Childhood
10 বছর old Walt (center right) at a gathering of Kansas City newsboys in 1912.
Walter Elias ডিজনি was born on December 5, 1901 to Elias Disney, of Irish-Canadian descent, and Flora Call Disney, of German-American descent, in Chicago's Hermosa community area at 2156 N. Tripp Ave.[3][4] Walt Disney's ancestors had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny in Ireland. Arundel Elias Disney, great-grandfather of Walt Disney, was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1801 and was a descendant of Hughes and his son Robert d'Isigny, originally of France but who travelled to England with William the Conqueror in 1066.[5]. The d'Isigny name became Anglicised as ডিজনি and the family settled in the village now known as Norton Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.
His father Elias ডিজনি moved from Huron County, Ontario to the United States in 1878, seeking first for স্বর্ণ in California but finally farming with his parents near Ellis, Kansas until 1884. He worked for Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888 in Acron, Florida. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890,[6] where his brother Robert lived.[6] For most of his early life, Robert helped Elias financially.[6] In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri,[7] where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland.[7] While in Marceline, ডিজনি developed his প্রণয় for drawing.[8] One of their neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert.[8] He also developed his প্রণয় for trains in Marceline, which owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which ran through town. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train.[4] Then he would look for his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years,[9] before moving to Kansas City in 1911.[10] There, Walt and his younger sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School where he met Walter Pfeiffer. The Pfeiffers were theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Soon, Walt was spending আরো time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.[11] During this time he attended Saturday courses as a child at the Kansas City Art Institute [12] While they were living in Kansas City, Walt and Ruth ডিজনি were also regular visitors of Electric Park, 15 blocks from their প্রথমপাতা (Disney would later acknowledge the amusement park as a major influence of his নকশা of Disneyland).
Teenage years
ডিজনি as an অ্যাম্বুলেন্স driver during World War I.
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell জেলি factory in Chicago and moved his family back there.[13] In the fall, ডিজনি began his freshman বছর at McKinley High School and began taking night courses at the Chicago Art Institute.[14] ডিজনি became the cartoonist for the school newspaper. His কার্টুন were very patriotic, focusing on World War I. ডিজনি dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to যোগদান the Army, but the army rejected him because he was underage.[15]
After his rejection from the army, Walt and one of his বন্ধু decided to যোগদান the Red Cross.[16] Soon after he joined The Red Cross, Walt was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance, but not before the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.[17]
In 1919, Walt, hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory,[18] left প্রথমপাতা and moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career.[19] After considering becoming an actor অথবা a newspaper artist, he decided he wanted to create a career in the newspaper, drawing political caricatures অথবা comic strips. But when nobody wanted to hire him as either an artist অথবা even as an অ্যাম্বুলেন্স driver, his brother Roy, who worked at a bank in the area, got a temporary job for him at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio through a bank colleague .[19] At Pesmen-Rubin, ডিজনি created ads for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters.[20] It was here that he met a cartoonist named Ubbe Iwerks.[21] When their time at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio expired, they were both without a job, and they decided to start their own commercial company.[22]
In January 1920, ডিজনি and Iwerks formed a short-lived company called, "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, ডিজনি left temporarily to earn money at Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon joined দ্বারা Iwerks who was not able to run the business alone.[23] While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation, ডিজনি took up an interest in the field of animation, and decided to become an animator.[24] He was allowed দ্বারা the owner of the Ad Company, A.V. Cauger, to borrow a camera from work, which he could use to experiment with at home. After পাঠ করা a book দ্বারা Edwin G. Lutz, called Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, he found cel অ্যানিমেশন to be much আরো promising than the cutout অ্যানিমেশন he was doing for Cauger. Walt eventually decided to open his own অ্যানিমেশন business,[25] and recruited a fellow co-worker at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, ফ্রেড Harman, as his first employee.[25] Walt and Harman then secured a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman — arguably the most জনপ্রিয় "showman" in the Kansas City area at the time[26] — to screen their কার্টুন — which they titled "Laugh-O-Grams" — at his local theater.[26]
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams",[26] Disney's কার্টুন became widely জনপ্রিয় in the Kansas City area.[27] Through their success, ডিজনি was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram,[28] and hire a vast number of additional animators, including ফ্রেড Harman's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks.[29] Unfortunately, with all his high employee salaries unable to make up for studio profits, Walt was unable to successfully manage money.[30] As a result, the studio became loaded with debt[30] and wound up bankrupt.[31] ডিজনি then set his sights on establishing a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.[32]
Hollywood
ডিজনি and his brother pooled their money to set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood.[33] Needing to find a distributor for his new Alice Comedies — which he started making while in Kansas City,[31] but never got to distribute — ডিজনি sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him. She was keen on a distribution deal with ডিজনি for আরো live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.[34]
Alice Comedies
Virginia Davis (the live-action তারকা of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were relocated at Disney's request from Kansas City to Hollywood, as were Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the ডিজনি Brothers' Studio. It was located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where the studio remained until 1939. In 1925, ডিজনি hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief period of dating her, the two got married the same year.
The new series, Alice Comedies, was reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role of Alice. দ্বারা the time the series ended in 1927, the focus was আরো on the animated characters, in particular a cat named Julius who resembled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
দ্বারা 1927, Charles B. Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her business, and ordered a new all-animated series to be put into production for distribution through Universal Pictures. The new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was an almost instant success, and the character, Oswald — drawn and created দ্বারা Iwerks — became a জনপ্রিয় figure. The ডিজনি studio expanded, and Walt hired back Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from Kansas City.
In February 1928, ডিজনি went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz. ডিজনি was shocked when Mintz announced that not only he wanted to reduce the fee he paid ডিজনি per short but also that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng (notably, except Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney) under contract and would start his own studio if ডিজনি did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Disney. ডিজনি declined Mintz's offer and হারিয়ে গেছে most of his অ্যানিমেশন staff.
