Disney
What is The Walt Disney Company?
Who is Walt Disney ?
Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago Illinois, to his father Elias Disney, and mother Flora Call Disney. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.
After Walt's birth, the Disney family moved to Marceline Missouri, Walt lived most of his childhood here.
Walt had very early interests in art, he would often sell drawings to neighbors to make extra money. He pursued his art career, by studying art and photography by going to McKinley High School in Chicago.
Walt began to love, and appreciate nature and wildlife, and family and community, which were a large part of agrarian living. Though his father could be quite stern, and often there was little money, Walt was encouraged by his mother, and older brother, Roy to pursue his talents.
During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was under age, only sixteen years old at the time. Instead, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas to France, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with Disney cartoons.
Once Walt returned from France, he began to pursue a career in commercial art. He started a small company called Laugh-O-Grams, which eventually fell bankrupt. With his suitcase, and twenty dollars, Walt headed to Hollywood to start anew.
After making a success of his "Alice Comedies," Walt became a recognized Hollywood figure. On July 13, 1925, Walt married one of his first employees, Lillian Bounds, in Lewiston, Idaho. Later on they would be blessed with two daughters, Diane and Sharon .
In 1932, the production entitled Flowers and Trees(the first color cartoon) won Walt the first of his studio's Academy Awards. In 1937, he released The Old Mill, the first short subject to utilize the multi-plane camera technique.
On December 21, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Theater in Los Angeles. The film produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression, the film is still considered one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt Disney Studios completed other full-length animated classics such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
Walt Disney's dream of a clean, and organized amusement park, came true, as Disneyland Park opened in 1955. Walt also became a television pioneer, Disney began television production in 1954, and was among the first to present full-color programming with his Wonderful World of Color in 1961.
When and Where
Social Influence
Political Influence
Economic Influences
The Walt Disney World Resort has also provided extensive tax revenues for county, state and federal governments. Theme park tickets, restaurant meals and resort hotel stays are ways in which the Resort benefits the surrounding community with tax revenue. In addition, Walt Disney World has brought numerous competitors, such as Universal Orlando Resort and Sea World. These resorts have attempted to capitalize on the enormous success of Walt Disney World, with limited success. Walt Disney World is the largest single-site employer in the United States, with over 58,000 full-time and part-time cast members. The property also has extensive recruitment programs overseas and in colleges.Walt Disney World has contributed to extensive economic growth in Central Florida and the surrounding region, and the Resort continues to grow and expand into new businesses including conventions and other large events.
Long Term Impacts Of The Walt Disney Company
Walt Disney created a fantasy land that incorporated Disney characters, nice restaurants, and new and different rides. Just the idea of going to an amusement park for a week was completely different from anything else at the time. Disney World emphasized cleanliness and demanded respectable workers to meet the public. The staff scraped up the gum and hosed down the streets. Another difference is the size of the Disney theme parks. At Great America outside of Chicago, one can go on all of the rides in a day, but the acreage that Walt Disney World occupies is equivalent in size to San Francisco. Disney World contains the Magic Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon (water park), Pleasure Island (nightly entertainment), Epcot, MGM studios, and a nature preserve. Disney envisioned Epcot as an experimental city of the future, but after Disney died, Epcot was developed into a year-round world's fair. The MGM studios in California have been replicated on the grounds of Disney World in Florida. Some shows are now taped in Florida, and some animated films are drawn there. There are so many different rides and shows to see in Disney World that one has to rush just to do everything in a week. Now even more people can go to the unique theme parks because a wildly successful Disney park was built in Japan, and last summer a park opened just outside Paris, France.
The films that Disney made appealed to many people, but he most wanted to make movies for the family market. Two hundred-forty million people have seen a Disney movie, and 800 million people have read a Disney comic book or magazine. Those figures clearly demonstrate his impact. Walt Disney, a Chicago boy who took Hollywood by storm, changed family entertainment. Not only was he the first to make full-length animated films, but he did so with critical acclaim and financial success. Few other films that are thirty to forty years old can still 'play nationwide in movie theaters or sell hundreds of thousands of video copies. The work of Walt Disney continues sixty years later with Beauty and the Beast, which was nominated for an Oscar award last year, and Aladdin, the Disney Studio's latest animated film.