Disney, Walt(er Elias) (1901-1966)

Walter Elias Disney, photographed here with his wife in the 1920s, became world-famous as Walt Disney, creator of popular animated cartoon figures such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. He also produced feature-length animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1938), Fantasia(1940), and Dumbo(1941), which are now regarded as classics of the genre.

US film producer, animator, and pioneer of family entertainment, whose career spanned the development of the motion picture medium. Disney created many world-famous cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, made phenomenally successful feature-length animated films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and opened Disneyland, his first theme park, in 1955. The first person to add music and effects to cartoons, he was also the originator of the modern multimedia corporation, the Walt Disney Company.

Disney formed the Disney Brothers Studio in 1923. His first cartoon with sound was released in 1928 and featured Mickey Mouse, and in 1929 he began using colour in his cartoons. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs broke all box-office records on its release, and was followed by a series of feature-length classics. In the 1950s Disney started making action films and in 1961 he set up the film studio Buena Vista International.

Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of five children. When he left McKinley High School he had a variety of jobs including working for his father's short-lived O Zell company, and at night he attended art classes. As a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I (he was too young to enlist), he kept drawing and, on his return to Kansas, met US animator Ub Iwerks. Together they set up as commercial artists in a small studio called Laugh-O-Grams, and produced a first series of animated cartoons. When the studio went bankrupt he moved to Los Angeles in California and formed the Disney Brothers Studios in partnership with his brother Roy in 1923. He created the Alice in Cartoonland series and then, in 1927, a fully animated series called Oswald the Rabbit (although he subsequently lost the rights to the character).

From the late 1920s, Disney was at the forefront of innovation in the film industry. His first sound cartoon featured Mickey Mouse (created earlier in his silent film, Plane Crazy) in Steamboat Willie in 1928, which premiered in New York. He then introduced Technicolor into his production of the ‘Silly Symphonies’, a series of animated pieces set to classical music, the first of which was The Skeleton Dance (1929). His Flowers in Trees won him the first of his Academy Awards in 1932, and shorts such as The Three Little Pigs (1933) made him internationally successful. After Mickey Mouse debuted in colour in 1935, Disney introduced the multiplane camera technique, a device that added depth to the cartoon, in The Old Mill in 1937, and also started merchandizing the Disney cartoon characters which by then included Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy. The characters also appeared in comic books worldwide.

Disney produced his first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, which broke all box office records. It was produced at an unheard of cost of $2 million during the Great Depression. Other famous full-length classics followed - Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).

From the 1940s he concentrated on production and story editing. When his new Burbank Studio in California was completed in 1940, Disney employed more than 1,000 artists and technicians. After the studio strike in 1941 (said to stem from Disney's autocratic style) and other financial difficulties caused by overexpansion, Disney branched out into other fields - during World War II he produced training and propaganda films for the US government and, after the war, produced live action features such as Treasure Island and the nature documentaries Seal Island and The Living Desert (1953).

When he set up the Buena Vista company in 1953 to handle his US film distribution, Disney was largely independent of the major film studios; he later set up Buena Vista International in 1961 to control the worldwide film distribution. From the 1950s the company expanded rapidly, re-releasing classic cartoon favourites and introducing new family orientated action films, including the major successes The Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Mary Poppins (1964).

Disney was the first Hollywood producer to embrace television; he made an historic deal with the ABC network to produce and appear in a weekly programme in 1954 and was the first to present a colour television series called the Wonderful World of Color in 1961. In 1955 Disney opened his magic kingdom, Disneyland, a $17 million theme park in Anaheim, California. The second, Disney World, in Orlando, Florida, opened after his death in 1971. In 1983 a Toyko Disneyland opened in Japan, and in 1992 Euro Disney opened at Marne-la-Vallée, 32 km/20 mi east of Paris, France. Disney's California Adventure opened in 2001, adjacent to the original Disneyland. A Walt Disney amusement park is being built in Hong Kong and is scheduled to open in 2005.

Disney was a founder of the California Institute of Arts in 1961. He received nearly 1,000 honours during his career, including 48 Academy Awards and 7 Emmy Awards; honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, and the University of Southern California; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France's Legion of Honour; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners.