- go to the top
- About WN
- Contact
- Feedback
- Privacy Policy
- © 2011 World News Inc., all Rights Reserved
The Walt Disney Company
Loading suggestions ...
-
4017 Disneya
4017 Disneya (1980 DL5) is a main-belt asteroid discovered on February 21, 1980 by Karachkina, L. G. at Nauchnyj. It was named after Walt Disney.
http://wn.com/4017_Disneya -
Al Michaels
Alan Richard "Al" Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television sportscaster. Now employed by NBC Sports after nearly three decades (1977–2006) with ABC Sports, Michaels is one of the most prominent members of his profession. He is perhaps best known for his many years of calling play-by-play of National Football League games, including nearly two decades with Monday Night Football. He is also known for famous calls in other sports, including the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Winter Olympics and the earthquake-interrupted Game 3 of the 1989 World Series.
http://wn.com/Al_Michaels -
AOL
AOL Inc. (), formerly known as America Online and logo typeset as "Aol.", is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services.
http://wn.com/AOL -
Bob Cummings
http://wn.com/Bob_Cummings -
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is an American fictional character who starred in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, which became Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1944. In 2002, he was named by TV Guide as the greatest cartoon character of all time. Bugs starred in 163 shorts in the Golden Age of American animation, and made cameos in three others along with a few appearances in non-animated films.
http://wn.com/Bugs_Bunny -
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling (November 10, 1891—November 29, 1972) was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.
http://wn.com/Carl_Stalling -
Carman Maxwell
Carman Griffin "Max" Maxwell (1902–1987) was an American animator and voice actor.
http://wn.com/Carman_Maxwell -
Charles Mintz
Charles B. Mintz (1889 – December 30, 1939) was an American film producer and distributor, who took control over Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures after marrying her in 1924.
http://wn.com/Charles_Mintz -
Cinephone
http://wn.com/Cinephone -
David Hilberman
David Hilberman (18 December 19115 July 2007) was a legendary American cartoon animator, remembered as one of the founders of classic 1940s animation.
http://wn.com/David_Hilberman -
Davy Crockett
David Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was a celebrated 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is referred to in popular culture as Davy Crockett and after the 1950s by the epithet “King of the Wild Frontier.” He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives, served in the Texas Revolution, and died at the Battle of the Alamo.
http://wn.com/Davy_Crockett -
Dawn O'Day
http://wn.com/Dawn_O'Day -
Flora Call Disney
Flora Call Disney (April 22, 1868November 26, 1938) was the mother of Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney.
http://wn.com/Flora_Call_Disney -
Frank Pierson
Frank Romer Pierson (born May 12, 1925) is an American screenwriter and film director.
http://wn.com/Frank_Pierson -
Fred Harman
Fred Harman (February 9, 1902 - January 2, 1982) is best known as the artist of Red Ryder, "America's famous fighting cowboy." The Red Ryder Round-up is an annual July 4th weekend event in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, home of the Fred Harman Art Museum.
http://wn.com/Fred_Harman -
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng (August 21, 1905 – May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. He introduced and/or developed several of the studio's biggest stars, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the cat, Yosemite Sam (to whom he was said to bear more than a passing resemblance) and Speedy Gonzales. The senior director at Warners' Termite Terrace studio, Freleng directed more cartoons than any other director in the studio (a total of 266), and is also the most honored of the Warner directors, having won four Academy Awards. After Warners shut down the animation studio in 1963, Freleng and business partner David DePatie founded DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which produced cartoons (notably The Pink Panther Show), feature film title sequences, and Saturday morning cartoons through the early 1980s. The nickname "Friz" came from how "frizzly" his hair was at one time.
http://wn.com/Friz_Freleng -
German-American
http://wn.com/German-American -
Herbert Kalmus
Herbert Thomas Kalmus (November 9, 1881 – July 11, 1963) was an American scientist and engineer who played a key role in developing color motion picture film. Kalmus was the co-founder and president of the The Technicolor Corporation.
http://wn.com/Herbert_Kalmus -
Herbert Sorrell
Herbert Knott Sorrell, known as Herb Sorrell, was a union organizer and leader. He headed the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) in the late 1940s, and was the business manager of the Motion Picture Painters union, Local 644 until the 1950s.
http://wn.com/Herbert_Sorrell -
Hugh Harman
http://wn.com/Hugh_Harman -
Irish-Canadian
http://wn.com/Irish-Canadian -
James Bedford
James Hiram Bedford (20 April 1893 – 12 January 1967) was a University of California psychology professor who had written several books on occupational counseling. He is the first person whose body was cryonically preserved (frozen) after death.
http://wn.com/James_Bedford -
John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter (born January 12, 1957) is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
http://wn.com/John_Lasseter -
Kurt Russell
Kurt Vogel Russell (born March 17, 1951) is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963–1964). In the 1970s, he signed a ten-year contract with the Walt Disney Company, where he became, according to Robert Osborne, the "studio's top star of the '70s." In 1979, Russell was nominated for an Emmy Award for the made-for-television film Elvis.
http://wn.com/Kurt_Russell -
Lawrence Turman
Lawrence Turman (born November 28, 1926 in Los Angeles) is a film producer who presently serves as the director of The Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California. He was nominated for an Academy Award for The Graduate (1967). He has also produced such films such as Pretty Poison (1968), The Great White Hope (1970), The Thing (1982), Mass Appeal (1984), Short Circuit (1986), The River Wild (1994), and American History X (1998). Turman is a member of the Producers Guild Hall of Fame, and is on the board of the Producers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
http://wn.com/Lawrence_Turman -
Leonard Mosley
Leonard Mosley (1913–1992) was a British journalist, historian, biographer and novelist. His works include five novels and a biography of Gen George Marshall. He also worked as chief war correspondent for the Sunday Times.
http://wn.com/Leonard_Mosley -
Lillian Disney
Lillian Disney (February 15, 1899December 16, 1997) was the widow of Walt Disney. She was married to him from 1925 until his death in 1966.
http://wn.com/Lillian_Disney -
Margaret Winkler
http://wn.com/Margaret_Winkler -
Maria Shriver
Maria Owings Shriver (; born November 6, 1955) is an American award-winning journalist and author of six best-selling books. She has won a Peabody Award, and was co-anchor for NBC's Emmy-winning coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics. As executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project, Shriver earned two Emmy Awards and an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences award for a "television show with a conscience". She is the First Lady of California, married to actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is a member of the Kennedy family.
http://wn.com/Maria_Shriver -
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer (July 19, 1883 – September 11, 1972) was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios. He brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, and Superman to the movie screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations.
http://wn.com/Max_Fleischer -
Michael Broggie
Michael Broggie (born June 19, 1942) is nationally-recognized as an authority on the life and legacy of Walt Disney and the global empire he inspired. As an author and public speaker, he tours the country lecturing on his first-person experiences with Walt Disney and many of the Disney Legends, including his father, the late Roger E. Broggie, who was selected by Walt Disney to be his first Imagineer.
http://wn.com/Michael_Broggie -
Neal Gabler
Neal Gabler is a professor, journalist, author, film critic and political commentator.
http://wn.com/Neal_Gabler -
Nine Old Men
http://wn.com/Nine_Old_Men -
P.L. Travers
http://wn.com/PL_Travers -
Red Cross
http://wn.com/Red_Cross -
Richard Fleischer
Richard O. Fleischer (December 8, 1916 – March 25, 2006) was an American film director.
http://wn.com/Richard_Fleischer -
Richard M. Sherman
Richard Morton Sherman (born June 12, 1928; see also: "Sherman Brothers") is an American songwriter who specializes in musical film with his brother Robert Bernard Sherman.
http://wn.com/Richard_M_Sherman -
Richard Schickel
Richard Warren Schickel (born February 10, 1933, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
http://wn.com/Richard_Schickel -
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (, ; 22 May 1813 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Famous extracts from his operas include the "Ride of the Valkyries" and the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, popularly known as the wedding march "Here Comes the Bride".
http://wn.com/Richard_Wagner -
Robert B. Sherman
Robert Bernard Sherman (born December 19, 1925; see also: "Sherman Brothers") is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman. Some of Sherman's best known writing includes the songs from Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose and the theme park song, "It's a Small World (after all)".
http://wn.com/Robert_B_Sherman -
Roger E. Broggie
Roger E. Broggie (October 22, 1908-November 4, 1991) was an American mechanical engineer who worked with Walt Disney and the Walt Disney Company.
http://wn.com/Roger_E_Broggie -
Roger Mobley
Roger L. Mobley (born January 16, 1949) in Evansville, Indiana, is a former child actor in film and television, working primarily during the late 1950s and early '60s. He was known for his roles working in Walt Disney productions, as well as guest starring appearances on many television programs. He became a Christian pastor, serving in southeast Texas.
http://wn.com/Roger_Mobley -
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975).
http://wn.com/Ronald_Reagan -
Rudolf Ising
http://wn.com/Rudolf_Ising -
Sherman Brothers
The Sherman Brothers are an American songwriting duo that specialize in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman (born December 19, 1925) and Richard M. Sherman (born June 12, 1928).
http://wn.com/Sherman_Brothers -
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. (March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971) was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney. He was born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks in Kansas City, Missouri.
http://wn.com/Ub_Iwerks -
Ward Kimball
Ward Walrath Kimball (March 4, 1914 – July 8, 2002) was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as Disney's Nine Old Men.
http://wn.com/Ward_Kimball -
Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846.
http://wn.com/Washington_Irving -
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-American rocket scientist, engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States during and after World War II. A one-time member of the Nazi party and a commissioned SS officer, von Braun would later be regarded as the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century in his role with the United States civilian space agency NASA.
http://wn.com/Wernher_von_Braun -
William I of England
http://wn.com/William_I_of_England -
William Pomerance
Mortimer William Pomerance was an animator who worked for Walt Disney Studios. He worked first as a business manager of cartoonists, and then was a business agent for the Screen Actors Guild. After the Disney strike of 1941, Pomerance and David Hilberman left Disney and started their own animation show studio called TEMPO.
http://wn.com/William_Pomerance -
Willy Schaeffler
Wilhelm Josef "Willy" Schaeffler (13 December 1915 – 9 April 1988) was a German-American skiing champion, winning coach and ski resort developer. He is best known to the public for his intensive training programs that led the US ski team to gold and bronze medals in the 1972 Winter Olympics. In development circles, he is known for his role in the development of Vail and Whistler Blackcomb.
http://wn.com/Willy_Schaeffler -
World War I
World War I was a military conflict centered on Europe that began in the summer of 1914. The fighting ended in late 1918. This conflict involved all of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding ones in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in history.
http://wn.com/World_War_I
-
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The estimated population in 2007 was 107,921.
http://wn.com/Burbank_California -
California
California (pronounced ) is the most populous state in the United States and the third-largest by land area, after Alaska and Texas. California is also the most populous sub-national entity in North America. It's on the U.S. West Coast, bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west and by the states of Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, Baja California, Mexico, to the south. Its 5 largest cities are Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, and Long Beach, with Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose each having at least 1 million residents. Like many populous states, California's capital, Sacramento is smaller than the state's largest city, Los Angeles. The state is home to the nation's 2nd- and 6th-largest census statistical areas and 8 of the nation's 50 most populous cities. California has a varied climate and geography and a multi-cultural population.