With most of his staff gone ডিজনি now found himself on his own again.[35] It took Disney's company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character. The Walt ডিজনি Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal in 2006, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels.[36]
Mickey Mouse
Main article: Mickey Mouse
After losing the rights to Oswald, ডিজনি felt the need to develop a new character to replace him. He based the character on a মাউস he had adopted as a pet while working in a Kansas City studio.[37] Ub Iwerks reworked on the sketches made দ্বারা ডিজনি so that it was easier to animate it. However, Mickey's voice and personality was provided দ্বারা Disney. In the words of a ডিজনি employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul."[37] Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in Alice Comedies which featured a মাউস named Ike the Mouse, and the first Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks, which showed a Mickey মাউস look-alike playing fiddle. The initial films were animated দ্বারা Iwerks, his name was prominently featured on the শিরোনাম cards. The মাউস was originally named "Mortimer", but later christened "Mickey Mouse" দ্বারা Lillian ডিজনি who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for Minnie, who was taller than his renowned adversary and had a Brooklyn accent.
The first animated short with Mickey in it was titled, Plane Crazy, which was, like all of Disney's পূর্ববর্তি works, a silent film. After failing to find a distributor for Plane Crazy অথবা its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, ডিজনি created a Mickey cartoon with sound called জলযান Willie. A businessman named Pat Powers provided ডিজনি with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization process. জলযান Willie became an instant success,[38] and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey কার্টুন were released with soundtracks. ডিজনি himself provided the vocal effects for the earliest কার্টুন and performed as the voice of Mickey মাউস until 1946. After the release of জলযান Willie, Walt ডিজনি would continue to successfully use sound in all of his future cartoons, and Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney's early sound কার্টুন as well.[39] Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most জনপ্রিয় cartoon character.[37] দ্বারা 1930, Felix, now in sound, had faded from the screen, as his sound কার্টুন failed to gain attention.[40] Mickey's popularity would now skyrocket in the early 1930s.[37]
Silly Symphonies
Following the footsteps of Mickey মাউস series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly Symphonies was released in 1929. The first of these was titled The Skeleton Dance and was entirely drawn and animated দ্বারা Iwerks, who was also responsible for drawing the majority of কার্টুন released দ্বারা ডিজনি in 1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the ডিজনি studio was not seeing its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers,[41] and in 1930, ডিজনি signed a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. The original basis of the কার্টুন were musical novelty, and Carl Stalling wrote the score for the first Silly Symphony কার্টুন as well.[42]
Iwerks was soon lured দ্বারা Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract. Later, Carl Stalling would also leave ডিজনি to যোগদান Iwerks' new studio.[43] Iwerks launched his Flip the Frog series with first voice cartoon in color, "Fiddlesticks," filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other series of cartoons, the Willie Whopper and the Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut his studio to work on various projects dealing with অ্যানিমেশন technology. He would return to ডিজনি in 1940 and, would go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized অ্যানিমেশন technologies in the studio's research and development department.
দ্বারা 1932, Mickey মাউস had become quite a জনপ্রিয় cinema character, but Silly Symphonies was not as successful. The same বছর also saw competition for ডিজনি grow worse as Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character, Betty Boop, would gain আরো popularity among theater audiences.[44] Fleischer was considered to be Disney's main rival in the 1930s,[45] and was also the father of Richard Fleischer, whom ডিজনি would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of ডিজনি কার্টুন and was replaced দ্বারা United Artists.[46] In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera,[47] approached Walt and convinced him to redo ফুলেরডালি and Trees, which was originally done in black and white, with three-strip Technicolor.[48] ফুলেরডালি and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: কার্টুন for 1932. After ফুলেরডালি and Trees was released, all future Silly Symphony কার্টুন were done in color as well. ডিজনি was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use three-strip Technicolor,[49][50] which would also eventually be extended to five years as well.[42] Through Silly Symphonies, ডিজনি would also create his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs, in 1933.[51] The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, and also featured the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".[52]
Walt Disney's তারকা on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
First Academy Award
In 1932, ডিজনি 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 কার্টুন in 1937,[53] and Goofy would get solo কার্টুন in 1939 as well.[54] Of all of Mickey's partners, Donald Duck—who first teamed with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan's Benefit—was arguably the most popular, and went on to become Disney's সেকেন্ড most successful cartoon character of all time.[55]
Children
The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended up in Lillian having a miscarriage. When Lillian ডিজনি became pregnant again, she gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted Sharon Mae ডিজনি (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).[56]
1937–1941: The Golden Age of Animation
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Walt ডিজনি introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937 Snow White theatrical trailer.
After the creation of two cartoon series, ডিজনি soon began plans for a full-length feature in 1934. In 1935, opinion মতামত showed that another cartoon series, Popeye the Sailor, produced দ্বারা Max Fleischer, was আরো জনপ্রিয় than Mickey Mouse.[57] ডিজনি was, however, able to put Mickey back on top, and also increase Mickey's popularity further দ্বারা colorizing him and partially redesigning him into what was considered to be his most appealing নকশা up to this point in time.[37] When the film industry came to know about Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they dubbed the project as "Disney's Folly" and were certain that the project would destroy the ডিজনি studio. Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk ডিজনি out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature. He employed Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff, and used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus such as the multiplane camera; ডিজনি would first use this new technique in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.[58]
All of this development and training was used to elevate the quality of the studio so that it would be able to give the feature film the quality ডিজনি desired. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the feature was named, was in full production from 1934 until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To acquire the funding to complete Snow White, ডিজনি had to প্রদর্শনী a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America, who gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The finished film premiered at the Carthay বৃত্ত Theater on December 21, 1937; at the conclusion of the film, the audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation. Snow White, the first animated feature in America and Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures; RKO had previously been the distributor for ডিজনি কার্টুন in 1936, after it closed down the অগ্রদূত Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution.[59] The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million in its original theatrical release.
