Walt Disney biography

Maker of dreams

December 5, 1901
December 15, 1966
On 5 December 1901 was born in Chicago, an absolute genius of the twentieth century, a man who would have given the world wonderful creatures, the result of his infinite imagination: the legendary Walt Disney or, if you prefer, the father of Mickey Mouse. Fourth son of Elias Disney and Flora Call, her family moved to Marceline, Missouri. Here grows toiling in the fields and it is perhaps for this reason that happy and carefree childhood that Walter Elias Disney (his full name) mentions in his works is more her dream that her memories, characterized by toil and sweat. In the fall of 1909, a series of events lead the Disney family to sell the farm and move to Kansas City.
Life in the big city is definitely tougher: the father gets up at night for the delivery of newspapers, and Walt gives him a hand. He remembers how sometimes stood in the corner of the road to steal a NAP at work. Some rest in order to follow the school lessons. In 1918, tired of her father's rules and of his authority, Walt Disney decides to enlist in the army to participate in the first world war. This choice marks a break with the family rules. It seems that in Kansas City, Walt Disney has worked for about a month at an advertising agency, where he met Ubbe Ert Iwerks, bravissimo as amazing painter.
Then no one could imagine that Walt and Ub had a rendezvous with history. Walt got a job as a retail cloth merchant of pictures at the "Kansas City", a company that dealt with animation (albeit at a lower level than the cartoons produced in New York in those years). The spark: asks and gets to borrow a camera with which he performs experiments. Walt realizes that if he could move those helpless pieces of paper would revolutionize the world of design. With Ub Iwerks gets excellent results, and thanks to the financial assistance of his brother Roy, Walt Disney opened a studio in which make historians "Laugh-o-grams", "Alice Comedies" (which Disney put girl real in a world created on the drawing boards), "Oswald The Lucky Rabbit" (now considered a sort of link between ' Felix The Cat ' by Otto Messmer and the famous ' Mickey Mouse ').
Presented their works at distribution companies, they get quickly a deal with Universal that realizes the huge economic potential that the novelty represents. Some time after things start to go wrong. To reconstruct the story you have to take a step back: the Universal at that time was owned by Margaret Winkler, woman skilled in the management of business, which allowed you to Disney and Iwerks to be satisfied, even in economic terms. In that brief period Walt and Ub hired several people to set up an animation studio. Things changed when the Winkler took husband. Universal spent in fact in the hands of her husband Walter Mintz, who saw fit to reduce payments and treat all with an iron fist. The creatives that revolved around Walt and Ub were soon cornered. Nothing earned him the discussions that followed: Oswald the lucky rabbit, legally belonged to Universal and, what's worse, Mintz had trapped Disney. Cartoon production was done by a group of animators that Walt and Ub were paying with money taken from the cartoons themselves; Once cut the payments it was not difficult for Mintz subtract workforce at Disney. The only ones who refuse to betray Walt were early friends: Johnny Cannon, Les Clark, Hamilton Lusky and of course Ub.
The Group decides to react to blackmail by creating a character all their own. Simply shortening the ears of Oswald, turning tail and touching up something here and there they get ... a mouse. Walt is a genius in creating gags and interesting situations; UB makes everything on paper at a rate unimaginable to 700 drawings a day. The miracle is called "Plane Crazy": the main character is some Mickey Mouse. The revolutionary idea is to add sound and make it speak. It's the November 18, 1928 when the Colony New York Theater is projected a war film, followed by a short cartoon. The next day is the blaze. The date coincides with the start of many Disney biography, that Walt Disney entered the Golden pages of the book of Hollywood. Receives her first Oscar (others will follow 31) in 1932 for the film "Flowers and trees". The first great classic of Disney animation goes back to 1937: "snow white and the seven dwarfs". In 1940 opened its first studios in California in Burbank.
It is the 1955 when deciding the launch of Disneyland and manufactured the first plans for television (including Zorro): ten years later Disney personally begins to draw Epcot, shaping the life in the future. The December 15, 1966 a cardiovascular collapse, ending the troubled existence of a creative genius, able to give shape to the dreams. Worldwide news gets great resonance. It recalls the comment of the Governor of California, the future President Ronald Reagan: "the world is poorer". Walt Disney is considered a legend, a hero of the 20th century. Its worldwide popularity is based on the ideas that his name is: imagination, optimism and success built by himself, in the American tradition. Walt Disney touched the hearts, minds and emotions of millions of people. Through his work he brought joy, happiness and universal media people of every nation.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.