87 Facts About Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur.

Walt Disney was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors.

Walt Disney took art classes as a boy and took a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18.

Walt Disney moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy.

Walt Disney was involved in planning the 1959 Moscow Fair, the 1960 Winter Olympics, and the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Walt Disney was a heavy smoker throughout his life and died of lung cancer in 1966 before either the park or the EPCOT project were completed.

Walt Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private but adopted a warm and outgoing public persona.

Walt Disney had high standards and high expectations of those with whom he worked.

Historiography of Walt Disney has taken a variety of perspectives, ranging from views of him as a purveyor of homely patriotic values to being a representative of American cultural imperialism.

Widely considered to be one of the most influential cultural figures of the 20th century, Walt Disney remains an important presence in the history of animation and in the cultural history of the United States, where he is acknowledged as a national cultural icon.

Walt Disney was born on December 5,1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue, in Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood.

In 1906, when Walt Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his uncle Robert had just purchased land.

In Marceline, Walt Disney developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a retired neighborhood doctor.

Elias was a subscriber to the Appeal to Reason newspaper, and Walt Disney practiced drawing by copying the front-page cartoons of Ryan Walker.

Walt Disney began to develop an ability to work with watercolors and crayons.

Walt Disney lived near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line and became enamored with trains.

The Walt Disney family were active members of a Congregational church.

The schedule was exhausting, and Walt Disney often received poor grades after falling asleep in class, but he continued his paper route for more than six years.

Walt Disney attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute and took a correspondence course in cartooning.

Walt Disney enrolled at McKinley High School and became the cartoonist of the school newspaper, drawing patriotic pictures about World War I; he took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

Walt Disney drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance for decoration and had some of his work published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes.

Walt Disney returned to Kansas City in October 1919, where he worked as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he drew commercial illustrations for advertising, theater programs and catalogs, and befriended fellow artist Ub Iwerks.

Walt Disney became interested in animation, although he preferred drawn cartoons such as Mutt and Jeff and Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell.

Walt Disney came to the conclusion that cel animation was more promising than the cutout method.

Unable to persuade Cauger to try cel animation at the company, Walt Disney opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co, Fred Harman.

Walt Disney studied Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables as a model, and the first six "Laugh-O-Grams" were modernized fairy tales.

Walt Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923 at 21 years old.

Walt Disney was losing the rights to both the Out of the Inkwell and Felix the Cat cartoons, and needed a new series.

In July 1924, Walt Disney hired Iwerks, persuading him to relocate to Hollywood from Kansas City.

In 1926, the first official Walt Disney Studio was established at 2725 Hyperion Avenue; the building was demolished in 1940.

The series ran until July 1927, by which time Walt Disney had begun to tire of it and wanted to move away from the mixed format to all animation.

In February 1928, Walt Disney hoped to negotiate a larger fee for producing the Oswald series, but found Mintz wanting to reduce the payments.

Walt Disney found out that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald.

Mintz threatened to start his own studio and produce the series himself if Walt Disney refused to accept the reductions.

Walt Disney declined Mintz's ultimatum and lost most of his animation staff, except Iwerks, who chose to remain with him.

Walt Disney, who had begun to distance himself from the animation process, provided Mickey's voice until 1947.

In 1930, Walt Disney tried to trim costs from the process by urging Iwerks to abandon the practice of drawing every frame individually in favor of the more efficient technique of drawing key poses and letting assistants sketch the inbetween poses.

Walt Disney asked Powers for an increase in payments for the cartoons.

Always keen to embrace new technology and encouraged by his new contract with United Artists, Walt Disney filmed Flowers and Trees in full-color three-strip Technicolor; he was able to negotiate a deal giving him the sole right to use the three-strip process until August 31,1935.

Walt Disney had been nominated for another film in that category, Mickey's Orphans, and received an Honorary Award "for the creation of Mickey Mouse".

In 1933, Walt Disney produced The Three Little Pigs, a film described by the media historian Adrian Danks as "the most successful short animation of all time".

Walt Disney realized the importance of telling emotionally gripping stories that would interest the audience, and he invested in a "story department" separate from the animators, with storyboard artists who would detail the plots of Walt Disney's films.

Walt Disney won another Honorary Academy Award, which consisted of one full-sized and seven miniature Oscar statuettes.

The strike temporarily interrupted the studio's next production, Dumbo, which Walt Disney produced in a simple and inexpensive manner; the film received a positive reaction from audiences and critics alike.

In 1948, Walt Disney initiated a series of popular live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with Seal Island the first; the film won the Academy Award in the Best Short Subject category.

In early 1950, Walt Disney produced Cinderella, his studio's first animated feature in eight years.

Walt Disney was less involved than he had been with previous pictures because of his involvement in his first entirely live-action feature, Treasure Island, which was shot in Britain, as was The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.

Walt Disney continued to produce full-length animated features too, including Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.

Around the same time, Walt Disney established his own film distribution division Buena Vista, replacing his most recent distributor RKO Pictures.

For several years Walt Disney had been considering building a theme park.

Walt Disney visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was heavily influenced by the cleanliness and layout of the park.

In mid-1954, Walt Disney sent his Imagineers to every amusement park in the US to analyze what worked and what pitfalls or problems there were in the various locations and incorporated their findings into his design.

An editorial in The New York Times considered that Walt Disney had "tastefully combined some of the pleasant things of yesterday with fantasy and dreams of tomorrow".

Walt Disney was consultant to the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow; Disney Studios' contribution was America the Beautiful, a 19-minute film in the 360-degree Circarama theater that was one of the most popular attractions.

Walt Disney was one of twelve investors in the Celebrity Sports Center, which opened in 1960 in Glendale, Colorado; he and Roy bought out the others in 1962, making the Disney company the sole owner.

Walt Disney oversaw aspects of the full-length features Lady and the Tramp in 1955, Sleeping Beauty in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone in 1963.

In 1964, Disney produced Mary Poppins, based on the book series by P L Travers; he had been trying to acquire the rights to the story since the 1940s.

Walt Disney provided four exhibits for the 1964 New York World's Fair, for which he obtained funding from selected corporate sponsors.

For PepsiCo, who planned a tribute to UNICEF, Walt Disney developed It's a Small World, a boat ride with audio-animatronic dolls depicting children of the world; Great Moments with Mr Lincoln contained an animatronic Abraham Lincoln giving excerpts from his speeches; Carousel of Progress promoted the importance of electricity; and Ford's Magic Skyway portrayed the progress of mankind.

Walt Disney hired experts such as the Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler.

The heart of Walt Disney World was to be the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", which he described as:.

Walt Disney received a story credit in the 1966 film Lt.

Walt Disney increased his involvement in the studio's films, and was heavily involved in the story development of The Jungle Book, the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

Walt Disney did not use cigarettes with filters and had smoked a pipe as a young man.

Walt Disney's remains were cremated two days later and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

The release of The Jungle Book and The Happiest Millionaire in 1967 raised the total number of feature films that Walt Disney had been involved in to 81.

Walt Disney's studios continue to produce successful film, television and stage entertainment.

Walt Disney changed the focus of the project from a town to an attraction.

Walt Disney World expanded with the opening of Epcot Center in 1982; Walt Disney's vision of a functional city was replaced by a park more akin to a permanent world's fair.

Early in 1925, Walt Disney hired an ink artist, Lillian Bounds.

Walt Disney engaged in red-baiting in response to organized labor actions against his company.

In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers, as communist agitators; Walt Disney stated that the 1941 strike led by them was part of an organized communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood.

The New York Times reported in 1993 that Disney had been an FBI informant passing secret information to J Edgar Hoover about communist activities in Hollywood.

However, while Walt Disney was made a "Special Agent in Charge Contact" in 1954, FBI officials claim this was largely an honorary title regularly awarded to members of a community who might be of use to the bureau.

Kimball argues that Walt Disney "played the role of a bashful tycoon who was embarrassed in public" and knew that he was doing so.

Norman recalls that when Walt Disney said "That'll work", it was an indication of high praise.

Walt Disney has been accused of antisemitism for having given Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl a tour of his studio a month after.

Animator Art Babbitt, organizer behind the 1941 strike at the studio and who held a well-known grudge against Walt Disney, claimed in his later years that he saw Walt Disney and his lawyer attend meetings of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization, during the late 1930s.

Walt Disney was never really able to expunge it throughout his life.

Walt Disney has been accused of other forms of racism because some of his productions released between the 1930s and 1950s contain racially insensitive material.

Walt Disney was portrayed by Len Cariou in the 1995 made-for-TV film A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story, and by Tom Hanks in the 2013 film Saving Mr Banks.

Walt Disney remains the central figure in the history of animation.

Walt Disney received 59 Academy Award nominations, including 22 awards: both totals are records.

Walt Disney received four Emmy Award nominations, winning once, for Best Producer for the Disneyland television series.

Walt Disney was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1986, the California Hall of Fame in December 2006, was the inaugural recipient of a star on the Anaheim walk of stars in 2014, and was a member of the first Orange County Hall of Fame class in 2023.

Walt Disney was made a in the French in 1935, and in 1952 he was awarded the country's highest artistic decoration, the.

Walt Disney 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.