Walt Disney
Forest Lawn Glendale
Walt Disney was a
pioneering animator, studio executive and the most honored person in
the history of the Academy Awards.
After serving briefly as a Red Cross ambulance driver
in France during the closing months of World War I, Disney returned
to the United States and enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute,
where he met fellow animator Ub Iwerks. They created a series of
cartoons called "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams" for the Newman theater chain.
Disney was not successful with managing the business's cash and the studio profits were not sufficient
to cover the employees salaries, and the studio went bankrupt.
Disney came to Hollywood in 1923 and, in partnership with his brother,
Roy, and Iwerks, began producing a series combining live action with
animation, called "Alice in Cartoonland."
In 1927, Disney and Iwerks started their "Oswald the
Lucky Rabbit" cartoon series, and the following year, created the
character that may be the most recognized figure around the
world - Mickey Mouse. (Disney originally wanted to call the character
Mortimer Mouse, but his wife urged him to use the name Mickey.)
There are two versions of the story of Mickey's birth. One
is that Disney was inspired by a friendly mouse who visited him at his
drawing board. The other, less heart-warming version is that the Disney
brothers and Iwerks were trying to think of a new cartoon character to
replace Oswald. Someone suggested a cat, but there were already several
cartoon cats. The next suggestion was a mouse and, when they couldn't
think of any other cartoon mouses, they used that. Mickey Mouse made his film
debut in "Plane Crazy" (1928), which featured Mickey, inspired by
Charles Lindbergh's recent flight from New York to Paris, building a
plane to take his girlfriend, Minnie, for a ride. Mickey and Minnie's
next film, "Gallopin' Gaucho" (1928), featured their visit to a cantina,
and Mickey's battle with a cat. Mickey's third film, "Steamboat Willie"
(1928), was the first animated film with synchronized sound, and featured
Disney providing Mickey's high-pitched voice. Rather than just using
sound to give his characters voices, Disney incorporated sound as a
major part of the cartoon. For example, when a goat eats the sheet music
for "Turkey in the Straw," Minnie cranks the goat's tail, and it plans the
tune. Mickey and Minnie also use various animals to create an orchestra.
"Steamboat Willie" was a huge success for Disney, and he later added sound
to Mickey's first two films.
With Disney and Iwerks sharing the writing and directing duties,
Mickey and Minnie appeared in dozens of comedy shorts during the next few years,
with their growing collection of friends, including Donald Duck, who first
appeared in 1934, Goofy and Pluto. In 1932, Disney received his first Academy
Award, a special Oscar given to him for creating Mickey Mouse.
With Mickey's popularity growing, Disney's operation was forced
to grow to keep up with the demand for more cartoons. Disney also created
the "Silly Symphonies" cartoon series, in which the action on the screen
is synchronized to match a pre-recorded sound track, rather than the other
way around. The first in the series was "The Skeleton Dance" (1929), and
the best-known and most successful was "The Three Little Pigs" (1933). Disney
also launched a new cartoon innovation - color - with "Flowers and Trees" (1932),
which won Disney his second Academy Award, and his first in the competitive
field of Best Cartoon Short.
In addition to supplying Mickey's voice for the first 20 years
of his cartoon life, Disney also provided the inspiration for much of Mickey's
personality. Like Disney, and unlike most other cartoon characters, Mickey
wasn't particularly funny. He didn't make funny faces or say funny things.
The humor from the Mickey Mouse cartoons usually came from the situations,
and Mickey's unswerving determination to accomplish his goal, despite any
obstacles that might get in his way, including the hot-tempered Donald Duck,
the witless Goofy and the clumsy Pluto.
The growth of Mickey Mouse as an enterprise started in 1930,
when Disney was offered $300 to put Mickey's image on a school notebook. From
that point on, Disney character merchandise became a major source of income
for the Disney studio. The same year, Mickey started to appear in a daily
newspaper comic strip, which kept the cartoon mouse in the eyes and minds
of the buying public. At the same time, the Disney studio was turning out a
new cartoon shorts every three to four weeks. Mickey's universal popularity
might be traced to the fact that, among cartoon characters, he was a true
Renaissance mouse. He went everywhere, and did everything. Mickey held a wide
assortment of jobs, traveled the world, climbed mountains, explored oceans,
and participated in every imaginable sport and pastime.
In 1934, Disney took another risk, and started work on the first
feature-length animated film - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), a musical
classic that remains popular after more than 60 years. Disney's "Fantasia"
(1940) was a controversial attempt to use animation to interpret various pieces
of classical music, and is now also recognized as a film classic. Disney
added animated documentaries to his repertoire with "New Spirit" (1942),
which featured Donald Duck's misadventures filling out his income tax forms
to help explain the federal tax system, and earned Disney's first Academy Award
nomination in the Best Documentary category. Live-action documentaries were
added with "Victory Through Air Power" (1943), nature documentaries with "Seal
Island" (1948), and action films with "Treasure Island" (1950).
In 1954, Disney came to television with a weekly anthology
series, originally called "Disneyland," but best known as "The Wonderful World
of Disney." Disney hosted the show from 1954 until 1966. In the 1950s,
Disney phased out the cartoon shorts, and focused on the other film departments.
But Mickey Mouse wasn't out of a job. In 1955, Disney opened his Disneyland
theme park in Anaheim, CA, a 160-acre fantasy-amusement park, with Mickey
as the official host and ambassador. Disneyland, which has undergone
numerous expansions over the years, remains one of the world's top tourist
attractions. "The Mickey Mouse Club" also debuted on television in 1955,
and helped launch the acting careers of original Mousketeers Annette Funicello,
Paul Petersen and Johnny Crawford. In recent years, Britney Spears, Christina
Aquliera and Keri Russell all wore the mouse ears as members of "The New Mickey
Mouse Club" cast.
The growing Disney empire includes Disney World, which opened
in Florida in 1971; Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in 1983; and EuroDisney,
which opened in France in 1992, in addition to the Disney film studio.
During his career, Disney received 64 individual Academy Award
nominations, and won 26 times - both all-time records. Most of Disney's nominations
and awards were for cartoon shorts, but he also won four awards for Best Documentary.
In 1941, Disney won the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which
honors "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality
of motion picture production." Perhaps an even more amazing statistic is
that, for 31 years, from 1931 to 1962, Disney was nominated for at least one
Academy Award every year but one - 1940. The year after that incredible string
of nominations finally ended, Disney won his first and only Best Picture award
for "Mary Poppins" (1963).
The area in front of Disney's grave is often full of flowers and
small plastic figurines of his most famous characters, Mickey Mouse and Donald
Buried with Disney are his wife, Lillian Bounds Disney (1899
- 1997), and his son-in-law, Robert B. Brown. The plaque also includes the
name of his daughter, Sharon M. Disney Brown Lund (1936 - 1993), with the
notation, "ashes scattered in paradise." The plaque contains space for
a total of eight names. Disney's parents, Elias Disney (1859 - 1941) and
Flora Disney (1868 - 1938), are buried in Forest Lawn's Great Mausoleum.
Disney was born Walter Elias Disney on Dec. 5, 1901, in
Chicago, IL. He died on Dec. 15, 1966, in Los Angeles, CA.
1901 - 1966
Back to biographies page