Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5th 1901, Walt Disney began drawing at a young age. As a teenager, he drew cartoons for the school newspaper and studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Then, at sixteen, he quit school to join the US Army, only to discover that he was too young to do so. So he joined the Red Cross instead and spent a year driving an ambulance in France, before returning to the US in 1919.
An artist and animator
Walt worked as an artist in Kansas City, before starting his own animation company there with a colleague named Fred Harman. He and Harman created cartoons called Laugh-O-Grams. The cartoons became very popular, and Walt soon opened an animation studio with an ex-colleague called Ub Iwerks. Sadly, the studio lost money and Walt had to shut it down and declare bankruptcy.
In the early 1920s, Walt and his brother Roy moved to Los Angeles, where they started the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923. Five years later, Walt worked with Ub Iwerks to create his most iconic character, Mickey Mouse, who he then voiced in cartoons that made the studio famous. A year later, he introduced to the world other famous characters, like Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, through a series of animated short films.
Films and THEME PARKS
In 1937, Walt released his first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film became an instant sensation and Walt went on to produce some of the most famous films of all time, including Pinocchio (1940), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Mary Poppins (1964). He won twenty-two Oscars in his lifetime and also produced many popular TV shows.
In 1955, he opened his first theme park, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, where people could meet the characters he’d created and go on fantastic rides. Ten years later, he began working on his second theme park, Disney World in Florida. He died on December 15th 1966 before construction was completed. However, his spirit lives on, through his timeless productions and the twelve theme parks he inspired, in the US, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai.