Good Afternoon students, this is Dr. Cooper. Like the majority of you, I too am snowed in at my residence and bored out of my mind. So while cleaning out my flash drive to pass the time, I found this essay on Walt Disney I had written for History class in tenth grade. The assignment had been to write 1,000 words on an American icon; I wrote 1,800 because of my feverish passion for Disney history. So here, for anyone interested in reading, is my essay...
One chilly December day
in Chicago, Illinois, circa 1901, a man was born who would change American
entertainment forever. Once he came onto the spotlight, movies were no longer
movies; they were works of art and beauty. When he came, children were no
longer scolded for using their imaginations; they were encouraged to chase
after their dreams. His influence came to change every form of media
imaginable; movies, TV, music, animation, amusement parks, all were completely
redefined by this man. He was an innovator; he changed animation and introduced
revolutionary theme park designs. He affected American culture in such a way,
that decades after his death, people still remember him through the dreams he
envisioned, the characters he created, and the masterpieces he brought to life.
His name was Walter Elias Disney.
Walt was born in 1901
to Elias and Flora Disney, who were of Irish-Canadian and German-English
descent respectively. They later moved to the small town of Marceline,
Missouri, where they lived for several years. Walt enjoyed drawing sketches of
all the farm animals, and the picturesque small town setting gave him
inspiration for many of his greatest works. At 16, Walt dropped out of school to join the
Red Cross and became an ambulance driver in Europe during WWI. Afterwards he
sought to become a cartoonist, with little success. But his luck changed when
he developed an interest in animation, and, with a couple fellow cartoonists,
Walt formed a small company and began producing cartoons, which he dubbed Laugh-O-Grams, for the Kansas City area.
The Laugh-O-Grams series proved
highly successful, yet Walt knew little concerning how to manage money, and the
small company soon went bankrupt. Undeterred, he moved to Hollywood and set up
a new studio there with his brother Roy, called Disney Brother’s Studios.
There, Walt produced a new series of successful cartoons titled the Alice Comedies, which starred a live
action child in a world of cartoon characters. It was also at this time that
Walt met and married his wife, Lillian Bounds, an amateur cartoon painter.
By 1927, Universal Studios had hired Walt’s
studio to create a new series of cartoons. The result was Walt’s first main
cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to today’s Mickey
Mouse. The Oswald shorts enjoyed major popularity in the beginning, and was on
his way to becoming a major cartoon star in America. However his golden days
ended when Walt was forced to leave Universal over a contract dispute, which
cost him both the rights to Oswald and many of his best workers. By this time,
Walt had gone through what many would have gone through in an entire lifetime.
His successes always became fated to end in failures. Many people at this point
would have given up and moved on to an easier occupation. But Walt Disney was
determined not to give up his dream. It was only just the beginning for him.
After losing ownership
of Oswald, Walt desperately needed to create a new cartoon character in order
to save his business. It is said that he was taking a train ride when he
developed the idea for a mouse similar to Oswald, named Mortimer. His wife
Lillian later persuaded him to change his name to Mickey. Disney’s first two
Mickey shorts, Plane Crazy and the Galloping Gaucho, were silent films and
met with lukewarm reception. But that all changed upon the arrival of Steamboat Willie, Mickey’s first cartoon
with sound, in 1928. Mickey’s popularity immediately skyrocketed and he
remained popular throughout the 1930’s. People even went to cinemas just so
they could see the Mickey shorts air before the main movie! Around the same
time, Walt also created the first cartoons in color, Silly Symphonies, which won an Academy Award in 1932. Walt was
rapidly rising to fame as one of the industry’s most successful cartoonists.
But Walt wanted to go bigger.
Walt’s next project was
his most ambitious and risky gamble: he wanted to make a full-length animated
movie. Such a thing was unheard of in the 1930’s. The majority of people
believed that cartoons would be perpetually relegated to being comical shorts, not
being capable of mimicking the action and seriousness of a live-action movie.
People even dubbed Walt’s idea as “Disney’s Folly”. But Walt pressed on with
his plans, even taking three years to make and bringing his studio to the brink
of bankruptcy once again. When Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1938, all of Disney’s hopes were pinned
on its success. He was not to be disappointed. Snow White was met with critical acclaim and standing ovations,
easily earning the company $8 million and an Oscar award, the first of seven
Walt would eventually win. The movie solidly cemented Walt’s place in history
as one of America’s greatest animators and movie makers, and it brought his
studio into the movie business.
Within a few years of
Snow White’s success the Disney Studio moved into the movie business permanently.
Throughout the 40’s and 50’s, Disney produced some of their greatest masterpieces.
