Walt Disney: The American Dream Personified (Bio & Facts)

Walt Disney is one of the most commendable figures in the history of entertainment. The animations produced by Walt and his team have a timeless, magical quality that has bewitched multiple generations for many decades.

But Walt’s journey to the top wasn’t smooth. He encountered many creative, financial, and political obstacles during his career, demonstrating that the path to success is never an easy one to tread.

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. When Walt was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. Here, Walt developed an interest in drawing, and the neighbor even gave him a nickel after Walt did a drawing of his horse.

When Walt was nine, the Disneys moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Walt continued to demonstrate his artistic talents and dreamed of becoming a professional artist. He also earned money delivering papers before and after school.

But Walt’s life was far from perfect. His father, Elias, was a bad-tempered, violent man who didn’t shy away from physical discipline. He beat all five of his children, including Walt’s younger sister Ruth.

During the closing stages of the First World War, Walt lied about his age and joined the American armed forces. But he managed to stay out of danger and spent most of his time running errands for the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in France. He continued to draw during this time, and some of his work was published in an army newspaper.

A Mouse Called Mickey

After the war, Walt Disney returned to Kansas City and worked as a commercial artist for just $50 a month. After being laid off, Walt started his own company with fellow artist Ub Iwerks.

However, the business was unsuccessful, forcing Walt and his partner to accept work for the Kansas City Slide Company. After saving up some money, the pair went out on their own again, but they went bankrupt after a year.

Walt was still determined to be successful despite these early failings. In 1923, he moved to Hollywood and started yet another company with his brother Roy called Disney Brothers Studio ‍(later renamed The Walt Disney Company). The two of them worked in the back of a real estate office, with Walt drawing the cartoons and Roy operating the camera. Ub later moved to Hollywood and joined the Disney brothers.

Other workers were brought in, too, including a woman named Lillian Bounds, who started working in the inking-and-painting department for fifteen dollars a week. Walt and Lillian grew close and married in the summer of 1925. The couple went on to have two daughters: Diane and Sharon. The former was born in 1933, and the latter was adopted by Walt and Lillian in 1936.

Walt’s marriage did nothing to quell his ambition. One day, he had a rush of inspiration and came up with the character of Mickey Mouse. This now-iconic character first appeared in a short film called Plane Crazy (1928). Minnie Mouse, Mickey’s girlfriend, also made an appearance.

Steamboat Willie (1928) followed several months later and was highly successful. At last, Walt had achieved his first big breakthrough. In the years that followed, he created other characters, such as Pluto, Goofy, and Donald Duck.

A year after the release of Steamboat Willie, the Great Depression rocked the global economy. Walt Disney and his team stayed afloat during this time, and this was partly due to the continued success of Mickey Mouse’s short films.

Merchandise was also a factor. In February 1930, Roy Disney signed a contract with George Borgfeldt & Company, allowing them to manufacture designs for Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Walt and his team created the designs, which were made into toys and appeared on various products. But the royalties were small, and Walt was keen to find an alternative.

A much-needed breakthrough came in the form of a man named Kay Kamen, who was the founder of a marketing company. He contacted the Disney brothers, offering his services and a much more lucrative royalty rate. Walt and Roy signed a deal with Kamen in July 1932.

Soon, Mickey cropped up in department stores across the country, his face beaming out from wallpapers, napkins, books, and items of clothing. (The Mickey Mouse watch was particularly popular.)

Yet Walt still wanted another revenue source, so he developed a new series of cartoons called Silly Symphonies. The goal was to maximize international appeal by mixing cartoons and musicals with as little dialogue as possible. Starting in 1929, the series ran for a decade and won seven Academy Awards. The series also spawned a comic strip that launched in 1932.

At a time when America (and the world) was battling against uncertainty and high unemployment, Walt and his team provided people with some much-needed entertainment. Walt also visited children’s hospitals and donated to charities during this troubled time.

Walt Disney had no intention of curtailing his ambitions. He had a creative spark that was hard to control. He insisted the company upheld the highest standards when it came to making cartoons, often prioritizing quality over financial stability.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), for example, was an expensive picture. The film cost more than one million dollars to produce. In order to get the money they needed, Roy Disney (who was in charge of the company’s finances) invited a lending officer from Bank of America to the studio to see some parts of the film. Impressed with what he saw, the lending officer provided the company with the money they needed.

Snow White wasn’t the first color cartoon produced by Disney. The company had already seen great success with Flowers and Trees (1932) and Three Little Pigs (1933). However, both these films were less than ten minutes in length. Snow White was colossal by comparison, and the plot was also a lot darker than Disney’s previous work, featuring an assassination attempt and a murderous witch.

But—as we all know—the risk paid off. When Snow White was released, it sold more than eight million dollars worth of tickets! This was more than enough for the company to pay off its loans and debts. Walt also won an honorary Academy Award for his efforts.

Walt had no intention of slowing down, however. Using the money from Snow White, he invested in an impressive new studio in Burbank, California, and returned to work.

Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940) were Walt Disney and his team’s next feature-length cartoons. Unfortunately, they failed to replicate Snow White’s financial success.

Though both pictures received plenty of praise from critics, the Second World War cut off the Asian and European markets, hindering the box-office potential. (Approximately forty-five percent of Disney’s revenue came from overseas.) Fantasia was particularly disappointing, resulting in a heavy loss for the company despite an abundance of critical praise.

Walt and his team soldiered on and produced Dumbo (1941) on a much smaller budget. RKO Pictures, the film’s distributor, wanted the film to be ten minutes longer, but Walt refused, saying the cost would be too much. Though Dumbo didn’t reach the box-office heights of Snow White, the film did turn a sizable profit.

During the Second World War, the company produced a number of cartoon propaganda films, including The New Spirit (1942), The Spirit of ’43 (1943), and Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), with the latter featuring Donald Duck working in a factory in Nazi Germany.

In October 1947, Walt testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). His testimony was part of a wider event known as the Second Red Scare. One of the individuals Walt denounced was a trade union activist known as Herbert K. Sorrell, who had been integral to the Disney animators’ strike back in 1941. In his testimony, Walt accused him of being a communist, helping to bring down Sorrell’s Congress of Studio Unions.

More broadly, Walt believed communism was an anti-American idea, an ideology that was directly opposed to the liberal foundation of the free world. He stressed the importance of keeping the American labor unions free from communist activists.

Helped by the success of Cinderella (1950), Walt Disney’s financial fortunes improved, and the company also started to venture into live-action movies in the early 1950s.

Treasure Island (1950) was the company’s first completely live-action film, and many others followed, including The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953), and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Yet Walt’s most demanding task during the 1950s was the development of the first Disney theme park. Roy Disney provided $10,000 of the company’s money for the planning of Disneyland, but Walt wasn’t happy with this number, so he borrowed against the cash value of his life insurance to raise an additional $100,000.

A group of engineers and artists worked on the park’s design, developing imaginative ideas for rides and attractions. Their ideas needed to be ambitious, for the site Walt purchased for the project was more than one hundred and fifty acres.

With some hefty financial backing from ABC (who received 34.5% of Disneyland’s profits in return), Walt’s dream park featuring five different lands cost seventeen million dollars to build and opened in July 1955. Within one year, Disneyland’s revenue shot to ten million dollars.

Central to this success was the Disneyland television show. Produced by ABC and originally called Walt Disney’s Disneyland, the show was the sixth-ranked show on television in its first year and moved up to fourth place in 1956. Walt Disney’s Disneyland helped to promote the park, compelling swathes of fans to buy tickets and visit Walt’s magical land. The sale of merchandise also increased due to the television show.

Following this success, ABC was given the opportunity to produce another television show, The Mickey Mouse Club, which aired for the first time in October 1955.

Walt Disney’s ambitious streak did not diminish during his final years. Following the success of the first theme park, he was keen to build a much bigger one in Orlando, Florida. Walt wanted the site to be a city as well as a theme park.

The company continued to make movies as well, though with mixed results. Sleeping Beauty (1959) performed poorly at the box office, while One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) was a big hit. Mary Poppins (1964) was also very successful, garnering critical praise and sweeping up five Academy Awards in 1965.

In November of the following year, Walt was diagnosed with lung cancer. He had been a heavy smoker for much of his life, and this unhealthy habit had at last caught up with him. He died on December 15 at the age of sixty-five.

Walt’s older brother and lifelong business partner became the new CEO of Disney until his death in December 1971. Several months before his passing, Roy Disney witnessed the opening of his brother’s unfinished passion project in Orlando: Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney’s Legacy

Walt Disney’s rise to the top of the ladder continues to inspire storytellers and creative minds. This brilliant, hardworking, and tenacious individual didn’t come from a privileged background, yet he managed to create one of—if not the greatest—companies in entertainment history.

Perhaps the most commendable aspect of Walt’s journey was his willingness to continually roll the dice. The early stages of his career weren’t smooth at all, yet his passion for animation and storytelling was so great that he never wanted money to get in the way of his creative vision.

The production of Snow White was a vast undertaking for Walt and his team, but the risk paid off. The film transformed the company’s financial fortunes and was a huge box-office success. It was a milestone in the history of cinema, and the company continued to produce films that were destined to become classics.

Walt’s ambitions went up another level when he ventured into the world of theme parks. With the opening of Disneyland in 1955, movie fans could immerse themselves in the world the company had created over the last thirty years.

Detractors tend to criticize Uncle Walt’s public persona, arguing that the image presented to the world didn’t represent his true nature. Indeed, Walt wasn’t always easy to work with. His ambitious, competitive nature came with a short temper.

Some have also criticized Walt for not paying his workers fairly and giving them low wages. This was the central factor that led to the aforementioned animators’ strike in 1941.

Nevertheless, Walt’s story will always inspire creative minds from all sectors of the entertainment industry. The tale of Walt Disney and his team reminds us that the path to success requires patience, tenacity, and a lot of risk-taking.