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Personal Info

Known For Production

Known Credits 810

Gender Male

Birthday December 5, 1901

Day of Death December 15, 1966 (65 years old)

Place of Birth Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Also Known As

• Walter Elias Disney
• Retlaw Elias Yensid
• Retlaw Yensid

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Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now now known as The Walt Disney Company and has annual revenues of approximately USD $35 billion.

Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history.[citation needed] Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney, Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong.

The year after his December 15, 1966 death from lung cancer in Burbank, California, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Walt Disney, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

The Jungle Book

Alice in Wonderland

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Walt Disney

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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, and a pioneer of the animation and entertainment industries, Walt co-founded his namesake company, Walt Disney Productions , with his brother, Roy in 1923 .

Walt Disney is in particular noted for being a successful storyteller, a hands-on film producer, and a popular showman. He and his staff created a number of the world's most popular animated properties; including the one creation that many consider Disney's alter-ego, Mickey Mouse .

Walt Disney was also the original voice of Mickey Mouse from 1928 to 1947 and again from 1955 and 1962 . He also did the original voices of Minnie Mouse and Pete as well.

• 1 1901-1919: Childhood
• 2.1 Kansas City animation studios
• 2.2 Alice Comedies: Contract and new California studio
• 2.3 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
• 2.4 The Creation of Mickey Mouse
• 2.5 Disney's daughters
• 3.1 Disney's Folly: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• 3.2 Wartime troubles
• 3.3 A dark chapter
• 4.1 Carolwood Pacific Railroad
• 4.2 Planning Disneyland
• 4.3 Expanding into new areas
• 4.4 Early 1960s successes
• 4.5 Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
• 5.1 The Epcot theme park
• 5.2 The Disney entertainment empire
• 5.3 Disney theme parks today
• 5.4 Disney animation today
• 5.5 CalArts
• 9 References
• 10 See also
• 11 External links

1901-1919: Childhood [ ]

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois to Elias Disney and Flora Call. He was named after his father's close friend, Walter Parr, a minister at St. Paul Congregational Church. In 1906, his family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri. The family sold the farm in 1909 and lived in a rented house until 1910 when they moved to Kansas City. Disney was nine years old at the time.

According to the Kansas City Public School District records, Disney began attending the Benton Grammar School in 1911, and graduated on June 8, 1917 . During this time, Disney also enrolled in classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He left school at the age of sixteen 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 but when he came, the fighting was over. He stayed in France until 1919.

1920-1936: Early years in animation [ ]

Kansas city animation studios [ ].

Disney returned to the USA, moved to Kansas City and, with Ub Iwerks , formed a company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in January 1920 . The company faltered and Disney and Iwerks soon gained employment at the Kansas City Film Ad Corporation, working on primitive animated advertisements for local movie houses.

In 1921 , Disney started Laugh-O-grams, Inc ., which produced short cartoons based on popular fairytales and children's stories. Among his employees were Iwerks, Hugh Harman , Rudolf Ising , Carman Maxwell , and Friz Freleng . The shorts were popular in the local Kansas City area, but their costs exceeded their returns. After creating one last short, the live-action/animation Alice's Wonderland , the studio declared bankruptcy in July 1923 . Two of Disney's brothers, Roy Oliver Disney and Raymond Arnold Disney, were employed as bank tellers in the First National Bank in downtown Kansas City during this time when Walt was developing his Laugh-O-grams, Inc. Studio. Roy later invited Walt to move to Hollywood, California, 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 ). Virginia Davis , the live-action star of Alice's Wonderland , was sequestered from Kansas, as was Ub Iwerks. 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 were reasonably successful and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice after Virginia Davis' parents pulled her out of the series because of a pay cut. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role. By the time the series ended in 1927 , the focus was more on the animated characters, in particular, a cat named Julius who recalled Felix 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 - Universal wanted to re-enter the cartoon business and needed a character of its own. Disney had Iwerks design a rabbit character, and when Universal approved the design, their publicity department named it Oswald.

In January 1928, Iwerks warned Walt that several of the animators at his studio were signing contracts with Winkler Pictures. George Winkler, one of the Winkler heads, had been talking with the animators during pick-up runs of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. 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 not being 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.

The Creation of Mickey Mouse [ ]

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.

Christened 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-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho , Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound called Steamboat Willie . A businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and the Cinephone, a bootlegged sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became a success, and Plane Crazy , The Galloping Gaucho , 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 and replaced by sound effects technician Jimmy MacDonald .

Joining the Mickey Mouse series in 1929 were a series of musical shorts called Silly Symphonies , which began with The Skeleton Dance . Although both series were successful, the Disney studio was not seeing its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers, and in 1930 , Disney signed a new distribution deal with Sony/Columbia Pictures, leaving behind Powers and Ub Iwerks, who had been lured into an exclusive contract with Powers. After heading the only mildly successful Ub Iwerks Studio, Iwerks would return to Disney in 1940 and, in the studio's research and development department, pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies.

By 1932 , Mickey Mouse became the most popular cartoon character on the screen, and many competing studios, such as Van Beuren and Screen Gems 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 .

Disney's daughters [ ]

As Mickey's co-creator and producer, Disney was almost as famous as his mouse cartoon character but remained a largely private individual. His greatest hope was to give birth to a child — preferably a son — but he and Lillian tried with no luck. Lillian finally gave birth to a daughter, Diane Disney Miller , on December 18, 1933 ; and the couple would adopt a second, Sharon Mae Disney, who was born December 21 , 1936 . Walt loved both of his children.

1937-1954: Animated feature films [ ]

Disney's folly: snow white and the seven dwarfs [ ].

Walt Disney introduces each of the seven dwarfs.

Although his studio produced the two most successful cartoon series in the industry, the returns were still dissatisfying to Disney, and he began plans for a full-length feature 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 dubbed the project "Disney's Folly" and 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. He employed Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff, and used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus, such as the multiplane camera .

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This film was his studio's full-length feature production and the first commercially-successful animated feature film.

