Walt Disney’s Birthday
December 05
Walt Disney was Born December 5, 1901
Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney
Who hasn’t ever heard of Mickey Mouse? How about “The Happy Place”, Disneyland? Well, these were the creation and the brainchild of one very talented and artistic man who was apparently also a very gifted businessman for he has laid the foundations for what The Walt Disney Company is today, a company with an annual revenue pegged at approximately $30 billion.
Mickey Mouse was just one of Walt Disney’s creations and he was, some people say, Walt Disney’s own alter ego. Walt had vision and the fortitude to carry out his vision. The Walt Disney World was just one of his hobbyhorses; however, lung cancer robbed him of the chance to see this project began and completed when he died on December 15, 1966, less than a year before the actual construction began.
Who Was Walt Disney?
Walt Elias Disney was the imaginative animator whose animated characters invaded the movie theaters of the whole world. He was the co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, maker of some of the greatest and most well-known kid’s movies. He was nominated for 7 Emmys, 48 Academy awards and a record nomination for Oscars.
He was born on December 5, 1901. He was the son of an immigrant father, Elias Disney, who married Flora Call. Walt’s father had wanderlust, always finding something new and interesting in another city and always getting bored with whatever had been occupying him at that time. Elias Disney moved his family around a lot.
In Missouri, Walt discovered his love for drawing and for trains. In Kansas City, he was introduced to the world of vaudevilles, theaters and motion pictures by the Pfeiffers whose son Walter was Walt’s schoolmate in the Benton Grammar School. His love for performing solidified and so when his family moved back to Chicago, he took day classes at Mc Kinley High School where he became the school paper’s cartoonist. At night, he went to the Chicago Art Institute. He dropped out of high school, joined the Red Cross and drove an ambulance in France, became an illustrator for a Kansas City advertising agency, and founded an arts company which failed. Then he went to Hollywood.
Walt Disney in Hollywood
Walt Disney applied to become a film director with the film studios in Los Angeles, but he was turned down by every one of them. He turned to his unfinished cartoon and went back to his first passion, that of animation. He submitted his work to a New York distributor who immediately commissioned him to make animations for Alice’s Wonderland. He asked his brother Roy to be partners with him in a studio. Roy consented and the Disney brothers Studio was born.
At first, the studio produced silent films. Mickey Mouse was a character in one such film. This did not take, however. Both Mickey Mouse animation shorts, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho that followed it were not well received. Disney and company thought of making one Mickey Mouse animation with sounds, Steamboat Willie. Walt himself became Mickey Mouse’s voice. It became an instant hit and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho and all other Mickey Mouse animations thereafter had soundtracks.
Related posts:
Filed under Birthdays | Tags: December 05 | Comment (0)Leave a Reply
![Disney - Mega Movie Mix [2004]](http://images.jr.com/musicimages/520323.jpg?WID=150&CVT=JPEG)
![The Muppets - The Muppets [Original Soundtrack]](http://images.jr.com/musicimages/1986596.jpg?WID=150&CVT=JPEG)
