Biographie de Walt Disney

Walt Disney

In 1066, a family of French peasants left the village of Isigny which was located on the Norman coast, to live in England. They anglicized their name: Isigny became Disney. In 1834, the next generations went to New York. It’s in Kansas City that Walter Elias Disney, born on the 5th of December 1901 and his brother Roy, born on the 24th of June 1893 created the Disney studios. Roy joined the American Navy. Walt who couldn’t follow him because he was too young, falsified a birth certificate to become a paramedic in France. He came back to America in 1919 and started drawing in an advertising design studio. Walt met Ub Iwerks, and together they discovered cartoons.

Walt Disney decided to create his own cartoon company with his former colleague Fred Harman. Together, they created cartoons of fairy tales which they called Laugh-O-Grams. Caricatures were featured in a local theater and were appreciated by the audience. This success led Disney to create his own studio, which he also called Laugh-O-Grams, which opened on May 18th, 1922. In 1923, the studio had gone bankrupt. Walt Disney decided to move to California, to create his new studio. He and his brother Roy established the Disney Brothers studio, in Hollywood, in October 1923. On July 25th, 1925, Walt married Lillian Bounds, an employee in his studio. Disney developed a new character based on his pet mouse; initially, it was named Mortimer, but his wife renamed it Mickey. At the beginning of the 30’s, Mickey Mouse was the most popular cartoon character in the world. Lilian and Walt’s first child, Diane, was born on December 18th, 1933. Later they adopted a girl, Sharon, who was born on December 31th, 1936. In February 1938, Disney Studios published Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the first full-length cartoon movie in America, in Technicolor. During the following years, Disney produced Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi and Dumbo.

During the Second World War, Walt Disney and his studio concentrated their efforts on making educational movies and short moral films. After the war, Disney published Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella and Peter Pan. At the end of the 40’s , Disney began to work on the concept of a theme park, Disneyland, which opened on July 17th, 1955.Walt Disney broadens the extent of his work with action movies, including Treasure Island (1950), Faithful Tramp (1957), Pollyanna (1960), and Swiss Family Robinson (1960) , and with a weekly anthology called Disneyland and a daily television program called the Mickey Mouse Club.

At the beginning of the 60’s, Walt Disney Productions became the main source of family entertainment. In 1964, Mary Poppins was published, and was the most successful Disney movie of the 60’s.

In 1966, doctors discovered a tumor in his lung. After removing the lung, the doctors gave him a life expectancy of six months. On December 15th, 1966, Disney died at the age of 65 because of an acute circulatory collapse resulting from the lung cancer. His brother Roy took control of Walt Disney Productions and Disneyworld opened in October 1971. Disney’s entertainment empire continues to be a billion-dollar company, with its eleven theme parks, five resorts, eleven TV networks by cable, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight cinema studios, and six record labels.

Today, Disney is an international company, and still provides the most famous family entertainment

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