All of this development and training was used to elevate the quality of the studio so that it would be able to give the feature the quality Disney desired. 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 very 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, but during the production of the new film, most of the animation staff went on strike, permanently straining the relationship between Disney and his artists.

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 and the feature film Victory Through Air Power in 1943 . The military films did not generate income, however, and Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942 . Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944 , establishing the seven-year re-release tradition for Disney features.

Inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, were created and issued to theaters during this period as well. The most notable and successful of these were Saludos Amigos ( 1942 ), its sequel The Three Caballeros ( 1945 ), Song of the South (the first Disney feature to feature dramatic actors, 1946 ), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections: the first based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and the second based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

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 . The studio also began a series of live-action nature films, entitled True-Life Adventures , in 1948 with On Seal Island .

A dark chapter [ ]

In 1947, during the dark early years of the Cold War, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he named several of his employees as Communist sympathizers. Some historians believe that the animosity from the 1941 strike of Disney Studio employees caused him to bear a grudge. His dislike and distrust of labor unions may have also led to his testimony.

1955-1966: Theme Parks and Beyond [ ]

Carolwood pacific railroad [ ].

In 1949, when Disney and his family moved to a new home on large piece of property in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California, with the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball , owners of their own backyard railroad, Disney developed the blueprints and immediately 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, gradients, an elevated dirt berm, and 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 [ ]

Walt and his Animated Family.

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. These ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise which was to become Disneyland . Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners and were dubbed Imagineers.

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.

Expanding into new areas [ ]

As Walt Disney Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. 1950 's Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed by successes, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954 ), The Shaggy Dog ( 1959 ), and The Parent Trap ( 1960 ). The Walt Disney Studio was one of the first to take full advantage of the then-new medium of television, producing its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Walt Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC named Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim , California . In 1955 , he debuted the studio's first daily television show, the popular Mickey Mouse Club , which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.

As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in CinemaScope, 1955 ) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians ( 1961 ) and the financially disappointing Sleeping Beauty (in Super Technirama 70 mm, 1959 ) and The Sword in the Stone ( 1963 ).

Production on the short cartoons had kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis.

The Disneyland Plaque.

These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary Buena Vista Distribution , which had assumed all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 1955 . Disneyland , one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17 , 1955 , and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful Disney properties and films. After 1955, the Disneyland TV show became known as Walt Disney Presents , went from black-and-white to color in 1961—changing its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color —and eventually evolved into what is today known as The Wonderful World of Disney , which continues to air on ABC as of 2005 .

During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955 , and Mars and Beyond in 1957. The films attracted the attention of not only the general public but also the Soviet Union’s space program.

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 , Walt Disney Productions began quietly purchasing land in central Florida west of Orlando in a largely rural area of marginal orange groves for Disney's "Florida Project". The company acquired over 27,000 acres (109 square kilometers) of land and arranged favorable state legislation which would provide unprecedented quasi-governmental control over the area to be developed in 1966 , founding the Reedy Creek Improvement District. 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.

However, 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 (where his dreams of advancements in the improvement of human health would have come in handy) 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. His dedication to his projects was still visible while lying in his deathbed. On the evening of December 14, Roy came to visit him. Here, Walt pointed up to the ceiling using the tiles as a grip map. He then signaled Roy about the roads and major places in EPCOT and Disney World. Even sick and near death, Walt's mind was clear, active, and vibrant; his imagination fully engaged and his voice enthusiastic.

It came as a complete shock to the Disney Family and to the whole world when Walt passed away the next morning. He was pronounced dead 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 Court of Freedom section of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

It was truly unthinkable. Walt Disney was dead. Roy, who had always been supportive to Walt, looking for and helping him, had lost his reason for living. After an hour or so, Walt's foot was sticking out from under the blanket. Roy was by the bed, gently rubbing Walt's foot and said "Well kid, it looks like the end of the road." Roy was still the older brother to the end.

Roy Disney carried out the Florida project, insisting that the name becomes Walt Disney World in honor of his brother. Roy O. Disney died only three months after that resort's opening in 1971.

The Epcot theme park [ ]

When the second phase of the Walt Disney World theme park was built, EPCOT was translated by Walt Disney's successors into the Epcot theme park, which opened in 1982 . The Epcot Park that currently exists is essentially a living world's fair, a far cry from the actual functional city that Disney had envisioned. However, the Celebration, Florida town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World harkens back to the EPCOT vision that Walt would have wanted.

The Disney entertainment empire [ ]

The famous "Partners" featuring Walt and Mickey at the Magic Kingdom park.

Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme park have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, four vacation resorts, nine theme parks, two water parks, thirty-two hotels (and counting), eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network.

Disney theme parks today [ ]

Today, what was known as the Florida Project is now the largest and most popular private-run tourist destination on the planet, but Walt Disney's spirit and shine is still there. From the 'Partners' statue at the Magic Kingdom to the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom , Walt Disney is still remembered and loved by guests, Theme Park Characters and Cast Members alike, and his vision is still continued. His fascination with mass transportation lives in the Walt Disney World Monorail which runs through two theme parks and four hotels, and his dreams of the future live on at Epcot in ahead-of-their-time attractions and technological breakthroughs. His Skyway, long since closed, is now reborn as the Disney Skyliner gondola system.

Disneyland has developed from a cramped theme park to an open resort of two theme parks, three hotels, and a large shopping complex. Walt Disney World is a popular destination for vacations by tourists worldwide, and Tokyo Disneyland is the most visited theme park in the world (its sister park Tokyo Disneysea is the second). In September 2005, The Walt Disney Company opened Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in China, with another Chinese theme park followed— Shanghai Disneyland .

On May 5 , 2005 , the Walt Disney Company kicked off the Happiest Homecoming on Earth celebration in front of Walt's Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland , celebrating fifty years of the world's most famous theme park. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts are renowned over the world for their attentions to detail, hygiene and standards, all set by Walt Disney at Disneyland.

Disney animation today [ ]

Traditional hand-drawn animation , with which Walt Disney started his company, was, for a time, no longer produced at the Walt Disney Animation Studios . After a stream of financially unsuccessful traditionally animated features in the early 2000s, the two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility. In 2004 , Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film Home on the Range . However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar , and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to Chief Creative Officer, that position has changed, and the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog has marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation.

CalArts [ ]

Disney devoted substantial time in his later years funding The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), which was formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s. When he died, one-fourth of his estate went towards CalArts, which greatly helped the building of its campus. Walt also donated 38 acres (154,000 m²) of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia for the school to be built on. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1971 .

Lillian Disney devoted a lot of her time after Walt died to pursuing CalArts and organized hundreds of fundraising events for the university in her late husband's honor (as well as funding the Walt Disney Symphony Hall). After Lillian's passing, the legacy continued with daughter Diane and husband Ron continuing the tradition. CalArts is one of the largest independent universities in California today, mostly because of the contributions of the Disneys.

Gallery [ ]

• The phrase "keep moving forward" is constantly used during the film in reference to Walt Disney's quote.
• In the ABC television series Once Upon a Time , August Booth reveals to them that the fairy tale storybook was created by a series of authors and names one past author as "Walt". The implication that Disney himself is an author is further proved in a flashback to 1966 when the sorcerer 's Apprentice approaches Isaac Heller and offers him the position of author, citing that the previous author had passed away; 1966 is the year that Walt passed away, and his death date of December 15 was written on a letter from the Apprentice to Isaac.
• Disney had very simple tastes in food. According to his daughter Diane , "He liked fried potatoes, hamburgers, western omelets, hotcakes, canned peas, hash, stew, roast beef sandwiches. He doesn't go for vegetables, but loves chicken livers or macaroni and cheese." Lillian Disney would complain, "Why should I plan a meal when all Disney really wants is a can of chili or a can of spaghetti?" [1]
• Hell's Bells ( November 11 , 1929 ) features Satan.
• Father Noah's Ark ( April 8 , 1933 ) features Noah, Ham, Japheth, Shem, and their respective wives.
• The Goddess of Spring ( November 3 , 1934 ) features Persephone and a version of her uncle/husband Hades / Pluto identified here with Satan.
• Noah's Ark ( November 10 , 1959 ) features Noah, Ham, Japheth, Shem, and their respective wives; not officially released as a Silly Symphony , but very similar to them.
• Several of the films he produced have also been noted for characters praying to God, such as Swiss Family Robinson and in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , where Snow White is seen in one scene praying beside her bed, representing Christianity as a religion; the same for Geppetto wishing upon the wishing star in Pinocchio , not to mention the final segment of the Fantasia musical Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria , a clear homage to Christianity.
• In 1940 , the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), recruited Disney as an official informant. He was later designated as a special agent in charge contact. He testified against employees of his company that he took issue with, alleging them to be communists.
• "Uncle Walt" could be seen around Disneyland in the 1950s doing menial chores, such as getting strollers for people, tinkering under the hood of a car on Main Street, U.S.A. , fishing in Rivers of America or piloting the Mark Twain Riverboat .
• One of the audio animatronic pirates on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride introduced in 1967 has Walt Disney's face. It was taken from the same life cast mold that was used in the "Partners" statue in Fantasyland in Disneyland.
• According to Richard Sherman , Walt would ask him how his progress on a week was then ask him to play the song " Feed the Birds ", his favorite song from Mary Poppins . After Walt passed away in 1966, Richard played the song frequently in his honor.
• Tom Hanks portrayed Walt in the 2013 live-action film Saving Mr. Banks . Hanks is a distant cousin of Walt Disney, but this marks the first time that Walt is portrayed in film.
• A cameo also appears in Ferdinand the Bull , wherein the bullring workers are based on Disney staffers, while the matador is based on Walt.
• In Epic Mickey , Oswald 's line: "I'm starting to see why he liked you more," is a clear reference to Walt.
• Howard Stark 's appearance in Iron Man 2 is a reference to Walt Disney.
• Amongst the detractors who kept this constantly debunked false rumor alive were Seth MacFarlane and Meryl Streep .
• Walt also made lots of anti-Nazi/Hitler/Axis propaganda through his cartoons.
• Disney's child daughter, Diane Disney-Miller, also passed away during the 2010s in November 2013 respectively.

References [ ]

• ↑ " Food for Thought ". Jim Hill Media ( Jul 16 , 2003 ).
• ↑ " The Gospel According to Walt ". Mouse Planet ( Feb 14 , 2007 ).
• ↑ " Walt Disney and Religion ". Mickey News ( Feb 13 , 2017 ).
• ↑ " How Walt Disney’s Faith Was Central to His Groundbreaking Career in Entertainment ". Movie Guide .

See also [ ]

• List of Disney animated features
• Walt Disney Quotes Video

External links [ ]

• The Walt Disney Family Museum

• Genealogy of Walt Disney on WikiTree
• 2 Inside Out 2

Walt Disney

• Overview ↓
• Filmography ↓
• Other Appearances ↓
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Biography by AllMovie

Walt Disney has become a 20th century icon of Americana. Like many mythic American figures, he had a humble beginning, an ambitious entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for modern technology. Born in Chicago, he enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute at age 14. Toward the end of World War I, when he was 16, Disney volunteered to drive ambulances in France. Upon his return home, he worked for a commercial art studio in Kansas City; there he teamed up with artist Ub Iwerks, who would become his lifelong business partner. Together, they moved to the Kansas City Film Ad Company to make animated commercials; this spawned their first brief business venture, Laugh-O-Grams, which sold satirical cartoons to a local theater. The success of these cartoons inspired Disney to create his own animation studio, where he independently produced such shorts as Puss in Boots (1922) and The Musicians of Bremen (1923). As the cartoons cost more to make than they earned, this first studio was not financially successful. In 1923, Disney (who, legend has it, had only 40 dollars to his name), his brother Roy, and Iwerks, went to Hollywood to begin producing the Alice in Cartoonland series of shorts that combined animation with live-action.