http://wn.com/California -
Celebration, Florida
Celebration is a census-designated place (CDP) and a master-planned community in Osceola County, Florida, United States, near Walt Disney World Resort. It was developed by The Walt Disney Company. Celebration is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,736 at the 2000 census, but as of 2010 is estimated to be more than 11,000 persons.
http://wn.com/Celebration_Florida -
Chicago, Illinois
http://wn.com/Chicago_Illinois -
Children's Fairyland
'''Children's Fairyland, U.S.A.''' was the first theme park in the United States created to cater to families with young children. Located in Oakland, California on the shore of Lake Merritt, Fairyland includes 10 acres (40,000 m2) of play sets, small rides, and animals. The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States.
http://wn.com/Children's_Fairyland -
County Kilkenny
County Kilkenny () is one of the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland, and also one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, located within the province of Leinster. It was named after the city of Kilkenny () and has a population of 87,558.
http://wn.com/County_Kilkenny -
Disneyland
Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company. Originally, and still often colloquially, called Disneyland, it was dedicated with a televised press preview on July 17, 1955, and opened to the general public on July 18, 1955. Disneyland holds the distinction of being the only theme park to be designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney himself. In 1998, the theme park was re-branded "Disneyland Park" to distinguish it from the larger Disneyland Resort complex.
http://wn.com/Disneyland -
Disneyland Hong Kong
http://wn.com/Disneyland_Hong_Kong -
Disneyland Paris
{| class="infobox" style="width: 20em;"
http://wn.com/Disneyland_Paris -
Disneyland Resort
The Disneyland Resort is a recreational resort that opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California. The resort is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks and Resorts division and is home to two theme parks, three hotels and a shopping, dining, and entertainment area.
http://wn.com/Disneyland_Resort -
Ellis, Kansas
Ellis is a city in Ellis County, Kansas, United States. The population was 1,873 at the 2000 census.
http://wn.com/Ellis_Kansas -
EPCOT Center
http://wn.com/EPCOT_Center -
Florida
Florida () is a state of the United States. It is located in the Southeastern United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the north. Much of the state's land mass is a large peninsula with the Gulf of Mexico to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Caribbean to the south. Florida was admitted as the 27th U.S. state in 1845, after a three hundred year period of European colonization.
http://wn.com/Florida -
Glendale, California
Glendale () is a upper middle class city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. According to Mapping L.A. by the Los Angeles Times, the average income in Glendale is $57,112 which is considered about average for the County of Los Angeles. It lies at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, is bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, and is a suburb in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The city is bordered to the northwest by the Sun Valley and Tujunga neighborhoods of Los Angeles; to the northeast by La Cañada Flintridge and the unincorporated area of La Crescenta; to the west by Burbank and Griffith Park; to the east by Eagle Rock and Pasadena; to the south by the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles; and to the southeast by Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Golden State, Ventura, Glendale, and Foothill freeways run through the city. The city is policed by the Glendale Police Department.
http://wn.com/Glendale_California -
Gowran
Gowran () is a village and former town in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Gowran Park race course is located nearby. Gowran is located on the N9 national primary road where it is crossed by the R702 regional road.
http://wn.com/Gowran -
Hermosa, Chicago
Hermosa, located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas. Originally called Kelvyn Grove, it was already called Hermosa, meaning "beautiful" in Spanish, when annexed to the city in 1889, prior to the founding of Hermosa Beach, California.
http://wn.com/Hermosa_Chicago -
Holmby Hills
http://wn.com/Holmby_Hills -
Illinois
Illinois ( {{respell|-i-), is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. It is the most populous state in the Midwest region, however with 65% of its residents concentrated in the Chicago metropolitan area, most of the state has either a rural or a small town character. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and western Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is an important transportation hub; the Port of Chicago connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via the Illinois River. As the "most average state", Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics, though the latter has not really been true since the early 1970s.
http://wn.com/Illinois -
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire ( or ; abbreviated Lincs) is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire. It also borders Northamptonshire for just 19 metres (20 yards), England's shortest county boundary. The county town is the city of Lincoln, where the county council has its headquarters.
http://wn.com/Lincolnshire -
Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom is one of four theme parks at the Walt Disney World Resort. The first park built at the resort, it opened October 1, 1971. Designed and built by WED Enterprises, the park's layout and attractions are similar to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. In 2009, the park saw an estimated 17.2 million visitors, making it the most visited theme park in the world.
http://wn.com/Magic_Kingdom -
Marceline, Missouri
Marceline is a city in Chariton and Linn Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 2,558 at the 2000 census.
http://wn.com/Marceline_Missouri -
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, ) is an Executive Branch agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's civilian space program and aeronautics and aerospace research. Since February 2006, NASA's self-described mission statement is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."
http://wn.com/NASA -
Norton Disney
Norton Disney is a small village on the western boundary of Lincolnshire. Situated between Lincoln and Newark, it is the seat of the Disney family (an Anglicised version of the original French surname ''d'Isigny'', of Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy), from whom Walt Disney is descended.
http://wn.com/Norton_Disney -
Oakland, California
Oakland () is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California. It is a major West Coast port, located on San Francisco Bay, about 8 miles (13 km) east of San Francisco. Oakland is a major hub city for the Bay Area subregion collectively called the East Bay, and it is the county seat of Alameda County. Based on United States Census Bureau estimates for 2010, Oakland is the 41st-largest city in the USA with a population of 446,901.
http://wn.com/Oakland_California -
Orlando, Florida
Orlando () is a major city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan region. The Orlando metropolitan area has a population of 2,082,628 and it is the 27th largest metropolitan area in the United States. The city-proper population is 235,860 making Orlando the 80th largest city in the United States. It is Florida's fifth largest city by population. Orlando was incorporated on July 31, 1875, and became a city in 1885.
http://wn.com/Orlando_Florida -
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios is an American CGI animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, United States. As of 2006, Pixar is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. The studio has earned twenty-four Academy Awards, six Golden Globes, and three Grammys, among many other awards, acknowledgments and achievements and has made $5.5 billion worldwide. It is one of the most (according to Rotten Tomatoes, perhaps the single most) critically acclaimed film studios of all time. It is best known for its CGI-animated feature films which are created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering API used to generate high-quality images.
http://wn.com/Pixar -
Red Cross
http://wn.com/Red_Cross -
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, , abbreviated СССР, SSSR), informally known as the Soviet Union () or Soviet Russia, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed on the territory of most of the former Russian Empire in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
http://wn.com/Soviet_Union -
Valencia, California
http://wn.com/Valencia_California -
WED Enterprises
http://wn.com/WED_Enterprises
- 4017 Disneya
- 70mm
- Academy Award
- Acron, Florida
- Al Michaels
- Alice Comedies
- Amazon Basin
- amusement park
- anglicised
- animation
- Animation Magazine
- animator
- Animatronic
- Anti-communism
- Antisemitism
- AOL
- Art Linkletter
- B'nai B'rith
- backyard railroad
- Bambi
- Bank of America
- Betty Boop
- biographical film
- biography
- Bob Cummings
- Bugs Bunny
- Burbank, California
- California
- Carl Stalling
- Carman Maxwell
- cel
- Celebration, Florida
- character animation
- Charles Mintz
- chemotherapy
- Chicago, Illinois
- Children's Fairyland
- Christian
- Cinderella Castle
- CinemaScope
- Cinephone
- Cold War
- Columbia Pictures
- Comicolor
- computer animation
- Congregationalist
- County Kilkenny
- Cryopreservation
- Cultural icon
- cutout animation
- David Hilberman
- Davy Crockett
- Dawn O'Day
- Der Fuehrer's Face
- Diane Marie Disney
- Disney
- Disney family
- Disney Renaissance
- Disney Vault
- Disneyland
- Disneyland Hong Kong
- Disneyland Paris
- Disneyland Records
- Disneyland Resort
- Disneyland TV show
- documentary
- Donald Duck
- Dumbo
- Elias Disney
- Ellis, Kansas
- Emmy Award
- entertainer
- entrepreneur
- EPCOT Center
- Fantasia (film)
- Felix the Cat
- film director
- Film producer
- Flip the Frog
- Flora Call Disney
- Florida
- Flowers and Trees
- fps magazine
- Frank Pierson
- Fred Harman
- Friz Freleng
- Fun and Fancy Free
- German-American
- Glendale, California
- Good Neighbor policy
- Goofy
- Gowran
- Hanna-Barbera
- HBO
- Herbert Kalmus
- Herbert Ryman
- Herbert Sorrell
- Hermosa, Chicago
- Holmby Hills
- Hugh Harman
- Hyperion (publisher)
- I-5
- Illinois
- IMDB
- Irish-Canadian
- Isigny-sur-Mer
- Ivan R. Dee
- James Bedford
- John Lasseter
- Kenneth Grahame
- Kurt Russell
- Lady and the Tramp
- Laugh-O-Gram Studio
- Lawrence Turman
- League of Nations
- Leonard Mosley
- Lillian Disney
- Lincolnshire
- live steam
- lung cancer
- Légion d'Honneur
- Magic Kingdom
- Make Mine Music
- Marceline, Missouri
- Margaret Winkler
- Maria Shriver
- Mary Poppins (film)
- Max Fleischer
- Melody Time
- Michael Broggie
- Michelin
- Mickey Mouse
- Mickey Mouse Club
- Mineral King
- minor planet
- multiplane camera
- NASA
- NBC Universal
- Neal Gabler
- Nine Old Men
- Norton Disney
- Oakland, California
- Orlando, Florida
- Orphan's Benefit
- P.L. Travers
- Paris, France
- philanthropist
- Pixar
- Plane Crazy
- Pluto (dog)
- polo
- Popeye the Sailor
- Red Cross
- Richard Fleischer
- Richard M. Sherman
- Richard Schickel
- Richard Wagner
- RKO
- RKO Radio Pictures
- Robert B. Sherman
- Roger E. Broggie
- Roger Mobley
- Ronald Reagan
- Roy E. Disney
- Roy O. Disney
- Rudolf Ising
- Saludos Amigos
- Santa Ana Freeway
- Screen Actors Guild
- screenwriter
- Sharon Mae Disney
- Sherman Brothers
- Sierra Nevada (U.S.)
- silent film
- Silly Symphonies
- Snopes.com
- Snow White
- So Dear to My Heart
- Song of the South
- sound reproduction
- Soviet Union
- Steamboat Willie
- Super Technirama
- synchronization
- talking picture
- Technicolor
- The Gallopin' Gaucho
- The Lion King
- The New York Times
- The Old Mill
- The Skeleton Dance
- The Three Caballeros
- theme park
- Three Little Pigs
- Tokyo Disney
- Toy Story
- trade union
- Tripod.com
- U.S. Army
- Ub Iwerks
- Ub Iwerks Studio
- United States Army
- Universal Pictures
- urban legend
- Valencia, California
- Variety (magazine)
- Virginia Davis
- voice actor
- Walt Disney Company
- Ward Kimball
- Washington Irving
- WED Enterprises
- Wernher von Braun
- William I of England
- William Pomerance
- Willie Whopper
- Willy Schaeffler
- World War I
- World War II
- world's fair
RELEASE
ALBUMS
Der König der Löwen
(Released 1994)
De allerbeste van Walt Disney (deel 1)
(Released 1992)
- Balou de Bruine Beer (Jungleboek)
- Dat moet een kat van adel zijn (De Aristokatten)
- Niet in Nottingham (Robin Hood)
- Fluit dan op je vingers (Pinokkio)
- Het circus is weer in de stad (Dumbo)
- Honderd en één (101 Dalmatiërs)
- Kleine Muis (Mickey Mouse)
- Ga maar in de rij staan (Peter Pan)
- Eens komt mijn prins terug (Sneeuwwitje)
- Bambi (Bambi)
- Als een droom (Doornroosje)
- Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boe (Assepoester)
- Waar is dat wonderland (Alice in Wonderland)
- Wie is er bang voor de boze wolf (Roodkapje)
- Roodkapje en de Wolf (Roodkapje)
- Superformiweldigeindefantkolosachtig (Mary Poppins)
- Jingle Bells
- Frosty the Snowman
- Joy to the World
- Deck the Halls
- We Wish You a Merry Christmas
- Sleigh Ride
- Here Comes Santa Claus
- Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
- The Santa Wrap
- Winter Wonderland
- The Science of the Season
- Jolly Old St. Nicholas
- Bring a Torch Jeannette, Isabella
- Carol of the Bells
- Silent Night
- What Child Is This
- Away in a Manger
- Oh Come All Ye Faithful
- Rare Old Christmas
- Angel Time
Born: 1901-12-05
Died: 1966-12-15
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
'Walt Disney's SIN CITY' A Trailer Mash Up
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:19
- Published: 05 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: ChiefBrodyRules
A experiment that didn't work out. Note: When I say 'didn't work out' I meant it didn't match my original vision. It's good but I wish it was better. I'm glad you guys like it. -chiefbrodyrules
http://wn.com/'Walt_Disney's_SIN_CITY'_A_Trailer_Mash_Up
Walt Disney UFO Documentary: Full Uncut Version
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 43:24
- Published: 19 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: StephenHannardADGUK
Rare Disney UFO documentary, this documentary was only broadcast once in five US states, then it was shelved and never broadcast again. This version is the complete uncut feature, recorded to VHS video when it was first broadcast on celestial tv. ADG Facebook: www.facebook.com Follow ADG on Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/Walt_Disney_UFO_Documentary_Full_Uncut_Version
The 2011 Walt Disney World Christmas Holiday Wishes Fireworks Show (in HD)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:58
- Published: 11 Nov 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: MoneySavingVideos
The Disney Christmas Wishes Fireworks show is called "Holiday Wishes" Please feel free to download this video to then upload to your own Youtube site. There is no need to reference me. I spent a lot of time on them and I just want to make sure they are seen everywhere! Thanks for doing this. The video can be downloaded using iTunes at: bit.ly The music is from a CD called Disney World Holiday Wishes available at the Disney theme parks (a few might still be available on Amazon and eBay) The music can also be listened to here: www.youtube.com I recorded this family video at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World using my Canon HV30. All references to Disney characters are property of Walt Disney Co.
http://wn.com/The_2011_Walt_Disney_World_Christmas_Holiday_Wishes_Fireworks_Show_in_HD
Avatar Disney Crossover! Pandora at the Animal Kingdom : Beyond The Trailer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:36
- Published: 28 Sep 2011
- Uploaded: 11 Dec 2011
- Author: BeyondTheTrailer
Avatar is coming to the Walt Disney World Resort, specifically Animal Kingdom! Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph tells you the details of the deal, plus what's at stake for both Avatar and Disney! Do James Cameron and Walt Disney go to together? And what about Marvel? Find out all about the Avatar Disney crossover here! Beyond The Trailer is part of YouTube Next Lab.
http://wn.com/Avatar_Disney_Crossover!_Pandora_at_the_Animal_Kingdom__Beyond_The_Trailer
Full Walt Disney World 40th anniversary celebration presentation at Magic Kingdom
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 17:52
- Published: 01 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 18 Dec 2011
- Author: InsideTheMagic
Visit www.InsideTheMagic.net for more from the Walt Disney World 40th anniversary celebration! On Oct. 1, 2011, Walt Disney World celebrated its 40th anniversary with a character procession and special presentation on the Magic Kingdom Cinderella Castle Forecourt Stage, featuring Walt Disney World President Meg Crofton, Magic Kingdom Vice President Phil Holmes, the current Walt Disney World Ambassadors, and a singalong with the Dapper Dans.
http://wn.com/Full_Walt_Disney_World_40th_anniversary_celebration_presentation_at_Magic_Kingdom
'Twas the Night Before Christmas at Walt Disney World Resort
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Published: 22 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: DisneyParks
To celebrate the holidays, Mickey Mouse has recruited some familiar faces from around Walt Disney World parks and resorts to help him recite the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (or as it's often called, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Read more at the Disney Parks Blog: bit.ly Check out the blog: disneyparks.disney.go.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com Find more videos: www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/'Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas_at_Walt_Disney_World_Resort
N° 036 1991 Walt Disney La Belle Et La Bete
http://wn.com/N°_036_1991_Walt_Disney_La_Belle_Et_La_Bete
OneRepublic Makes Memories at Walt Disney World Resort in New Music Video
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:35
- Published: 16 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: DisneyParks
OneRepublic has re-created their hit music video "Good Life" and it's a performance you won't want to miss. The artists are making memories around some of your favorite Disney attractions at Walt Disney World Resort and they're joined by several familiar faces, including Donald Duck on drums. Read more at the Disney Parks Blog: bit.ly Check out the blog: disneyparks.disney.go.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com Find more videos: www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/OneRepublic_Makes_Memories_at_Walt_Disney_World_Resort_in_New_Music_Video
Disney's Prep and Landing **FULL VERSION**
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 21:31
- Published: 26 Nov 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: The51stAgent
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. And sorry for the wacky subtitles, ppl but it's better than nothing!
http://wn.com/Disney's_Prep_and_Landing_**FULL_VERSION**
The Aristocats *Full Movie*
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 78:51
- Published: 22 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: stevenallabaugh777
© 1970 Walt Disney Pictures
http://wn.com/The_Aristocats_*Full_Movie*
Disney Channel this Christmas!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:56
- Published: 02 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: DisneyChannelUK
Join Disney Channel this Christmas to ensure that your Christmas is as special as ever! On the 16th December you can catch a glimpse of the brand new Disney Channel series, Jessie, followed by the brand new Good Luck Charlie Christmas movie at 17:25.
http://wn.com/Disney_Channel_this_Christmas!
Mickey's Christmas Carol
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 25:38
- Published: 03 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: LiveRetroNetwork
(Aired 1983) Disney's adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol with Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit and Scrooge McDuck as his namesake and inspiration, Ebeneezer Scrooge.
http://wn.com/Mickey's_Christmas_Carol
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Mickey's Big Job Full Episode 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:53
- Published: 18 Nov 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: atlantikskopje
Mickey and the gang take care of Willie the Giant's farm while he's away. . ,,ENJOY. NOTE: 1. I do not own this video. All rights reserved to DISNEY and all other owners. No copyright infringement intended
http://wn.com/Mickey_Mouse_Clubhouse_Mickey's_Big_Job_Full_Episode_1
Walt Disney's & Salvador Dali - Destino 2003 (HD 1080p)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:32
- Published: 07 Jul 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: JOnas3MokaQ
The film tells the story of Chronos, the personification of time and the inability to realize his desire to love for a mortal. The scenes blend a series of surreal paintings of Dali with dancing and metamorphosis. The target production began in 1945, 58 years before its completion and was a collaboration between Walt Disney and the Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dali and Walt Disney Destiny was produced by Dali and John Hench for 8 months between 1945 and 1946. Dali, at the time, Hench described as a "ghostly figure" who knew better than Dali or the secrets of the Disney film. For some time, the project remained a secret. The work of painter Salvador Dali was to prepare a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers and special effects for a movie in the same format of "Fantasia." Dali in the studio working on The Disney characters are fighting against time, the giant sundial that emerges from the great stone face of Jupiter and that determines the fate of all human novels. Dalí and Hench were creating a new animation technique, the cinematic equivalent of "paranoid critique" of Dali. Method inspired by the work of Freud on the subconscious and the inclusion of hidden and double images. Dalí said: "Entertainment highlights the art, its possibilities are endless." The plot of the film was described by. Dalí as "A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time." Walt Disney said it was "A simple story about a young girl in <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Walt_Disney's_Salvador_Dali__Destino_2003_HD_1080p
The Lion King 1½ Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:43
- Published: 09 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: alvinandchipmunksroc
The Lion King 1½ (also known as The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata in some countries) is a 2004 American direct-to-video animated film released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on February 10, 2004. The film is the third installment in the Lion King series. The DVD went to the Disney Vault in January 2005. The film is a part prequel-part parallel film to the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King as it focuses on the meerkat/warthog duo Timon and Pumbaa before and during the events of the original film. The film, setup as a frame story, starts out playing the very beginning of the original film. Timon and Pumbaa are shown in silhouette commenting on the movie being shown before them
http://wn.com/The_Lion_King_1½_Part_1
The Tigger Movie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 77:05
- Published: 28 Jul 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: WinnieThePooh4Life
The long awaited Tigger Movie is finally up sorry it took so long to get up, but its finally up & better late then never. Directed By: Jun Falkenstein Production Companies: SimEx Digital Studios, Walt Disney Animation Japan, & Walt Disney Television Animation. Walt Disney Pictures Copyright 2000 I DO NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS TO THIS WALT DISNEY MOVIE
http://wn.com/The_Tigger_Movie
Winnie the Pooh Bluray unboxing
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:23
- Published: 13 Oct 2011
- Uploaded: 20 Oct 2011
- Author: stuffwelikewebcam
www.StuffWeLike.com unboxes Winnie the Pooh.
http://wn.com/Winnie_the_Pooh_Bluray_unboxing
Lea Salonga's DISNEY LEGEND Awards Acceptance Speech & Performance
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:06
- Published: 20 Aug 2011
- Uploaded: 22 Dec 2011
- Author: fictionmindx
Established in 1987, the Disney Legends program recognizes men and women who have made an extraordinary and integral contribution to The Walt Disney Company. The honor is awarded annually during a special ceremony. Lea provided the singing voice for two Disney Princesses: Jasmine in Aladdin (1992), and Fa Mulan in Mulan (1998) and Mulan II (2004). "The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all." — Mulan . . . . . . . Please LIKE her Facebook Fan page: www.facebook.com THANKS! . . . . . . . Credit: As labelled/ tags
http://wn.com/Lea_Salonga's_DISNEY_LEGEND_Awards_Acceptance_Speech_Performance
Justin Bieber at Disney World
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:29
- Published: 10 Dec 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: justinbnewscom
justinbnews.com - Justin appears in some promotional footage for the upcoming "Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade" which airs Christmas day on ABC. Twitter - http
http://wn.com/Justin_Bieber_at_Disney_World
The Lion King 3D :Bloopers And Outtakes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:43
- Published: 23 Aug 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: snitchalert
The Lion King (c) Disney and respective owners. No copyright infringement intended. Disclaimer: I do not own The Lion King, I own nothing of The Lion King. The Lion King is rightfully owned by The Walt Disney Company.
