Inspiring Stories

Walt Disney
Presented by:

Anushka
Siddhi Gaur Ashirwad Ruhela Sarmad Ali
Aggarwal
“If you can dream it, you can do it!”
• Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an
American entrepreneur, business magnate,
animator, voice actor, producer, director,
writer, and the eponymous founder of The
Walt Disney Company. One of the most
famous and well-known motion picture
producers in the world, Walt co-founded his
namesake company, Walt Disney
Productions, with his brother, Roy in 1923.
1901-1919: Childhood
• Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in
Chicago to Elias Disney and Flora Call. He was
named after his father's close friend Walter Parr,
the minister at St. Paul Congregational Church.
• Disney began attending the Benton Grammar
School in 1911, and graduated on June 8, 1917.
• He enrolled at McKinley High School in 1918 where
he worked as a cartoonist in the school newspaper,
where he mainly drew things pertaining to WWI.
• He the left school and became a volunteer
ambulance driver in The Red Cross during World
War I after he changed his birth certificate to show
his year of birth as 1900 in order to be able to enlist
in The Red Cross.
• He set sail for France in November and stayed
there until 1919.
1920-1936: Early years in animation
• Kansas City animation studios
• Disney returned Kansas City and, with Ub Iwerks, formed a
company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in
January 1920. Owing to start-up problems, they temporarily
worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, working on
primitive animated advertisements for local movie houses.
• In 1921, Disney started Laugh-O-grams, Inc., which produced
short cartoons based on popular fairy tales and children's
stories. Among his employees were Iwerks, Hugh
Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng.
After creating one last short, the live-action/animation Alice's
Wonderland, the studio declared bankruptcy in July 1923.
• One of Disney's brothers, Roy Oliver Disney later invited Walt
to move to Hollywood, California primarily because he was
suffering from tuberculosis, and Disney earned enough
money for a one-way train ticket to California, leaving his
staff behind, but taking the finished reel of Alice's
Wonderland with him.
• Alice Comedies: Contract and new California studio
• Disney set up shop with his brother Roy, started the
Disney Brothers Studio in their Uncle Robert's
garage, and got a distribution deal with New York
City states-rights distributors Margaret J.
Winkler and her fiancé Charles Mintz (via Winkler
Pictures). 
• By 1926, the Disney Brothers Studio had its name
changed to Walt Disney Studio; the name Walt Disney
Productions would be adopted in 1929. One of the
studio's employees, Lillian Bounds, became Walt
Disney's wife; they married on July 13, 1925.
• The Alice Comedies (animated/live-action shorts)
were reasonably successful and featured different
ladies throughout. By the time the series ended
in 1927, the focus was more on the animated
characters, in particular, a cat named Julius the Cat,
rather than the live-action Alice.
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
• In January 1927, Mintz told Disney to create a cartoon
character they could sell to Universal Pictures . Disney
had Iwerks design a rabbit character, and named it
Oswald.
• In January 1928, Iwerks warned Walt that several of
the animators at his studio were signing contracts with
Winkler Pictures. In the following month, Disney went
to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from
Mintz. Mintz announced that not only did he want to
reduce the fee he paid Disney per short, but that he
had most of his main animators, including Harman,
Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng under contract. Mintz' final
deal was for Walt and Roy become his employees.
Disney declined, and it resulted in his contract for the
Oswald series to not be renewed.
• Disney, Iwerks, and the few non-defecting animators
secretly began work on a new mouse character during
the production of the last contracted Oswald cartoons.
“I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse.”
-Walt Disney
The Creation of Mickey Mouse
• Named by Lillian Disney, Mickey
Mouse made his film debut in a short
called Plane Crazy, which was, like all of
Disney's previous works, a silent film.
• After failing to find distributor interest
in Plane Crazy or its follow-ups, Disney
created a Mickey cartoon with sound
called Steamboat Willie.
• Steamboat Willie became a success,
and Plane Crazy, and all future Mickey
cartoons were released with
soundtracks.
• Disney himself provided the vocal effects
for the earliest cartoons and performed
as the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947.
• By 1932, Mickey Mouse became the most
popular cartoon character on the screen, and
many competing studios created Mickey Mouse
clones in hopes of cashing in on Disney's success.
• After moving from Sony/Columbia to
MGM/United Artists in 1932, Walt began
producing the Silly Symphonies in the new three-
strip Technicolor process, making them the first
commercial films presented in a true-color
process.
• The first color Symphony was Flowers and Trees,
which won the first Academy Award for Best
Short Subject: Cartoons in 1932. The same year,
Disney received a special Academy Award for the
creation of Mickey Mouse, whose series was
moved into color in 1935 and soon launched spin-
off series for supporting characters such
as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.