In 1927, Disney and Iwerks created their first popular character, Oswald Rabbit. Unfortunately, a bitter dispute with the cartoon's distributor resulted in Disney losing the rights to Oswald. The distributor also hired away most of Disney's staff and produced more Oswald cartoons without him. Disney's next character was the beloved Mickey Mouse, whom he starred in two silent shorts, Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho. For his third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928), Disney used sound. The success of Willie led Disney to create the "Silly Symphony" series, in which the characters' antics were synchronized to prerecorded music. As most animators did it the other way around, this was an innovation. The best known of this series was The Three Little Pigs (1933), which contained the hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." During the 1930s, many of Disney's other beloved characters began to appear, including Minnie Mouse, Pluto (originally called Dippy Dawg), Goofy, and Donald Duck. And as they developed, so did his use of technology. Disney began using two-strip color in 1931; by the mid-'30s, he was using three-strip Technicolor, and he had exclusive use of the process for three years. At his growing studio -- which employed hundreds of people and included its own art school -- the revolutionary multiplane camera was developed, which allowed for more fluid, realistic animated movements with greater perspective and depth.

In 1934, Disney began working on his first feature-length animated film, a project he'd been dreaming of for years. No one in the industry supported his idea, believing that such extended exposure to animation would give the audience headaches. But Disney, driven to experiment further with his newfound technology, was not dissuaded; in 1937, he released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a film that went on to gross nearly eight million dollars in its first release. Soon, other such features followed. Audiences liked them for many reasons: the animation was spectacular, the tunes were hummable, and the stories -- ultra-sanitized versions of the originals -- were reassuringly upbeat during the troubled war years. The one exception was Disney's technical masterpiece, Fantasia (1940). Though it didn't initially do well, subsequent, more sophisticated audiences have come love it. During World War II, the Disney studios also churned out propaganda films for the government; the best-known was the documentary Victory Through Air Power (1943).

At one point during the early '40s, it looked as if all of Disney's dreams would disintegrate when most of his staff resigned over his authoritarianism and insistence upon absolute artistic control. Still, Disney continued turning out shorts and features, some of them, such as Song of the South (1946), combining live-action with animation. Beginning in the 1950s, Disney made live-action adaptations of classics and pseudo-documentaries, which, like his fictional features, presented a sanitized, anthropomorphic version of nature. Wanting complete control over his empire, he formed Buena Vista Distribution Company for his films. And, in 1954, he launched his long-running television anthology, Disneyland (later dubbed Walt Disney Presents), which was broadcast in various incarnations for 30 years and consisted of animated shorts, live-action serials, and movies. In 1955, he opened Disneyland, his 160-acre fantasy theme park in Anaheim, CA, which eventually spawned the massive Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, a Disneyland in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Euro Disney in France.

During his heyday, Disney was awarded 29 Oscars for his films, and, by the 1960s, he had become the king of American entertainment. But many felt the quality of his work was in decline; the animation was not as rich, and he did not produce as many shorts. His live-action films, with a few notable exceptions -- such as Mary Poppins (1965) -- were also becoming routine, and had a hastily made feel to them. Still, he remained a beloved figure. So when he died of acute circulatory collapse following the removal of a lung tumor on December 15, 1966, the world paused to mourn his passing. His legacy lives on in a whole new generation of Disney animated features, including The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Lion King (1994), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).

Movie Highlights

• Once worked for animator Walter Lantz, creator of Woody Woodpecker, in the Universal Studios animation division.
• His 1928 short Steamboat Willie was the first synchronized sound cartoon.
• During the early 1930s, developed the multiplane camera, which revolutionized animation by enabling the camera to look through a series of animation "planes" (up to seven, each lighted separately from the side) to create depth and dimension.
• In 1932, made the first all-Technicolor short, Flowers and Trees , for the Silly Symphonies series. It was the first cartoon to win an Oscar.
• During WWII, Disney Studios produced government training and propaganda films, as well as health movies.
• In 1947, Disney (an ardent foe of Communism) gave friendly testimony to the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee.
• Received three special Oscars, for the creation of Mickey Mouse, innovations in feature-film animation and advancement of sound in motion pictures.
• Until his death in 1966, provided the voice for Mickey Mouse.
• His heirs, upset over negative portrayals of Disney after his death, opened the Walk Disney Family Museum in San Francisco in 2009. His daughter Diane told the New York Times that she was especially frustrated by a Neal Gabler biography, as well as by the 1994 book Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince , which depicted Disney as a bigot (a charge his family staunchly denies).

It Took Walt Disney More Than 20 Years to Make 'Mary Poppins'

Disney offered Travers a big payday for her book

By the time Julie Andrews' titular heaven-sent nanny quite literally descended from the clouds into the Banks family's Cherry Tree Lane home — and into theaters across America — in August 1964, about 20 years had passed since Disney made that promise to his young daughter. The holdup: notoriously prickly Travers was staunchly against selling the screen rights, particularly to a studio she feared would overly sentimentalize her work. What ensued was nearly two decades of Disney himself personally appealing to Travers before she finally relented in 1961.

Her eventual change of heart, it turned out, was motivated less by Disney's apparent charm, but more so by money. The royalties from her Mary Poppins series had begun to dwindle by the '60s, and Disney reportedly offered to pay her $100,000 (more than $800,000 by today's standards), plus five percent of the movie's multi-million-dollar gross earnings. Disney also agreed to allow Travers (or "Mrs. Travers," as she demanded that she be called) to act as a consultant on the film. She spent several weeks at Disney's Burbank, California studio, where she became notorious for the “No No No” mantra she constantly barked at Disney's creative team. (This particular catchphrase was immortalized due in large part to the fact Travers also insisted that all of their meetings be recorded.)

Travers' aunt inspired the character of Mary Poppins

For Travers (born Helen Lyndon Goff), her extreme investment in the story of Mary Poppins was rooted in dark, painful personal experience. After her beloved banker father Travers Goff (who inspired her later pseudonym) fell victim to alcoholism and died when she was just seven years old, Travers' great-aunt Ellie (also known as Aunt Sass) stepped in to support her mother Margaret Goff, as well as Travers' sisters.

"I thought to myself, 'Someday, in spite of her, I shall commit the disrespectful vulgarity of putting Aunt Sass in a book,'" she later wrote. "And then it occurred to me that this had already been done, though unconsciously and without intent... I suddenly realized that there is a book through which Aunt Sass, stern and tender, secret and proud, anonymous and loving, stalks with her silent feet. You will find her occasionally in the pages of Mary Poppins ."

What resulted from Travers' later collaboration with Disney (which was also depicted in 2013's Saving Mr. Banks , with Tom Hanks portraying Disney and Emma Thompson playing Travers) was the much-beloved film, which starred Andrews, along with Dick Van Dyke . The film's legacy remains undeniable. Mary Poppins won five Academy Awards (of a total 13 nominations), with Andrews taking home the Oscar for Best Actress that year for the role — her first in a feature film. In 2013, the Library of Congress also added Mary Poppins to the National Film Registry, which showcases "the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation."

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The author ripped the movie to shreds

Despite the films' critical acclaim, many accolades, and commercial success, Travers was not among the movie's many fans worldwide. Disney granted her final script approval, but she was not given any film editing rights whatsoever. After screening the film, she reportedly asked Disney, “When do we start cutting it?” The filmmaker, however, refused to change anything, and Travers was furious, vowing never to work with him again.

Travers allegedly wept at the movie’s premiere. “I said, ‘Oh God, what have they done?’” she later revealed. Among her dislikes were: the animated sequences, the Banks' family home, the shift in the time period from her original story, Poppins' attractive appearance, Van Dyke's casting, and the songs penned by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman. In an interview with the New York Times , Richard, who was partly behind such songs as "Spoonful of Sugar" and "Feed the Birds," admitted that Travers "didn’t care about our feelings, how she chopped us apart.”

Despite Travers' lifelong objections, Mary Poppins will soon be given new life, hitting theaters once again in the December 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns . The film, which will star Emily Blunt this time in the titular role, will also include appearances from Hamilton scribe Lin-Manuel Miranda , Angela Lansbury , Colin Firth, Meryl Streep , and even Van Dyke himself. (Travers, of course, won't be able to gripe about his casting, as she died in 1996 at age 96.) The Rob Marshall-directed project will depict the nanny coming back into the Banks' family's life in the 1930s — ironically enough, 20 years following the original film's story. It is both an ode to Travers and to the decades-long plight of Disney himself.

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The 20 movies that made Walt Disney Pictures

Posted: April 23, 2024 | Last updated: April 23, 2024

Walt Disney Studios are officially a century old. Other studios reached the same milestone, but Disney has done something more impressive than just continuing to exist. They've turned their films into a media empire that practically has its own genre: the Disney movie. It's a genre that stands as the apex of family entertainment. The best Disney movies are lighthearted, colorful, and amusing for kids but just as enthralling, vivid, and even entertaining for the grownups in the theater. These are the movies that paved the way for Disney's 100 years of the iconic movie-making empire. 

'Steamboat Willie'

Studio founder and namesake Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse in 1928 on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood when he and his brother Roy's studio were one big project away from bankruptcy. The duo lost control of their first successful cartoon character, Oswald, and needed a surefire hit to rebuild their animation studio. You know the rest. Mickey Mouse became a financial success and an iconic character that's recognized all over the world. The rubber hose cartoon short "Steamboat Willie" was the third cartoon to star Disney's leading character, but it opened the gates for the Disney Studio's skyrocketing success. According to the Walt Disney Family Museum , the short was one of the first short animated features to use synchronized sound and became such a success that it outshined and received more buzz and press than the films for which it was supposed to open. 

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'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'

Disney Studios spent the next decade perfecting its animation art with short films series featuring its now iconic characters. A noticeable number of these shorts, such as "The Three Little Pigs," "The Old Mill," "The Tortoise and the Hare," and "Ferdinand the Bull," would even get Oscar nominations — earning Disney 13 Oscar nominations and seven Oscar wins from 1932-38. These were just a way to warm up for the studio's biggest achievement. 

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first full-length animated feature in cinematic history. The film saw a preview release in 1937 and a wide release the following year to wild acclaim. The film's release wasn't its only achievement. Disney's animators created characters who moved in realistic ways that enhanced their personalities and felt more like realized people than just cartoonish blobs of animated ink. The Academy Awards honored Disney Studios with a special achievement award the following year. 

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'Fantasia'

The release of Snow White transformed Disney Studios into a powerhouse of artistic endeavors, and Fantasia is the clearest example of the standard the mouse house could set even in its infancy. 

That means Disney could pursue artistic endeavors without worrying about the bottom line. Fantasia , however, would become one of the studios' most famous and ambitious works of animation. The scenes are combined with classic compositions like Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" and Beethoven's "Symphony No. 6" with cartoonish visions that range from delightful to downright dark. The most famous segment is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," starring Mickey Mouse, set to the tune of Paul Dukas' orchestral masterpiece of the same name, in which Mickey dons a wizard's cap that quickly becomes too powerful for him to handle. 

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'Pinocchio'

There are a lot of very good reasons why Disney's live-action remake of this classic animated fairy-tale failed at the box office, but the biggest one is the expectation it would have to live up to set by its predecessor. 

Disney's 1940 retelling of another classic children's story also features its now-trademark mix of cartoonish humor mixed with the deep emotional well of its characters. The scenery is enveloping and feels like worlds that extend beyond the boundaries of the screen. The animators also employed new technology, such as the multiplane camera that could present three dimensions to a scene on a flat screen to get a sense of depth and realism. Characters like Jiminy Cricket, Figaro the Cat, and Cleo the Goldfish also helped develop the formula for future Disney film successors. 