http://wn.com/The_Lion_King_3D_Bloopers_And_Outtakes
Walt Disney - Mulan 2 - Italiano
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 75:30
- Published: 23 Sep 2011
- Uploaded: 23 Dec 2011
- Author: MemiO9Disney
John Carter Trailer 2012 -- Official Movie Trailer | HD
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:38
- Published: 14 Jul 2011
- Uploaded: 24 Dec 2011
- Author: WaltDisneyStudiosUK
Check out the NEW John Carter trailer here: www.youtube.com John Carter of Mars is inexplicably transported to the mysterious and exotic planet Mars, and becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions and discovers that the survival of the planet and its people rests in his hands. Visit the official website at www.disney.co.uk John Carter is a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). John Carter is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands. John Carter of Mars will be out in UK cinemas in March 2012.
http://wn.com/John_Carter_Trailer_2012_-_Official_Movie_Trailer_|_HD
![Rafael Palmeiro (batter), one of the Major League Baseball players suspended for steroid abuse.[64]](http://web.archive.org./web/20111226063121/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/68/4f/34dcfabffee012d6e77e75fb7c48_medium.jpg "Rafael Palmeiro (batter), one of the Major League Baseball players suspended for steroid abuse.[64]")
photo: Creative Commons / Jisp Cheung
19 Dec 2011
Christmas means crowds at Disney World, Universal, Islands of Adventure, and SeaWorld, and crowds + winter = increased germs. I like to visit the parks at this time of year, and I've noticed a steady...
size: 5.7Kb
size: 5.7Kb
photo: WN / Yolanda Leyba
14 Dec 2011
Based in San Francisco, California, Zynga (ZNGA) scheduled a $925 million IPO with a market capitalization of $6.5 billion at a price range mid-point of $9.25 for Friday, December 16, 2011. 11 IPOs to...
size: 7.2Kb
size: 7.2Kb
Most Popular
RELATED LINKS
- 1960 Winter Olympics
- 4017 Disneya
- 70mm
- Academy Award
- Acron, Florida
- Al Michaels
- Alice Comedies
- Amazon Basin
- amusement park
- anglicised
- animation
- Animation Magazine
- animator
- Animatronic
- Anti-communism
- Antisemitism
- AOL
- Art Linkletter
- B'nai B'rith
- backyard railroad
- Bambi
- Bank of America
- Betty Boop
- biographical film
- biography
- Bob Cummings
- Bugs Bunny
- Burbank, California
- California
- Carl Stalling
- Carman Maxwell
- cel
- Celebration, Florida
- character animation
- Charles Mintz
- chemotherapy
- Chicago, Illinois
- Children's Fairyland
- Christian
- Cinderella Castle
- CinemaScope
- Cinephone
- Cold War
- Columbia Pictures
- Comicolor
- computer animation
- Congregationalist
- County Kilkenny
- Cryopreservation
- Cultural icon
- cutout animation
- David Hilberman
- Davy Crockett
- Dawn O'Day
- Der Fuehrer's Face
- Diane Marie Disney
- Disney
- Disney family
- Disney Renaissance
- Disney Vault
Walt Disney Animation Gives 'The Snow Queen' New Life, Retitled 'Frozen' – But Will It Be Hand Drawn?
22 Dec 2011
IMDb
Walt Disney Studios has announced the title for their Holiday 2013 movie -- Frozen. All of the Hollywood tradepapers are reporting that the movie...
size: 0.9Kb
size: 0.9Kb
The Examiner
Tired of the usual unrealistic New Year's resolutions? This year, instead of making a generic promise to lose weight, get organized, or quit smoking come New Year's Day, try some of these resolutions for Disney World junkies on for size. These specific Disney resolutions are followed by a more...
size: 4.9Kb
size: 4.9Kb
The Examiner
On Dec. 21, runDisney announced the addition of another race for its schedule of running events at Disney theme parks. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler, a fall nighttime race, will take place at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (DHS) at Walt Disney World Resort. The Twilight Tower of...
size: 7.7Kb
size: 7.7Kb
'Walt Disney' Ex-Cop To Be Sentenced
21 Dec 2011
MSNBC
A former Hollywood Police officer convicted of falsifying records for fabricating an accident report for a crash his co-worker committed is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. Dewey Pressley, 45, faces just under two years behind bars after he was convicted by a jury earlier this month. He was...
size: 3.0Kb
size: 3.0Kb
Walt Disney World Resorts part 2
19 Dec 2011
The Examiner
Disney’s Dining Plan Disney Resort guests also have the opportunity to experience some of the best dining that Disney has to offer. Disney has over 100 restaurants that participate in the dining plan that also include character dining. The dining plan requires a Magic Your Way...
size: 4.9Kb
size: 4.9Kb
Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend Nearly Full
19 Dec 2011
MSNBC
WESH.com LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- If you're planning on taking part in the 2012 Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend and you haven't registered yet, you'd better get a run on (no pun intended). Registration for the...
size: 1.4Kb
size: 1.4Kb
The Examiner
As the winter vacation months start to roll around, families all around the world flock to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, Walt Disney World. Walt Disney World is a fantastic destination that enables adults, families, and friends to relax, forget about work,...
size: 4.2Kb
size: 4.2Kb
The Examiner
For athletes who have signed up a runDisney event during Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend, the race itself is the main event. But Disney’s Health & Fitness Expo, held at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, is an important part of race-day preparation. Disney’s Health & Fitness...
size: 9.3Kb
size: 9.3Kb
The Examiner
As the winter vacation months start to roll around, families all around the world flock to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, Walt Disney World. Walt Disney World is a fantastic destination that enables adults, families, and friends to relax, forget about work,...
size: 4.2Kb
size: 4.2Kb
| name | Walt Disney |
|---|---|
| birth name | Walter Elias Disney |
| birth date | December 05, 1901 |
| birth place | Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| death date | December 15, 1966 |
| death place | Burbank, California, U.S.
Interred: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S. |
| occupation | Film producer, Co-founder of The Walt Disney Company, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions |
| yearsactive | 1920–1966 |
| spouse | Lillian Bounds (1925–1966) |
| parents | Elias DisneyFlora Call Disney |
| relations | Herbert Arthur Disney (brother)Raymond Arnold Disney (brother)Roy Oliver Disney (brother)Ruth Flora Disney (sister)Ronald William Miller (son-in-law)Robert Borgfeldt Brown (son-in-law)Roy Edward Disney (nephew) |
| children | Diane Marie DisneySharon Mae Disney |
| religion | Christian (Congregationalist) |
| party | Republican |
| signature | Walt Disney Signature 2.svg }} |
Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney, Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong.
The year after his December 15, 1966 death from lung cancer in Burbank, California, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.
1901–1937: Beginnings
Childhood
Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 2156 N. Tripp Avenue in Chicago's Hermosa community area to Irish-Canadian father Elias Disney and German-American mother Flora Call Disney. His great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney, had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny, Ireland where he was born in 1801. Arundel Disney was a descendant of Robert d'Isigny, a Frenchman who had travelled to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. With the d'Isigny name anglicised as "Disney", the family settled in a village now known as Norton Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.In 1878, Disney's father Elias had moved from Huron County, Ontario, Canada to the United States at first seeking gold in California before finally settling down to farm with his parents near Ellis, Kansas, until 1884. Elias worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888, in Acron, Florida. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1890, hometown of his brother Robert who helped Elias financially for most of his early life. In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland. In Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing with one of the family's neighbors, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paying him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert. His interest in trains also developed in Marceline, a town that owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which ran through it. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train then try and spot his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years, before moving to Kansas City in 1911 where Walt and his younger sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School. At school he met Walter Pfeiffer who came from a family of theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long Walt was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' than at home. As well as attending Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute, Walt often took Ruth to Electric Park, 15 blocks from their home, which Disney would later acknowledge as a major influence of his design of Disneyland).
Teenage years
In 1917, Elias acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory in Chicago and moved his family back to the city, where in the fall Disney began his freshman year at McKinley High School and took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute. He became the cartoonist for the school newspaper, drawing patriotic topics and focusing on World War I. Despite dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen to join the army, Disney was rejected for being underage.After his rejection by the army, Walt and a friend decided to join the Red Cross. Soon after joining he was sent to France for a year, where he drove an ambulance, but only after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
Hoping to find work outside the Chicago O-Zell factory, in 1919 Walt moved back to Kansas City to begin his artistic career. After considering whether to become an actor or a newspaper artist, he decided on a career as a newspaper artist, drawing political caricatures or comic strips. But when nobody wanted to hire him as either an artist or even as an ambulance driver, his brother Roy, then working in a local bank, got Walt a temporary job through a bank colleague at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio where he created advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and movie theaters. At Pesmen-Rubin he met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks and when their time at the studio expired, they decided to start their own commercial company together.
In January 1920, Disney and Iwerks formed a short-lived company called, "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists". However, following a rough start, Disney left temporarily to earn money at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, and was soon joined by Iwerks who was not able to run their business alone. While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animations, Disney became interested in animation, and decided to become an animator. The owner of the Ad Company, A.V. Cauger, allowed him to borrow a camera from work to experiment with at home. After reading the Edwin G. Lutz book Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, Disney considered cel animation to be much more promising than the cutout animation he was doing for Cauger. Walt eventually decided to open his own animation business, and recruited a fellow co-worker at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Fred Harman, as his first employee. Walt and Harman then secured a deal with local theater owner Frank L. Newman, arguably the most popular "showman" in the Kansas City area at the time, to screen their cartoons at his local theater, which they titled Laugh-O-Grams.
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams", Disney's cartoons became widely popular in the Kansas City area and through their success, he was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram, for which he hired a vast number of additional animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks. Unfortunately, studio profits were insufficient to cover the high salaries paid to employees. Unable to successfully manage money, Disney's studio became loaded with debt and wound up bankrupt whereupon he decided to set up a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.
Hollywood
Disney and his brother Roy pooled their money and set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood where they needed to find a distributor for Walt's new Alice Comedies, which he had started making while in Kansas City but never got to distribute. Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him that she was keen on a distribution deal for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.