The Golden Age of Animation
The success of Snow White, (for which ডিজনি received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes) allowed ডিজনি to build a new campus for the Walt ডিজনি Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939; Snow White was not only the peak of Disney's success, but it also ushered in a period that would later be known as the Golden Age of অ্যানিমেশন for Disney.[60][61] The feature অ্যানিমেশন staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi and the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan while the shorts staff continued work on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this time. Animator ফ্রেড Moore had redesigned Mickey মাউস in the late 1930s, when Donald হাঁস began to gain আরো popularity among theater audiences than Mickey Mouse.[62]
Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both were financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was planned as an income generator, but during production of the new film, most of the অ্যানিমেশন staff went on strike, permanently straining the relationship between ডিজনি and his artists.
1941–1945: During World War II
ডিজনি and a group of animators were sent to South America in 1941 দ্বারা the U.S. State Department as part of its Good Neighbor policy, and guaranteed financing for the resulting movie, Saludos Amigos.[63]
Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the United States entered World War II. The U.S. Army contracted most of the ডিজনি studio's facilities and had the staff create training and instructional films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face and the feature film Victory Through Air Power in 1943. However, the military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942. ডিজনি successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition for ডিজনি features. In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature দ্বারা ডিজনি during the war period.
In 1944, William Benton, publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, had entered into unsuccessful negotiations with ডিজনি to make six to twelve educational films annually. ডিজনি was asked দ্বারা the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the মর্দানী স্ত্রীলোক Basin and it resulted in the 1944 animated short, The মর্দানী স্ত্রীলোক Awakens.[64][65][66][67][68]
1945–1955: ডিজনি in the post-war Period
The ডিজনি studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. This includes Make Mine সঙ্গীত (1946), Melody Time (1948), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections: the first based on The Wind in the Willows দ্বারা Kenneth Grahame, and the সেকেন্ড based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow দ্বারা Washington Irving. During this period, ডিজনি also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade as well.[69]
দ্বারা the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years, and began work on Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The studio also began a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, in 1948 with On সীল Island. Despite rebounding success through feature films, Disney's অ্যানিমেশন shorts were no longer as জনপ্রিয় as they used to be, and people began to instead draw attention to Warner Bros and their অ্যানিমেশন তারকা Bugs Bunny. দ্বারা 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country's most জনপ্রিয় অ্যানিমেশন studio.[70] However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's;[71] Donald would also replace Mickey মাউস as Disney's তারকা character দ্বারা 1949.[72]
During the mid-1950s, ডিজনি produced a number of educational films on the মহাকাশ program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in মহাকাশ and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.
Walt ডিজনি meets Wernher von Braun in 1954.
Testimony before Congress
ডিজনি was a founding member of the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War,[73] ডিজনি testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers, as Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations. According to Peter Schweizer, an লেখক of the time, Archives of the Soviet Union released দ্বারা the Russian government implicate Sorrell as a Communist spy.[74] However, Sorrell testified before the HUAC in 1946 but there was insufficient evidence to link him to the Communist Party.[75][76] ডিজনি accused the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.[73]
1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond
Planning Disneyland
Aerial view August, 1963 looking SE. New Melodyland Theater at the top. The Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) upper left corner. Disneyland
On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, ডিজনি 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. This plan was originally meant for a plot located south of the Studio, across the street. The original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that was to become Disneyland. ডিজনি spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of ডিজনি studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.
When describing one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman (who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland which was presented to the Bank of America while requesting for funds), ডিজনি said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded দ্বারা a train."[77] Entertaining his daughters and their বন্ধু in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired ডিজনি to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
Disneyland grand opening
Walt ডিজনি giving the opening দিন speech July 17, 1955.
Disneyland officially opened July 17, 1955. Among the thousands of people who came out for the opening were Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following opening দিন speech:
“ To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past ... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America ... with the hope that it will be a উৎস of joy and inspiration to all the world. ”
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
The Lilly Belle on display at Disneyland Main Station in 1993. The caboose's woodwork was done entirely দ্বারা Walt himself.
Main article: Carolwood Pacific Railroad
During 1949, ডিজনি and his family moved to a new প্রথমপাতা on a large piece of property in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. With the help of his বন্ধু Ward and Betty Kimball, owners of their own backyard railroad, ডিজনি developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, originated from the address of his প্রথমপাতা that was located on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46-foot (14 m)-long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90-foot (27 m) tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built দ্বারা Roger E. Broggie of the ডিজনি Studios Lilly Belle in his wife's honor. He had his attorney draw up right-of-way papers giving the railroad a permanent, legal easement through the garden areas, which his wife dutifully signed; However, there is no evidence of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property's title.
Expanding into new areas
As Walt ডিজনি Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950, Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed দ্বারা 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and The Parent Trap (1961). The Walt ডিজনি Studio produced its first TV special, One ঘন্টা in Wonderland, in 1950. ডিজনি began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC named Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past ডিজনি productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim, California. The প্রদর্শনী also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started a craze among the American youth known as the Davy Crockett craze, in which millions of coonskin স্মারক and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country.[78] In 1955, the studio's first daily টেলিভিশন show, Mickey মাউস Club debuted, which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.
As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, ডিজনি devoted less of his attention to the অ্যানিমেশন department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. During Disney's lifetime, the অ্যানিমেশন department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in CinemaScope, 1955), Sleeping Beauty (in Super Technirama 70mm, 1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and The Sword in the Stone (1963).
Production on the short কার্টুন had kept pace until 1956, when ডিজনি shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed দ্বারা Disney's new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had assumed all distribution duties for ডিজনি films from RKO দ্বারা 1955. Disneyland, one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17, 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful ডিজনি properties and films.
