Walter Elias Disney - What do you know?

[Barbaraann]

Walter Elias Disney was born on this day in 1901. He was born in my hometown Chicago. He spent his childhood in the town of Marceline Missouri. Disneyland was fashioned after that Missouri city. At 16, he studied Art in Chicago. He went into the cartoon business when he traveled to Los Angeles in 1923. The year of 1928, brough Mickey Mouse, and the rest, is history.

Share what you know about Walt Disney here with other MiceChatters.

[FrumiousBoojum]

This should be a long thread...

Well, to get this rolling:

In order to celebrate my future birthday, he debuted the first feature length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, on December 21st.

[Disney Wrassler]

he did take art classes but did not become heavily interested in art until he came back from doing his war time duties in Europe and France. When Walt was 17, WWI had begun and he really wanted to join but he was not 18. So he erased his birthyear on his birth certificate, which was 1901, and re-wrote it as 1900. He sent in the application to red cross and he was accepted by them. He became an ambulance driver for the red cross and he was sent to Europe. Here on his spare time, he took up the hobby of drawing on his ambulance and smoking. He would sent some of his drawings back to his classmates at his high school in Kansas. When he returned, he decided to take up art as a hobby, but his father worried, because he thought Walt was wasting his time and would not be successful.

[Disney Wrassler]

During World War II, Walt pdid a lot to help wherever he could. Given the fact that his studios were not far from the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Burbank, the Military took over his studios too. There they made WWII propaganda films and Disney animators even made insignias for the war crafts. This was a difficult time for Disney though and eventually his animators striked against him in the 1940's. Walt blamed this all on Communism.

[Disney Wrassler]

In Walt Disneys 1942 short Propaganda film,"The New Spirit", starring Donald Duck, the viewers are educated on why they should pay taxes. The short was so successful, that the number of people paying taxes rose up 33%.

Fast foward to a few days before his death, december of 1966, As Walt laid in his hospital bed, he told Roy that he had a vision of what his EPCOt was going to be like on the ceiling of his hospital room.

On the date that Walt Died, people at Disneyland heard Julie London sing the mickey Mouse Club song Thile the American flag was lowered in honor of him over the loud speakers. Talk about emotional .

Walt died, 10 days after his 65 birthday at 9:30 AM in Saint Joseph Providence Medical Center in Burbank California.

Walt was not frozen, he was cremated after a service that was held in Glendale, Ca. 31 years to the day, in 1997, Walts wife Lillian died of a stroke on December 15.

[TDLFAN]

Happy Birthday Walt!!!

[ksejr1]

i know that we share the same birthday

[Skippy]

I know this is cheating, but here's a bunch of Walt info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney

[Gothemi]

Those of you interested in seeing and learning more about Walt, I would recommend purchasing (or borrowing from somebody who has it) the DVD Walt; The Man Behind The Myth. It tells the story of Walt through his friends and family. At the end they discuss his death and even I teared up a little.

Anyway, there is also a book with the same title, though I think the DVD is better as there are a lot of old photos and videos of Walt.

And, Mickey Mouse was orignally called Mortimer mouse until Lilly encouraged him to change his new character's name to Mickey. Mickey was drawn by Walt on the way back to Cal. from NY after finding that that the Oswald the rabbit was being "taken" from Walt along with half of his cartoon staff. The Oswald character was taken over by it's distributor (can't remember the name).

[Disney Wrassler]

Those of you interested in seeing and learning more about Walt, I would recommend purchasing (or borrowing from somebody who has it) the DVD Walt; The Man Behind The Myth. It tells the story of Walt through his friends and family. At the end they discuss his death and even I teared up a little.

Anyway, there is also a book with the same title, though I think the DVD is better as there are a lot of old photos and videos of Walt.

And, Mickey Mouse was orignally called Mortimer mouse until Lilly encouraged him to change his new character's name to Mickey. Mickey was drawn by Walt on the way back to Cal. from NY after finding that that the Oswald the rabbit was being "taken" from Walt along with half of his cartoon staff. The Oswald character was taken over by it's distributor (can't remember the name).

I agree 1,000,000% Get that DVD. I bought it a few years back at the World of Disney store at Disneyland and teared up at the end. I felt like I knew Walt by the time the film was over. I just got done watching some of my favorite chapters about an hour ago too. I LOVE the instrumental music that is played right when you turn the DVD on. The chapters I love the most is the one about Disneyland and the one about Walts final month. It is a very good, yet very emotional film made by Disney family members. Plus you get to see exclusive and unique interviews from Disney Legends that have passed on such as Marc Davis and Ollie Johnson.