Transcript
[Disney]
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Bob Jackson
NEWS from WED Imagineering
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FOR YOUR INFORMATION
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
WALT DISNEY
The life and works of Walt Disney, his eminence and the impacts of his artistry and showmanship on his times, are not readily encompassed in dates and data. His fabulous career just bursts out of such conventional bounds with events of historic consequence in motion pictures and television, as well as of personal nature, during the past three and one-half decades.
The creator of Mickey Mouse and founder of Disneyland was born in Chicago December 5, 1901. His father was Elias Disney, Irish-Canadian, a building contractor, and his mother, Flora Call Disney was of German-American descent. He has two brothers and a sister living. He received his public schooling in Chicago and Kansas City and attended art school in Chicago. He is married to the former Lillian Bounds of Idaho.
They have two daughters, Diane, married to Ron Miller, U.S.C. honor student and football star, now a production executive at Disney’s, and Sharon, wife of Robert Brown, and interior designer. The Millers have six children: Christopher, Joanna Sharon, Tamara, Jennifer, Walter Elias Disney Miller, and Ronald William, Jr.
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In business, Walt has been a lifelong partner with his elder brother, Roy, president of Walt Disney Productions. Roy has always directed the financial affairs of the company.
Tying these biographical statistics vitally together is a story of achievement as fabulously exciting as any of the film fables in the Disney repertoire.
In 1923, a tall, lean son of the mid-West came unheralded to Hollywood, mecca of the movies. His equipment for his chosen profession consisted largely of $40 in a well-worn suit and a boundless ambition hitched to a fantastic imagination. Pooling funds with brother Roy, and with an additional $500 borrowed from an uncle, Walt was in business. The Disney boys set up shop in a little real estate shack. Walt’s proficiency as an artist and a self-taught animator was the basis of the undertaking -- the founding of an institution which today is housed in a multi-million dollar studio in Burbank, California.
Fortune runs erratically through the statistics of the next few years, now high, now low.
After a series of “Alice’s Wonderland,” featuring a living girl with cartoon characters, Walt created a character from a title owned by another studio. This was Oswald the Rabbit.
Oswald spelled misfortune which turned into one of the most fortunate turning points in the Disney career. After Walt had been making the Oswald shorts for about a year, some 26 altogether, rights to the character were re-claimed by the distributors. The outlook seemed suddenly dark and disastrous. Oswald had become the pay-load character.
In this extremity, Walt created Mickey Mouse, destined to become the most continuously famous of all movie stars, live or cartoon. And it was this test
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of his resourcefulness and showmanship which marked him as the genius of entertainment which he was soon acclaimed by millions of people around the globe. Mickey’s first released picture was “STEAMBOAT WILLIE,” at the Colony Theatre in New York in 1928.
The advent of sound in pictures enabled Walt to launch one of his most venturesome and creative undertakings, a series of brilliant short musi-comedies called “THE SILLY SYMPHONIES.” The first of these was “THE SKELETON DANCE.”
Besides introducing sound to cartoons, Walt also was the first to use Technicolor.
Mickey’s popularity in turn enabled Walt to produce the first full-length animation feature, “SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” in 1938. It is still accounted one of the great facts and imperishable monuments of motion picture history.
With the opening of the beautiful Burbank Studio in 1940, the Disney production personnel soared to over 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians. They were literally guided at every turn by the indefatigable man of ideas and fantastic works. Creations of his own and brilliant adaptations of the great classic fables and fairytales were produced with incredible industry and creative energy. They took the entertainment world by storm; made the Disney name ever more illustrious. It became a synonym for what was most unique and best in bringing laughter and buoyancy to people of all nations.
In the wake of “SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS,” screen immortals, there followed “PINOCCHIO,” and “FANTASIA,” in 1940; “DUMBO” and “THE RELUCTANT DRAGON” in 1941; “BAMBI,” in 1942; “SALUDOS AMIGOS”
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and “VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER” in 1943; “THE THREE CABALLEROS,” first combination of Technicolor live action and cartoon, in 1945; “CINDERELLA,” 1950; “ALICE IN WONDERLAND,” in 1951; “PETER PAN,” 1953; “LADY AND THE TRAMP,” 1955; “SLEEPING BEAUTY,” 1959; “ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS,” 1961; and for Christmas, 1963 release “THE SWORD AND THE STONE.”
With our entrance into World War II, Disney literally turned over his entire facilities to the production of training films for the Armed Services, pictures on health which are still used around the world by the U.S. State Department, and what might be termed propaganda films.
It was not until after 1945 that the Disney personnel began returning from the services to the studio in sufficient numbers to get production back into full swing.
Disney turned from exclusive filming of cartoons to the live action field and today nearly a score of his features are listed among the all-time top box office entries.
Supplementing the cartoon ventures have been such notable live action pictures as: “SOUTH OF THE SOUTH,” 1946; “TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA,” 1954; “OLD YELLER,” 1957; “POLLYANNA,” 1960; “SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON,” 1960; “THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR,” 1961; “THE PARENT TRAP,” 1961; “BABES IN TOYLAND,” 1961; “MOON PILOT,” 1962; “BON VOYAGE,” and “BIG RED” in 1962; and “IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS.” In 1963 the shows included “MIRACLE OF THE WHITE STALLIONS,” “SAVAGE SAM,” “SUMMER MAGIC” and “INCREDIBLE JOURNEY.” A complete list of feature releases is attached.
The exact years tell little of the progression and scope of the Walt
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Disney legend. The pictures, rather, reveal the constant experimentation in the animation medium and live action formats he has done so much to develop.
Twenty-nine motion picture Academy Awards, four TV Emmys, scores of citations from many nations, and more than seven hundred other awards, attest his standing among his peers and in the favor of vast audiences.
Prominent among these honors are decoration by the French Legion of Honor and Officer d’Academie, France; the Art Workers Guild of London; twenty-nine awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale and Southern California University; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; citations from patriotic, educational and professional societies and international film festivals for distinguished services and product.
During the past fourteen years, Disney gained world-wide approbation for his famous True-Life Adventure camera factuals of wild nature’s drama, culminating in such features as “THE LIVING DESERT,” “PERRI” (a True-Life fantasy), “WHITE WILDERNESS” and “JUNGLE CAT.”
Disneyland, launched in 1955 as a fabulous $17,000,000 “Magic Kingdom,” now represents a $45,000,000 investment and has been visited by more than 38,000,000 people including Presidents, Kings and Queens and Royalty from all around the globe. Disneyland is Walt’s grandest venture in public entertainment and the acme of his showman’s experience. It is a place where audiences, particularly family groups, may actually participate in the exciting, thrilling fantastic things to which Walt has devoted a lifetime and which are conjured wherever the name of Disney is known and spoken. The 160 acre area in Anaheim, California,
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adjacent to Los Angeles is a place of enchantment.
In 1961 Disney entered the field of color television with his “WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR” over NBC network and today it is rated among the top TV programs. This followed seven years of the “DISNEYLAND” and “WALT DISNEY PRESENTS:” also “MICKEY MOUSE CLUB” black and white shows.
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FEATURE LENGTH PICTURES UP TO DATE ARE:
1937 - “SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS”
1939 - “PINOCCHIO”
1940 - “FANTASIA”
1941 - “THE RELUCTANT DRAGON”
1941 - “DUMBO”
1942 - “BAMBI”
1942 - “SALUDOS AMIGOS”
1943 - “VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER”
1945 - “MAKE MINE MUSIC”
1946 - “SONG OF THE SOUTH”
1947 - “FUN AND FANCY FREE”
1948 - “MELODY TIME”
1949 - “SO DEAR TO MY HEART”
1949 - “ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD”
1950 - “CINDERELLA”
1950 - “TREASURE ISLAND”
1951 - “ALICE IN WONDERLAND”
1952 - “ROBIN HOOD”
1953 - “PETER PAN”
1953 - “THE SWORD AND THE ROSE”
1953 - “THE LIVING DESERT”
1954 - “ROB ROY”
1954 - “THE VANISHING PRAIRIE”
1954 - “STORMY”
1954 - “TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA”
1955 - “LADY AND THE TRAMP”
1955 - “DAVY CROCKETT, KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER”
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1955 - “THE LITTLEST OUTLAW”
1955 - “THE AFRICAN LION”
1956 - “THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE”
1956 - “DAVY CROCKETT AND THE RIVER PIRATES”
1956 - “SECRETS OF LIFE”
1956 - “WESTWARD HO THE WAGONS!”
1957 - “JOHNNY TREMAIN”
1957 - “PERRI”
1957 - “OLD YELLER”
1958 - “THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST”
1958 - “WHITE WILDERNESS”
1958 - “TONKA”
1959 - “SLEEPING BEAUTY”
1959 - “THE SHAGGY DOG”
1959 - “DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE”
1959 - “THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN”
1960 - “TOBY TYLER”
1960 - “KIDNAPPED”
1960 - “THE SIGN OF ZORRO”
1960 - “POLLYANNA”
1960 - “TEN WHO DARED”
1960 - “JUNGLE CAT”
1960 - “SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON”
1961 - “THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR”
1961 - “ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS”
1961 - “THE PARENT TRAP”
1961 - “NIKKI, WILD DOG OF THE NORTH”
1961 - “GREYFRIARS BOBBY”
1961 - “BABES IN TOYLAND”
1962 - “MOON PILOT”
1962 - “BON VOYAGE”
1962 - “BIG RED”
1962 - (“ALMOST ANGELS”
(“LADY AND THE TRAMP”
1962 - “THE LEGEND OF LOBO”
1962 - “IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS”
1963 - “SON OF FLUBBER”
1963 - “MIRACLE OF THE WHITE STALLIONS”
1963 - “SAVAGE SAM”
1963 - “SUMMER MAGIC”
1963 - “INCREDIBLE JOURNEY”
1963 - “SWORD IN THE STONE”
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