After 1955, the show, Disneyland came to be known as Walt ডিজনি Presents. The প্রদর্শনী 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,[79] and eventually evolving into its current form as The Wonderful World of Disney. It continued to air on NBC until 1981, when CBS picked it up.[80] Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, Hallmark Channel and Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the ডিজনি series offered some recurring characters, such as Roger Mobley appearing as the newspaper reporter and sleuth "Gallegher", based on the লেখা of Richard Harding Davis.
ডিজনি had already formed his own সঙ্গীত publishing division back in 1949. In 1956, partly inspired দ্বারা the huge success of the টেলিভিশন theme song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records.
Early 1960s successes
(Left to right) Robert B. Sherman, Richard M. Sherman and Walt ডিজনি sing "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" (1964)
দ্বারা the early 1960s, the ডিজনি empire was a major success, and Walt ডিজনি Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt ডিজনি was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.
After decades of pursuing, ডিজনি finally procured the rights to P.L. Travers' বই about a magical nanny. Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful ডিজনি film of the 1960s and featured a memorable song score written দ্বারা ডিজনি favorites, the Sherman Brothers. The same year, ডিজনি 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 was to be established on the East Coast.
Though the studio probably would've made great competition with Hanna-Barbera, ডিজনি had decided not to enter the race for producing Saturday morning cartoon series on টেলিভিশন (which Hanna-Barbera had done at the time), because with the expansion of Disney's empire and constant production of feature films, there would be too much for the budget to handle. Thus, the studio had not produced any Saturday morning কার্টুন until 1985, when Michael Eisner was the president of the corporation.[citation needed]
Plans for ডিজনি World and EPCOT
ডিজনি World was to include a larger, আরো elaborate version of Disneyland which was to be called the Magic Kingdom. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The হৃদয় of ডিজনি World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, অথবা EPCOT for short.
Mineral King Ski Resort
Walt ডিজনি had plans for a ski resort in Mineral King for a while, called Walt ডিজনি Ski Resort. During the early to mid 1960s, ডিজনি brought in experts like the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among the several bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid 1960s, but Walt died before the actual work had started. Disney's death and the actions from preservationists made sure the resort was never built.
Death
In late 1966 ডিজনি was scheduled to undergo neck surgery for an old polo injury;[81] he had played frequently at the Riveria Club in Hollywood for many years.[82] On November 2, 1966, during pre-surgery X-rays, doctors at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center across the রাস্তা from the ডিজনি Studio discovered that ডিজনি had an enormous tumor on his left lung.[83] Five days later, ডিজনি went back to the hospital for surgery, but the tumor had spread to such great extent that doctors had to remove his entire left lung.[83] The doctors then told ডিজনি that he only had six months to a বছর to live.[83] After several chemotherapy sessions, ডিজনি and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California before returning home.[81] On November 30, 1966, ডিজনি collapsed in his home, but was revived দ্বারা paramedics, and was taken back to the hospital, where he died[81] on December 15, 1966 at 9:30 a.m., ten days after his 65th birthday. He was cremated on December 17, 1966 and his ashes reside at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Roy O. ডিজনি continued to carry out the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt ডিজনি World in honor of his brother.
The final productions in which ডিজনি had an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book and the live-action musical comedy The Happiest Millionaire, both released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman ব্যক্ত about the last time he saw Disney:
“ He was up in the third floor of the অ্যানিমেশন building after a run-through of The Happiest Millionaire. He usually held court in the hallway afterward for the people involved with the picture. And he started talking to them, telling them what he liked and what they should change, and then, when they were through, he turned to us and with a big smile, he said, 'Keep up the good work, boys.' And he walked to his office. It was the last we ever saw of him.[84] ”
A long-standing urban legend maintains that ডিজনি was cryogenically frozen, and his ফ্রোজেন corpse was stored underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.[85] The first known instance of cryogenic freezing of a corpse occurred a মাস later, in January 1967.[85]
1967–present: legacy
Continuing the vision
Plaque at the entrance that embodies the intended spirit of Disneyland দ্বারা Walt Disney: to leave reality and enter fantasy
After Walt Disney's death, Roy ডিজনি returned from retirement to take full control of Walt ডিজনি Productions and WED Enterprises. In October that year, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of সিন্ড্রেলা দুর্গ at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt ডিজনি World Resort.
After giving his dedication for Walt ডিজনি World, Roy asked Lillian ডিজনি to যোগদান him. As the orchestra played "When আপনি Wish Upon a Star", she stepped up to the podium accompanied দ্বারা Mickey Mouse. He then said, "Lilly, আপনি knew all of Walt's ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it [Walt ডিজনি World]?". "I think Walt would have approved," she replied.[86] Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the দিন he was due to open the Disneyland বড়দিন parade.
1968 US postage stamp
During the সেকেন্ড phase of the "Walt ডিজনি World" theme park, EPCOT was translated দ্বারা Disney's successors into EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. As it currently exists, EPCOT is essentially a living world's fair, different from the actual functional city that ডিজনি had envisioned. In 1992, Walt ডিজনি Imagineering took the step closer to Walt's vision and dedicated Celebration, Florida, a town built দ্বারা the Walt ডিজনি Company adjacent to Walt ডিজনি World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT. EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of ডিজনি characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children but the company later changed this policy.
The ডিজনি entertainment empire
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 ডিজনি 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 টেলিভিশন networks, and one terrestrial টেলিভিশন network. As of 2007, the company has an annual revenue of over U.S. $35 billion.[87]
10 বছর old Walt (center right) at a gathering of Kansas City newsboys in 1912.
Walter Elias ডিজনি was born on December 5, 1901 to Elias Disney, of Irish-Canadian descent, and Flora Call Disney, of German-American descent, in Chicago's Hermosa community area at 2156 N. Tripp Ave.[3][4] Walt Disney's ancestors had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny in Ireland. Arundel Elias Disney, great-grandfather of Walt Disney, was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1801 and was a descendant of Hughes and his son Robert d'Isigny, originally of France but who travelled to England with William the Conqueror in 1066.[5]. The d'Isigny name became Anglicised as ডিজনি and the family settled in the village now known as Norton Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.
