here .

During a 43-year Hollywood career, which spanned the development of the motion picture medium as a modern American art, Walter Elias Disney, a modern Aesop, established himself and his product as a genuine part of Americana.

David Low, the late British political cartoonist, called Disney “the most significant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo.” A pioneer and innovator, and the possessor of one of the most fertile imaginations the world has ever known, Walt Disney, along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from throughout the world, including 48 Academy Awards® and 7 Emmys® in his lifetime.

Walt Disney’s personal awards included honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California, and UCLA; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France’s Legion of Honor and Officer d’Academie decorations; Thailand’s Order of the Crown; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners.

The creator of Mickey Mouse and founder of Disneyland and Walt Disney World was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901. His father, Elias Disney, was an Irish-Canadian. His mother, Flora Call Disney, was of German-American descent. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Raised on a farm near Marceline, Missouri, Walt early became interested in drawing, selling his first sketches to neighbors when he was only seven years old. At McKinley High School in Chicago, Disney divided his attention between drawing and photography, contributing both to the school paper. At night he attended the Academy of Fine Arts.

During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was only 16 years of age, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with drawings and cartoons.

After the war, Walt returned to Kansas City, where he began his career as an advertising cartoonist. Here, in 1920, he created and marketed his first original animated cartoons, and later perfected a new method for combining live-action and animation.

In August of 1923, Walt Disney left Kansas City for Hollywood with nothing but a few drawing materials, $40 in his pocket and a completed animated and live-action film. Walt’s brother Roy O. Disney was already in California, with an immense amount of sympathy and encouragement, and $250. Pooling their resources, they borrowed an additional $500 and constructed a camera stand in their uncle’s garage. Soon, they received an order from New York for the first “Alice Comedy” short, and the brothers began their production operation in the rear of a Hollywood real estate office two blocks away.

On July 13, 1925, Walt married one of his first employees, Lillian Bounds, in Lewiston, Idaho. They were blessed with two daughters — Diane, married to Ron Miller, former president and chief executive officer of Walt Disney Productions; and Sharon Disney Lund, formerly a member of Disney’s Board of Directors. The Millers have seven children and Mrs. Lund had three. Mrs. Lund passed away in 1993.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, and his talents were first used in a silent cartoon entitled Plane Crazy . However, before the cartoon could be released, sound burst upon the motion picture screen. Thus Mickey made his screen debut in Steamboat Willie , the world’s first fully synchronized sound cartoon, which premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on November 18, 1928.

Walt’s drive to perfect the art of animation was endless. Technicolor® was introduced to animation during the production of his “Silly Symphonies.” In 1932, the film entitled Flowers and Trees won Walt the first of his 32 personal Academy Awards®. In 1937, he released The Old Mill , the first short subject to utilize the multiplane camera technique.

On December 21 of that same year, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Produced at the unheard of cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Great Depression, the film is still accounted as one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt completed such other full-length animated classics as Pinocchio , Fantasia , Dumbo and Bambi .

In 1940, construction was completed on Disney’s Burbank studio, and the staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians. During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work including the production of training and propaganda films for the armed services, as well as health films which are still shown throughout the world by the U.S. State Department. The remainder of his efforts were devoted to the production of comedy short subjects, deemed highly essential to civilian and military morale.

Disney’s 1945 feature, the musical The Three Caballeros , combined live action with the cartoon medium, a process he used successfully in such other features as Song of the South and the highly acclaimed Mary Poppins . In all, 81 features were released by the studio during his lifetime.

Walt’s inquisitive mind and keen sense for education through entertainment resulted in the award-winning “True-Life Adventure” series. Through such films as The Living Desert , The Vanishing Prairie , The African Lion and White Wilderness , Disney brought fascinating insights into the world of wild animals and taught the importance of conserving our nation’s outdoor heritage.

Disneyland, launched in 1955 as a fabulous $17 million Magic Kingdom, soon increased its investment tenfold and entertained, by its fourth decade, more than 400 million people, including presidents, kings and queens and royalty from all over the globe.

A pioneer in the field of television programming, Disney began production in 1954, and was among the first to present full-color programming with his Wonderful World of Color in 1961. The Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro were popular favorites in the 1950s.

But that was only the beginning. In 1965, Walt Disney turned his attention toward the problem of improving the quality of urban life in America. He personally directed the design on an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT, planned as a living showcase for the creativity of American industry.

Said Disney, “I don’t believe there is a challenge anywhere in the world that is more important to people everywhere than finding the solution to the problems of our cities. But where do we begin? Well, we’re convinced we must start with the public need. And the need is not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a community that will become a prototype for the future.”

Thus, Disney directed the purchase of 43 square miles of virgin land — twice the size of Manhattan Island — in the center of the state of Florida. Here, he master planned a whole new Disney world of entertainment to include a new amusement theme park, motel-hotel resort vacation center and his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. After more than seven years of master planning and preparation, including 52 months of actual construction, Walt Disney World opened to the public as scheduled on October 1, 1971. Epcot Center opened on October 1, 1982.

Prior to his death on December 15, 1966, Walt Disney took a deep interest in the establishment of California Institute of the Arts, a college level, professional school of all the creative and performing arts. Of Cal Arts, Walt once said, “It’s the principal thing I hope to leave when I move on to greener pastures. If I can help provide a place to develop the talent of the future, I think I will have accomplished something.”

California Institute of the Arts was founded in 1961 with the amalgamation of two schools, the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Chouinard Art Institute. The campus is located in the city of Valencia, 32 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Walt Disney conceived the new school as a place where all the performing and creative arts would be taught under one roof in a “community of the arts” as a completely new approach to professional arts training.

Walt Disney is a legend, a folk hero of the 20th century. His worldwide popularity was based upon the ideas which his name represents: imagination, optimism and self-made success in the American tradition. Walt Disney did more to touch the hearts, minds and emotions of millions of Americans than any other man in the past century. Through his work, he brought joy, happiness and a universal means of communication to the people of every nation. Certainly, our world shall know but one Walt Disney.

Biography Online

Walt Disney Biography

Early Life – Walt Disney

Walt Disney was born on 5 December 1901, in Chicago. His parents were of German/English and Irish descent. As a child, the Disney family moved between Marceline in Missouri, Kansas City and back to Chicago. The young Walt Disney developed an interest in art and took lessons at the Kansas City Institute and later Chicago Art Institute. He became the cartoonist for the school magazine.

When America joined the First World War, Walt dropped out of school and tried to enlist in the army. He was rejected for being underage, but he was later able to join in the Red Cross and in late 1918 was sent to France to drive an ambulance.

In 1919, he moved back to Kansas City where he got a series of jobs, before finding employment in his area of greatest interest – the film industry. It was working for the Kansas City Film Ad company that he gained the opportunity to begin working in the relatively new field of animation. Walt used his talent as a cartoonist to start his first work.

The success of his early cartoons enabled him to set up his own studio called Laugh-O-Gram. However, the popularity of his cartoons was not matched by his ability to run a profitable business. With high labour costs, the firm went bankrupt. After his first failure, he decided to move to Hollywood, California which was home to the growing film industry in America. This ability to overcome adversity was a standard feature of Disney’s career.

“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

– The Story of Walt Disney (1957)

With his brother, Roy, Walt set up another company and sought to find a distributor for his new film – Alice Comedies – based on the adventures of Alice in Wonderland.

Mickey Mouse

In 1927, the Disney studio was involved in the successful production of ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’, distributed by Universal Pictures. However, with Universal Pictures controlling the rights to ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’, Walt was not able to profit from this success. He rejected an offer from Universal and went back to working on his own.

The Mickey Mouse cartoons with soundtracks became very popular and cemented the growing reputation and strength of Disney Productions. The skill of Walt Disney was to give his cartoons believable real-life characteristics. They were skillfully depicted and captured the imagination of the audience through his pioneering use of uplifting stories and moral characteristics.

In 1932, he received his first Academy Award for the Best Short Subject: Cartoons for the three coloured ‘Flowers and Trees’ He also won a special Academy Award for Mickey Mouse.

