Walt Disney facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Walt Disney
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Walt Disney on January 1, 1954
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Walter Elias Disney
December 5, 1901 |
| Died | December 15, 1966 (aged 65) Burbank, California, U.S.
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| Cause of death | Lung cancer |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | McKinley High School, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts |
| Occupation | Co-founder of The Walt Disney Company, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions |
| Years active | 1920–1966 |
| Home town | Chicago, Illinois |
| Political party | Republican |
| Board member of | The Walt Disney Company |
| Spouse(s) | Lillian Bounds (1925–66; his death) |
| Children | Diane Marie Disney Sharon Mae Disney |
| Parent(s) | Elias Disney Flora Call Disney |
| Relatives | Ronald William Miller (son-in-law) Robert Borgfeldt Brown (son-in-law) Roy Edward Disney (nephew) |
| Family | Herbert Arthur Disney (brother) Raymond Arnold Disney (brother) Roy Oliver Disney (brother) Ruth Flora Disney (sister) |
| Awards | 7 Emmy Awards 22 Academy Awards Cecil B. DeMille Award |
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Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 - December 15, 1966) was an American business entrepreneur, animator, cartoonist, producer, screenwriter, entrepreneur, and voice actor. Disney was an important person in the American animation industry and throughout the world. He is regarded as an international icon, and philanthropist. He is well known for his influence and contributions to the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy Disney, he was the founder of Walt Disney Productions. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company.
As an extraordinary animator and entrepreneur, Disney was well known as a film producer and a 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. He provided the original voice for Mickey Mouse. He received four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year. It gave him more awards and nominations than any other person in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards. He gave his name to the Disneyland, and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, as well as international resorts like Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.
He died on December 15, 1966 from lung cancer. A year later, construction of the Walt Disney World Resort began in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated the Magic Kingdom in 1971.
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Early life
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 at 2156 North Tripp Avenue in Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois. His father Elias Disney had Irish-Canadian ancestry and his mother, Flora Call Disney had German and English ancestry. 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 traveled to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. The d'Isigny name was anglicized as "Disney" and the family settled in a village now known as Norton Disney, south of the city of Lincoln, in the county of Lincolnshire.
Career
About the time Disney was entering high school, his family moved to the big city of Chicago. Disney took classes at the Chicago Art Institute and drew for the school newspaper. When he was sixteen, Disney decided he wanted to help fight in World War I. Since he was still too young to join the army, he dropped out of school and joined the Red Cross. He spent the next year driving ambulances for the Red Cross in France.
Disney's best-known creation is the cartoon character, Mickey Mouse. Disney even provided the voice for Mickey Mouse for many years. Donald Duck is another famous creation. Minnie Mouse and Pluto are also his creations. Disney was once fired from a newspaper company in Kansas City, Missouri because of his lack of creativity.
Disney began as a cartoonist in the 1920s. He created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit but lost ownership of the character due to a contract problem. He then created Mickey Mouse. Disney started the Walt Disney Studios and created the first full-length animated movie when he created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). The movie was a huge success. The money from the movie helped Disney create many more cartoons and movies such as Fantasia, Pinocchio (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including the critically successful Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan (1953), and Mary Poppins (1964), the latter of which received five Academy Awards. He earned 32 academy awards. Disney once refused an offer from Alfred Hitchcock to make a movie at Disney World after Hitchcock filmed Psycho. He also served as the host of The Wonderful World of Disney, a weekly variety show that had Disney cartoons and some live-action skits.
In the 1950s, Disney created Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disneyland was the first modern theme park. Disney also bought the land for Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Disney did not see Walt Disney World finished though because he died before it opened. Both Disneyland and Walt Disney World (and now other Disney theme parks) are famous for their design, level of detail, being very clean, and animatronics.
Personal life and character
Early in 1925, Disney hired an ink artist, Lillian Bounds. They married in July of that year, at her brother's house in her hometown of Lewiston, Idaho. The marriage was generally happy, according to Lillian, although according to Disney's biographer Neal Gabler she did not "accept Walt's decisions meekly or his status unquestionably, and she admitted that he was always telling people 'how henpecked he is'." Lillian had little interest in films or the Hollywood social scene and she was, in the words of the historian Steven Watts, "content with household management and providing support for her husband". Their marriage produced two daughters, Diane (born December 1933) and Sharon (adopted in December 1936, born six weeks previously). Within the family, neither Disney nor his wife hid the fact Sharon had been adopted, although they became annoyed if people outside the family raised the point. The Disneys were careful to keep their daughters out of the public eye as much as possible, particularly in the light of the Lindbergh kidnapping; Disney took steps to ensure his daughters were not photographed by the press.