His father Elias ডিজনি moved from Huron County, Ontario to the United States in 1878, seeking first for স্বর্ণ in California but finally farming with his parents near Ellis, Kansas until 1884. He worked for Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888 in Acron, Florida. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890,[6] where his brother Robert lived.[6] For most of his early life, Robert helped Elias financially.[6] In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri,[7] where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland.[7] While in Marceline, ডিজনি developed his প্রণয় for drawing.[8] One of their neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert.[8] He also developed his প্রণয় for trains in Marceline, which owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which ran through town. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train.[4] Then he would look for his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years,[9] before moving to Kansas City in 1911.[10] There, Walt and his younger sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School where he met Walter Pfeiffer. The Pfeiffers were theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Soon, Walt was spending আরো time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.[11] During this time he attended Saturday courses as a child at the Kansas City Art Institute [12] While they were living in Kansas City, Walt and Ruth ডিজনি were also regular visitors of Electric Park, 15 blocks from their প্রথমপাতা (Disney would later acknowledge the amusement park as a major influence of his নকশা of Disneyland).
Teenage years
ডিজনি as an অ্যাম্বুলেন্স driver during World War I.
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell জেলি factory in Chicago and moved his family back there.[13] In the fall, ডিজনি began his freshman বছর at McKinley High School and began taking night courses at the Chicago Art Institute.[14] ডিজনি became the cartoonist for the school newspaper. His কার্টুন were very patriotic, focusing on World War I. ডিজনি dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to যোগদান the Army, but the army rejected him because he was underage.[15]
After his rejection from the army, Walt and one of his বন্ধু decided to যোগদান the Red Cross.[16] Soon after he joined The Red Cross, Walt was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance, but not before the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.[17]
In 1919, Walt, hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory,[18] left প্রথমপাতা and moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career.[19] After considering becoming an actor অথবা a newspaper artist, he decided he wanted to create a career in the newspaper, drawing political caricatures অথবা comic strips. But when nobody wanted to hire him as either an artist অথবা even as an অ্যাম্বুলেন্স driver, his brother Roy, who worked at a bank in the area, got a temporary job for him at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio through a bank colleague .[19] At Pesmen-Rubin, ডিজনি created ads for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters.[20] It was here that he met a cartoonist named Ubbe Iwerks.[21] When their time at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio expired, they were both without a job, and they decided to start their own commercial company.[22]
In January 1920, ডিজনি and Iwerks formed a short-lived company called, "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, ডিজনি left temporarily to earn money at Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon joined দ্বারা Iwerks who was not able to run the business alone.[23] While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation, ডিজনি took up an interest in the field of animation, and decided to become an animator.[24] He was allowed দ্বারা the owner of the Ad Company, A.V. Cauger, to borrow a camera from work, which he could use to experiment with at home. After পাঠ করা a book দ্বারা Edwin G. Lutz, called Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, he found cel অ্যানিমেশন to be much আরো promising than the cutout অ্যানিমেশন he was doing for Cauger. Walt eventually decided to open his own অ্যানিমেশন business,[25] and recruited a fellow co-worker at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, ফ্রেড Harman, as his first employee.[25] Walt and Harman then secured a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman — arguably the most জনপ্রিয় "showman" in the Kansas City area at the time[26] — to screen their কার্টুন — which they titled "Laugh-O-Grams" — at his local theater.[26]
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams",[26] Disney's কার্টুন became widely জনপ্রিয় in the Kansas City area.[27] Through their success, ডিজনি was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram,[28] and hire a vast number of additional animators, including ফ্রেড Harman's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks.[29] Unfortunately, with all his high employee salaries unable to make up for studio profits, Walt was unable to successfully manage money.[30] As a result, the studio became loaded with debt[30] and wound up bankrupt.[31] ডিজনি then set his sights on establishing a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.[32]
Hollywood
ডিজনি and his brother pooled their money to set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood.[33] Needing to find a distributor for his new Alice Comedies — which he started making while in Kansas City,[31] but never got to distribute — ডিজনি sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him. She was keen on a distribution deal with ডিজনি for আরো live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.[34]
Alice Comedies
Virginia Davis (the live-action তারকা of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were relocated at Disney's request from Kansas City to Hollywood, as were Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the ডিজনি Brothers' Studio. It was located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where the studio remained until 1939. In 1925, ডিজনি hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief period of dating her, the two got married the same year.
The new series, Alice Comedies, was reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role of Alice. দ্বারা the time the series ended in 1927, the focus was আরো on the animated characters, in particular a cat named Julius who resembled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
দ্বারা 1927, Charles B. Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her business, and ordered a new all-animated series to be put into production for distribution through Universal Pictures. The new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was an almost instant success, and the character, Oswald — drawn and created দ্বারা Iwerks — became a জনপ্রিয় figure. The ডিজনি studio expanded, and Walt hired back Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from Kansas City.
In February 1928, ডিজনি went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz. ডিজনি was shocked when Mintz announced that not only he wanted to reduce the fee he paid ডিজনি per short but also that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng (notably, except Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney) under contract and would start his own studio if ডিজনি did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Disney. ডিজনি declined Mintz's offer and হারিয়ে গেছে most of his অ্যানিমেশন staff.