Donald goofy pluto
1937-1954: Animated feature films
• Disney's Folly: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• in 1934, when the rest of the film industry learned
of Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-
length version of Snow White, they were certain
that the project would destroy the Disney studio.
Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the
project, but he continued plans for the feature.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the feature
was named, was in full production from 1935 until
mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To
acquire the funding to complete Snow White,
Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion
picture to loan officers at the Bank of America,
who gave the studio the money to finish the
picture.
• The finished film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater
on December 21, 1937; at the conclusion of the film the
audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing
ovation.
• The first animated feature in English and Technicolor, Snow
White was released in February 1938 under a new
distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures.
• The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938
and earned over $8 million (today $98 million) in its original
theatrical release. The success of Snow White allowed Disney
to build a new campus for the Walt Disney
Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December
24, 1939.
• The feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio,
continued work on Fantasia and Bambi, while the shorts staff
continued work on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy,
and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this
time.
Wartime troubles
• Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White into
movie theaters in 1940, but both were financial
disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was
planned as an income generator and shortly
after Dumbo was released in October 1941 and
became a successful moneymaker, the United
States entered World War II.
• The U.S. Army took over most of the Disney
studio's facilities and had the staff create
training and instructional films for the military,
as well as home-front propaganda such as Der
Fuehrer's Face.
• By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered
enough to continue production on the full-
length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter
Pan, which had been shelved during the war
years and began work on Cinderella.
1955-1966: Theme Parks and Beyond
• Carolwood Pacific Railroad
• Disney developed the blueprints and set to
work creating his own miniature railroad in
his backyard. The name of the railroad,
Carolwood Pacific Railroad, originated from
the address of his home which was located
on Carolwood Drive.
• The railroad's half-mile long layout included
a 46-foot-long trestle, loops, overpasses,a
90-foot tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's
flower bed. He even named the miniature
working steam locomotive built by Roger E.
Broggie of the Disney Studios Lilly Belle in
his wife's honor.
• Planning Disneyland
• On a business trip to Chicago in the late 1940s, Disney
drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park
where he envisioned his employees spending time
with their children. which was to become Disneyland.
• Disney spent five years of his life developing
Disneyland. A small group of Disney studio
employees joined the Disneyland development
project as engineers and planners and were dubbed
Imagineers.
• When presenting his plan to the Imagineers, Disney
said: "I want Disneyland to be the most amazing
place on Earth, and I want a train circling it".
• Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his
backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood
Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a
railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
• The park opened on July 17th, 1955.
• “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.”
• Early 1960s successes
• By the early 1960s, the Disney Empire
was a major success, and Walt Disney
Productions had established itself as
the world's leading producer of family
entertainment.
• After decades of trying, Disney finally
procured the rights to P.L. Travers'
books about a magical nanny. 
• Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was
the most successful Disney film of the
1960s, and many hailed the live-
action/animation combination feature
as his greatest achievement.
• The same year, Disney debuted
a number of exhibits at the 
1964 New York World's Fair,
including Audio-Animatronic
figures, all of which later were
integrated into attractions at
Disneyland and a new theme
park project, to be established
on the east coast, which Disney
had been planning since
Disneyland opened.
• Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
• In, 1964, he company acquired over 27,000 acres (109
square kilometers) of land in central Florida west of
Orlando in a largely rural area for Disney’s “Florida
Project”. Disney and his brother Roy then announced
plans for what they called "Disney World".
• Disney World was to include a larger, more elaborate
version of Disneyland to be called the Magic
Kingdom, and would also feature a number of golf
courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World,
however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City
(or Community) of Tomorrow, or EPCOT for short.
• EPCOT was designed to be an operational city where
residents would live, work, and interact using
advanced and experimental technology, while
scientists would develop and test new technologies
to improve human life and health.
Death
• Disney's involvement in Disney World ended in late
1966, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in his
left lung, after a lifelong habit of chain-smoking since
World War 1.
• He was checked into the St. Joseph's Hospital across
the street from the Disney Studio lot and his health
eventually deteriorated.
• It came as a complete shock to the Disney Family and
to the whole world when Walt passed at 9:35 AM
PST on December 15, 1966 having just celebrated his
sixty-fifth birthday two weeks earlier.
• The official cause of death was "acute circulatory
collapse." His heart simply stopped beating.
• Contrary to urban legend, he was not cryogenically
frozen. He was cremated and his ashes were interred
in the Disney family garden in the Forest Lawn
Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
• “Walt Disney did things that made
other people do things, too, things
that didn't seem possible on paper.
He had a way of bringing out the
best in people, of lifting them to
their highest performance" ("Walt
Disney").
• Disney revolutionized the
entertainment industry by creating
films, theme parks, and characters
such as Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney
not only changed the entertainment
industry; he also created a family
friendly place known as Disneyland.
But most importantly he inspired
others to use their imagination and
to do the impossible.