In 1949, Disney and his family moved to a new home in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles. 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 miniature working steam locomotive was built by Disney Studios engineer Roger E. Broggie, and Disney named it Lilly Belle after his wife; after three years Disney ordered it into storage due to a series of accidents involving his guests.
Disney grew more politically conservative as he got older. A Democratic Party supporter until the 1940 presidential election, when he switched allegiance to the Republican Party, he became a generous donor to Thomas E. Dewey's 1944 bid for the presidency. In 1946, he was a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an organization who stated they "believ[ed] in, and like, the American Way of Life ... we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of Communism, Fascism and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life". In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, 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, as communist agitators; Disney stated that the 1941 strike led by them was part of an organized communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood. It was alleged by The New York Times in 1993 that Disney had been passing secret information to the FBI from 1940 until his death in 1966. In return for this information, J. Edgar Hoover allowed Disney to film in FBI headquarters in Washington. Disney was made a "full Special Agent in Charge Contact" in 1954.
Disney's public persona was very different from his actual personality. Playwright Robert E. Sherwood described him as "almost painfully shy ... diffident" and self-deprecating. According to his biographer Richard Schickel, Disney hid his shy and insecure personality behind his public identity. Kimball argues that Disney "played the role of a bashful tycoon who was embarrassed in public" and knew that he was doing so. Disney acknowledged the façade and told a friend that "I'm not Walt Disney. I do a lot of things Walt Disney would not do. Walt Disney does not smoke. I smoke. Walt Disney does not drink. I drink." Critic Otis Ferguson, in The New Republic, called the private Disney: "common and everyday, not inaccessible, not in a foreign language, not suppressed or sponsored or anything. Just Disney." Many of those with whom Disney worked commented that he gave his staff little encouragement due to his exceptionally high expectations. Norman recalls that when Disney said "That'll work", it was an indication of high praise. Instead of direct approval, Disney gave high-performing staff financial bonuses, or recommended certain individuals to others, expecting that his praise would be passed on.
Death and legacy
On December 15, 1966, Disney died of lung cancer in Burbank, California at the age of 65. His movies and theme parks are still enjoyed by millions of people. His company continues to produce very successful new theme parks and films.
His ashes were interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.
Awards and honors
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Disney received 59 Academy Award nominations, including 22 awards: both totals are records. He was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, but did not win, but he was presented with two Special Achievement Awards—for Bambi (1942) and The Living Desert (1953)—and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. He also received four Emmy Award nominations, winning once, for Best Producer for the Disneyland television series. Several of his films are included in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant": Steamboat Willie, The Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Bambi, Dumbo and Mary Poppins. In 1998, the American Film Institute published a list of the 100 greatest American films, according to industry experts; the list included Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (at number 49), and Fantasia (at 58).
In February 1960, Disney was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with two stars, one for motion pictures and the other for his television work; Mickey Mouse was given his own star for motion pictures in 1978. Disney was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1986, the California Hall of Fame in December 2006, and was the inaugural recipient of a star on the Anaheim walk of stars in 2014.
The Walt Disney Family Museum records that he "along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from throughout the world". He was made a Chevalier in the French Légion d'honneur in 1935, and in 1952 he was awarded the country's highest artistic decoration, the Officer d'Academie. Other national awards include Thailand's Order of the Crown (1960); Germany's Order of Merit (1956), Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross (1941), and Mexico's Order of the Aztec Eagle (1943). In the United States, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on September 14, 1964, and on May 24, 1968, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He received the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners, and in 1955, the National Audubon Society awarded Disney its highest honor, the Audubon Medal, for promoting the "appreciation and understanding of nature" through his True-Life Adventures nature films. A minor planet discovered in 1980 by astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina, was named 4017 Disneya, and he was also awarded honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Related pages
- The Walt Disney Company
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Roy E. Disney
- Michael Eisner
- List of Disney animated movies
- List of Disney animated movies
- Disney+
- Disneyland
Images for kids
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Theatrical poster for Trolley Troubles (1927)
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Disney in 1935
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Roy O. Disney finished the building of Disney World
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Display case in the lobby of The Walt Disney Family Museum showing many of the Academy Awards won by Disney
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1968 U.S. postage stamp
See also
In Spanish: Walt Disney para niños