In 1933, he developed his most successful cartoon of all time ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (1933) with the famous song ‘Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”

In 1924, Walt Disney began his most ambitious project to date. He wished to make a full length animated feature film of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Many expected it to be a commercial failure. But, using new techniques of filming, the production was met with glowing reviews. It took nearly three years to film – coming out in 1937 after Disney had run out of money. But, the movie’s strong critical reception, made it the most successful film of 1938, earning $8 million on its first release. The film had very high production values but also captured the essence of a fairy tale on film for the first time. Walt Disney would later write that he never produced films for the critic, but the general public. Replying to criticism that his productions were somewhat corny, he replied:

“All right. I’m corny. But I think there’s just about a-hundred-and-forty-million people in this country that are just as corny as I am.” – Walt Disney

Disney always had a great ability to know what the public loved to see.

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the studio produced several other successful animations, such as ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Bambi’ and ‘The Wind in the Willows’. After America’s entry into the Second World War in 1941, this ‘golden age’ of animation faded and the studio struggled as it made unprofitable propaganda films.

Political and religious views

In 1941, Disney also had to deal with a major strike by his writers and animators. This strike left a strong impression on Disney. He would later become a leading member of the anti-Communist organisation ‘Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals’ (the right-wing organisation was also considered to be anti-semitic.) At one point, he (unsuccessfully) tried to brand his labour union organisers as Communist agitators.

However, in the 1950s, Disney distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. However, by associating with the organisation, he was often associated with the anti-labour and anti-semitic philosophy it expressed. Disney was a Republican, though was not particularly involved in politics. It is often asked whether Walt Disney was anti-semitic.

His biographer, Neal Gabler stated:

“…And though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not anti-semitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were anti-semitic, and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life.”

Walt Disney believed in the benefits of a religious approach to life, though he never went to church and disliked sanctimonious teachers.

“I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person’s whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.”

Ch. 15: Walt Lives!, p. 379

He respected other religions and retained a firm faith in God.

Post-war success

During the war, there was much less demand for cartoon animation. It took until the late 1940s, for Disney to recover some of its lustre and success. Disney finished production of Cinderella and also Peter Pan (which had been shelved during the war) In the 1950s, Walt Disney Productions also began expanding its operations into popular action films. They produced several successful films, such as ‘Treasure Island’ (1950), ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1954) and ‘Pollyanna’ (1960)

In another innovation, the studio created one of the first specifically children’s shows – The Mickey Mouse Club. Walt Disney even returned to the studio to provide the voice. In the 1960s, the Disney Empire continued to successfully expand. In 1964, they produced their most successful ever film ‘Mary Poppins.’

In the late 1940s, Walt Disney began building up plans for a massive Theme Park. Walt Disney wished the Theme Park to be like nothing ever created on earth. In particular, he wanted it to be a magical world for children and surrounded by a train. Disney had a great love of trains since his childhood when he regularly saw trains pass near his home. It was characteristic of Walt Disney that he was willing to take risks in trying something new.

“Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually, it implies some risk, especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.”

– The Disney Way Fieldbook (2000) by Bill Capodagli

After several years in the planning and building, Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955. Disney spoke at the address.

“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.”

The success of Disneyland encouraged Walt to consider another park in Orlando, Florida. In 1965, another theme park was planned.

Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966. He had been a chain smoker all his life. An internet myth suggested Walt Disney had his body cryonically frozen, but this is untrue. It seems to have been spread by his employers, looking for one last joke at the expense of their boss.

After his death, his brother Roy returned to lead The Disney Company, but the company missed the direction and genius of Walt Disney. The 1970s were a relatively fallow period for the company, before a renaissance in the 1980s, with a new generation of films, such as ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988) and ‘The Lion King’ (1994)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Walt Disney”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 8th August 2014. Last updated 1st March 2019.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination at Amazon

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Walt Disney, Biography

Walt’s optimism came from his unique ability to see the entire picture. His views and visions, came from the fond memory of yesteryear, and persistence for the future. Walt loved history. As a result of this, he didn’t give technology to us piece by piece, he connected it to his ongoing mission of making life more enjoyable, and fun. Walt was our bridge from the past to the future.

During his 43-year Hollywood career, which spanned the development of the motion picture industry as a modern American art, Walter Elias Disney established himself and his innovations as a genuine part of Americana.

 Walt Disney in his office © Disney

A pioneer and innovator, and the possessor of one of the most fertile and unique imaginations the world has ever known. Walt Disney could take the dreams of America, and make them come true. He was a creator, a imaginative, and aesthetic person. Even thirty years after his death, we still continue to grasp his ideas, and his creations, remembering him for everything he’s done for us.

Later, after Walt’s birth, the Disney family moved to Marceline, Missouri. Walt lived out most of his childhood here. Walt had a very early interest in drawing, and art. When he was seven years old, he sold small sketches, and drawings to nearby neighbors. Instead of doing his school work Walt doodled pictures of animals, and nature. His knack for creating enduring art forms took shape when he talked his sister, Ruth, into helping him paint the side of the family’s house with tar.Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago Illinois, to his father, Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, who was of German-American descent. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Close to the Disney family farm, there were Santa Fe Railroad tracks that crossed the countryside. Often Walt would put his ear against the tracks, to listen for approaching trains. Walt’s uncle, Mike Martin, was a train engineer who worked the route between Fort Madison, Iowa, and Marceline. Walt later worked a summer job with the railroad, selling newspapers, popcorn, and sodas to travelers.

During his life Walt would often try to recapture the freedom he felt when aboard those trains, by building his own miniature train set. Then building a 1/8-scale backyard railroad, the Carolwood Pacific or Lilly Bell.

Besides his other interests, Walt attended McKinley High School in Chicago. There, Disney divided his attention between drawing and photography, and contributing to the school paper. At night he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, to better his drawing abilities.

Walt discovered his first movie house on Marceline’s Main Street. There he saw a dramatic black-and-white recreation of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

During these “carefree years” of country living young Walt began to love, and appreciate nature and wildlife, and family and community, which were a large part of agrarian living. Though his father could be quite stern, and often there was little money, Walt was encouraged by his mother, and older brother, Roy.

Even after the Disney family moved to Kansas City, Walt continued to develop and flourish in his talent for artistic drawing. Besides drawing, Walt had picked up a knack for acting and performing. At school he began to entertain his friends by imitating his silent screen hero, Charlie Chaplin. At his teachers invitation, Walt would tell his classmates stories, while illustrating on the chalk board. Later on, against his fathers permission, Walt would sneak out of the house at night to perform comical skits at local theaters.

During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was under age, only sixteen years old at the time. Instead, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas to France, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with Disney cartoons.

Once he returned from France, he wanted to pursue a career in commercial art, which soon lead to his experiments in animation. He began producing short animated films for local businesses, in Kansas City. By the time Walt had started to create The Alice Comedies , which was about a real girl and her adventures in an animated world, Walt ran out of money, and his company Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupted. Instead of giving up, Walt packed his suitcase and with his unfinished print of The Alice Comedies in hand, headed for Hollywood to start a new business. He was not yet twenty-two.

The early flop of The Alice Comedies inoculated Walt against fear of failure; he had risked it all three or four times in his life. Walt’s brother, Roy O. Disney, was already in California, with an immense amount of sympathy and encouragement, and $250. Pooling their resources, they borrowed an additional $500, and set up shop in their uncle’s garage. Soon, they received an order from New York for the first Alice in Cartoonland(The Alice Comedies) featurette, and the brothers expanded their production operation to the rear of a Hollywood real estate office. It was Walt’s enthusiasm and faith in himself, and others, that took him straight to the top of Hollywood society.

Although, Walt wasn’t the typical Hollywood mogul. Instead of socializing with the “who’s who” of the Hollywood entertainment industry, he would stay home and have dinner with his wife, Lillian, and his daughters, Diane and Sharon. In fact, socializing was a bit boring to Walt Disney. Usually he would dominate a conversation, and hold listeners spellbound as he described his latest dreams or ventures. The people that where close to Walt were those who lived with him, and his ideas, or both.

