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Oakland Museum of California
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Elizabeth Whipple
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Exhibition dates: May 6–August 20, 2006

BEHIND THE MAGIC—50 YEARS OF DISNEYLAND®
Biographical Sketch of Walter Elias Disney

The man behind the magic of the Disney entertainment empire was born into a family of modest means in Chicago in 1901. Disney, his parents, and four siblings moved frequently when he was young, but his formative years were spent in the small railroad town of Marceline, Missouri.

Born with artistic ability, Disney sold his first drawings at age seven and, while a teenager, attended night classes at a professional art school. His education was cut short, though, by World War I. Too young to enlist, he volunteered for Red Cross duty and spent a year in France driving an ambulance and chauffeuring agency administrators.

When he returned to the U.S., he decided he wanted to become an editorial cartoonist and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to advance his career. Rejected by the city’s newspapers, he eventually found work as an illustrator for an art studio and, later, for a company that produced animated advertising films. Before reaching his 20th birthday, he had created and marketed his first original animated cartoon and later perfected a new method for combining live action and animation in a short film he called Alice’s Wonderland.

In 1923, he left Kansas City for California with nothing but a few drawing materials and $40 to his name and Alice under his arm. He convinced a distributor in New York City to purchase the movie and order more in the series. Encouraged by the news, his brother Roy—recovering from tuberculosis in a Los Angeles hospital—left his sickbed to join Walt in establishing a cartooning studio. Roy was the financial wizard and Walt the creative spark in their new venture.

After the Alice films ran their course, Walt and a team of animators created a cartoon character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but quickly lost control of it to an unscrupulous distributor. Anxious to put that experience behind him, Disney came up with a new character, a rounded rodent that he called Mortimer Mouse (later named Mickey Mouse at the suggestion of his wife.)

Mickey Mouse made his screen debut in the animated short Steamboat Willie—the world’s first synchronized sound cartoon. (Disney himself provided Mickey’s voice.) Other innovations in animation soon followed from the Disney studio, including the first color cartoon, the first short subject to utilize the multi-plane camera technique, and the first full-length animated music feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1932, an animated production entitled Flowers and Trees captured the first of Disney’s many Academy Awards.

By 1940, the studio’s staff had swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, writers, and technicians, many trained at a school Disney founded on-site. During World War II, these men and women dedicated themselves to producing training and propaganda films for the armed services.

After the war, Disney turned his attention to live-action features, producing a series of nature films called True-Life Adventures. Through such films as The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie, and White Wilderness, he introduced Americans to the world of wild animals and taught even the youngest viewers the importance of conserving our natural heritage.

In the 1950s, Walt focused his considerable energies on another idea: the construction of a new kind of amusement park. Having taken his own daughters to local parks in search of wholesome entertainment, he was surprised and dismayed to note their deteriorating conditions. Certain he could create an entertaining and educational environment that was clean, safe, and well organized, he challenged his animators to bring his ideas to life.

With financial support from the Disney Studios, Western Publishing, Walt himself, and the American Broadcasting Company—which got a weekly TV series in return—Disney realized his dream. Disneyland opened its doors to the public on July 17, 1955, to overwhelmingly positive response.

Drawing on the films his studio produced, the park combined elements of the past (Frontierland), the exotic (Adventureland), fairy tales (Fantasyland), and the future (Tomorrowland). Walt’s fond memories of his childhood in a small Midwestern town were reflected on Main Street, as was his lifelong interest in trains; a 5/8ths-scale railroad rimmed the park.

Recognizing that the park needed some tweaking and updating as the years went by, he added new rides, Audio-Animatronics® attractions, a sky tram between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, and a monorail system. But he didn’t stop dreaming with Disneyland. By 1958, he was planning a second park—this one to be located east of the Mississippi.

The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair was Walt’s “proving ground” to see if East Coast audiences would respond to Disneyland-type attractions. The Florida land acquisitions began in early 1965, after the first year of the fair. With Roy directing the land acquisitions, the studio purchased 43 square miles of swamp and forest in central Florida. In addition to a new park, Walt hoped to found a planned community there—the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT—with a centralized hub of businesses and services and up to 20,000 inhabitants.

Unfortunately, Walt Disney died before seeing either the Florida park or his new town come into being. After his passing, in 1966, EpcotPCOTEPCOT evolved into a World’s Fair-type attraction under the Walt Disney World umbrella. In 1994, a version of his planned community—called “Celebration”—was founded on Disney-owned land just minutes from the park.

During the final decade of his life, Disney and his team of “Imagineers” staged the ceremonies at the 1960 Winter Olympics as well as several exhibits at the 1964 World’s Fair. One of the last projects Disney spearheaded was the establishment of the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts), a college-level institution of creative and performing arts in the city of Valencia. Of Cal Arts, Walt once said, “It’s the principal thing I hope to leave when I move on to greener pastures. If I can help provide a place to develop the talent of the future, I think I will have accomplished something.”

Among Disney’s many honors were the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France’s Legion of Honor and Officer d’Academie decorations; Thailand’s Order of the Crown; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theater Owners. Additionally, in his lifetime he and his staff earned 48 Academy Awards and seven Emmys.

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Back to the main Behind the Magic Press Release

Behind the Magic was developed by The Henry Ford in association with Walt Disney Imagineering, a division of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. Produced and managed by ExhibiTour, LLC.

The Oakland Museum of California exhibition received generous support from the Oakland Museum Women’s Board and Ron and Diane Miller.

USA TODAY is the official media partner of Behind the Magic—50 Years of Disneyland. USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co, Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is the nation's top-selling newspaper and is headquartered in McLean, VA. USA TODAY has an average daily circulation of 2.3 million and is available worldwide. The USA TODAY brand also includes: USA TODAY Sports Weekly, USATODAY.com, and USA TODAY LIVE.