50+ Years of Walt Disney

For over 50 years, The Walt Disney Company has been delighting families of every generation. Beginning with Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Pinocchio all the way up to today’s The Lion King, Disney World, and the spectacular Pixar films, Disney has been a major force in the world of entertainment. But did you ever wonder how it all got started?  Just who was the inspiration behind Mickey Mouse? And  just who were those Seven Little Dwarves based on?  Well, read on and find out all you ever wanted to know about Walt Disney– the man and his Magic Kingdom:

Walter Elias “Walt” Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Kansas City Missouri.

Having worked as a cartoonist for his high school newspaper, Disney went on to open his own  animation studio in Kansas City, called Laugh-O-Gram.

In 1928, Disney created the Mickey Mouse character which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio.

Mickey’s first appearance in a cartoon with sound was 1929′s Steamboat Willie.

In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of “Mickey Mouse”, whose series was made into color in 1935 and soon launched spin-off series for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto; Pluto and Donald would immediately get their individual cartoons in 1937, and Goofy would eventually get his solo cartoon as well.

Deciding to push the boundaries of animation even further, Disney began production of his first feature-length animated film in 1934. Taking three years to complete, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based upon the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale, premiered on December 21, 1937 and became the the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million in its original theatrical release.

In 1939, Walt Disney received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes for his work on Snow White.

The studio continued releasing animated shorts and features, such as Pinocchio (1940).

Fantasia (1940)

Dumbo (1941)

and Bambi (1942)

By 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country’s most popular animation studio. However, while Bugs Bunny’s popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck’s; Donald would also replace Mickey Mouse as Disney’s star character by 1949.

Disney was a founding member of the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

The release of Cinderella in 1950 proved that feature-length animation could still succeed in the marketplace.

Other Disney releases of the period included Alice in Wonderland (1951).

and Peter Pan (1953), both in production before the war began.

In 1950, Treasure Island became the studio’s first all-live-action feature.

and was soon followed by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Old Yeller (1957)

The Shaggy Dog (1959)

Pollyanna (1960)

Swiss Family Robinson (1960)

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)

and The Parent Trap (1961)

In December 1950, Walt Disney Productions and The Coca-Cola Company teamed up for Disney’s first venture into television, the NBC television network special, An Hour in Wonderland.

In October 1954, the ABC network launched Disney’s first regular television series, Disneyland, which would go on to become one of the longest-running primetime series of all time.

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. He got his idea for a children’s theme park after visiting Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, California.

On July 18, 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California to the general public.

In 1955, The Mickey Mouse Club premiered on national television.

Throughout the 50′s and early 60s, the studio released a number of popular animated features, like Lady and the Tramp (1955).

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

After 1955, the show, Disneyland came to be known as Walt Disney Presents. The show transformed from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, moving from ABC to NBC.

Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.

Disney 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 featured a memorable song score written by Disney favorites, the Sherman Brothers.

Mary Poppins went on to receive five Academy Awards, including the Best Actress award for Julie Andrews.

Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, including Audio-Animatronic figures, all of which were later integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project which  eventually became Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of lung cancer, The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor Kurt Russell, but even Russell himself does not know what Disney meant.

In 1967, Roy Disney took over as chairman, CEO, and president of the company. One of his first acts was to rename Disney World as “Walt Disney World,” in honor of his brother and his vision.

In 1967, the last two films Walt actively followed were released: the animated feature The Jungle Book

and the musical The Happiest Millionaire.

The studio released a number of comedies in the late 1960s, including The Love Bug (1968)

and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), which starred a young Disney discovery, Kurt Russell.

On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened to the public in Orlando, Florida with Roy Disney dedicating the facility in person later that month. Two months later, on December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a stroke.

Inspired by the popularity of Star Wars, the Disney studio produced the science-fiction adventure The Black Hole in 1979. The Black Hole was one of the first Disney releases to carry a PG rating.

With The Wonderful World of Disney remaining a prime-time staple, Disney returned to television in the 1980s with syndicated programing such as the anthology series The Mouse Factory and a brief revival of the Mickey Mouse Club.

EPCOT Center opened in Orlando, Florida in 1982.

In 1984, financier Saul Steinberg launched a hostile takeover bid for Walt Disney Productions, with the intent of selling off its various assets. Disney successfully fought off the bid with the help of friendly investors, and Sid Bass and Roy Disney’s son Roy Edward Disney brought in Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg from Paramount Pictures and Frank Wells from Warner Bros. Pictures to head up the company.

In June of 1994, The Lion King was released. The Lion King turned out to be the highest rated Disney animated movie.

Toy Story was also released in 1998.

On January 23, 2006, it was announced that Disney would purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. The deal was finalized on May 5, and made Apple CEO Steve Jobs Disney’s largest individual shareholder at 7% and a Director of the company.

On December 31, 2009, Disney Company acquired the Marvel Entertainment, Inc. for $4.24 billion.

Today, Walt Disney’s animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carry his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network. As of 2007, the company has an annual revenue of over U.S. $35 billion.

Walt Disney holds the records for number of Academy Award nominations (with fifty-nine) and number of awarded Oscars (twenty-six).