Alice Comedies
Virginia Davis, the live-action star of Alice’s Wonderland and her family relocated from Kansas City to Hollywood at Disney's request, as did Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the Disney Brothers' Studio located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where it remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. After a brief courtship, the pair married that same year.The new series, Alice Comedies, proved reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day and Margie Gay as Alice with Lois Hardwick also briefly assuming the role. By the time the series ended in 1927, its focus was more on the animated characters and in particular a cat named Julius who resembled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
By 1927, Charles Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her business. He then 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 by Iwerks — became a popular figure. The Disney studio expanded and Walt re-hired Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng from Kansas City.Disney went to New York in February 1928 to negotiate a higher fee per short and was shocked when Mintz told him that not only did he want to reduce the fee he paid Disney per short but also that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng—but not Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney—under contract and would start his own studio if Disney did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, owned the Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Walt. Disney declined Mintz's offer and as a result lost most of his animation staff whereupon he found himself on his own again.
It subsequently took his company 78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character when in 2006 the Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal, through a trade for longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels.
Mickey Mouse
After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him, which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City. Ub Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney to make the character easier to animate although Mickey's voice and personality were provided by Disney himself until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." Besides Oswald and Mickey, a similar mouse-character is seen in the Alice Comedies, which featured "Ike the Mouse". Moreover, the first Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks showed a Mickey Mouse look-alike playing fiddle. The initial films were animated by Iwerks with his name prominently featured on the title cards. Originally named "Mortimer", the mouse was later re-christened "Mickey" by Lillian Disney who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name of Mickey's rival for Minnie – taller than his renowned adversary and speaking with a Brooklyn accent.
The first animated short to feature Mickey, Plane Crazy was a silent film like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound entitled Steamboat Willie. A businessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became an instant success, and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks. After the release of Steamboat Willie, Disney successfully used sound in all of his subsequent cartoons, and Cinephone also became the new distributor for Disney's early sound cartoons. Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartoon character and by 1930, despite their having sound, cartoons featuring Felix had faded from the screen after failing to gain attention. Mickey's popularity would subsequently skyrocket in the early 1930s.
Silly Symphonies
Following in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly Symphonies were released in 1929. The first, The Skeleton Dance was entirely drawn and animated by Iwerks, who was also responsible for drawing the majority of cartoons released by Disney in 1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the Disney studio was not receiving its rightful share of profits from Pat Powers, and in 1930, Disney signed a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. The original basis of the cartoons was their musical novelty with the first Silly Symphony cartoons featuring scores by Carl Stalling.Iwerks was soon lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract, while Stalling would also later leave Disney to join Iwerks. Iwerks launched his Flip the Frog series with the first voiced color cartoon Fiddlesticks, filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks also created two other cartoon series, Willie Whopper and the Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shut down his studio in order to work on various projects dealing with animation technology. He would return to Disney in 1940 and go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animation technologies in the studio's research and development department.
By 1932, although Mickey Mouse had become a relatively popular cinema character, Silly Symphonies was not as successful. The same year also saw competition increase as Max Fleischer's flapper cartoon character, Betty Boop, gained popularity among theater audiences. Fleischer, considered Disney's main rival in the 1930s, was also the father of Richard Fleischer, whom Disney would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of Disney cartoons to be replaced by United Artists. In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-strip technicolor camera, approached Walt and convinced him to reshoot the black and white Flowers and Trees in three-strip Technicolor. Flowers and Trees would go on to be a phenomenal success and would also win the first 1932 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. After the release of Flowers and Trees, all subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were in color while Disney was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving him the sole right to use their three-strip process, a period eventually extended to five years. Through Silly Symphonies, Disney also created his most successful cartoon short of all time, The Three Little Pigs (1933). The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, featuring the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
First Academy Award
In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of "Mickey Mouse", a series which switched to color in 1935 and soon launched spin-offs for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. Pluto and Donald became standalone cartoons in 1937, with Goofy following in 1939. Of all Mickey's partners, Donald Duck, who first teamed up with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan's Benefit, was arguably the most popular, going on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character of all time.
Children
The Disneys' first attempt at pregnancy ended when Lillian miscarried. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter, Diane Marie Disney, on December 18, 1933. The Disneys adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936 – February 16, 1993).
1937–1941: Golden age of animation
"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
[[Image:Walt Disney Snow white 1937 trailer screenshot (13).jpg|left|thumb|Walt Disney introduces each of the Seven Dwarfs in a scene from the original 1937 Snow White theatrical trailer.]]Following the creation of two cartoon series, in 1934 Disney began planning a full-length feature. The following year, opinion polls showed that another cartoon series, Popeye the Sailor, produced by Max Fleischer, was more popular than Mickey Mouse. Nevertheless, Disney was able to put Mickey back on top as well as increase his popularity by colorizing and partially redesigning the character to become what was considered his most appealing design to date. When the film industry learned of Disney's plans to produce an animated feature-length version of Snow White, they were certain that the endeavor would destroy the Disney Studio and dubbed the project "Disney's Folly". Both Lillian and Roy tried to talk Disney out of the project, but he continued plans for the feature, employing Chouinard Art Institute professor Don Graham to start a training operation for the studio staff. Disney then 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 – a new technique first used by Disney in the 1937 Silly Symphonies short The Old Mill.
All of this development and training was used to increase quality at the studio and to ensure that the feature film would match Disney's quality expectations. Entitled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the feature went into full production in 1934 and continued until mid-1937, when the studio ran out of money. To obtain the funding to complete Snow White, Disney had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers at the Bank of America, who then gave the studio the money to finish the picture. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater on December 21, 1937 and at its conclusion the audience gave Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a standing ovation. Snow White, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, was released in February 1938 under a new distribution deal with RKO Radio Pictures. RKO had been the distributor for Disney cartoons in 1936, after it closed down the Van Beuren Studios in exchange for distribution. The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million on its initial release.
Golden age of animation
Following the success of Snow White, for which Disney received one full-size, and seven miniature Oscar statuettes, he was able to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939. Snow White was not only the peak of Disney's success, but also ushered in a period that would later be known as the Golden Age of Animation for the studio. Feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi as well as the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Wind in the Willows while the shorts staff carried on working on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series, ending the Silly Symphonies at this time. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments. The inexpensive Dumbo was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staff went on strike, permanently straining relations between Disney and his artists.
1941–1945: World War II era
In 1941, the U.S. State Department sent Disney and a group of animators to South America as part of its Good Neighbor policy, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resultant movie, Saludos Amigos.Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the United States entered World War II. The U.S. Army contracted most of the Disney studio's facilities where the staff created training and instruction films for the military, home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power. However, military films did not generate income, and the feature film Bambi underperformed on its release in April 1942. Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944, establishing a seven-year re-release tradition for his features. In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.
In 1944, Encyclopædia Britannica publisher William Benton, entered into unsuccessful negotiations with Disney to make six to twelve educational films per annum. Disney was asked by the US Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.
1945–1955: Post-war period
Disney studios also created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. These included Make Mine Music (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 by Kenneth Grahame, and the second on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. During this period, Disney 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.By 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. Work also began on Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1948 the studio also initiated a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with On Seal Island the first. Despite its resounding success with feature films, the studio's animation shorts were no longer as popular as they once were, with people paying more attention to Warner Bros. and their animation star Bugs Bunny. 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, a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.
During the mid-1950s, Disney produced a number of educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957.
Testimony before Congress
Disney 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, Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers, Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations and Sorrell went on to testify before the HUAC in 1946 when insufficient evidence was found to link him to the Communist Party.Disney also 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.
1955–1966: Theme parks and beyond
Planning Disneyland
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. The idea for a children's theme park came after a visit to Children's Fairyland in Oakland, California. This plan was originally intended to be built on a plot located across the street to the south of the studio. These original ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise that would become Disneyland. Disney spent five years developing Disneyland and created a new subsidiary company, WED Enterprises, to carry out planning and production of the park. A small group of Disney studio employees joined the Disneyland development project as engineers and planners, and were dubbed Imagineers.As Disney explained one of his earliest plans to Herb Ryman, who created the first aerial drawing of Disneyland presented to the Bank of America during fund raising for the project, he said, "Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train." Entertaining his daughters and their friends in his backyard and taking them for rides on his Carolwood Pacific Railroad had inspired Disney to include a railroad in the plans for Disneyland.
Disneyland grand opening
Disneyland officially opened on July 18, 1955. On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland hosted a live TV preview, among the thousands of people in attendance were Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Walt gave the following dedication day speech:
Carolwood Pacific Railroad
During 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home on a large piece of land in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. With the help of his friends Ward and Betty Kimball, who already had their own backyard railroad, Disney 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, came from his home's location on Carolwood Drive. The railroad's half-mile long layout included a long trestle bridge, loops, overpasses, gradients, an elevated berm, and a tunnel underneath his wife's flowerbed. He named the miniature working steam locomotive built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie Lilly Belle in his wife's honor and 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.
Expansion into new areas
As Walt Disney 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, soon followed by 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 studio produced its first TV special, One Hour in Wonderland, in 1950. Disney began hosting a weekly anthology series on ABC entitled Disneyland, after the park, on which he aired clips of past Disney productions, gave tours of his studio, and familiarized the public with Disneyland as it was being constructed in Anaheim. The show also featured a Davy Crockett miniseries, which started the "Davy Crockett craze" among American youth, during which millions of coonskin caps and other Crockett memorabilia were sold across the country. In 1955, the studio's first daily television show, Mickey Mouse Club debuted and would continue in various incarnations into the 1990s.As the studio expanded and diversified into other media, Disney devoted less of his attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, whom he dubbed the Nine Old Men. Although he was spending less time supervising the production of the animated films, he was always present at story meetings.. During Disney's lifetime, the animation department created the successful Lady and the Tramp ( the first animated film in CinemaScope) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty ( the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels) in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone in 1963.
Production of short cartoons kept pace until 1956, when Disney shut down the responsible division although special shorts projects would continue for the remainder of the studio's duration on an irregular basis. These productions were all distributed by Disney's new subsidiary, Buena Vista Distribution, which had taken over all distribution duties for Disney films from RKO by 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 on a number of successful Disney characters and films.
After 1955, the Disneyland TV show was renamed Walt Disney Presents. It switched from black-and-white to color in 1961 and changed its name to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, at the same time moving from ABC to NBC, and eventually evolving into its current form as The Wonderful World of Disney. The series continued to air on NBC until 1981, when it was picked up by CBS. Since then, it has aired on ABC, NBC, the Hallmark Channel and the Cartoon Network via separate broadcast rights deals. During its run, the Disney series offered some recurring characters, such as the newspaper reporter and sleuth "Gallegher" played by Roger Mobley with a plot based on the writings of Richard Harding Davis.
Disney had already formed his own music publishing division in 1949 and in 1956, partly inspired by the huge success of the television theme song The Ballad of Davy Crockett, he created a company-owned record production and distribution entity called Disneyland Records.
Early 1960s successes
By the early 1960s, the Disney empire had become a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics.After decades of pursuit, Disney finally acquired 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. The same year, 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 was to be established on the East Coast.
Although the studio would probably have proved major competition for Hanna-Barbera, Disney decided not to enter the race and mimic Hanna-Barbera by producing Saturday morning TV cartoon series. With the expansion of Disney's empire and constant production of feature films, the financial burden involved in such a move would have proven too great.
Plans for Disney World and EPCOT
In early 1964, Disney announced plans to develop another theme park to be called Disney World a few miles west of Orlando, Florida. Disney World was to include "the Magic Kingdom", a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow, known as EPCOT for short.
Mineral King Ski Resort
During the early to mid 1960s, Walt Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral King, a glacial valley in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. He brought in experts such as 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 started. Disney's death and opposition from conservationists ensured that the resort was never built.
Death
In 1966, Disney was scheduled to undergo surgery to repair an old neck injury caused by many years of playing polo at the Riviera Club in Hollywood. On November 2, during pre-operative X-rays, doctors at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, across the street from the Disney Studio, discovered a tumor in his left lung. Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung. After removal of the lung, doctors informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years. After several chemotherapy sessions, Disney and his wife spent a short amount of time in Palm Springs, California. On November 30, Disney collapsed at his home. He was revived by fire department personnel and rushed to St. Joseph's where on December 15, 1966, at 9:30 a.m., ten days after his 65th birthday, Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer. The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor Kurt Russell, the significance of which remains a mystery, even to Russell.Disney was cremated on December 17, 1966, and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Roy O. Disney continued out with the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World in honor of his brother.
The final productions in which Disney played an active role were the animated features The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, as well as the live-action musical comedy The Happiest Millionaire, both released in 1967. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman recalled of the last time he saw Disney: }}
A long-standing urban legend maintains that Disney was cryogenically frozen, and his frozen corpse stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. However, the first known cryogenic freezing of a human corpse did not occur until January 1967, more than a month after his death.
Legacy: 1967–present
Continuing Disney Productions
After Walt Disney's death, Roy Disney returned from retirement to take full control of Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises. In October 1971, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt Disney World Resort.After giving his dedication for Walt Disney World, Roy asked Lillian Disney to join him. As the orchestra played "When You Wish Upon a Star", she stepped up to the podium accompanied by Mickey Mouse. He then said, "Lilly, you knew all of Walt's ideas and hopes as well as anybody; what would Walt think of it [Walt Disney World]?". "I think Walt would have approved," she replied. Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 20, 1971, the day he was due to open the Disneyland Christmas parade. During the second phase of the "Walt Disney World" theme park, EPCOT was translated by 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 Disney had envisioned. In 1992, Walt Disney Imagineering took the step closer to Disney's original ideas and dedicated Celebration, Florida, a town built by the Walt Disney Company adjacent to Walt Disney World, that hearkens back to the spirit of EPCOT. EPCOT was also originally intended to be devoid of Disney characters which initially limited the appeal of the park to young children. However, the company later changed this policy and Disney characters can now be found throughout the park, often dressed in costumes reflecting the different pavilions.
The Disney 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. Among other assets The Walt Disney Company owns 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 had annual revenues of over U.S. $35 billion.
Disney Animation
Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animation. He was one of the first people to move away from basic cartoons with just "impossible outlandish gags" and crudely drawn characters to an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience can connect to on an emotional level. The personality displayed in the characters of his films and the technological advancements remain influential when animating today. He was also considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his demise until the late 1980's in a period known as the Disney Renaissance. The most finacially and critically successful films produced during this time include Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). In 1995 Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar's Toy Story, the first computer animated feature film. Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney claimed that Walt would have loved Toy Story and that it was "his kind of movie" . With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful Traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early 2000s emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility, firing hundreds of people in the process. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film, Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to Chief Creative Officer, that position has changed with the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation and the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.
CalArts
In his later years, Disney devoted substantial time to funding The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s, when Disney died, one-fourth of his estate went to CalArts, which helped in building its campus. In his will, Disney paved the way for the creation of several charitable trusts which included one for the California Institute of the Arts and other for the Disney Foundation. He also donated of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia for construction of the school. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1972.In an early admissions bulletin, Disney explained: }}
Walt Disney Family Museum
In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum opened in the Presidio of San Francisco. Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including 248 awards that he received.
Anti-Semitism accusations
Disney was long rumored to be anti-Semitic during his lifetime, and such rumors have persisted after his death. Disney biographer Neal Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concluded in 2006 that available evidence does not support such accusations. In a CBS interview Gabler summarized his findings: }} Disney eventually distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance in the 1950s.The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that Disney did have "difficult relationships" with some Jewish individuals, and that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons, such as Three Little Pigs. However, the museum points out that Disney employed Jews throughout his career and was named "1955 Man Of The Year" by the B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills.
Academy Awards
Walt Disney holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (59) and the number of Oscars awarded (22). He also earned four honorary Oscars while his last competitive Academy Award was posthumous.
Other honors
Walt Disney was the inaugural recipient of a star on the Anaheim walk of stars awarded in recognition of his significant contribution to the city of Anaheim and specifically Disneyland, which is now the Disneyland Resort. The star is located at the pedestrian entrance to the Disneyland Resort on Harbor Boulevard. Disney has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and the other for his television work.Walt Disney received the Congressional Gold Medal on May 24, 1968 (P.L. 90-316, 82 Stat. 130–131) and the Légion d'Honneur awarded by France in 1935. In 1935, Walt received a special medal from the League of Nations for creation of Mickey Mouse, held to be Mickey Mouse award. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on September 14, 1964. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Walt Disney into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
A minor planet, 4017 Disneya, discovered in 1980 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina, is named after him.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, opened in 2003, was named in his honor.
In 1993, HBO began development of a Walt Disney biopic directed by Frank Pierson and featuring Lawrence Turman but the project never materialized and was soon abandoned. However, Walt - The Man Behind the Myth, a biographical documentary about Disney, was later made.
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Discusses Walt Disney's attitude towards unions and communism.
Category:1901 births Category:1966 deaths Category:American animators Category:American anti-communists Category:American cartoonists Category:American Congregationalists Category:American Christians Category:American entertainment industry businesspeople Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American screenwriters Category:American television personalities Category:American voice actors Category:Animated film directors Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:California Republicans Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Disney comics writers Category:Disney people Category:English-language film directors Category:Film studio executives Category:American artists of German descent Category:American writers of German descent Category:Illinois Republicans Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French descent Category:Kansas City Art Institute alumni Category:National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Category:Animated film producers
af:Walt Disney ar:والت ديزني an:Walt Disney az:Uolt Disney bn:ওয়াল্ট ডিজনি be:Уолт Дысней be-x-old:Ўолт Дыснэй bs:Walt Disney br:Walt Disney bg:Уолт Дисни ca:Walt Disney cs:Walt Disney cy:Walt Disney da:Walt Disney de:Walt Disney et:Walt Disney el:Ουώλτ Ντίσνεϋ es:Walt Disney eo:Walt Disney ext:Walt Disney eu:Walt Disney fa:والت دیزنی hif:Walt Disney fr:Walt Disney fy:Walt Disney ga:Walt Disney gl:Walt Disney ko:월트 디즈니 hi:वॉल्ट डिज़्नी hr:Walt Disney io:Walt Disney id:Walt Disney ia:Walt Disney os:Дисней, Уолт is:Walt Disney it:Walt Disney he:וולט דיסני jv:Walt Disney kn:ವಾಲ್ಟ್ ಡಿಸ್ನಿ ka:უოლტ დისნეი kk:Уолт Дисней sw:Walt Disney la:Gualterius Elias Disney lv:Volts Disnejs lb:Walt Disney lt:Walt Disney li:Walt Disney hu:Walt Disney mk:Волт Дизни ml:വാൾട്ട് ഡിസ്നി mr:वॉल्ट डिस्नी arz:والت ديزنى ms:Walt Disney mn:Уолт Дисней nl:Walt Disney new:वाल्ट डिज्नी ja:ウォルト・ディズニー no:Walt Disney nn:Walt Disney oc:Walt Disney pnb:والٹ ڈزنی nds:Walt Disney pl:Walt Disney pt:Walt Disney kbd:Уолт Дисней ro:Walt Disney qu:Walt Disney rue:Уолт Дісней ru:Дисней, Уолт sah:Уолт Дисней se:Walt Disney sa:वाल्ट डिज्नी sq:Walt Disney scn:Walt Disney simple:Walt Disney sk:Walt Disney sl:Walt Disney szl:Walt Disney sr:Волт Дизни sh:Walt Disney fi:Walt Disney sv:Walt Disney tl:Walt Disney ta:வால்ட் டிஸ்னி tt:Уолт Дисней te:వాల్ట్ డిస్నీ th:วอลต์ ดิสนีย์ tg:Уолтер Элайас Дисней tr:Walt Disney uk:Волт Дісней ur:والٹ ڈزنی vi:Walt Disney vo:Walt Disney war:Walt Disney zh-yue:和路迪士尼 bat-smg:Volts Dėsniejos zh:華特·迪士尼
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| company name | The Walt Disney Company |
|---|---|
| company logo | |
| company type | Public company |
| traded as | Dow Jones Industrial Average Component |
| foundation | Los Angeles, California, U.S.(October 16, 1923) |
| founder | Walt and Roy Disney |
| location city | Burbank, California, U.S. |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| key people | Robert Iger()John E. Pepper, Jr. () |
| industry | Media conglomerate |
| revenue | US$ 38.063 billion (FY 2010) |
| operating income | US$ 6.627 billion (FY 2010) |
| net income | US$ 4.313 billion (FY 2010) |
| assets | US$ 69.206 billion (FY 2010) |
| equity | US$ 39.342 billion (FY 2010) |
| num employees | 149,000 (FY 2010) |
| divisions | |
| subsid | |
| homepage | Disney.com }} |
The Walt Disney Company () (commonly referred to as Disney) is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio the company was reincorporated as Walt Disney Productions, Ltd. in 1929, and became publicly-traded as Walt Disney Productions in 1938. Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel. Taking on its current name in 1986, The Walt Disney Company expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theatre, radio, publishing, and online media. In addition, it has created new divisions of the company in order to market more mature content than it typically associates with its flagship family-oriented brands.
The company is best known for the products of its film studio, the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, and today one of the largest and best-known studios in Hollywood. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, and ABC Family; publishing, merchandising, and theatre divisions; and owns and licenses 14 theme parks around the world. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991. An early and well-known cartoon creation of the company, Mickey Mouse, is the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company.
Corporate history
1923–1928: The silent era
In early 1923, Kansas City, Missouri animator Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alice's Wonderland, which featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. Film distributor Margaret J. Winkler contacted Disney with plans to distribute a whole series of Alice Comedies based upon Alice's Wonderland. The contract signed, Walt and his brother Roy Disney moved to Los Angeles. On October 16, 1923, they officially set up shop in their uncle Robert Disney's garage, marking the beginning of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. Within a few months, the company moved into the back of a realty office in downtown Los Angeles, where production continued on the Alice Comedies until 1927. In 1926, the studio moved to a newly constructed studio facility on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles.After the demise of the Alice comedies, Disney developed an all-cartoon series starring his first original character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was distributed by Winkler Pictures through Universal Pictures. Disney only completed 26 Oswald shorts before losing the contract in February 1928, when Winkler's husband Charles Mintz took over their distribution company. Mintz hired away all of Disney's animators except Ub Iwerks to start his own animation studio.