On July 13, 1925, Walt married one of his first employees, Lillian Bounds, in Lewiston, Idaho. Later on they would be blessed with two daughters, Diane and Sharon . Three years after Walt and Lilly wed, Walt created a new animated character, Mickey Mouse.

Walt with many plush Mickey Mouse Dolls © Disney

His talents were first used in a silent cartoon entitled Plane Crazy . However, before the cartoon could be released, sound was introduced upon the motion picture industry. Thus, Mickey Mouse made his screen debut in Steamboat Willie, the world’s first synchronized sound cartoon, which premiered at the Colony Theater in New York on November 18, 1928. On December 21, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Theater in Los Angeles. The film produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression, the film is still considered one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt Disney Studios completed other full-length animated classics such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi. Walt’s drive to perfect the art of animation was endless. Technicolor was introduced to animation during the production of his Silly Symphonies Cartoon Features. Walt Disney held the patent for Technicolor for two years, allowing him to make the only color cartoons. In 1932, the production entitled Flowers and Trees won Walt the first of his studio’s Academy Awards. In 1937, he released The Old Mill , the first short subject to utilize the multi-plane camera technique.

Walt rarely showed emotion, though he did have a temper that would blow over as it blew up. At home, he was affectionate and understanding. He gave love by being interested, involved, and always there for his family and friends. Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, once said:

Probably the most painful time of Walt’s private life, was the accidental death of his mother in 1938. After the great success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt and Roy bought their parents, Elias and Flora Disney, a home close to the studios. Less than a month later Flora died of asphyxiation caused by a faulty furnace in the new home. The terrible guilt of this haunted Walt for the rest of his life.

In 1940, construction was completed on the Burbank Studio, and Disney’s staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men, and technicians. Although, because of World War II 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work, including the production of training and propaganda films for the armed services, as well as health films which are still shown through-out the world by the U.S. State Department. The remainder of his efforts were devoted to the production of comedy short subjects, deemed highly essential to civilian and military morale.

Disney’s 1945 feature, the musical The Three Caballeros , combined live action with the cartoon animation, a process he used successfully in such other features as Song of the South and the highly acclaimed Mary Poppins . In all, more than 100 features were produced by his studio.

Walt’s inquisitive mind and keen sense for education through entertainment resulted in the award-winning True-Life Adventure series. Through such films as The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie, The African Lion, and White Wilderness, Disney brought fascinating insights into the world of wild animals and taught the importance of conserving our nation’s outdoor heritage.

Walt Disney on his trips through Disneyland © Disney

Walt Disney’s dream of a clean, and organized amusement park, came true, as Disneyland Park opened in 1955. As a fabulous $17-million magic kingdom, soon had increased its investment tenfold, and by the beginning of its second quarter-century, had entertained more than 200 million people, including presidents, kings and queens, and royalty from all over the globe.

Photographs on this page, © Disney

Disney 100: The Story of How a Century of Disney Magic Began

Go behind the scenes of the founding of the company and the creation of mickey mouse, snow white, disneyland, and more..

One hundred years ago, on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in the living room of their uncle Robert’s house. Some may say Walt could never have imagined that a small, four-page contract for six Alice Comedies would spawn a kingdom that includes over 1,200 movies and TV shows, a team of companies that includes Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, six Disney resorts across the world, and so much more, but Walt did.

He obviously didn’t know the exact details of what Disney would become, but as he once said when talking about the secret of making dreams come true, it’s all made possible “when you believe a thing, believe it all over, implicitly and unquestioningly.” And oh boy, did he and all the others who helped get Disney where it is today believe.

Looking back at Disney’s first 100 years, they’re filled with moments of magic, innovation, and stories that will forever live in our hearts, and it all began in that home on Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles. So let’s take a journey back in time, with the help of some Disney icons, for the story of how it all began.

Once Upon a Dream in Marceline

Walt Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, but one of his life's first and most important moments took place in the small town of Marceline, Missouri.

Walt and his family moved to Marceline when he was just four years old, and there they were neighbors of a doctor who was lovingly referred to as Doc Sherwood. This doctor had a prized horse named Rupert and, one day around 1909, he asked a young Walt Disney to draw a portrait of him and Rupert’s halter rope.

This drawing and the nickel he made from it was the first commission Walt ever earned and was, according to his brother Roy, the “highlight” of his life. That special moment and feeling Walt had would guide him throughout his life and pave the way for what we now know as The Walt Disney Company to be born. However, that road was anything but smooth.

Prior to founding Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt had a couple of failed attempts at starting his own companies, including one with legendary animator Ub Iwerks, who would go on to be the one to sketch Mickey Mouse for the first time.

These failures, as Walt himself would say later in his life, were important – even as they must have been heartbreaking for him.

“I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young,” Walt said, as presented in The Official Walt Disney Quote Book. “I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.”

And that’s exactly what he did. He took his dreams of building a successful business with him to California to join Roy. He began by searching for a job directing live-action films but kept getting rejected over and over again. Much as he had done before, he persevered and found a new way forward.

This new way would involve utilizing Alice’s Wonderland, an unreleased pilot film that he had made back in Kansas City that starred a real-life little girl who found herself in a cartoon world. Walt would use this film to sell a series of shorts known as Alice Comedies to a film distributor named Margaret Winkler. After receiving a telegram that said Winkler would pay him $1,500 for six Alice Comedies, he convinced Roy to join him on this new adventure as equal partners.

And so, on October 16, 1923, the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio was born thanks to that four-page contract.

Disney would make these Alice Comedies for four years, and then the team decided to start developing an all-cartoon series with a loveable character that would change the company forever. Without this character, Disney as we know it may have been completely different.

That character, of course, is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Who did you think we were talking about?

It Was All Started By a Mouse

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was the Mickey Mouse before there ever was a Mickey Mouse. He was the star of 26 silent cartoons made by Walt, Ub Iwerks, and rest of Disney between 1927 and 1928, and proved to be very popular for Disney. However, this happy-go-lucky rabbit quickly led to one of the darkest moments in the company’s history.

Walt contracted with Margaret Winkler’s husband, Charles Mintz, and Universal Pictures to distribute Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unfortunately, Walt didn’t realize that he didn’t own the rights to the character and he would soon lose not only Oswald to Universal and Mintz, but also most of his animators.

Mintz wanted Disney to take less money for the cartoons or to work for just a share of the profits, but Walt wouldn’t budge. He tried to negotiate with Mintz but ended up giving up the battle in early 1928. Following his defeat, with the loss of Oswald and nearly all of his animators to Universal, he then took one of the most important train rides of his life. As the legend goes, it was on that train that Mickey Mouse was born.

Walt loved to tell the story of how Mickey was inspired by a mouse that lived in his office back in Kansas City. But other versions of the story involve more help from Ub Iwerks and the pair not wanting to create another rabbit, while also trying to avoid the popularity of cat characters like Felix the Cat back then. Walt also publicly discussed how the creation of Mickey was influenced by one of the greatest actors and filmmakers in history.

“We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little,” Walt said of Mickey. “I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin – a little fellow trying to do the best he could.”

Becky Cline, the director of The Walt Disney Archives, says the truth about the creation of Mickey Mouse probably lies somewhere in the middle of all of these tales.

“My take on it is that Walt was always telling stories, and sometimes he would massage the truth,” Cline told IGN. “Sometimes he was a fabulist, but he was always honest. After all, it is more interesting to tell a story about how the mouse ran around what he was drawing on in the old days and that he came up with this great idea on the train ride home. Either way, he wasn't ever going to give up.”

What isn’t up for debate, however, is how important the role Iwerks played in the creation of Mickey Mouse. He was one of the animators targeted by Universal and was offered a ton of money to jump ship. However, he stayed true to Walt and chose to stand by him. Because of that, he was the one who helped Walt bring Mickey to life in secret while they finished out the Oswald cartoons they were still contractually obligated to complete.

