Walt Disney, full name - Walter Elias Disney, was an American motion picture and television producer and showman.He was best known for creating the cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. He was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on December 15, 1966, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 56, from lung cancer.He also invented, designed, and built Disneyland, a massive amusement park - one of the best theme parks in the world - outside Los Angeles that opened in 1955. He was working on a second one - Walt Disney World - to be opened near Orlando, Florida, at the time of his death. In addition, he started the Walt Disney Company, which has grown to be one of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates.Walter Disney was the fourth son of a peripatetic carpenter, farmer, and building contractor Elias Disney and his wife, Flora Call, a former public school teacher. When Walt was a baby, the family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, a typical rural Midwestern town that is thought to have served as the inspiration and model for Disneyland’s Main Street, USA.Walt began his education there and this was when he first showed an interest in and the ability for sketching and painting with crayons and watercolors. Walt’s favorite color was blue.Keep reading to learn more interesting facts about Walt Disney and his influence on the motion picture business. Why not check out our other facts’ articles on the youngest Disney princess and cute Disney characters.Cool Facts About Walt Disney’s ChildhoodMany important things happened to Disney in his childhood. Walt Disney was born in the Hermosa neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901.He spent most of his boyhood, growing up in Marceline, Missouri, where, during his childhood, he learned drawing, painting, and even selling his creations to neighbors and family members.Disney’s family moved and relocated to Kansas City in 1911 when he was nine years old. He attended Benton Grammar School between 1911-17.He also acquired a passion for railways. Mike Martin, his uncle, was a railroad engineer who operated between Fort Madison, Iowa, and Marceline, Missouri. Later, Disney even worked as a summer team member at a train station, selling refreshments and newspapers to passengers.When Walt’s father gave up farming and relocated the family to Kansas City, he purchased a morning newspaper route and made his young kids help him distribute papers. It was later remarked that many of Walt’s mature habits and compulsions arose from the disciplines and discomforts of assisting his father with the paper route.Walt began his cartooning studies at a correspondence school in Kansas City and also attended the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design seminars.Disney later went to Chicago’s McKinley High School as a freshman, where he took drawing and photography lessons and worked as a cartoonist for the school newspaper. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago at night.Disney dropped out of school at the age of 16 to join the army but was turned down due to his age. Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to drive an ambulance in France for a year. In 1919, he returned to the United States.He moved to Kansas City and pursued a job as a newspaper illustrator. He met cartoonist Ubbe Eert Iwwerks, better known as Ub Iwerks, at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where his brother Roy had helped him land a job. Disney worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he created cutout animation ads.Disney began experimenting with a camera and hand-drawn cel animation around this period, which is what led him to decide to create his own animation studio and start Disney. He hired Fred Harman from the advertising agency as his first-ever team member.Disney and Harman struck an agreement with a local Kansas City theater to broadcast their Laugh-O-Grams cartoons. The cartoons got so famous that Disney could soon buy his own studio, which he named after himself.Iwerks and Harman’s brother Hugh were among the team members hired by Laugh-O-Gram. They created ‘Alice In Cartoonland’, a series of seven-minute fairy tales that mixed live-action and animation.However, by 1923, the studio had become insolvent due to debt, and Disney declared bankruptcy.Iconic Facts About Walt Disney’s Childhood And CareerIn 1923, Walt and his brother Roy Disney, together with cartoonist Ub Iwerks, relocated to Hollywood and started the Disney Brothers Studio because of the success of Mickey Mouse.Following Roy’s advice, the company was named Walt Disney Studios.The Walt Disney Studios’ initial distribution arrangement was with Margaret Winkler, a New York distributor, to distribute their Alice cartoons. They also created a character named Oswald The Lucky Rabbit and were paid $1,500 each for the shorts by Universal Studios.However, the studio broke away from its distributors in the late ’20s and began producing cartoons starring Mickey Mouse and his buddies.Walt Disney Animation Studios opened a new facility in Burbank in December 1939.When Disney animators went on strike in 1941, the company suffered a setback. A large number of them quit and the company took years to fully recover.‘Flowers And Trees ‘(1932), one of the most successful cartoons by Disney Studio, was the first to be produced in color and to receive an Academy Award.In 1933 during the middle of the Great Depression, ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and its title tune ‘Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?’ became a national anthem and is one of Disney’s biggest accomplishments.The Success Of Mickey Mouse’Steamboat Willie’, a sound-and-music-equipped animated short, was Disney’s first popular feature featuring Mickey Mouse. It premiered on Nov 18, 1928, at the Colony Theater in New York.When sound was first introduced to movies, Disney himself was the voice of Mickey, a character he created and had drawn with his main animator, Ub Iwerks. The cartoon became an instant hit.Out of necessity, the Disney brothers, their wives, and Ub Iwerks made two previous silent animated cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, ‘Plane Crazy’ and ‘The Gallopin’ Gaucho’.‘Silly Symphonies’ was released in 1929, and it included Mickey’s newly created companions Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.Disney’s creativity and enthusiasm, as well as his ability to understand the whims of public taste, motivated him to create much-loved amusements for children of all ages all over the world.Despite some criticisms of his often sugary subject matter and accusations that he created a near aesthetic monopoly in American animation that hindered creativity, there is no denying his ground-breaking achievements.His accomplishments as a creator of entertainment for an almost limitless audience and as a highly inventive merchandiser of his commodities are comparable to the most successful manufacturers in history.Walt Disney’s First Full Length Animated FilmDisney has made many feature films. The first full-length animated feature, ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’, premiered in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. Despite premiering during the Great Depression, it grossed an incredible $1.49 million and won eight Academy Awards.Over the next few years, Walt Disney Studios completed another string of full-length animated features due to this success.Disney introduced packaged features in the mid-’40s which were collections of short films put together to make a feature film. By the ’50s, Disney went back to concentrating on animated films.The motion feature ‘Mary Poppins’, which was released in 1964 and blended live-action and animation, was Walter Disney’s last significant success that he created himself.Walt Disney is world-famous and was immensely successful in his movie-making. From his first original movie, ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’, he truly changed the world with his entertainment and movie-making.Interesting, it was an American cartoonist named Winsor McCay who most inspired Walter Elias Disney to make animated movies.Some of Disney’s other well-known films include ‘Pinocchio’ (1940), ‘Bambi’ (1942), ‘Fantasia’ (1940), ‘Dumbo’ (1941), ‘Cinderella’ (1950), ‘Alice In Wonderland’ (1951), ‘Peter Pan’ (1953), ‘Treasure Island’ (1950), ‘Lady And The Tramp’ (1955), ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (1959), and ‘101 Dalmatians’ (1961).Disney was also one of the first to use television as a form of entertainment. The ‘Zorro’ and ‘Davy Crockett’ programs and ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’, a variety show featuring a cast of teens known as the Mouseketeers were extremely popular with kids.In addition, Walt Disney’s ‘Wonderful World of Color’, a famous Sunday night show, was used by Disney to promote his new theme park.On July 17, 1955, Walt Disney’s $17 million Disneyland theme park, one of the best theme parks in the world, debuted in Anaheim, California, on what was originally an orange grove. The activities were presided over by actor (and future US president) Ronald Reagan. The location became recognized as a place where children and their families could explore, enjoy rides, and meet Disney characters.But it all happened after a dramatic opening day that included multiple mistakes (including the delivery of thousands of fraudulent invitations). Still, the park managed to tenfold its investment in a short period and was soon entertaining people from all over the world.Disney hired Lillian Bounds, an ink-and-paint artist, in 1925. The pair married after a brief courtship.Lillian Bounds and Walt Disney had two children together. Diane Disney Miller, the couple’s sole biological daughter, was born in 1933. Sharon Disney Lund was adopted immediately after her birth in 1936. Christopher, Tamara, Walter, Joanna, Jennifer, Patrick, and Ronald Miller Jr. are the children of Diane and her husband, Ronald Miller.Victoria Disney was born to Sharon and her first husband, Robert Brown. Bill Lund, Sharon’s second husband, was a real estate entrepreneur who explored the 27,000 ac (10926.5 ha) land that became Disney World in Orlando. Brad and Michelle, their twins, were born in 1970.Other Interesting Walt Disney FactsDisney created The California Institute of the Arts, also known as Cal Arts.He himself had attended art college and turned his passion into a business to become an entrepreneur.He also went back to college and received his master’s degree in 1938. He was given an honorary Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California.Walter Disney believed in Christianity.Disney continued to expand his Mickey Mouse cartoons and live-action films with the help of Disney’s animators throughout the Great Depression. As a result, he influenced people all around the world with his movies.Disney produced the first animated film with sound, ‘Steamboat Willie’, which starred both Mickey and Minnie Mouse.During World War I, he tried to join the war effort and ended up joining the Red Cross for a while.Disney’s movie production of animated films and motion pictures slowed during World War II as he worked on training and propaganda films for the US government.Following Walt Disney’s death, his brother Roy postponed retirement in order to gain complete control of the Disney companies.Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked reading about Walt Disney’s childhood, then why not take a look at male Disney characters or Disney characters that start with I. Main image credit: Ritu Manoj Jethani / Shutterstock.comArticle image credit: Javi Az / Shutterstock.com
Walt Disney, full name - Walter Elias Disney, was an American motion picture and television producer and showman.