1928–1934: Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies
In 1928, to recover from the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse. Disney's first sound film Steamboat Willie, a cartoon starring Mickey, was released on November 18, 1928. It was the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, behind Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho. It was also the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound. Disney used Pat Powers' Cinephone system, created by Powers using Lee De Forest's Phonofilm system. Steamboat Willie premiered at B. S. Moss's Colony Theater in New York City, now The Broadway Theatre.Disney continued to produce cartoons with Mickey Mouse and other characters, and began the Silly Symphonies series, which was advertised as "Mickey Mouse Presents a Walt Disney Silly Symphony". In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor (through the end of 1935) to produce cartoons in color, beginning with Flowers and Trees (1932). Disney released cartoons through Powers' Celebrity Pictures (1928–1930), Columbia Pictures (1930–1932), and United Artists (1932–1937). The popularity of the Mickey Mouse series and the Silly Symphony series allowed Disney to plan for his first feature-length animation.
1934–1945: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and World War II
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 in December 1937 and became highest-grossing film of that time by 1939. Snow White was released through RKO Radio Pictures, which had assumed distribution of Disney's product in July 1937, after United Artists attempted to attain future television rights to the Disney shorts.Using the profits from Snow White, Disney financed the construction of a new studio complex in Burbank, California. The new Walt Disney Studios, in which the company is headquartered to this day, was completed and open for business by the end of 1939. The following year, Walt Disney Productions had its initial public offering.
The studio continued releasing animated shorts and features, such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). With the onset of World War II, box-office profits began to dry up. When the United States entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of Disney's animators were drafted into the armed forces, and the studio itself was temporarily commandeered by the U.S. military. The U.S. government commissioned the studio to produce training and propaganda films, which provided Disney with needed funds. Films such as the feature Victory Through Air Power and the short Education for Death (both 1943) were meant to galvanize public support for the war effort. Even the studio's characters joined the effort, as Donald Duck appeared in a number of comical propaganda shorts, including the Academy Award-winning Der Fuehrer's Face (1943).
1946–1954: Post-war and television
With limited staff and little operating capital during and after the war, Disney's feature films during much of the 1940s were "package films," or collections of shorts, such as The Three Caballeros (1944) and Melody Time (1948), which performed poorly at the box-office. At the same time, the studio began producing live-action films and documentaries. Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948) featured animated segments, while the True-Life Adventures series, which included such films as Seal Island (1948) and The Vanishing Prairie (1954), were also popular and won numerous awards.The release of Cinderella in 1950 proved that feature-length animation could still succeed in the marketplace. Other releases of the period included Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953), both in production before the war began, and Disney's first all-live action feature, Treasure Island (1950). Other early all-live-action Disney films included The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952),The Sword and the Rose (1953), and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Disney ended its distribution contract with RKO in 1953, forming its own distribution arm, Buena Vista Distribution.
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. Disneyland allowed Disney a platform to introduce new projects and broadcast older ones, and ABC became Disney's partner in the financing and development of Disney's next venture, located in the middle of an orange grove near Anaheim, California.
1955–1965: Disneyland
In 1954, Walt Disney used his Disneyland series to unveil what would become Disneyland, an idea conceived out of a desire for a place where parents and children could both have fun at the same time. On July 18, 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland to the general public. On July 17, 1955 Disneyland was previewed with a live television broadcast hosted by Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan. After a shaky start, Disneyland continued to grow and attract visitors from across the country and around the world. A major expansion in 1959 included the addition of America's first monorail system.For the 1964 New York World's Fair, Disney prepared four separate attractions for various sponsors, each of which would find its way to Disneyland in one form or another. During this time, Walt Disney was also secretly scouting out new sites for a second Disney theme park. In November 1955, "Disney Planet" was announced, with plans for theme parks, hotels, and even a model city on thousands of acres of land purchased outside of Orlando, Florida.
Disney continued to focus its talents on television throughout the 1950s. Its weekday afternoon children's television program The Mickey Mouse Club, featuring its roster of young "Mouseketeers", premiered in 1955 to great success, as did the Davy Crockett miniseries, starring Fess Parker and broadcast on the Disneyland anthology show. Two years later, the Zorro series would prove just as popular, running for two seasons on ABC, as well as separate episodes on the Disneyland series. Despite such success, Walt Disney Productions invested little into television ventures in the 1960s, with the exception of the long-running anthology series, later known as The Wonderful World of Disney.
Disney's film studios stayed busy as well, averaging five or six releases per year during this period. While the production of shorts slowed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s, 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), which introduced a new xerography process to transfer the drawings to animation cels. Disney's live-action releases were spread across a number of genres, including historical fiction (Johnny Tremain, 1957), adaptations of children's books (Pollyanna, 1960) and modern-day comedies (The Shaggy Dog, 1959). Disney's most successful film of the 1960s was a live action/animated musical adaptation of Mary Poppins, which received five Academy Awards, including Best Actress Julie Andrews.
1966–1971: The deaths of Walt and Roy Disney and the opening of Walt Disney World
On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of lung cancer, and 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 another young Disney discovery, Kurt Russell. The 1970s opened with the release of Disney's first "post-Walt" animated feature, The Aristocats, followed by a return to fantasy musicals in 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened to the public, with Roy Disney dedicating the facility in person later that month. Two months later, on December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a stroke, leaving the company under control of Donn Tatum, Card Walker, and Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller, each trained by Walt and Roy.
1972–1984: Theatrical malaise and new leadership
While Walt Disney Productions continued releasing family-friendly films throughout the 1970s, such as Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Freaky Friday (1976), the films did not fare as well at the box office as earlier material. The animation studio, however, saw success with Robin Hood (1973), The Rescuers (1977), and The Fox and the Hound (1981).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, the first being Take Down, also released in 1979. In 1980, Disney has joined venture with Paramount Pictures on the production of the 1980 film adaptation of Popeye, which was a critical failure, yet a moderate box office success. Disney joined with Paramount again in the 1981 fantasy epic Dragonslayer, which was more mature than anything Disney was ever involved with at the time, though it was a box office failure. The releases of these and other PG-rated Disney films such as the boldly innovative Tron (1982) led Disney CEO Ron Miller to create Touchstone Pictures as a brand for Disney to release more adult-oriented material. Touchstone's first release was the comedy Splash (1984), which was a box office success.
With The Wonderful World of Disney remaining a prime-time staple, Disney returned to television in the 1970s with syndicated programing such as the anthology series The Mouse Factory and a brief revival of the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1980, Disney launched Walt Disney Home Video to take advantage of the newly-emerging videocassette market. On April 18, 1983, The Disney Channel debuted as a subscription-level channel on cable systems nationwide, featuring its large library of classic films and TV series, along with original programming and family-friendly third-party offerings.
Walt Disney World received much of the company's attention through the 1970s and into the 1980s. In 1978, Disney executives announced plans for the second Walt Disney World theme park, EPCOT Center, which would open in October 1982. Inspired by Walt Disney's dream of a futuristic model city, EPCOT Center was built as a "permanent World's Fair", complete with exhibits sponsored by major American corporations, as well as pavilions based on the cultures of other nations. In Japan, the Oriental Land Company partnered with Walt Disney Productions to build the first Disney theme park outside of the United States, Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in April 1983.
Despite the success of the Disney Channel and its new theme park creations, Walt Disney Productions was financially vulnerable. Its film library was valuable, but offered few current successes, and its leadership team was unable to keep up with other studios, particularly the works of Don Bluth, who defected from Disney in 1979. 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. to head up the company.
1984–2004: The Eisner era
:See also, 1984–2004 under Timeline of The Walt Disney Company. Since Walt's death in 1966, The Walt Disney Company had narrowly survived takeover attempts by corporate raiders. Its shareholders Sid Bass and Roy E. Disney brought on Eisner and former Warner Brothers chief Frank Wells to replace Ron W. Miller in 1984 and strengthen the company.During the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, Disney revitalized. Beginning with Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and later, The Little Mermaid (1989), its flagship animation studio enjoyed a series of commercial and critical successes. In addition, the company successfully entered the field of television animation with a number of lavishly budgeted and acclaimed series such as Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Duck Tales and Gargoyles, which were credited in raising artistic standards for the medium in general. Disney also broadened its adult offerings in film when then Disney Studio Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg acquired Miramax Films in 1993. Disney acquired many other media sources during the decade, including a merger with Capital Cities/ABC in 1996 which brought broadcast network ABC and its assets, including the ESPN networks, into the Disney fold.
During the early part of the 1990s, Eisner and his partners set out to plan "The Disney Decade" which was to feature new parks around the world, existing park expansions, new films, and new media investments. While some of the proposals did follow through, most did not. These included the Euro Disney Resort (now Disneyland Paris), Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios), Disney's California Adventure Park, Disney-MGM Studios Paris (eventually opened in 2002 as Walt Disney Studios Park), and various film projects including a Who Framed Roger Rabbit franchise.
Wells died in a helicopter crash in 1994 (The Lion King, which went on to become the most successful hand-drawn animated picture of all time, was dedicated to his memory). Shortly thereafter, Katzenberg resigned and formed Dreamworks SKG with partners Steven Spielberg and David Geffen because Eisner would not appoint Katzenberg to Wells' now-available post. Instead, Eisner recruited his friend Michael Ovitz, one of the founders of the Creative Artists Agency, to be President, with minimal involvement from Disney's board of directors (which at the time included Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier, the CEO of Hilton Hotels Corporation Stephen Bollenbach, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Yale dean Robert A. M. Stern, and Eisner's predecessors Raymond Watson and Card Walker). Ovitz lasted only 14 months and left Disney in December 1996 via a "no fault termination" with a severance package of $38 million in cash and 3 million stock options worth roughly $100 million at the time of Ovitz's departure. The Ovitz episode engendered a long running derivative suit, which finally concluded in June 2006, almost 10 years later. Chancellor William B. Chandler, III of the Delaware Court of Chancery, despite describing Eisner's behavior as falling "far short of what shareholders expect and demand from those entrusted with a fiduciary position..." found in favor of Eisner and the rest of the Disney board because they hadn't violated the letter of the law (namely, the duty of care owed by a corporation's officers and board to its shareholders).
"Save Disney" campaign and Eisner's ouster
In 2003, Roy E. Disney, the son of Disney co-founder Roy O. Disney and nephew of Walt Disney, resigned from his positions as the company's vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation, accusing Eisner of micromanagement, flops with the ABC television network, timidity in the theme park business, turning the Walt Disney Company into a "rapacious, soul-less" company, and refusing to establish a clear succession plan, as well as a string of box-office movie flops starting in the year 2000.On March 3, 2004, at Disney's annual shareholders' meeting, a surprising and unprecedented 43% of Disney's shareholders, predominantly rallied by former board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, withheld their proxies to re-elect Eisner to the board. Disney's board then gave the chairmanship position to Mitchell. However, the board did not immediately remove Eisner as chief executive.
