Walt Disney

Biography

• Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

• Born in December 5th 1901

• Deceased due to lung cancer in Burbank California: December 15, 1966

• His brother Roy Disney inaugurated Disney world on October 1, 1971

• an American producer, film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist

• famous for being one of the most influential entertainment in the industry during the 20th century

• The Walt Disney Company today has annual revenues of approx. US$35 billion.

• Innovator in animation and theme parks design

• Awarded 4 honorary Academy awards and has won 22 competitive Academy awards out of 59 nominations, including a record 4 in a year

• Won 7 Emmy awards.


Timeline

• Winding of first studio (Laugh-O-Gram Studio)
• Known as Newman Laugh-O-grams, Disney's cartoon became widely popular in the Kansas city area
• Through success, Disney was able to hire additional animators such as Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and close friend Ub Iwerks
• Unfortunately, high employee salaries unable to sustained by studio profits.
• Studio loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt
• Disney planned to establish studio in the movie industries in Hollywood, California.


Hollywood
• Disney and brother set up cartoon studio in Hollywood
• Disney sent out unfinished print of Alice Comedies (which he started making while in Kansas city but never got to distribute) to New York distributor Margaret Winkler.
• Winkler was keen on a distribution deal with Disney for more live-action/animated shorts based on Alice in the Wonderland.

Works:
Alice Comedies

• Virginia Davis (live action star of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were relocated at Disney’s request from Kansas to Hollywood
• Disney Brother’s studio was located on Hyperion avenue in Silver Lake district till 1939.
• Lillian Bounds was hired in 1925 to ink and paint celluloid
• Walt Disney married Bounds in the same year.
• New series feature both Dawn O’Day and Margie gay as Alice
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Oswald the lucky rabbit


What happened?

• Oswald was drawn and created by Iwerks (Disney’s friend)
• New series Oswald the Lucky rabbit was almost an instant success, Oswald a popular figure
• Disney studio expanded and Walt re-hired Harman, Ising, Maxwell and Freleng from Kansas City
• Margaret Winkler was married to Charles Mintz in 1927 and assumed control of her business
• Mintz ordered all new animated series to be put into production for distribution through Universal Pictures.
• In February 1928 Disney went to New York for negotiation of a higher fee per short from Mintz and was shocked when Mintz announced reduction in fee per short and pay-cut for all his animators.
• Mintz announced the start of his own studio if Disney went against the contract.
• Disney declined Mintz offer and lost his all his staff.
• Universal Pictures owned the Oswald trademark not Disney but could not make films without Disney.
• It took Disney’s company 78 years to reacquire the rights to Oswald the lucky rabbit from NBC Universal in 2006 through Al Michaels.

Mickey Mouse

• After losing rights to Oswald the lucky rabbit, Disney felt a need to develop a new character to replace him.
• A character based on a mouse which he adopted as a pet while working in Kansas City
• Ub Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney so the character would be easier to animate.
• Mickey’s voice and personality was provided by Disney until 1947
• “Ub designed the character but Walt gave him soul”
• The mouse was originally named “Mortimer” but later christened to “Mickey Mouse”
• The first silent animated short with Mickey is titled Plane Crazy followed by a short with sound titled “Steamboat Willie”

Silly Symphonies

• Silly symphonies was released in 1929
• The very first of the series was titled “Skeleton Dance”, entire drawn and animated by Iwerks
• Both Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series were successful
• In 1930, Disney signed a distribution with Columbia Pictures
• Original basis of cartoon were music novelty
• Carl Stalling wrote the score for the first Silly Symphony cartoons.
• By 1932, Mickey Mouse had become quite popular but Silly Symphonies was not as successful.
• The same year, Disney faced increasing competition as Max Fleischer’s cartoon character “Betty Boop” was popular among theatre audiences.
• Walt convinced Herbert Kalmus to redo “Flowers and Trees” which was originally done in Black and White with three strips Technicolor.
• “Flowers and trees won the first Academy award for best short subject in 1932
• After Silly Symphonies, all future Silly Symphonies series were done in colour as well.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• After creating 2 cartoon series, Disney began plans for full length feature in 1934.
• When the film industry knew of Disney plans to produce a full length animated version of Snow White, they dubbed the project as “Disney’s folly” and were certain that the project will destroy Disney Studio.
• Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Walt Disney out of the project but he continued his plans.
• Disney employed Don Graham to start training operation for studio staff and used Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects and the use of specialised processes and apparatus as the multiplane camera.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was in full production from 1934 to mid-1937 when the studio ran out of money.
• Disney showed a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America who gave the studio money to finish the picture.
• The finished film was premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937.
• The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8million in its original theatrical release.
• The Golden Age of Animation
• Success of Snow White earned one full size and seven miniature Oscar statutes
• Disney builds a new campus for Walt Disney Studios in Burbank which opened for business on December 24, 1939.
• Snow white was the peak of Disney’s success and ushered a period known as the Golden Age of Animation for Disney.
• The feature animation staff completed Pinocchio, continued Fantasia and Bambi.
• They were at early production of Alice in the wonderland and Peter Pan.

1941-1945 World War I

• Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1947, United States entered World War I.
• US army contracted most of Disney’s studio facilities and had staff create trainings and instructional films for military.
• Morale boosting shorts such as “Der Fuehrer’s Face” and feature film “Victory Through Air Power” were created in 1943.
• However the military films did not generate income and feature film Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942.

1945-1955 Post-war period

• By late 1940s, the studio recovered enugh to recontinue production on full length feature Alice in the wonderland and Peter Pan.
• Disney began work on Cinderella which became Disney’s most successful film since Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
• Despite rebounding success through feature films, Disney’s animation shorts were no longer as popular as theu used to be.
• People begin to draw attention to Warner Bros and their animation Bugs Bunny.
• By 1942 Warner Bros cartoons became the country’s most popular animation studio.

Bibliography

Books

• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
• Broggie, Michael (1997, 1998, 2005). Walt Disney's Railroad Story. Virginia Beach, Virginia. Donning Publishers. 
• Eliot, Marc (1993). Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince. Carol. 
• Mosley, Leonard. Disney's World: A Biography (1985, 2002). Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House.
• Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of American Imagination (2006). New York, NY. Random House. 
• Schickel, Richard, and Dee, Ivan R. (1967, 1985, 1997). The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 
• Sherman, Robert B. and Sherman, Richard M. (1998) "Walt's Time: From Before to Beyond" 
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• Thomas, Bob (1991). Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast. New York: Hyperion.
• Watts, Steven, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life, University of Missouri Press, 2001

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