'Dumbo'

The golden years of Walt Disney Studios weren't smooth sailing. Despite being the first studio to make an animated feature and the studio with the most Oscar nominations, they were still running short on funds. So they rushed this project into production, and it became another Disney classic. 

The touching story of an elephant with abnormally large ears who uses them to fly and glide with the grace of a bird is about as perfect as a classic film can get. The film gave Disney the money it needed to operate and became the studio's first original feature, proving that it could create great animated stories as well as adapted ones in the past. 

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'Bambi'

The money and critical success of Dumbo paved the way for one of the studio's most beloved and successful films in the history of its medium. 

The story of Bambi comes from a German writer named Felix Salten , who used the story of an innocent baby doe forced to grow up too fast in a cruel world of violence is meant to be an allegorical tale of oppressive regimes. The German Nazi Party noticed the parallels and banned the book in 1935. The Disney-fied version doesn't follow the novel exactly, but it presents some of its chief themes about the power of love and the fragility of life and the Earth. Bambi also received high praise for its animatic achievements, which seemed to get better with every film. Even its use of new Foley sounds paved the way for new sound achievements in movies. 

'The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad'

Disney scores two back-to-back hits, giving them the financial means to take bigger risks. This time, the studio attempts its first anthology film since Fantasia .

This double feature includes two stories based on "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving and "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame. Both meet the high standard of Disney excellence but in very different ways. The Mr. Toad story is more eccentric as the cartoonish main character. The Ichabod Crane story presents some very new territory for Disney as the studio's first attempt at a horror film. Both continue to show Disney's unique ability to capture the spirit of its source material while mining its own identity and legacy. 

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'Cinderella'

The anticipation for Disney's adaptation of this classic tale could not be higher, which meant the pressure could not be more intense. It not only had to live up to the standards set by classics like Snow White  and Bambi , but it could also break Disney's studio if it failed. 

The advent of World War II caused economic hardships across the entire film industry in almost every major film production and studio. Disney bet a lot on Cinderella being the film that could pull his company out of the slump. Fortunately for Disney, the bet put his studio back in the green. A tale of adversity balanced with genuine humor was just what audiences needed after a decade of conflict, and the music set a new standard of excellence for Disney's films. The score and the iconic song "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" both received Academy Award nominations. 

'Treasure Island'

Animated films may have built Disney's studio, but they can be an expensive prospect. Disney knew he needed to move his studio toward live-action productions, and he started with this iconic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's timeless adventure. 

Another reason the Disney brothers decided to make its first live-action film had to do with the profits their films made in England. Disney's films made over $1 million in profits, but the money they made there could only be spent there. So Disney and RKO Radio Picture commissioned a production of Treasure Island . Stevenson's story was a perfect choice since it presented a rollicking adventure with colorful characters. It also helped establish a studio on British soil that could increase Disney's production and bottom line. 

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'Alice in Wonderland'

Disney spent many years trying to adapt Lewis Carroll's whimsical, absurdist story into an animated film. Almost every great writer tried to adapt the story for film for Disney's studio. Aldous Huxley ( Brave New World ) even tried writing a script for Disney at one point. 

By the time Disney settled on a script he liked, it still took five years and $3 million to produce a feature-length film for theaters. Like every new Disney animated film, the stakes were raised higher and higher, and believe it or not, the final release was considered a critical failure for the studio. So, how does a failure fit into Disney's foundation? For starters, its achievements in character and scene design showed how both could be leveraged to make engaging stories that jumped off the screen. 

'Peter Pan'

The story of Peter Pan is another one of those classic children's tales that seemed destined to become a Disney animated feature. The studio's adaptation of J.M. Barrie's timeless story about a high-flying boy who refuses to grow up in a mystic playland of mermaids and pirates would turn the corner on what animated films could do on a big screen. 

Peter Pan made full use of its colorful settings thanks to breathtaking paintings and ingenious lighting designs. Building on the goofy character designs of Alice in Wonderland , the film's cast featured a mix of lifelike human characters and cartoony creations like the wily Captain Hook and the tick-tocking Croc that ate Hook's hand. The most stunning achievement was the shimmering design of Tinker Bell, animated by prominent artist Marc Davis, who made the character move like a human performer that could make audiences forget they were just looking at a series of ink paintings on celluloid. 

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'20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'

Jules Verne's classic novel is one of those fantastic epics that Hollywood seemingly could not truly replicate on the big screen, but Disney was established and well-funded enough to take on the task. 

Disney's adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seat was the first live-action film produced entirely under his studio's banner. It was also the first Disney film to use the groundbreaking CinemaScope lens that could capture the film's biggest moments on an even bigger screen. The special effects budget needed to recreate the famed Nautilus submarine and the epic battle with a 40-foot-long giant squid that required two expensive shots made it one of the most anticipated films of the decade. It also became one of the most ambitious cinematic projects of its time that built its own word of mouth and made it a critical and financial juggernaut. 

'Lady and The Tramp'

The successful use of CinemaScope wasn't limited to Disney's live-action pictures. This romantic comedy about two dogs from different sides of the streets was the first of Disney's animated films to bring this massive cinematic technology to the big screen. 

The story for Lady and the Tramp  marked a departure from its usual use of fairytales as source material. The original story came from a story called "Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog," written by Ward Greene that ran in Cosmopolitan . The designs for the dogs came from animator Joe Grant, who first drew sketches of his springer spaniel named Lady in the 1930s when Disney was just starting to build his film empire. Both of these sources were combined to create Lady and the Tramp . The emotional depth of its animal characters made it an endearing story that would inspire filmmakers for generations to come. 

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'Mary Poppins'

P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was notoriously stingy about giving away the rights to her beloved novel about a magical British nanny. Walt Disney himself had to woo the author to prove that he not only understood the material but would do it justice if he made a film based on it. The story of its making is so legendary that it has its own film with 2013's Saving Mr. Banks . 

