In , he opened a film studio called Laugh-O-Gram but it struggled financially and shut down in After producing various short, animated cartoons, the studio started making a series in about a character Walt had developed called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, the next year, in what was a major blow, Walt lost the rights to his popular creation and many of his employees were poached in a corporate dispute.
In response, he developed a new character originally dubbed Mortimer Mouse before it was decided Mickey would be a better moniker. The rodent quickly became a star, and soon there were Mickey Mouse Clubs for children as well as merchandise and a comic strip. The film, which starred Donald Duck, was shown in thousands of movie theaters and even earned an Academy Award nomination.
The Disney studio also made training films for the American military, and created, free-of-charge, more than a thousand insignia for military units; the designs centered around established Disney characters as well as new characters.
Disney drives a miniature railroad filled with passengers at his California home. The famous filmmaker had a long fascination with trains. It is also the first one in English, the first one in Technicolor, and the first one ever made in the US. Cinderella is one of the first movies to push the 'Prince Charming Exists' agenda.
Based on the classic fairy tale; it's hard to not feel a swell of excitement when Cinderella's rags are turned into her dream gown after all the abuse she's dealt with.
It gives hope that good people will ultimately be rewarded. With its psychedelic elements, the movie also carries some of the darkest undertones Disney universe.
While we see Alice's imagination in Wonderland unfold, it goes from being fun and whimsical to sinister. That tension, that childhood can be both wonderful and frightening, is what makes Alice in Wonderland a classic. Created in , Mickey Mouse is virtually synonymous with Walt Disney. Originally referred to as Mortimer Mouse, the name was changed to Mickey which was thought to be a more marketable name.
Before Mickey, there was Oswald. 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. They did a series of seven-minute fairy tales that combined both live action and animation, which they called Alice in Cartoonland.
By , however, the studio had become burdened with debt, and Disney was forced to declare bankruptcy. In the late s, the studios broke from their distributors and created cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse and his friends.
In 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. 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 two earliest Mickey Mouse films failed to find distribution, as sound was already revolutionizing the movie industry.
Walt Disney with a cutout of his famous cartoon, Mickey Mouse. Disney produced more than feature films. This led Walt Disney Studios to complete another string of full-length animated films over the next five years. During the mids, Disney created "packaged features," groups of shorts strung together to run at feature length. By , he was once again focusing on animated features. During this time, Disney did not have a lot of money to do feature films. He focused on government contracts that required him to make training and patriotic films such as Victory Through Air Power in Disney produced many educational and industrial films at this time.
Disney recovered from the turmoil of the s to give the public animated films such as Cinderella , Alice in Wonderland , Peter Pan , Lady and the Tramp , and Sleeping Beauty. He also ventured into live-action films, making twenty-four pictures between and , including Pollyanna , Swiss Family Robinson , and The Parent Trap.
Disney took advantage of television to promote his movies and his theme parks. Episodes of Davy Crockett appeared on the television show, Disneyland , between and , and were so popular that young boys everywhere wore coonskin hats to idealize their frontier hero.
The building of Disneyland in was a dream come true for Disney. With financial backing from ABC, he was able to create a fantasy world for both adults and children, allowing guests to immerse themselves in his cartoons rather than just watching them on the big screen.
In fact, Disney paid a visit to Marceline in and likely did research for his park design. Disney began buying land and designing a second park in central Florida that would become Walt Disney World in By the end of his career, Disney had grown from a struggling artist to a great visionary. Walt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won. He was known for his relentless work ethic and vision.
Disney had a profound sense of what the public wanted, and he capitalized upon the prevailing sentiments of the times, whether it was the poverty of the Great Depression, patriotism during the s, or anticommunist feelings of the s. Walt and Roy Disney were also instrumental in establishing the California Institute of the Arts in Before he died on December 15, of lung cancer, Disney visited Marceline several more times.
Disney returned in for the Walt Disney Elementary School dedication. He never forgot the small Missouri town that influenced his work so much. The following is a selected list of books, articles, and manuscripts about Walt Disney in the research centers of The State Historical Society of Missouri.
The Society is not responsible for the content of the following websites:. Skip to content. Walt Disney. Text and research by Laura R. Jolley with assistance from Dan Viets.
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