Walt’s wife, Lillian, also deserves a ton of credit as she was the one who convinced Walt to name this new character Mickey Mouse instead of Mortimer Mouse – the name he was said to have given that mouse back in Missouri – as she simply didn’t like it.

Mickey Mouse was born during Disney’s darkest days, and he made his big debut in “Steamboat Willie” alongside Minnie Mouse and others on November 18, 1928, at New York’s Colony Theater. However, there were two Mickey cartoons that came before that which couldn’t find a distributor and marked a bit of a bumpy start for our favorite mouse.

“He created ‘Plane Crazy’ first, and then a cartoon called ‘The Gallopin' Gaucho,’” Cline said. “And both of them were kind of inspired by Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Lindbergh, and the adventurers of the time.”

Those two shorts were both created as silent cartoons, and while Walt was looking for a distributor for them, he couldn’t find one amid the competition.

“There were just too many silent cartoons out in the market at the time, and he was still struggling to find something,” said Cline. “And then The Jazz Singer came out from Warner Bros., and it was the first full-length talkie story, and it was an overnight sensation. This caused Walt to say, ‘Oh my gosh, that's what we need to do.’ And so he got the idea to create a Mickey Mouse cartoon using synchronized sound, which was revolutionary, and that also became an overnight success like The Jazz Singer. I think it was a combination of that he struck gold with not only synchronized sound, but that Mickey was adorable and was an instant hit because of that personality that Walt put into him alongside being lovable, funny, and a little rascal.”

Indeed, much of Walt was in Mickey, and he would even voice the character until 1946 (when Jim MacDonald took over).

Mickey Mouse has obviously gone on to become a worldwide icon. He was even the first cartoon character to get his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But what about Mickey made him so instantly iconic and recognizable?

Eric Goldberg has a long history at the studio, having served as co-director of Pocahontas, lead animator on Aladdin’s Genie, among many other things. He’s also one of the few at The Walt Disney Company who has the honor of drawing Mickey Mouse today.

“To me, Mickey is animation,” Goldberg told IGN. “I don't think there's ever been a character in animation history that you could do so much with. He can change his shape. He can have really, really strong attitudes. He's heroic, he has human foibles. He can be very, very fluid. One of my favorite things is animation that looks like it's enjoying itself on screen. And my God, Mickey is one character who embodies that like crazy. Whether it's [animator] Dick Lundy's tap dancing in ‘Through The Mirror,’ or it's Mickey trying to explain how he allegedly killed a giant in ‘Brave Little Tailor.’ But all of this stuff is Mickey enjoying himself, Mickey doing his crazy dance in ‘Mickey's Birthday Party.’ All of that stuff adds to your sheer enjoyment of the character over all these decades. And I hope we can keep that alive with him.”

Mickey Mouse was the biggest step forward yet for The Walt Disney Company, but Walt would soon dream even larger and aim for the next impossible challenge – creating the first-ever full-length animated feature film.

The So-Called ‘Disney’s Folly’ That Changed the Entertainment World Forever

Today, we all know Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as Disney’s groundbreaking first feature film that paved the road to the studio’s future movie-making empire. However, Hollywood originally had a different two-word view of the film.

“All of Hollywood was calling Snow White ‘Disney's Folly’ prior to its release, and there were all sorts of excuses that various people made,” Goldberg explained. “Like, the color is going to hurt your eyes for 90 minutes. You won't be able to sustain drama for 90 minutes with a cartoon. And there was all this kind of pontificating about how it was going to fail, and it didn't. It didn't fail because of Walt and his crew's perseverance and sheer concentrated talent.”

Yes, Walt and 750 of his artists did what seemed impossible at the time: Over three years, with a budget of $1.4 million (roughly $30.5 million in 2023) and nearly two million individual paintings, they created what became Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Walt was a huge fan of fairy tales and fables, and many of his earlier projects were based on existing stories. Remember those Alice Comedies that started The Walt Disney Company? Those were based on 1865’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. So, when it became time to venture into the world of feature films, he chose to follow his love of those stories and go with an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White.

Why Snow White? When Walt was 15 and living in Kansas City, he saw a silent film adaptation of the German fairy tale from 1812 that starred Marguerite Clark and, according to Disney bographer Bob Thomas from The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder , it was the "most vivid memory of his moviegoing childhood."

And the Dwarfs! The titular seven dwarfs were actually fleshed out in greater detail than they were in the original story, as they didn’t have names that were linked to their personalities until Walt got a hold of them. This was emblematic of what the Disney team did with Snow White and other adaptations like it. They took the foundation of something that came before and infused it with heart, believable and deep characters, and expanded storytelling.

“As far as Disney style goes, the animation of the dwarfs by Freddie Moore and Bill Tytla primarily really set that style of movement as being Disney,” Goldberg said. “This is what Disney characters should act and move like and look like. And they employed a lot of squash and stretch, and they employed a lot of streamlining on the characters to make them as fluid as possible.

“And there are certain sequences in the film that I don't think have been better, like the dwarfs introducing themselves to Snow White. That was Ham Luske and Freddie Moore, and they helped give them so much personality. It's kind of mind-boggling how well it holds up so many years later. And all the characters are engaging to watch and experience.”

Speaking of the dwarfs, their names weren’t even locked down until about a year out from release, and the dozens of names that were in consideration will surely take any Disney fan on a fun journey of what if. Among those that didn’t make it were Scrappy, Sneezy-Wheezy, Hungry, Dumpy, Thrifty, Woeful, Wistful, Awful, Goopy, Neurtay, Gloomy, Flabby, Ghaspy, Hotsy, Puffy, Biggy-Wiggy, Biggo-Ego, and even Snoopy, well before Charles Schulz brought that loveable dog to life.

All of these incredibly talented people, the revolutionary multiplane camera that added so much depth to every scene, the unforgettable musical tracks like “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-Ho,” the complex and deep characters and story, and so much more led to a film that shocked the world and quickly changed the notion that this was Disney’s Folly.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had its premiere at the Cathay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937, and oh was it a night to remember. Not only did it sell out more than every other picture that was ever booked at the theater before, but there were more than 30,000 fans who simply gathered outside of the theater to say they were part of the night.

The film went on to have a worldwide gross of $8.5 million (roughly $185 million in 2023) and was the highest-grossing movie of all time until Gone with the Wind took that honor in 1940. Walt would also receive a special Academy Award for the film, presented by Shirley Temple and designed as one full-size Oscar alongside seven “dwarf” Oscars.

Snow White was so successful that not only did it give Disney enough money to continue to grow his company, but it proved that animation and these types of stories were possible at this scale. In fact, the film’s success led to the development of The Wizard of Oz as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s novel in the wake of the Disney success.

Disney would of course continue to develop animated feature films, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, and would even venture into live-action in 1950 with Treasure Island. Walt was enjoying great success, but he was never satisfied. Something else was calling to him.

The Happiest Place on Earth

The story of Disneyland begins with a dream Walt had when he was sitting on a park bench in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park with his young daughters. We could explain to you how that moment happened, but why not let Walt tell you his side of the story?

“It came about when my daughters were very young, and Saturday was always Daddy’s day,” Walt said, as presented in The Official Walt Disney Quote Book. “I took them different places and as I’d sit while they rode the Merry-Go-Round and did all these things – sit on a bench, you know, eating peanuts – I felt that there should be something built where the parents and the children could have fun together. So that’s how Disneyland started.”

There were many skeptics of this idea, and many thought it was a great way to lose money. Even his wife, Lillian, had doubts that were born from her experience visiting other amusement parks.

“But why do you want to build an amusement park?” Lillian asked, as told in The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder . “They’re so dirty.”

Walt’s response? “I told her that was just the point – mine wouldn’t be.”

Every decision would make its guests feel like they were just that: guests. Disneyland’s employees aren’t simply called employees or workers; they are cast members. The places you don’t see at Disneyland are called backstage, meaning the parks themselves are the stage where these cast members have to perform to their highest ability.

