Walt Disney

In my last blog post I wrote about how an author and the magic of his books and I thought, why not write about someone that expresses his feelings and his magic in movies? In this blog post, I am going to talk about Mr. Walter Elias Disney or Mr. Walt Disney and tell you a little about him.

Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, but he grew up in Missouri, always with a big interest in art. He was part of a very humble family. When he was 16, he left high school and tried to enlist into the army, but he was rejected because he didn’t reach the required age so instead he joined the Red Cross. After joining, he was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance, and it is said that he decorated the ambulance entirely with his very own cartoons. 

When Walter went back to the US, his interest in animation grew more than his interest in art itself, and he started showing his cartoons, in a theater, which he called Laugh-o-grams, but unfortunately that wasn’t really successful and it didn’t stick, and he ended up owing a lot of money, totally bankrupt. 

After his failed attempt, Walter and his brother went to Hollywood and set up their own little cartoon studio and this time it did work for them. They created a cartoon series called “Alice’s Adventures” which was a big hit and worked really well for him, but a little while later, he lost the rights to a very important cartoon he had created “Oswald the Rabbit”. 

It is said that after losing his rabbit rights, he felt the need to create something to replace him, and here is where, I think, and I’m sure a lot of you will agree with me, he created MICKEY MOUSE. He was based on a pet mouse Walt had, and it is said that even the mouse’s personality was based on Walter’s, and he voiced him.  It started off as a silent black and white silent cartoon, which then turned to a colour, voiced one, and this was the cartoon that won him his first ACADEMY AWARD. Mr. Disney won a total of 22 Academy Awards.

Later on, he moved on to film-making, and started making SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN-DWARFS, but he didn’t have enough money to finish it, and the Bank of America gave him the money to finish it and it was showing by 1937. This movie made more than $100,000,000.00, and he continued in the movie industry. 

In 1955 de opened an amusement park he called Disney Park, and it was located in California.

 

By 1966, Disney started having a bit of health problems and was diagnosed lung cancer, due to that he was a smoker. He later died of shortness of breath. A rumor was very heard saying that Walt Disney was frozen, but he was cremated and that was just an urban legend.

Even after his death, his legacy still continues to be, and continues to charm and bring happiness to all the people in the world. Mr. Walt Disney was a truly creator of magic, and he will never be forgotten.

Like I said in my last blog post, I grew up reading Dr. Seuss’s books, I used to and still love them, and I think not everybody used to read them like I did, but Disney’s movies are also part of me growing up and I can ASSURE that they are part of everybody’s childhood too.