Walt Disney was the embodiment of the American dream.
A love of animation and classic, wholesome American values inspired this self-made man to revolutionise the art of film-making and popularise animation.
A childhood spent in the farmlands of Missouri gave Disney a love of wildlife, family and community that was evident in many of his later cartoons.
In 1918, aged 16, Disney was enlisted by the Red Cross and sent to France to drive war ambulances. By decorating his vehicles from top to bottom with his cartoons, he had found his first captive audience.
On his return, Disney headed for Hollywood with $20 in his pocket and a head full of designs. He met his brother there and together they constructed a camera and started making animated series. Their first contract for ‘Alice Comedy’ paved the way for their production company.
Orders flooded in and by 1928 Disney had created his beloved Mickey Mouse, who premiered in Steamboat Willie that year. Disney won his first Academy Award (of 30) in 1932 for Flowers and Trees after successfully introducing Technicolor, special effects and multiple camera techniques to the animation world.
In 1937 Disney unveiled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated musical feature, which cost an unprecedented $1.5m. It is still considered the greatest feat in motion picture history. Over the next five years Walt Disney Studios created classics such as Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi, and by the 1950s Disney was in the vanguard of production companies producing full-colour television broadcasts.
Walt Disney cultivated an avuncular, cheerful image, which he projected through the media. Yet anyone that professes to never “have depressed moods” probably has more than most. And the man behind some of the most mawkish, anodyne movies of the 20th century was actually an emotionally distant, controlling man.
Involved in numerous philanthropic projects, including his ‘Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow’, designed to address the problems facing urban communities, Disney’s dream of an amusement wonderland was fulfilled in 1955 with the opening of Disneyland Park.
Disney died of lung cancer in 1966, a few years before the opening of the second Disney theme park in Florida.