On March 13, 2005, Eisner announced that he would step down as CEO one year before his contract expired. On September 30, Eisner resigned both as an executive and as a member of the board of directors, and, severing all formal ties with the company, he waived his contractual rights to perks such as the use of a corporate jet and an office at the company's Burbank headquarters. Eisner's replacement was his longtime assistant, Robert Iger.
2005–present: The Iger Era
On July 8, 2005, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney returned to The Walt Disney Company as a consultant and with the new title of Non Voting Director, Emeritus. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Disneyland Park on July 17, and opened Hong Kong Disneyland on September 12. Walt Disney Feature Animation released Chicken Little, the company's first film using 3-D animation. On October 1, Robert Iger replaced Michael Eisner as CEO. Miramax co-founders Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein also departed the company to form their own studio. On July 25, 2005, Disney announced that it was closing DisneyToon Studios Australia in October 2006, after 17 years of existence.Aware that Disney's relationship with Pixar was wearing thin, President and CEO Robert Iger began negotiations with leadership of Pixar Animation Studios, Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull, regarding possible merger. 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 among noteworthy results was the transition of Pixar's CEO and 50.1% shareholder, Steve Jobs, becoming Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7% and a member of Disney's Board of Directors. Ed Catmull took over as President of Pixar Animation Studios. Former Executive Vice-President of Pixar, John Lasseter, became Chief Creative Officer of both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios, as well assuming the role of Principal Creative Adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering.
After a long time working in the company as a senior executive and large shareholder, Director Emeritus Roy E. Disney died from stomach cancer on December 16, 2009. At the time of his death, he had roughly 1% of all Disney shares which amounted to 16 million. He is seen to be the last member of the Disney family to be actively involved in the running of the company and working in the company altogether.
On December 31, 2009, Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment, Inc. for $4.24 billion. Disney has stated that their acquisition of the company will not affect Marvel's products, neither will the nature of any Marvel characters be transformed.
In October 2009, Disney Channel president Rich Ross, hired by Iger, replaced Dick Cook as chairman of the company and, in November, began restructuring the company to focus more on family friendly products. Later in January 2010, Disney decided to shut down Miramax after downsizing Touchstone, but one month later, they began selling the Miramax brand and its 700-title film library. On March 12, ImageMovers Digital, Robert Zemeckis's company which Disney had bought in 2007, was shut down. In April 2010, Lyric Street, Disney's country music label in Nashville, was shut down. In May 2010, the company sold the Power Rangers brand, as well as its 700-episode library, back to Haim Saban. In June, the company canceled Jerry Bruckheimer's film project Killing Rommel. In September 2010, Disney Interactive Studios was downsized. In November, two ABC stations were sold.
With the release of Tangled in 2010, Ed Catmull said that the "princess" genre of films was taking a hiatus until, "someone has a fresh take on it … but we don't have any other musicals or fairytales lined up." He explained that they were looking to get away from the princess era due to the changes in audience composition and preference. However, in the official Facebook page for Disney, Ed Catmull stated that this was just a rumor.
In April 2011, Disney broke ground on Shanghai Disney Resort. Costing $4.4 billion, the resort is slated to open in 2015. Later, in August 2011, Bob Iger stated on a conference call that after the success of the Pixar and Marvel purchases, he and the Walt Disney Company are looking to "buy either new characters or businesses that are capable of creating great characters and great stories."
Company divisions
The Walt Disney Company operates as four primary divisions: The Walt Disney Studios or Studio Entertainment, which includes the company's film, recording label, and theatrical divisions; Parks and Resorts, featuring the company's theme parks, cruise line, and other travel-related assets; Disney Consumer Products, which produces toys, clothing, and other merchandising based upon Disney-owned properties, and Media Networks, which includes the company's television and Internet operations.Its main entertainment features and holdings include Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Disney Music Group, Walt Disney Theatrical, Disney-ABC Television Group, Radio Disney, ESPN Inc., Disney Interactive Media Group, Disney Consumer Products, Pixar Studios, and Marvel Entertainment. Its resorts and diversified holdings include Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, Euro Disney S.C.A., Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Disney Vacation Club and Disney Cruise Line.
Executive management
Presidents
Chief Executive Officers
Chairmen of the Board
From 1945 to 1960 Walt and Roy Disney shared the role of Chairman of the Board. Walt dropped the Chairman title in 1960 so he could focus more on the creative aspects of the company. Roy O. Disney kept the Chairman and CEO's role.
Vice Chairman of the Board
Chief Operating Officers
Financial data
Revenues
| + Annual gross revenues of The Walt Disney Company (in millions USD) | ||||||
| Year | Walt Disney Studio Entertainment | Disney Consumer Products | !style="width:150px" | Disney Media Networks | Walt Disney Internet Group / Disney Interactive Media Group | Total |
| 1991 | 2,593.0 | 724 | 2,794.0 | 6,111 | ||
| 1992 | 3,115 | 1,081 | 3,306 | 7,502 | ||
| 1993 | 3,673.4 | 1,415.1 | 3,440.7 | 8,529 | ||
| 1994 | 4,793 | 1,798.2 | 3,463.6 | 359 | 10,414 | |
| 1995 | 6,001.5 | 2,150 | 3,959.8 | 414 | 12,525 | |
| 1996 | 4,502 | 4,142 | 18,739 | |||
| 1997 | 6,981 | 3,782 | 5,014 | 6,522 | 174 | 22,473 |
| 1998 | 6,849 | 3,193 | 5,532 | 7,142 | 260 | 22,976 |
| 1999 | 6,548 | 3,030 | 6,106 | 7,512 | 206 | 23,402 |
| 2000 | 5,994 | 2,602 | 6,803 | 9,615 | 368 | 25,402 |
| 2001 | 7,004 | 2,590 | 6,009 | 9,569 | 25,790 | |
| 2002 | 6,465 | 2,440 | 6,691 | 9,733 | 25,360 | |
| 2003 | 7,364 | 2,344 | 6,412 | 10,941 | 27,061 | |
| 2004 | 8,713 | 2,511 | 7,750 | 11,778 | 30,752 | |
| 2005 | 7,587 | 2,127 | 9,023 | 13,207 | 31,944 | |
| 2006 | 7,529 | 2,193 | 9,925 | 14,368 | 34,285 | |
| 2007 | 7,491 | 2,347 | 10,626 | 15,046 | 35,510 | |
| 2008 | 7,348 | 2,415 | 11,504 | 15,857 | 719 | 37,843 |
| 2009 | 712 | |||||
| 2010 | 761 |
Net income
| + Net income of The Walt Disney Company (in millions USD) | ||||||
| Year | Walt Disney Studio Entertainment | Disney Consumer Products | !style="width:150px" | Disney Media Networks | Walt Disney Internet Group / Disney Interactive Media Group | Total |
| 1991 | 318 | 229 | 546 | 1,094 | ||
| 1992 | 508 | 283 | 644 | 1,435 | ||
| 1993 | 622 | 355 | 746 | 1,724 | ||
| 1994 | 779 | 425 | 684 | 77 | 1,965 | |
| 1995 | 998 | 510 | 860 | 76 | 2,445 | |
| 1996 | 990 | 747 | −300 | 3,035 | ||
| 1997 | 1,079 | 893 | 1,136 | 1,699 | −56 | 4,312 |
| 1998 | 769 | 801 | 1,288 | 1,746 | −94 | 3,231 |
| 1999 | 116 | 607 | 1,446 | 1,611 | −93 | 3,231 |
| 2000 | 110 | 455 | 1,620 | 2,298 | −402 | 4,081 |
| 2001 | 260 | 401 | 1,586 | 1,758 | 4,214 | |
| 2002 | 273 | 394 | 1,169 | 986 | 2,826 | |
| 2003 | 620 | 384 | 957 | 1,213 | 3,174 | |
| 2004 | 662 | 534 | 1,123 | 2 169 | 4,488 | |
| 2005 | 207 | 543 | 1,178 | 3,209 | 5,137 | |
| 2006 | 729 | 618 | 1,534 | 3,610 | 6,491 | |
| 2007 | 1,201 | 631 | 1,710 | 4,285 | 7,827 | |
| 2008 | 1,086 | 778 | 1,897 | 4,942 | −258 | 8,445 |
| 2009 | −295 | |||||
| 2010 | −234 |
Criticism
Some of Disney's animated family films have drawn fire for being accused of having sexual references hidden in them, among them The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). Instances of sexual material hidden in some versions of The Rescuers (1977) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) resulted in recalls and modifications of the films to remove such content.Some religious welfare groups, such as the Catholic League, have opposed films including Priest (1994) and Dogma (1999). A book called Growing Up Gay, published by Disney-owned Hyperion Press and similar publications, as well as the company's extension of benefits to same-sex domestic partners, spurred boycotts of Disney and its advertisers by the Catholic League, the Assemblies of God USA, the American Family Association, and other conservative groups. The boycotts were discontinued by most of these organizations by 2005. In addition to these social controversies, the company has been accused of human rights violations regarding the working conditions in factories that produce their merchandise.
See also
References
Further reading
External links
Category:Amusement park companies Category:Burbank, California Category:Companies based in Los Angeles County, California Category:Companies established in 1923 Category:Dow Jones Industrial Average Category:Entertainment companies of the United States Category:Irish American history Category:Media companies of the United States
ar:شركة والت ديزني zh-min-nan:Walt Disney Kong-si br:The Walt Disney Company bg:The Walt Disney Company ca:The Walt Disney Company cs:The Walt Disney Company da:The Walt Disney Company de:The Walt Disney Company es:The Walt Disney Company eo:Walt Disney Company eu:The Walt Disney Company fa:شرکت والت دیزنی fr:The Walt Disney Company ga:Disney gl:The Walt Disney Company ko:월트 디즈니 컴퍼니 hi:द वॉल्ट डिज़्नी कंपनी hr:The Walt Disney Company id:The Walt Disney Company is:Walt Disney-fyrirtækið it:The Walt Disney Company he:חברת וולט דיסני jv:The Walt Disney Company ka:უოლტ დისნეის კომპანია sw:The Walt Disney Company la:Walt Disney Societas lt:The Walt Disney Company hu:The Walt Disney Company mk:The Walt Disney Company ml:ദ വാൾട്ട് ഡിസ്നി കമ്പനി ms:Syarikat Walt Disney nl:The Walt Disney Company ja:ウォルト・ディズニー・カンパニー no:The Walt Disney Company nn:The Walt Disney Company pl:The Walt Disney Company pt:The Walt Disney Company ro:The Walt Disney Company ru:The Walt Disney Company sq:The Walt Disney Company simple:The Walt Disney Company sr:Компанија Волт Дизни fi:The Walt Disney Company sv:Walt Disney Company tl:The Walt Disney Company ta:வால்ட் டிஸ்னி கம்பனி te:వాల్ట్ డిస్నీ సంస్థ th:เดอะวอลต์ดิสนีย์ tr:The Walt Disney Company uk:The Walt Disney Company vi:Công ty Walt Disney zh:华特迪士尼公司
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