Disney's Mary Poppins is the definition of a film iconoclast, even if Travers didn't like the film. She's in a very small minority. The film was one of the first to mix live-action with animation as Mary, played by Julie Andrews, and Burt, played by Dıck Van Dyke, travel through one of his chalk paintings. The film became an artistic and technical marvel. It also became the studio's most successful film at the time of its box office release as the year's highest-grossing film. It was a hit among critics — earning 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Oscar wins for Andrews for Best Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Effects, and two of the three Best Music categories. 

'The Jungle Book'

This classic tale based on the works of Rudyard Kipling may be a masterpiece of storytelling, but it carries a sad distinction as the final film overseen by Walt Disney before his passing in 1966. 

The production behind Disney's Jungle Book feature is one of the most challenging in the studio's history. The scripts went through several rewrites because they had to meet the high bar set by Kipling's work and Disney himself. The struggle to find the right tone between meeting Disney's expectations and paying homage to Kipling's iconic work almost derailed the movie. The music ended up saving the whole project. Songs like "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You," sung by jazz great Louis Prima, gave the film its sense of whimsy and comedy and breathed life into characters like Baloo the Bear and King Louie while the storyline stuck with Kipling's original vision. It's become one of Disney's most beloved and successful films. 

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'TRON'

The loss of Walt Disney, mixed with audiences' changing tastes, created a bit of a slump throughout the '70s and early '80s. There were some notable hits, like Robin Hood , but none of them were big enough to pull them out of its rut. 

Once again, the studio needed to pivot to something new to bring people back into the theaters. So, in 1982, the studio turned to the burgeoning world of computer animation to create a completely original adventure film. Tron starred Jeff Bridges as a renegade computer hacker who gets sucked into the computer of a multinational corporation run by an evil AI hellbent on controlling all of the world's computer systems. The film mixed live-action special effects with awesome-looking computer-generated scenery and action scenes. CGI may be in every other movie, but back then, audiences had never seen anything like it, and they flocked to the theaters to be the first to witness this new transition into cinematic technology. 

'Beauty and the Beast'

The Walt Disney Studios set another huge record with this stunning and timeless classic. 

The Academy Awards granted a Best Picture Oscar to its first animated feature ever in 1992 with Disney's Beauty and the Beast based on the classic 18th-century fairytale. The film worked brilliantly on every level. The animators utilized computer technology to create the stunning ballroom dance scene. The songs written by Oscar-winner Alan Menken make the story pop with vibrant sounds and colors. The characters are voiced by the likes of Angela Lansbury, David Ogden Stiers, and Jerry Orbach, but they get so deep into their characters that you don't recognize them. It is unquestionably the culmination of Disney's vision for his studios and the medium of film. 

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'Toy Story'

Making a feature film entirely on a computer may be commonplace in today's industry, but Pixar's first attempt with  Toy Story  was no small feet. However, the hundreds of thousands of hours dedicated to making it would launch Pixar and Disney to a status never seen before in the film industry. 

Toy Story was a technological achievement. It was also a trendsetter in storytelling. The tale of Andy's toys is familiar to kids and adults who had a favorite plaything when they were children, and the humor and emotion could reach anyone of any age in the audience. How many kids' movies can say they are just as entertaining to the adults who took them to the theater? Toy Story 's success created a whole new medium for animation and storytelling. 

'Pirates at the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl'

When Disney Studios announced it would start adapting its theme park rides into feature films, a lot of people thought it must've meant the movie idea well had run dry. Instead, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie turned out to be one of the studios' most successful and beloved films, live-action or otherwise. 

The trailer showed Jerry Bruckheimer's name attached to the project, a filmmaker known for focusing more on special effects than story. The storyline seemed to be repeating the scenes from the iconic boat ride. The film, however, turned out to be a clever, well-written, and fantastic journey into a genre of movie everyone thought had run out of original ideas long ago. It not only spawned a new Disney franchise but one of its most beloved characters, the sly and wily Captain Jack Sparrow, played to perfection by Johnny Depp. Sparrow is so beloved that Disney worked his animatronic character into the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in both parks and built an impressive attraction based on the film franchise in Shanghai Disneyland. 

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'The Princess and The Frog'

Even though Disney Studios has been churning out movies for decades, none of its feature films offered proper representation to its viewers until this 2009 Oscar-nominated hit. 

The Princess and the Frog was the first of Disney's animated features to include a person of color as its lead character. It also updated the classic story of "The Frog Princess" to a New Orleans tale that beautifully recreated the iconic town's preserved buildings and signature style and wasn't afraid to take risks by making its lead prince character into an egotistical buffoon who has much growing up to do as other characters. It also paved the way for future roles like Halle Bailey's performance as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid . 

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The 10 Best Books on Walt Disney

Essential books on walt disney.

There are numerous books on Walt Disney, and it comes with good reason, he was an American animator, film producer, and entrepreneur. As a pioneer of the animation industry, Disney introduced several developments in the production of cartoons, and as a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned and nominations by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations.

“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,” he remarked.

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on Walt Disney.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination, and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films – most notably Snow White, Fantasia,  and  Bambi . In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man – of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life.

Disney’s Land by Richard Snow

One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” Despite his wealth and fame, exactly no one wanted Disney to build such a park. Not his brother Roy, who ran the company’s finances; not the bankers; and not his wife, Lillian. Amusement parks at that time, such as Coney Island, were a generally despised business, sagging and sordid remnants of bygone days. Disney was told that he would only be heading toward financial ruin.

But Walt persevered, initially financing the park against his own life insurance policy and later with sponsorship from ABC and the sale of thousands and thousands of Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Disney assembled a talented team of engineers, architects, artists, animators, landscapers, and even a retired admiral to transform his ideas into a soaring yet soothing wonderland of a park. The catch was that they had only a year and a day in which to build it.

On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates…and the first day was a disaster. Disney was nearly suicidal with grief that he had failed on a grand scale. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. Eight hundred million visitors have flocked to the park since then.