Unlike other amusement parks, Walt envisioned a single entrance to Disneyland that would give all guests the same joyous and welcoming experience as they walked into the park. Those first few steps are meant to provide a feeling of nostalgia and wonder, and it all begins with Main Street, U.S.A. Inspired by places like Marceline, Main Street, U.S.A. was meant to invoke the feeling of an idealized small town in America rather than a specific place.

Construction on Disneyland began on July 16, 1954, after Harrison “Buzz” Price of the Stanford Research Institute helped Walt find the perfect spot for the theme park on land that was occupied by a few avocado, citrus, and bean farms and various houses. Disney was able to purchase it for $4,600 per acre or $639,400 (roughly $7.3 million in 2023) and it would take a year and a day and $17 million (roughly $195.9 million in 2023) to get to opening day on that very land.

This was accomplished in large part thanks to a group of people he called Imagineers, which is of course a combination of the words imagination and engineering. What separated these Imagineers from other creatives and developers at the time was the focus Walt put on stories when building a project. These weren’t just rides or buildings that would make up Disneyland, no, they were an extension of the studio’s films and animation endeavors.

Images From the Opening of Disneyland and Beyond

Tom Fitzgerald, a Walt Disney Imagineering portfolio creative executive who has been with the company since 1979 and is best known for his role in reimagining Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Tours, Tower of Terror, and so many more, said Walt’s original mantra for designing the park still holds true today.

“We start with the story,” Fitzgerald tells IGN. “What's the story we want to tell? What is the role of the guest in that story? We still create storyboards to figure out how we tell the story. We still build physical models to understand how things are going to look and to evolve the design process. And I think that is still one of the differentiators between Imagineering and other groups… we start with, ‘How are we going to tell the story?’ versus, ‘What is the thing that we're building?’”

Many of these early Imagineers were people who had already worked at Disney. They helped create the opening lineup of Disneyland attractions that included Peter Pan’s Flight, Mad Tea Party, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Adventures, Jungle Cruise, and Mark Twain Riverboat.

As if creating Disneyland wasn’t revolutionary enough, Walt and his team also devised another plan to help raise money for the park. This step, which became Walt Disney’s Disneyland, would make Walt one of the first major film producers to venture into the world of television. CBS and NBC both turned down Disney, so he went with ABC to present a show that teased Disneyland and was also meant to get fans excited for its opening.

Opening day was on Sunday, July 17, 1955, and it was anything but smooth. Many of the attractions weren’t fully ready by then and, as the late Marty Sklar, former vice chairman and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, recalled in The Imagineering Story, “The director of the TV show said, ‘Well, what am I going to have to shoot on Sunday?’ And the art director said, ‘You’ll have plenty to shoot. We’re going to be pouring concrete.’”

The blacktop wasn’t fully dry and women’s high heels would get stuck in parts of it, counterfeit tickets caused crowds to be higher than planned, electrical fuses blew out on Mr. Toad’s Wild Road, the Tea Cups were falling apart, the Mark Twain boat was overloaded and was sinking, and many more problems plagued the opening. Still, despite the unfinished state, 22 television cameras broadcasted Disneyland’s opening to the world, and 83 million people watched from their homes.

“To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land,” Walt said on opening day. “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 the world.”

Of course, Walt and his team eventually rose above those speed bumps, as was evident as the one-millionth visitor walked through the front gates after only two months of being open. And it hasn’t slowed down since.

As for those who criticized the opening of Disneyland without all of its attractions being completed, Walt had something to say to them that would become a core belief and driving force of the entire company.

“Disneyland will never be completed,” Walt said, as presented in The Official Walt Disney Quote Book. “It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

As we all know, there has been plenty of imagination in this world as Disneyland was just the beginning, and today there are 12 parks at six different resorts in California, Florida, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

Unfortunately, Walt didn’t get to see the full realization of all of his dreams as he passed away on December 16, 1966, from lung cancer. He did, however, put into motion the expansion into Walt Disney World and everything he did before and after that at the company was aimed at allowing Disney to continue even when he was gone.

As Dick Nunis, former chairman of Walt Disney Attractions said in the documentary series The Imagineering Story, “The great thing about Walt, he was always dreaming past his lifetime. But he also knew that it would take people to carry on the great dream.”

And carry on that dream they did.

Taking Inspiration From the Past, With Some Help From Marvel and Star Wars

In 2023, The Walt Disney Company may look a lot different than it did back in 1923, but the foundations and dreams that Walt built the studio on are very much the same.

“There have been so many innovations in Walt Disney's history, and Walt was always pushing the envelope and doing something that was wonderful in the world of storytelling with the newest technology,” Cline said. “He did that with Mickey Mouse and Snow White and he never looked back.

“We work so hard to make everything we do in the way Walt always did to make them the finest in family entertainment – high-quality productions that are enjoyable for all ages and cultures that feature wonderful stories everyone can take with them into their homes and hearts for years to come. And I think just like 100 years ago, we're going to keep doing that.”

Pixar's Movies: Worst to Best

A century ago, Walt began bringing stories from fables and fairy tales to the big screen while also creating new worlds and universes. And today Disney is taking some of the most celebrated stories of this new generation and doing the same thanks to its relatively recent focus on acquisitions.

Disney now has access to that galaxy far, far away thanks to its purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012 ($4.05 billion), stories of the mightiest heroes and villains in the MCU after acquiring Marvel Entertainment in 2009 ($4 billion), a collection of toys and cars and houses with balloons since it bought a Steve Jobs-led Pixar in 2006 ($7.4 billion), mutants and Pandora’s finest from 21st Century Fox in 2019 ($71.3 billion), and more.

Yes, in 2023, Disney had access to Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the Avengers, Black Panther, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Captain Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Simpsons, Avatar, Family Guy, Deadpool, Die Hard, Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes, X-Files, The Muppets, Home Alone, Ice Age, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Bob’s Burgers, Futurama, King of the Hill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and countless others.

It’s mind-boggling to see all of those top-tier franchises and characters under one roof, and that doesn’t even include everything Disney has created internally. It’s also important to note that these acquisitions were for more than just these characters and stories, but also for the tools these companies have built over the years, like Pixar’s Academy Award-winning RenderMan software (which is now an industry standard for VFX and animation), Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, and many more.

As for the world of television, like Walt did with Walt Disney’s Disneyland, the company has continued to build its presence in that space. This can be seen with the creation of its own Disney Channel in 1983 and then the $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC in 1996. The biggest step, however, just may have been the creation of Disney+. Disney+ is now the gateway to everything Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and even National Geographic. The platform is also an avenue for Disney to tell even more stories from its biggest franchises outside of the theater, and it has seen such standout hits as Loki, WandaVision, The Mandalorian, and Andor.

However, there is still work to be done as not every show has been the runaway success the company has hoped for. Even Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the company needs to be “better at curating” franchise content that is “extraordinarily expensive.”

Marvel president Kevin Feige also spoke on this matter, saying the focus on Disney+ really needs to be on quality over quantity in the future. "I do think one of the powerful aspects of being at Marvel Studios is having these films and shows hit the zeitgeist," Feige said. "It is harder to hit the zeitgeist when there's so much product out there … But we want Marvel Studios and the MCU projects to really stand out and stand above. So, people will see that as we get further into Phase 5 and 6. The pace at which we're putting out the Disney+ shows will change so they can each get a chance to shine."

Marvel Phases 1-3: The MCU's Infinity Saga Ranked

These comments echo one of Walt’s most important philosophies: that story and heart need to be at the center of everything. If that doesn’t work, as some would say was the case with a film like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it may be time to take a step back and really think about why these stories have been so captivating and popular in the past. In an effort to do so, Iger announced back in 2019 that Star Wars movies would be going on a “bit of a hiatus” following The Rise of Skywalker, and a recent delay has pushed the potential next Star Wars film to May 22, 2026.

While it may be disheartening for many (myself included!) that we have to wait that long, if that patience results in a film for the ages and begins a new golden era of Star Wars, it will all have been worth it.