Films such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland,
Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella
are recognizable by almost everyone today, and are widely regarded as animation
classics. Soon he even ventured into TV shows and live action movies, such as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Walt,
affectionately known as “Uncle Walt” by the children of America, became a
household name. Throughout the country, children were pretending to be like
Davy Crocket, dressing up as Cinderella, or singing the Mickey Mouse Club Song.
Everyone was transfixed by the seemingly endless surprises this man had up his
sleeve. People everywhere saw him as a
kindly warm man who only sought to entertain people and improve on his greatest
art, animation. Walt never spared any expense when it came to producing quality
films; he often brought his studio near bankruptcy simply to ensure that his
movies were good enough. While movies and cartoons were far more than enough to
solidify Walt’s career forever, his ambitions only continued to grow. He never
stopped imagining, and it was imagining that gave him his biggest idea to date.
An idea so absurd, that even his most loyal employees and followers were
positive that it would fail.
Walt Disney had always
painted his dreams onto the big screen, but he wondered, could he make them a
reality? Could he bring his creations to life? Could he make a place where the
credits never rolled, and where the magic never ended? It was in 1954 that he
initiated construction on Disneyland, the most magical place on earth. It would
be an amusement park unlike any other. It would be always kept clean, and the
employees always friendly. People could not just ride rides; they could take a
leisurely stroll down a recreation of classic small town America, ride a train
around the park, and interact with all of Disney’s magical characters. You
could travel to the future in one section, and explore the wild frontier in the
other. It would always be perfect and happy in Disneyland. Parades would be
marching every day, and the celebrations would never end. Everyone thought that
Walt would finally meet his demise with this seemingly impossible project. Yet
he marched on. Walt began buying up land in Anaheim, CA, and construction
commenced unheeded. When the Disneyland grand opening came a year later in
1955, it was attended by thousands of people, and broadcasted live to millions
more. In his opening speech Walt said “…Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals,
the dreams and the hard facts that have created America ... with the hope that
it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world…” Over 50,000 people attended the first day, and
Disneyland became an instant hit with the American people. It was an experience
that no one had ever been able to comprehend. Today people still come to visit
this extraordinary land, the only park ever personally created under Walt’s
supervision. But the best was yet to come.
As Walt Disney and his
company soared through the 60’s, Walt began to slow down. The studio was still
producing spectacular hit movies and shows. Disneyland continued to fascinate
all. But he was no longer the creative
young man he once was. His years of addiction to smoking were catching up with
him. However, he still had a lot of fight in him, and a vast imagination. Walt
Disney had one final card in his hand, one last conception laying in his mind.
When it became public that the Disney Company was buying massive amounts of
property in rural Florida, everybody assumed that Walt was building a second
Disneyland. But he had something better in mind. He wanted to create an entire
Disney world. Not just a single
little amusement park, but a whole world, all under his jurisdiction. In the
center of it would be his biggest ambition ever: the Experimental Prototype
City of Tomorrow, or E.P.C.O.T. It would be an entire real city inhabited by
20,000 people. It would have all the safety and friendliness as small town
America, but with all the technologies of the future. Here people would live in
an idealistic utopian society where they could experiment with new home
technologies, and live with the Disney spirit. There would be no cars, no
criminals, and no slums. It would be the one place, the one place, in the world that would be absolutely perfect. A
community free of all imperfections. It would be his greatest achievement ever,
his final lasting legacy for mankind, the one thing people would remember most
about him. But sadly, and almost fittingly, Walt’s last dream was the only one
he could never realize.
Walt Disney’s smoking habits
finally did catch up to him at the worst possible moment, and he died
unexpectedly of lung cancer in 1966. And with his death, his final dream of a
city of the future died with him. The company decided that they were not
interested in managing an entire city, so they scrapped the idea. Instead they
recycled the conception of Disney World into a series of amusement parks. His
last legacy, ironically, was one that wasn’t how he intended it to be.
Walt Disney had a long,
successful, and enduring career. His story is perhaps one of the best examples
of the American dream. From humble beginnings on a farm in Kansas, to becoming
the nation’s great entertainer, Walt never gave up in his pursuits. He knew
what he wanted to do and he accomplished what many thought were impossible. He
broke the barriers of our human limitations, he thought outside of the box. No
idea was too big or too ambitious for him. As long as he could dream it up,
Walt could make it. The motivations, inspirations, and philosophies of Walt
Disney are similar to that of our own American values; that you can be whatever
you want to be if you set your mind to it, and that
nothing is impossible. It is stories like Walt’s that remind us that America is
still a land of endless opportunities.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/images/uewb_04_img0239.jpg
http://abcnewsradioonline.com/storage/news-images/Getty_N_011712_WaltDisney.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1347662336603
