Walt Disney- A man of Dreams
Disney was a star. He was a hero, inspiration and dream maker. He made his dreams come true. With hard work and a bit of magic, Walt Disney became the worlds most famous cartoonist/animator of all time. And nothing has changed about that in many many years.
Quite a bit of Disney’s work started way before he was the famous dude he is now.
Walter E. Disney was born in Chicago (USA in case you were wondering). When he was four his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri (great names for places), where his uncle Robert had just purchased land. In Marceline, Disney developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a retired neighbourhood doctor. Elias (Walt’s dad) was a subscriber to the Appeal to Reason newspaper, and Walt practiced drawing by copying the front-page cartoons of Ryan Walker. He also began to develop an ability to work with watercolours and crayons.
In 1911, the Disneys moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Where Disney attended the Benton Grammar School, and met fellow-student Walter Pfeiffer, who came from a family of theatre fans and introduced Disney to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long, he was spending more time at the Pfeiffers’ house than at home. Elias had purchased a newspaper delivery route for The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times. Disney and his brother Roy woke up at 4:30 every morning to deliver the Times before school and also did the round for the evening Star after school. The schedule was exhausting, and Disney often received poor grades for falling asleep in class (not recommended), but he continued his paper route for more than six years (why would anyone wake up at 4:30am willingly?). He also attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute and also took a course in cartooning.
In 1917, Disney’s dad bought stock in a Chicago jelly producer, the O-Zell (thats is a way better name then Jell-o!) Company, and moved back to the city with his family. Disney enrolled at McKinley High School and became the cartoonist of the school newspaper, drawing patriotic pictures about World War I, he also took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In mid-1918, Disney attempted to join the Unites States Army to fight against the Germans, but he was rejected for being too young. After faking his date of birth on his birth certificate, he joined the Red Cross in September 1918 as an ambulance driver. He was shipped to France and arrived in November. He drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance for decoration and had some of his work published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Disney returned to Kansas City in October of 1919, where he worked as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. Where he drew commercial illustrations for advertising, theatre programs and catalogs. He also befriended fellow artist Ub Iwerks (names back then. Wow).
In January 1920, as Pesmen-Rubin’s revenue declined after Christmas, Disney and Iwerks were laid off. They started their own business, the short-lived Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Failing to attract many customers (needs more perfume), Disney and Iwerks agreed that Disney should temporarily leave the company to earn money at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, run by A. V. Cauger, the following month Iwerks, who was not able to run their business alone, also joined. The company produced commercials using the cutout animation technique. Disney became interested in animation, although he preferred drawn cartoons such as Mutt and Jeff and Koko the Clown. With the assistance of a borrowed book on animation and a camera, he began experimenting at home. He came to the conclusion that cel animation (yes, animation has cells) was more promising than the cutout method. Unable to convince Cauger to try cel animation at the company, Disney opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co, Fred Harman. Their main client was the local Newman Theatre, and the short cartoons they produced were sold as “Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams”. Disney studied Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables as a model, and the first six “Laugh-O-Grams” were modernized fairy
tales.
In May 1921, the success of the “Laugh-O-Grams” led to the establishment of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, where he hired more animators, including Fred Harman’s brother Hugh, Rudolf Ising and Iwerks. The Laugh-O-Grams cartoons did not provide enough income to keep the company solvent, so Disney started production of Alice’s Wonderland—based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—which combined live action with animation; he cast Virginia Davis in the title role. The result was, a 12-and-a-half-minute, one-reel film, that was completed too late to save Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which then went into bankruptcy in 1923.
After that, many other hardships fell on Disney. He went bankrupt or fired/laid off a few more times and having another attempt at a cartoon company stolen out of his hands. A man named Charles Mintz (I wonder how many mints he carried around to throw at people who made mint jokes about his name….), stole Disney’s Oswald the Rabbit series and sold it to Universal (another cartooning company I believe). Mintz stole most of Disney’s Animators, except for Iwerks, who stayed with him.
Disney and Iwerks then created Mickey Mouse to replace Oswald the Rabbit.
Walt Disney- The tension maker:
Disney believed in what he did. That made it very difficult to convince him to do things with his work he didn’t want to do. He caused tension in his family, because he kept going bankrupt form his “stupid dreams and ideas” (*cough* his greatness). He caused tension in the cartoon industry because he kept trying so many things they weren’t ready for. He caused tension because he believed in his dreams and didn’t let anyone or anything stop that.
The evolution of Mickey Mouse, Disney’s big beginning:
Heres a question to confuse the heck out of you, Does Mickey Mouse wear overalls? The answer is no. I thought he did, but no. From the very beginning, he didn’t. He still doesn’t.
But animation has gone a long way since Mickey Mouse began. And is still evolving. Still, personally I think the old ones are the best.
To this day, a new Disney movie is a must see for many many people. And olds ones are really fun to watch. Disney was a man of dreams. He made his dreams come true and thats what matters. And with making his dreams come true, though all the roughness and darkness, he showed the world how to make dreams come true, and he entertained us on the way. Walt Disney was the hero of animation, and an inspiration to many. His company and his work has made childhoods so much more memorable.
Disney Land is awesome. If you haven’t gone, and you have the chance, Go.