With most of his staff gone ডিজনি now found himself on his own again.[35] It took Disney's company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character. The Walt ডিজনি Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal in 2006, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels.[36]
Mickey Mouse
Main article: Mickey Mouse
After losing the rights to Oswald, ডিজনি felt the need to develop a new character to replace him. He based the character on a মাউস he had adopted as a pet while working in a Kansas City studio.[37] Ub Iwerks reworked on the sketches made দ্বারা ডিজনি so that it was easier to animate it. However, Mickey's voice and personality was provided দ্বারা Disney. In the words of a ডিজনি employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul."[37] Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in Alice Comedies which featured a মাউস named Ike the Mouse, and the first Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks, which showed a Mickey মাউস look-alike playing fiddle. The initial films were animated দ্বারা Iwerks, his name was prominently featured on the শিরোনাম cards. The মাউস was originally named "Mortimer", but later christened "Mickey Mouse" দ্বারা Lillian ডিজনি who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for Minnie, who was taller than his renowned adversary and had a Brooklyn accent.
The first animated short with Mickey in it was titled, Plane Crazy, which was, like all of Disney's পূর্ববর্তি works, a silent film. After failing to find a distributor for Plane Crazy অথবা its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, ডিজনি created a Mickey cartoon with sound called জলযান Willie. A businessman named Pat Powers provided ডিজনি with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization process. জলযান Willie became an instant success,[38] and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey কার্টুন were released with soundtracks. ডিজনি himself provided the vocal effects for the earliest কার্টুন and performed as the voice of Mickey মাউস until 1946. After the release of জলযান Willie, Walt ডিজনি would continue to successfully use sound in all of his future cartoons, and Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney's early sound কার্টুন as well.[39] Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most জনপ্রিয় cartoon character.[37] দ্বারা 1930, Felix, now in sound, had faded from the screen, as his sound কার্টুন failed to gain attention.[40] Mickey's popularity would now skyrocket in the early 1930s.[37]
Silly Symphonies
Following the footsteps of Mickey মাউস series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly Symphonies was released in 1929. The first of these was titled The Skeleton Dance and was entirely drawn and animated দ্বারা Iwerks, who was also responsible for drawing the majority of কার্টুন released দ্বারা ডিজনি in 1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the ডিজনি studio was not seeing its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers,[41] and in 1930, ডিজনি signed a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. The original basis of the কার্টুন were musical novelty, and Carl Stalling wrote the score for the first Silly Symphony কার্টুন as well.[42]
Iwerks was soon lured দ্বারা Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract. Later, Carl Stalling would also leave ডিজনি to যোগদান Iwerks' new studio.[43] Iwerks launched his Flip the Frog series with first voice cartoon in color, "Fiddlesticks," filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other series of cartoons, the Willie Whopper and the Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut his studio to work on various projects dealing with অ্যানিমেশন technology. He would return to ডিজনি in 1940 and, would go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized অ্যানিমেশন technologies in the studio's research and development department.
দ্বারা 1932, Mickey মাউস had become quite a জনপ্রিয় cinema character, but Silly Symphonies was not as successful. The same বছর also saw competition for ডিজনি grow worse as Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character, Betty Boop, would gain আরো popularity among theater audiences.[44] Fleischer was considered to be Disney's main rival in the 1930s,[45] and was also the father of Richard Fleischer, whom ডিজনি would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of ডিজনি কার্টুন and was replaced দ্বারা United Artists.[46] In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera,[47] approached Walt and convinced him to redo ফুলেরডালি and Trees, which was originally done in black and white, with three-strip Technicolor.[48] ফুলেরডালি and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: কার্টুন for 1932. After ফুলেরডালি and Trees was released, all future Silly Symphony কার্টুন were done in color as well. ডিজনি was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use three-strip Technicolor,[49][50] which would also eventually be extended to five years as well.[42] Through Silly Symphonies, ডিজনি would also create his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs, in 1933.[51] The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, and also featured the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".[52]
Walt Disney's তারকা on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
First Academy Award
In 1932, ডিজনি 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 কার্টুন in 1937,[53] and Goofy would get solo কার্টুন in 1939 as well.[54] Of all of Mickey's partners, Donald Duck—who first teamed with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan's Benefit—was arguably the most popular, and went on to become Disney's সেকেন্ড most successful cartoon character of all time.[55]
Children
The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended up in Lillian having a miscarriage. When Lillian ডিজনি became pregnant again, she gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted Sharon Mae ডিজনি (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).[56]
1937–1941: The Golden Age of Animation
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Walt ডিজনি introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937 Snow White theatrical trailer.
After the creation of two cartoon series, ডিজনি soon began plans for a full-length feature in 1934. In 1935, opinion মতামত showed that another cartoon series, Popeye the Sailor, produced দ্বারা Max Fleischer, was আরো জনপ্রিয় than Mickey Mouse.[57] ডিজনি was, however, able to put Mickey back on top, and also increase Mickey's popularity further দ্বারা colorizing him and partially redesigning him into what was considered to be his most appealing নকশা up to this point in time.[37] When the film industry came to know about Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they dubbed the project as "Disney's Folly" and were certain that the project would destroy the ডিজনি studio. Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk ডিজনি out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature. He employed Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff, and used the Silly Symphonies as a platform for experiments in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and apparatus such as the multiplane camera; ডিজনি would first use this new technique in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.[58]
All of this development and training was used to elevate the quality of the studio so that it would be able to give the feature film the quality ডিজনি desired. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the feature was named, was in full production from 1934 until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To acquire the funding to complete Snow White, ডিজনি had to প্রদর্শনী a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America, who gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The finished film premiered at the Carthay বৃত্ত Theater on December 21, 1937; at the conclusion of the film, the audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation. Snow White, the first animated feature in America and Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures; RKO had previously been the distributor for ডিজনি কার্টুন in 1936, after it closed down the অগ্রদূত Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution.[59] The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million in its original theatrical release.
The Golden Age of Animation
The success of Snow White, (for which ডিজনি received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes) allowed ডিজনি to build a new campus for the Walt ডিজনি Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939; Snow White was not only the peak of Disney's success, but it also ushered in a period that would later be known as the Golden Age of অ্যানিমেশন for Disney.[60][61] The feature অ্যানিমেশন staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi and the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan while the shorts staff continued work on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this time. Animator ফ্রেড Moore had redesigned Mickey মাউস in the late 1930s, when Donald হাঁস began to gain আরো popularity among theater audiences than Mickey Mouse.[62]
Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both were financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was planned as an income generator, but during production of the new film, most of the অ্যানিমেশন staff went on strike, permanently straining the relationship between ডিজনি and his artists.
1941–1945: During World War II
ডিজনি and a group of animators were sent to South America in 1941 দ্বারা the U.S. State Department as part of its Good Neighbor policy, and guaranteed financing for the resulting movie, Saludos Amigos.[63]
Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the United States entered World War II. The U.S. Army contracted most of the ডিজনি studio's facilities and had the staff create training and instructional films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face and the feature film Victory Through Air Power in 1943. However, the military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi underperformed when it was released in April 1942. ডিজনি successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition for ডিজনি features. In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature দ্বারা ডিজনি during the war period.
In 1944, William Benton, publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, had entered into unsuccessful negotiations with ডিজনি to make six to twelve educational films annually. ডিজনি was asked দ্বারা the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the মর্দানী স্ত্রীলোক Basin and it resulted in the 1944 animated short, The মর্দানী স্ত্রীলোক Awakens.[64][65][66][67][68]
1945–1955: ডিজনি in the post-war Period
The ডিজনি studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. This includes Make Mine সঙ্গীত (1946), Melody Time (1948), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The latter had only two sections: the first based on The Wind in the Willows দ্বারা Kenneth Grahame, and the সেকেন্ড based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow দ্বারা Washington Irving. During this period, ডিজনি also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. After the war ended, Mickey's popularity would also fade as well.[69]
দ্বারা the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years, and began work on Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The studio also began a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, in 1948 with On সীল Island. Despite rebounding success through feature films, Disney's অ্যানিমেশন shorts were no longer as জনপ্রিয় as they used to be, and people began to instead draw attention to Warner Bros and their অ্যানিমেশন তারকা Bugs Bunny. দ্বারা 1942, Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Warner Bros. cartoons, had become the country's most জনপ্রিয় অ্যানিমেশন studio.[70] However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's;[71] Donald would also replace Mickey মাউস as Disney's তারকা character দ্বারা 1949.[72]
During the mid-1950s, ডিজনি produced a number of educational films on the মহাকাশ program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in মহাকাশ and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.
Walt ডিজনি meets Wernher von Braun in 1954.
Testimony before Congress
ডিজনি was a founding member of the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War,[73] ডিজনি testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers, as Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations. According to Peter Schweizer, an লেখক of the time, Archives of the Soviet Union released দ্বারা the Russian government implicate Sorrell as a Communist spy.[74] However, Sorrell testified before the HUAC in 1946 but there was insufficient evidence to link him to the Communist Party.[75][76] ডিজনি accused the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.[73]
1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond
Planning Disneyland
Aerial view August, 1963 looking SE. New Melodyland Theater at the top. The Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) upper left corner. Disneyland
On a business trip to Chicago in the late-1940s, ডিজনি 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. This plan was originally meant for a plot located south of the Studio, across the street. The original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that was to become Disneyland. ডিজনি spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary of his company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. A small group of ডিজনি studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.
When describing one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman (who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland which was presented to the Bank of America while requesting for funds), ডিজনি said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded দ্বারা a train."[77] Entertaining his daughters and their বন্ধু in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired ডিজনি to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
Disneyland grand opening
Walt ডিজনি giving the opening দিন speech July 17, 1955.
Disneyland officially opened July 17, 1955. Among the thousands of people who came out for the opening were Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following opening দিন speech:
“ To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past ... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America ... with the hope that it will be a উৎস of joy and inspiration to all the world. ”
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
The Lilly Belle on display at Disneyland Main Station in 1993. The caboose's woodwork was done entirely দ্বারা Walt himself.
Main article: Carolwood Pacific Railroad
During 1949, ডিজনি and his family moved to a new প্রথমপাতা on a large piece of property in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. With the help of his বন্ধু Ward and Betty Kimball, owners of their own backyard railroad, ডিজনি developed blueprints and immediately set to work on creating a miniature live steam railroad for his backyard. The name of the railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, originated from the address of his প্রথমপাতা that was located on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a 46-foot (14 m)-long trestle, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a 90-foot (27 m) tunnel underneath Mrs. Disney's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built দ্বারা Roger E. Broggie of the ডিজনি Studios Lilly Belle in his wife's honor. He had his attorney draw up right-of-way papers giving the railroad a permanent, legal easement through the garden areas, which his wife dutifully signed; However, there is no evidence of the documents ever recorded as a restriction on the property's title.
Expanding into new areas
As Walt ডিজনি Productions began work on Disneyland, it also began expanding its other entertainment operations. In 1950, Treasure Island became the studio's first all-live-action feature, and was soon followed দ্বারা 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in CinemaScope, 1954), Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and The Parent Trap (1961). The Walt ডিজনি Studio produced its first TV special, One ঘন্টা in Wonderland, in 1950. ডিজনি began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC named Disneyland after the park, where he showed clips of past ডিজনি productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim, California. The প্রদর্শনী also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started a craze among the American youth known as the Davy Crockett craze, in which millions of coonskin স্মারক and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country.[78] In 1955, the studio's first daily টেলিভিশন show, Mickey মাউস Club debuted, which would continue in many various incarnations into the 1990s.
As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, ডিজনি devoted less of his attention to the অ্যানিমেশন department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. During Disney's lifetime, the অ্যানিমেশন department created the successful Lady and the Tramp (in CinemaScope, 1955), Sleeping Beauty (in Super Technirama 70mm, 1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and The Sword in the Stone (1963).