Walt Disney: An American Original by Bob Thomas

Walt Disney is an American hero. From Mickey Mouse to Disneyland, he changed the face of American culture. His is a success story like no other: a man who developed animated film into an art form and made a massive contribution to the folklore of the world.

After years of research, respected Hollywood biographer Bob Thomas produced a definitive biography of the man behind the legend of Disney: the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who when bankrupt on his first movie venture and developed into the genius who produced unmatched works of animation, and ultimately was the creative spirit of an international entertainment empire that has enchanted generations.

Buying Disney’s World by Aaron H. Goldberg

In November of 1965, after numerous months of speculation surrounding a mystery industry that had been purchasing large amounts of land in central Florida, Walt Disney finally put an end to the rumors. He announced to the public his grandiose plans for the thousands of acres he had secretly purchased.

For the eighteen months prior to the announcement, Walt entrusted a small group of men to covertly make these purchases. Next, they were tasked with drafting a legislative act to submit to the state of Florida that would allow Disney to wield nearly absolute legal control over the property under a quasi-government municipality.

As told through the personal notes and files from the key figures involved in the project,  Buying Disney’s World details the story of how Walt Disney World came to be, like you’ve never heard before.

From conception to construction and everything in between – including how a parcel of land within Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort was acquired during a high-stakes poker game – explore how the company most famous for creating Mickey Mouse acquired central Florida’s swamps, orange groves, and cow pastures to build a Disney fiefdom and a Magic Kingdom.

The Imagineering Story by Leslie Iwerks

The highly acclaimed and rated Disney+ documentary series, The Imagineering Story , becomes a book that greatly expands the award-winning filmmaker Leslie Iwerks’ narrative of the fascinating history of Walt Disney Imagineering. The entire legacy of WDI is covered from day one through future projects with never-before-seen access and insights from people both on the inside and on the outside.

So many stories and details were left on the cutting room floor – this book allows an expanded exploration of the magic of Imagineering. So many insider stories are featured. Sculptor Blaine Gibson’s wife used to kick him under the table at restaurants for staring at interesting-looking people seated nearby, and he’d even find himself studying faces during Sunday morning worship.

“You mean some of these characters might have features that are based on people you went to church with?” Marty Sklar once asked Gibson of the Imagineer’s sculpts for Pirates of the Caribbean. “He finally admitted to me that that was true.”

Walt’s Disneyland by Marcy Smothers

Walt Disney’s personal imprint remains firmly intact at Disneyland. Walt’s Disneyland allows guests to walk around Disneyland identifying the attractions and landmarks Walt championed, touching what he touched, and seeing his original Magic Kingdom through his eyes. Walt’s Disneyland is organized land by land, clockwise, beginning with Main Street, U.S.A. then on to Adventureland, Frontierland, New Orleans Square, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.

Walt’s Apprentice by Dick Nunis

Walt’s Apprentice: Keeping the Disney Dream Alive is the memoir of Disney Legend Dick Nunis. It is a warm personal reminiscence of learning directly from Walt Disney for 12 years, followed by more than 30 years devoted to championing his vision and standards as the Disney empire grew.

The story covers Disney’s highlights, including the 1960 Winter Olympics, 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, and the development and opening of Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Epcot, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris.

Unlike other Disney books, this story is told from the perspective of operations rather than Imagineering. It touches on decisions that defined the guest experience and Disney’s reputation for quality in areas ranging from capacity and people-moving, training, delivering a consistent “good show,” food service, and more.

The Disney Story by Aaron H. Goldberg

Welcome to  The Disney Story , this gem among books on Walt Disney provides a decade-by-decade account of the man, the mouse, and the theme parks. From Mickey Mouse’s debut at the Colony Theatre in November 1928 to the opening of Shanghai Disneyland in 2016 – and everything in between.

The Walt Disney Film Archives by Daniel Kothenschulte

One of the most creative minds of the 20th century, Walt Disney created a unique and unrivaled imaginative universe. Like scarcely any other classics of cinema, his astonishing collection of animated cartoons revolutionized storytelling on screen and enchant to this day across geographies and generations.

This expansively illustrated publication on Disney animation gathers hundreds of images as well as essays by Disney experts, taking us to the beating heart of the studio’s “Golden Age of Animation.” We trace Disney’s complete animation journey from the silent film era, through his first full-length feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Fantasia (1940), right up to his last masterpieces Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) and The Jungle Book (1967).

With extensive research conducted through the historical collections of the Walt Disney Company, as well as private collections, editor Daniel Kothenschulte curates some of the most precious concept paintings and storyboards to reveal just how these animation triumphs came to life. Masterful cel setups provide highly detailed illustrations of famous film scenes while rare pictures taken by Disney photographers bring a privileged insider’s view to the studio’s creative process.

The Gospel According to Disney by Mark I. Pinsky

Religion journalist Mark Pinsky explores the role that the animated features of Walt Disney played on the moral and spiritual development of generations of children. Pinsky explores thirty-one of the most popular Disney films, as well as recent developments such as the 1990s boycott of Disney by the Southern Baptist Convention and the role that Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg played in the resurgence of the company since the mid-1980s.

The Walt Disney World that Never Was by Christopher E. Smith

On an alternate earth, Walt Disney World guests are taking in the thrills of Thunder Mesa, braving the Beastly Kingdom, marveling at Villains Mountain, and staying the night at Disney’s Persian Resort. Want to join them? This is your guidebook to the theme park that Disney never built.

In this unique, extensively researched book, Christopher Smith discusses the many attractions, shows, and resorts that were planned for Walt Disney World, from opening day to the present day, but that exist only in the minds of Imagineers.

You’ll find old “favorites” such as Thunder Mesa and Beastly Kingdom, as well as those lost to the pixie dust of time, like Dick Tracy’s Crime Stoppers, the Enchanted Snow Palace, and Buffalo Junction. Smith looks at the politics and internal struggles behind the decision to shelve each concept, and imagines what guests might have experienced.

If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on Walt Disney, check out our list of The 5 Best Books on Steven Spielberg !