One of the main reasons Disney has had the success it has over the past hundred years is because it wasn’t a factory that knocked out cookie-cutter project after cookie-cutter project as quickly as it could. It’s because it is a studio filled with incredibly talented individuals who come together as a team to create stories that matter and characters with heart that make us believe even the impossible can happen.

Tom Fitzgerald will help tell one final tale that perfectly encapsulates this feeling, and it involves a special turtle from Finding Nemo and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. The team at Disneyland installed a version of Turtle Talk with Crush at the hospital and, if you aren’t familiar with the experience, it sees a Disney cast member playing a digital version of the Finding Nemo character and interacting with an audience.

It’s a joy at the parks, but at the children’s hospital it just means that much more. Crush remembers these incredible kids, he asks them how their treatment is going, and he brightens up their day and allows them to forget about their battles, even for just a moment.

“For the kids, it's magic. To the kids, Crush is a friend,” Fitzgerald says. “These characters are real, these characters are alive, and these characters are friends. And that is so powerful, that you can touch a life. And I know for the people who do it on our side, it's equally as emotional as it is for the kids. That is the power of what we do to the nth degree.”

That is Disney as Walt envisioned it, and that is Disney still today.

It’s also going to be the Disney of the future, and the promise of the journeys we have yet to take is the most wonderful thing of all for those who are now guiding this ship into that great big beautiful tomorrow.

“I think for the next hundred years, what I’m most excited about is the stuff that I don't know about yet,” Goldberg said with a smile on his face. “And because, frankly, that's what the studio did for the first hundred years, is continue to experiment and explore and find new ways to do things and new ways to tell stories.”

We may not know what adventures Disney will take us on in the future, but we’ve had a century to see how remarkable they can be when the ingredients are just right. We hold up Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars to such a high standard because they’ve proven they can reach and even exceed our wildest expectations.

One thing is for certain: Wherever this new Walt Disney Company goes, it will bring with it all the hard work and dreams of those who got it to today, and that’s what is most important. These stories were made by real individuals who have all experienced joy, grief, and everything in between, just as we have, and that’s what makes them so special.

That is Disney magic, and I can’t wait to see what new wonders are in store for us in the next 100 years and beyond.

For more ways to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, be sure to check out our ultimate Disneyland guide for Disney100, our chat with the filmmakers of Wish - the Walt Disney Animation Studios film that celebrates this milestone - on why they chose not to go full 2D and what they learned from Frozen, and the official trailer for 'Once Upon a Studio,' the Disney+ short that features 543 Disney characters and celebrates a century of animation.

Oh, and if you need another reason to check it out, just look at this image of all the beloved characters from the short posing for a group photo.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

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Walt Disney

• Occupation: Entrepreneur
• Born: December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois
• Died: December 15, 1966 in Burbank, California
• Best known for: Disney animated movies and theme parks
• Nickname: Uncle Walt

• Tom Hanks played the role of Walt Disney in the 2013 movie Saving Mr. Banks .
• The original name for Mickey Mouse was Mortimer, but his wife didn't like the name and suggested Mickey.
• He won 22 Academy Awards and received 59 nominations.
• His last written words were "Kurt Russell." No one, not even Kurt Russell, knows why he wrote this.
• He was married to Lillian Bounds in 1925. They had a daughter, Diane, in 1933 and later adopted another daughter, Sharon.
• The robot from Wall-E was named after Walter Elias Disney.
• The sorcerer from Fantasia is named "Yen Sid", or "Disney" spelled backwards.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

Best Books about Disney and Disney History [2024 Updates]

While the internet has a wealth of information on Disney planning and some good Disney history content, some of the best advice, history, and photography is found only in the old-school printed word. In this post, we’re collecting the best books related to Disney, be it Disney history, Disney design, or the business side of things.

Most of the books here are sold by Amazon and thus when you use our affiliate links to make a purchase, we may receive compensation. Occasionally I add books that aren’t yet on Amazon, too.

People Behind the Disney Parks: Stories of Those Honored with a Window on Main Street, U.S.A. (Affiliate Link)

Description: This is a pretty cool concept. It’s a book that tells the story of Disney by focusing on the people whose names have been added to the windows on Main Street USA. You might not have noticed, or you noticed but didn’t know the significance, that the Main Street USA windows have names of various “fictional” proprietors. Well, actually these aren’t fictional people—they’re real people who played a role in the parks and company.

The Disney Monorail: Imagineering A Highway In The Sky (Affiliate Link)

Description: This is a book that focuses specifically on the monorail , which is a good topic to sort of center a discussion about Disney and Walt Disney around. It’s a bit futurism, a bit Imagineering, and a whole lot of ambition.

Marc Davis in His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks (Affiliate Link)

Description: Okay…I promise this is the only book that clocks in at a regular price of around $100…but it’s worth it. If you’re a Disney parks fanatic or you’re shopping for one and this book is in your budget, you have to grab it.

At nearly 400 pages across two coffee-table book sized halves, the authors take you on a thorough history of Disney Legend, animator, and Imagineer Marc Davis’s time developing Disney parks. The book includes concept art and interviews with Davis himself that haven’t seen the light of day until now.

The Ride of a Lifetime (Affiliate Link)

Read our review of ride of a lifetime here.

Description: Bob Iger’s “not a memoir” reads more like a memoir at times, which is good if you’re looking for his insight into the happenings at Disney during his tenure, but is also filled with nuggets of business wisdom. While I’m hopeful we’ll get a full memoir in the future, for now this book is a good look at Disney’s CEO.

Walt Disney’s Disneyland (Affiliate Link)

Description: This very large (10 in x 13 in x 1.2 in) book is a tour de force in the history of Disneyland. In over 300 pages (including some great full-page photography), Chris Nichols gives you a detailed look at the happiest place on earth.

The Unofficial Walt Disney World 1971 Companion: Stories of How the World Began (Affiliate Link)

Description: If it’s Disney parks history you’re into, Jim Korkis is your guy. His latest work focuses on the development and opening of Walt Disney World. The development of Walt Disney World is no doubt a huge moment in Disney history, but the story rarely sees as much detail as Korkis gives it here.

Drinking at Disney: A Tipsy Travel Guide to Walt Disney World's Bars, Lounges & Glow Cubes (Affiliate Link)

Description: While there are plenty of ways to “adult” without drinking, it’s safe to say that Drinking at Disney deserves a lot of credit from brining “adulting at Disney” into the mainstream. If you’re taking an adults-only trip to Disney World, this is the guide that answers all the questions you were too afraid to ask the Disney fanatics in your life.

[2024 Edition] Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2024 (Affiliate Link)

Description: The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2024 is undoubtedly the most comprehensive planning guide you’re going to find. It’s so comprehensive, it honestly is pretty good competition for many websites. If you just can’t spend hours online but need the detail you’d find searching everywhere on google, this is as close as you’ll get in printed form.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler (Affiliate Link)

Description: At over 900 pages and with accolades including Winner of the  Los Angeles Times  Book Prize for Biography and USA Today  Biography of the Year, this is the definitive biography of Walt Disney. But be warned—if you’re looking for a book that glosses over some of the less magical aspects of Walt’s life, you won’t find that here.

Walt Disney: An American Original (Disney Editions Deluxe) (Affiliate Link)

Description: There are basically three things you need to know about this biography of Walt. First, it’s a well-received book in many circles (so, it’s worth considering). Second, it’s significantly shorter than the biography mentioned above. Third, it’s published by the The Walt Disney Company .

Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney (Affiliate Link)

Description: Another business book on the list, this time from Lee Cockerell, former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resort. This is a good little book and an easy read for any Disney fan with an interest in the business side of things or who is in business themselves.

Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making More Magic Real (Affiliate Link)

Description: This coffee table book gives an inside look at Imagineering from the perspective of the Imagineers themselves. With looks at the work of different imagineers, the book gives a more comprehensive and complete look at the imagineering process.

The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World (Affiliate Link)

Description: Susan Veness’s book is a go-to for fun facts at Walt Disney World. Experts might not be blown away by all of the secrets (though certainly a few will surprise), but it’s perfect for someone finding a new passion for Disney parks!

Dream It! Do it! (Affiliate Link)

Description: Marty Sklar joined Disney imagineering in 1961 and worked on several projects, including the Enchanted Tiki Room and “it’s a small world.” What he’s perhaps most known for is his time as president of Walt Disney Imagineering, during which he supervised the construction of eight Disney parks around the world. Dream It! Do It! is Sklar’s autobiography, and a must-read for Disney parks fans.

One Little Spark!: Mickey's Ten Commandments and The Road to Imagineering (Affiliate Link)

Description: This is another Marty Sklar book, but with more of a focus on imagineering as a process and business / art form, rather than an autobiography. It’s a good companion or counterpart to the “Walt Disney Imagineering” book discussed above. While that one focused more on the ground level of things, this book is more focused on the principles at work.

Maps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to Shanghai (Affiliate Link)

Description: Let’s get this clear— this is not a collection of park maps that are given out at the parks . Rather, it’s a collection of concept art/maps for the Disney parks throughout the years.

The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic (Affiliate Link)

Description: I wish they did more of these style books. The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering A Disney Classic is a great telling of the development of Haunted Mansion and its “sister” rides at Disney parks around the world . Read about how the ride was conceived and all the different options that were considered while getting a peek at great photos, diagrams, and concept art along the way.

Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (Affiliate Link)

Description:  Like the Haunted Mansion book above, the Pirates of the Caribbean book covers the development of a famous attraction.

Defunctland: Guide to the Magic Kingdom (Affiliate Link)

Description: Defunctland creator Kevin Perjurer takes you on a tour of the Magic Kingdom, complete with insight into existing and extinct attractions. To be fair, it’s the Defunctland YouTube Channel that is the best thing being produced in theme park commentary right now. But the book is a fun little trip through the Magic Kingdom.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Affiliate Link)

Description: Creativity Inc. is a book about building a business environment that fosters creativity. Prior to being acquired by Disney, Pixar was seemingly on a path to taking Disney Animation’s crown, and it was their creative brilliance and the leadership of Ed Catmull that drove Bob Iger to acquire Pixar (and then give Catmull control of Disney Animation as well) in the first place.

Kingdom Keepers (Affiliate Link)

Description: Honestly, I’ve never read, skimmed, or touched a Kingdom Keepers book, but this list wouldn’t be complete without these cult hits. As I understand it, these fantasy books follow a group of kids trying to protect Walt Disney World from Disney villains. Sounds like a fun enough premise.

And Some Travel Books We Love

Okay, this post is about Disney travel, but we had to also throw in a few travel books we love, just in case your wanderlust extends beyond Disney.

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders (Affiliate Link)

Description: Atlas Obscura is a great book for your coffee table or to start planning your next getaway. It’s filled with some of the most interesting spots around the world, from the Waitomo Glowworm Caves to the Sunland Baobab.

How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Third Edition: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter (Affiliate Link)

Description: Before there were legions of budget travelers and backpackers on the internet making a full-time career out of telling you their tips and tricks, there was Matt Kepnes. With his “OG” status, Kepnes has maintained an honest and clear voice about what it takes to travel the world on a budget.

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections (Affiliate Link)

Description: For the most part, this is a introduction to the behind the scenes world of aviation. Any hardcore AV geek won’t be impressed by its contents, but if you’re new to travel this is a good look at some of the questions you might not have even known you had.

Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot (Affiliate Link)

Description: Skyfaring is a book about the beauty of travel. It’s less utilitarian than Cockpit Confidential , but every bit as engaging. It’s a great read for any lover of travel.

All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.

Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars . For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.

When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets . Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans ! And don't forget to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations !

Don't forget to master your Disney World Genie+ and Lightning Lane strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Genie+ and Lightning Lanes , Epcot Genie+ and Lightning Lanes , Animal Kingdom Genie+ and Lightning Lanes , and Hollywood Studios Genie+ and Lightning Lanes .

Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides , Hollywood Studios rides , Epcot rides , and Animal Kingdom rides ! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon ! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World .

Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip . And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish .

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us?

The Truth About Walt Disney’s Frozen Head and His Quest to Live Forever

He imagined the world of tomorrow. Fifty-seven years after his death, could he come back to life in the future he envisioned?

Sixty years ago this month, on April 22, 1964, the New York World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York. The Fair had the theme of “Peace Through Understanding,” and was dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” as symbolized by the 140-foot-tall stainless-steel globe, known as the “Unisphere,” that towered over a massive reflecting pool.

The 1964 World’s Fair wasn’t the first one held in Flushing Meadows; the Unisphere was built on the same ground once occupied by the similarly spherical “Perisphere,” which was constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair. To kick off the 1964 Fair, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered opening remarks that evoked the ‘39 edition, which imagined the 1960s of the future:

“The last time New York had a World’s Fair, we also tried to predict the future. A daring exhibit proclaimed that in the 1960s, it would really be possible to cross the country in less than 24 hours, flying as high as 10,000 feet; that an astounding 38 million cars would cross our highways. There was no mention of outer space, or atomic power, or wonder drugs that could destroy disease.”

But Johnson’s reflections on human progress weren’t all positive. “No one prophesied that half the world would be devastated by war, or that millions of helpless would be slaughtered,” the President noted, just months after he approved the controversial National Security Action Memorandum 288 escalating the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. “No one foresaw power that was capable of destroying man, or a cold war which could bring conflict to every continent.”

Johnson’s presence at the 1964 World’s Fair underscored the somber reality facing America at the time. After all, an assassin’s bullet killed the intended speaker, his predecessor, John F. Kennedy , thrusting him—a representative of Washington D.C.’s “old guard”—into the role intended for JFK, a symbol of the “New Frontier.”

So, who could Fair attendees turn to for hopeful visions of “Peace Through Understanding,” and “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe”? Only one man: Walt Disney .

Disney, who had been a weekly presence in American homes for the last decade through his television show, Walt Disney’s Disneyland— later titled Walt Disney Presents —created four attractions for the ‘64 World’s Fair. These exhibits were a hit, drawing 135,000 visitors per day during the first season alone, according to The Walt Disney Family Museum .

Disney’s attractions included “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” at the Illinois Pavilion, an animatronic replica of another President who represented hope, and who was also assassinated ; “Ford’s Magic Skyway” for the Ford Motor Company, where guests rode in Ford vehicles past animatronic dinosaurs; and the now-iconic “it’s a small world,” which Disney’s Imagineers built in collaboration with Pepsi-Cola as a tribute to UNICEF.

But it was the “Carousel of Progress,” located in General Electric’s “Progressland” pavilion, that most epitomized Walt Disney’s vision of the future. The rotating animatronic show guided audiences through the history of human innovation and provided a comforting escape with its optimistic theme song by the Sherman Brothers , promising, “There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow/Shining at the end of every day.”

In the aftermath of a national tragedy, Walt Disney became a beacon of optimism for fairgoers, and for Americans. His presence fostered a belief in a “great big beautiful tomorrow.”

Perhaps it’s that enduring optimism that fuels the persistent conspiracy that Disney, who died in 1966, might still be among us, secretly preserved in hopes of one day being revived.

The “Final” Years of Walt Disney

In 1964, besides contributing to the World’s Fair, Disney also released his most acclaimed live-action film yet: Mary Poppins . Just a few years earlier, during a screening of To Kill a Mockingbird , Disney had reportedly lamented , “That’s the kind of film I’d like to make, but I can’t.” Now, his tender musical adaptation of P.L. Travers ’ novel had achieved the same milestone as Universal’s adaptation of Harper Lee ’s seminal work: a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

With his status finally solidified in the entertainment industry, Disney turned his sights to the future—not of his film studio, but of humanity. Intent on using his renowned imagination to forge a brighter tomorrow, Disney envisioned a utopia designed to last forever. In 1964, the future looked bright for Walt Disney.

In less than three years, he would be dead.