Production on the short কার্টুন had kept pace until 1956, when ডিজনি shut down the shorts division. Special shorts projects would continue to be made for the rest of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed দ্বারা Disney's new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had assumed all distribution duties for ডিজনি films from RKO দ্বারা 1955. Disneyland, one of the world's first theme parks, finally opened on July 17, 1955, and was immediately successful. Visitors from around the world came to visit Disneyland, which contained attractions based upon a number of successful ডিজনি properties and films.
After 1955, the show, Disneyland came to be known as Walt ডিজনি Presents. The প্রদর্শনী 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,[79] and eventually evolving into its current form as The Wonderful World of Disney. It continued to air on NBC until 1981, when CBS picked it up.[80] Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, Hallmark Channel and Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the ডিজনি series offered some recurring characters, such as Roger Mobley appearing as the newspaper reporter and sleuth "Gallegher", based on the লেখা of Richard Harding Davis.
ডিজনি had already formed his own সঙ্গীত publishing division back in 1949. In 1956, partly inspired দ্বারা the huge success of the টেলিভিশন theme song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records.
Early 1960s successes
(Left to right) Robert B. Sherman, Richard M. Sherman and Walt ডিজনি sing "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" (1964)
দ্বারা the early 1960s, the ডিজনি empire was a major success, and Walt ডিজনি Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt ডিজনি was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.
After decades of pursuing, ডিজনি finally procured the rights to P.L. Travers' বই about a magical nanny. Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful ডিজনি film of the 1960s and featured a memorable song score written দ্বারা ডিজনি favorites, the Sherman Brothers. The same year, ডিজনি 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 was to be established on the East Coast.
Though the studio probably would've made great competition with Hanna-Barbera, ডিজনি had decided not to enter the race for producing Saturday morning cartoon series on টেলিভিশন (which Hanna-Barbera had done at the time), because with the expansion of Disney's empire and constant production of feature films, there would be too much for the budget to handle. Thus, the studio had not produced any Saturday morning কার্টুন until 1985, when Michael Eisner was the president of the corporation.[citation needed]
Plans for ডিজনি World and EPCOT
ডিজনি World was to include a larger, আরো elaborate version of Disneyland which was to be called the Magic Kingdom. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The হৃদয় of ডিজনি World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, অথবা EPCOT for short.
Mineral King Ski Resort
Walt ডিজনি had plans for a ski resort in Mineral King for a while, called Walt ডিজনি Ski Resort. During the early to mid 1960s, ডিজনি brought in experts like the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among the several bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid 1960s, but Walt died before the actual work had started. Disney's death and the actions from preservationists made sure the resort was never built.
Death
In late 1966 ডিজনি was scheduled to undergo neck surgery for an old polo injury;[81] he had played frequently at the Riveria Club in Hollywood for many years.[82] On November 2, 1966, during pre-surgery X-rays, doctors at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center across the রাস্তা from the ডিজনি Studio discovered that ডিজনি had an enormous tumor on his left lung.[83] Five days later, ডিজনি went back to the hospital for surgery, but the tumor had spread to such great extent that doctors had to remove his entire left lung.[83] The doctors then told ডিজনি that he only had six months to a বছর to live.[83] After several chemotherapy sessions, ডিজনি and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California before returning home.[81] On November 30, 1966, ডিজনি collapsed in his home, but was revived দ্বারা paramedics, and was taken back to the hospital, where he died[81] on December 15, 1966 at 9:30 a.m., ten days after his 65th birthday. He was cremated on December 17, 1966 and his ashes reside at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Roy O. ডিজনি continued to carry out the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt ডিজনি World in honor of his brother.
The final productions in which ডিজনি had an active role were the animated feature The Jungle Book and the live-action musical comedy The Happiest Millionaire, both released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman ব্যক্ত about the last time he saw Disney:
“ He was up in the third floor of the অ্যানিমেশন building after a run-through of The Happiest Millionaire. He usually held court in the hallway afterward for the people involved with the picture. And he started talking to them, telling them what he liked and what they should change, and then, when they were through, he turned to us and with a big smile, he said, 'Keep up the good work, boys.' And he walked to his office. It was the last we ever saw of him.[84] ”
A long-standing urban legend maintains that ডিজনি was cryogenically frozen, and his ফ্রোজেন corpse was stored underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.[85] The first known instance of cryogenic freezing of a corpse occurred a মাস later, in January 1967.[85]
1967–present: legacy
Continuing the vision
Plaque at the entrance that embodies the intended spirit of Disneyland দ্বারা Walt Disney: to leave reality and enter fantasy
After Walt Disney's death, Roy ডিজনি returned from retirement to take full control of Walt ডিজনি Productions and WED Enterprises. In October that year, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of সিন্ড্রেলা দুর্গ at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt ডিজনি World Resort.
After giving his dedication for Walt ডিজনি World, Roy asked Lillian ডিজনি to যোগদান him. As the orchestra played "When আপনি Wish Upon a Star", she stepped up to the podium accompanied দ্বারা Mickey Mouse. He then said, "Lilly, আপনি knew all of Walt's ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it [Walt ডিজনি World]?". "I think Walt would have approved," she replied.[86] Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the দিন he was due to open the Disneyland বড়দিন parade.
1968 US postage stamp
During the সেকেন্ড phase of the "Walt ডিজনি World" theme park, EPCOT was translated দ্বারা Disney's successors into EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. As it currently exists, EPCOT is essentially a living world's fair, different from the actual functional city that ডিজনি had envisioned. In 1992, Walt ডিজনি Imagineering took the step closer to Walt's vision and dedicated Celebration, Florida, a town built দ্বারা the Walt ডিজনি Company adjacent to Walt ডিজনি World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT. EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of ডিজনি characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children but the company later changed this policy.
The ডিজনি entertainment empire
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 ডিজনি 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 টেলিভিশন networks, and one terrestrial টেলিভিশন network. As of 2007, the company has an annual revenue of over U.S. $35 billion.[87]