On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died as a result of complications from lung cancer. As Biography notes , “a private funeral was held the next day, and on December 17, his body was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.”

Some conspiracy theorists, however, believe that Disney’s remains aren’t actually at Forest Lawn. They’ll tell you, according to Biography , that Disney’s body is instead “suspended in a frozen state and buried deep beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, awaiting the day when medical technology would be advanced enough to reanimate the animator.”

Why Do People Believe Walt Disney Is Frozen?

The rumored cryonic freezing of Walt Disney has no clear origin point that Biography could confirm . But its first documented mention is in a 1969 Ici Paris article, reportedly as a prank concocted by “disgruntled animators” who once worked for Disney “seeking to have a laugh at their late taskmasker employer’s expense.” Their motive was seemingly revenge for Disney’s strict oversight, an aftermath of a labor uprising in the late 1930s that is chronicled in depth in The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age .

Initially, whispers suggested Disney’s entire body was preserved in a secret facility, but soon the tale focused on the animator’s head alone, frozen beneath iconic Disneyland attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Matterhorn, the Partners statue at the center of the park, and even the Magic Kingdom castle. Over time, it seems every corner of Disneyland has been rumored to shelter its founder’s frozen head.

The notion of Walt Disney’s icy remains hiding within park attractions might stem from the actual secrets of Disneyland. There is indeed a hidden space at the top of the Matterhorn, but it’s home to a basketball court for bored Disney staff, not a frozen former CEO. And while early versions of Pirates of the Caribbean did feature real skeletons from UCLA’s medical school, according to SFGate , none belonged to Disney himself.

The grim idea that only Walt Disney’s head was placed in cryostasis might have caught on due to its eerie, sci-fi feel, with modern cryonics offering both full-body and head-only preservation options. That singular detail adds a creepy wrinkle to the conspiracy, evoking images more akin to the 1962 horror flick The Brain That Wouldn’t Die than the reality of a Hollywood mogul’s legacy.

Nevertheless, the tale of Walt Disney’s “frozen head” persisted, specifically resurfacing in two biographies released years after his death: Leonard Mosely’s 1986 Disney’s World and Marc Eliot’s 1993 Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince , which further embedded the legend into popular culture.

Eliot’s controversial biography, which was criticized by Disney’s family and historians alike for its speculative content, included unfounded allegations against Disney, including claims that he was an FBI informant (which evidence suggests he was not ), and that he refused to have flags at half mast at Disneyland when JFK died (which photographic evidence disproves ). Nevertheless, Hollywood’s Dark Prince fed into a desire to find the dark side of a man often propped up as the symbol of Americana, pushing both the cryonics rumor and the assertions of Disney’s rampant antisemitism (also notably debunked ) into the mainstream.

Disney’s family has firmly denied the rumor that he was cryogenically frozen, and as Biography points out, it has been “further discredited by those pointing to the existence of signed legal documents that indicate Disney was in fact cremated and that his remains are interred in a marked plot (for which his estate paid $40,000) at Forest Lawn, the exact location of which is a matter of public record.” Plus, the first instance of a person being cryopreserved after his death, James Bedford , didn’t occur until nearly a month after Disney’s cremation, debunking the timeline of the rumor that Disney was frozen.

Diane Disney, Walt’s daughter, wrote in a 1972 biography about her famous father that she “doubted her father had even heard of cryonics.”

Nonetheless, even skeptics who reject the frozen head story might concede that Walt Disney, a famously forward-thinking futurist, could have been aware of cryonics. The concept gained attention in 1964, the same year Disney shifted his focus from film to envisioning his utopian future.

The Futurist Who Inspired Walt Disney

If you were browsing the “New Releases” shelf at a bookstore in 1964, you might stumble upon an intriguing non-fiction book in between copies of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and the Warren Commission’s The Warren Report : Robert Ettinger’s The Prospect of Immortality .

“Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality,” Ettinger claims in the very first sentence. All you need to do, Ettinger says, is join one “established fact” with one “reasonable assumption.”

The fact: “At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely.”

The assumption: “If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.”

Six decades later, while we haven’t mastered the art of repairing all human body damage, our cryopreservation methods have advanced significantly, particularly with the introduction of vitrification by Greg Fahy and William F. Rall in the 1980s. And recent scientific advancements suggest that what we currently understand as death might be more reversible than previously thought.

Some excerpts from Ettinger’s book resonate with the futuristic optimism of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland. For example, Ettinger writes,“If civilization endures ... if the Golden Age materializes, the future will reveal a wonderful world indeed, a vista to excite the mind and thrill the heart.” However, even if Disney had encountered Ettinger’s work, his imagination had already been sparked by another piece of literature before he died.

In May 1960, Horizon magazine published “Out of a Fair, a City,” an article in which architect Victor Gruen envisioned transforming the 1964 World’s Fair site into a domed city to test solutions for societal challenges. According to Imagineer Marty Sklar’s 1999 book, Remembering Walt , Gruen’s philosophy (further elaborated in Gruen’s 1964 work, “The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure,”) was a significant influence on Disney during his final years—so much that he began an ambitious plan to build a community in Florida that would “never cease to be a living blueprint of the future.”

Disney, utilizing land his corporation discreetly bought in Florida, set out to build an “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” adjacent to his planned East Coast theme park. The community aimed to eliminate traffic jams, offer abundant green spaces, and showcase efficient public transportation with the use of a monorail system.

After Walt Disney’s death, the Florida land earmarked for his future city was transformed into EPCOT, the second theme park at Walt Disney World Resort. EPCOT features a “Future World” section with educational attractions and a World Showcase with international pavilions, operating as a “perpetual World’s Fair.”

Why People Want To Believe Walt Disney Is Frozen

In his last years, Walt Disney was introspective, focusing not on the “prospect of immortality,” but on a different sentiment. While the 1964 song “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” planted the seed in millions of young minds, it was another tune by the Sherman Brothers from the same year that resonated deeply with Disney as he reflected on his life. Richard Sherman recalls :

“On Fridays, after work, Walt Disney would often invite us into his office and we’d talk about things that were going on at the Studio. After a while, he’d wander to the north window, look out into the distance and just say, 'Play it.' And Dick would wander over to the piano and play 'Feed the Birds' for him. One time just as Dick was almost finished, under his breath, I heard Walt say, 'Yep. That’s what it’s all about.'”

There is little left of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows—Corona Park. The spot where the “Carousel of Progress” once played in GE’s Progressland is now an athletic field. The Vatican pavilion has been replaced by a stone bench. The Unisphere, however, still remains, towering over a park whose occupants have little memory, or even awareness, of the “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” promised at the park 60 years ago.

For the Baby Boomers who experienced Disney’s contributions to the 1964 World’s Fair, the event offered hope and a last optimistic vision of the future from “Uncle Walt.” And while today, these visitors can encounter preserved pieces of the Fair at the Queens Museum and experience “it’s a small world” at Disney parks worldwide, they can’t turn that athletic field back into Progressland. And they can’t bring back the man who made it possible.

Walt Disney’s legacy extends far beyond his films and theme parks. He symbolizes something greater than a sprawling entertainment empire. As biographer Neal Gabler put it in the final pages of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination , “he demonstrated how one could assert one’s will on the world at the very time when everything seemed to be growing beyond control and beyond comprehension.”

For conspiracy theorists who want to believe Walt Disney is a frozen head, waiting for revival, perhaps it’s because they want to believe he asserted his will over the one thing no one has been able to do before. That maybe, “if the Golden Age materializes,” Walt Disney could even come back to life. And with him would come, once again, the promise of a “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.” A promise he made in Queens 60 years ago.

Michael Natale is the news editor for Best Products , covering a wide range of topics like gifting, lifestyle, pop culture, and more. He has covered pop culture and commerce professionally for over a decade. His past journalistic writing can be found on sites such as Yahoo! and Comic Book Resources , his podcast appearances can be found wherever you get your podcasts, and his fiction can’t be found anywhere, because it’s not particularly good. 

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