May I introduce Walter Elias Disney?

Walter "Walt" Elias Disney is one of the founders of the world-famous Walt Disney Company. It all started in 1901, when Walt was born in a city called Chicago, Illinois.

At this point, let's have a closer look at the state Illinois, so we can trace back Walt's roots more easily.
Illinois is located in the Midwest Region of the United States. While Chicago is Illinois' largest community, Springfield is home to the Illinois State Capitol, which makes it Illinois' capital city.

As you can see on the map, Illinois borders Iowa, Wisconsin, Lake Michigan (which belongs to Michigan), Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri. The latter was a very significant place in Disney's life. When he and his family relocated to Marceline, Missouri, Disney found out he was a passionate and talented draftsman. Walt carried four years on his back when he realized he would become a cartoonist one day!

In 1917, Walt moved back to Chicago. After being rejected by the army, Walt joined the American Red Cross where he was sent to France to conduct an ambulance car. For me as a  voluntary paramedic this was really interesting to read!

First steps

Disney and his friend Ubbe Iwerks formed a company named "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in 1920. The company soon ceased to exist, whereupon Walt joined the Kansas City Film Ad Company in Missouri. Eventually, Walt launched his own business. With his very first employee, Fred Harman, Walt wrapped up a deal with Frank L. Newman (I'm not kidding!) who was the owner of the local theater in Kansas City. There, Walt and Frank presented their cartoons ("Laugh-O-Grams") for the very first time.
In 1923, Disney signed a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies. This year is considered as the beginning of "The Disney Brothers Studio". Unfortunately, their costs exceeded their returns, which is why they soon declared bankruptcy. Roy O. Disney, Walt's brother, invited him to come to Hollywood, CA. Once again, Walt launched the Disney Brothers Studio together with his brother Roy.

Does anyone of you remember this cartoon on the right hand side? Do you know how this "sort of Mickey Mouse" was called back then? Well, here's the answer: Published in 1928, this cartoon was the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon created by Walter Elias Disney. He was called the "Steamboat Willie". Doesn't ring a bell?
Some of you might have heard that the story of Disney started with a lucky rabbit. This is absolutely true: Before Walt made some early drafts on the Mickey Mouse, he drew a rabbit called "Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit".

Walt Disney's Masterpieces

Over the years, numerous things happened: Walt Disney's first full-color cartoons are introduced, Donald Duck appears, the Disney Studio relocates to Burbank, California and the first Disney park ("Disneyland") is opened in Anaheim, CA. What's more is the release of several films which are nowadays considerer as The Walt Disney Masterpieces. For example:

1937: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the very first animated film in Walt Disney's history
1940: Fantasia, one of today's classics
1950: Treasure Island, Disney's first live-action movie is released
And so on and so forth... 

What is your favorite disney movie? Which ones did you watch when you were a kid? Tarzan? The Lion King? 101 Dalmations? Beauty and the Beast? I watched so many Disney films in my childhood, I could never list all of them. Today, I watch a Disney movie every once in a while. Aren't they just amazing? I admire all the cartoonists and graphic designers who put so much work into this. Lately I found some early drafts of several Disney cartoons. I am going to show you two of them, but if you would like to see more, click here.

Do you recognize these two films?

Walter's private life

Walt got married to Lillian Marie Bounds at the age of 24. He had met her while Lillian worked as a secretary at the Disney Studio. His wife gave birth to a daughter in 1933, Diane Marie Disney, although Walt had always dreamed about having a son. The couple adopted a second daughter, Sharon Mae Disney, who was born in 1936.
By the way: It was not Walter who named his most famous cartoon character "Mickey Mouse". At first, Walter wanted to give him the name "Mortimer Mouse", whereupon Lillian told Walt it sounded "too pompous". His wife then suggested the name "Mickey Mouse".

His whole life, Walter had been chain smoking. In 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and soon afterwards died because of it. After his death, Lillian Disney gave a $50 million to the Walt Disney Company so as to construct a new concert hall. Six years after Lillians death, the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in Los Angeles, CA.

Some facts you surely didn't know about Disney

• Opinion polls show that Mickey Mouse wasn't the most famous cartoon, but Popeye the Sailor.
• Mickey Mouse was the first animated cartoon to talk. His first words were "Hot dog"!
• In some Disney movies, classic characters are hidden somewhere in the background. E.g. in the opening scenes of The Little Mermaid you can make out Goofy, Mickey and Donald. See for yourself in the picture on the right. If you want to see more scenes where other Disney characters are hidden, follow this link.
• Donald Duck's voice, Clarence Nash, created the dog barks for 101 Dalmations.
• Walt Disney's personal favorite character was Goofy.
• Bahlu (Baloo) is Hindi and means "bear".
• Lots of Disney films such as The Jungle Book or Pinnochio do not have a mother-character. Some say that's because of the early death of Disney's mother.  
• They used tiger roars for the Lion King as lions weren't loud enough.
• Simba is Swahili and means "lion".
• Originally, they wanted to name the film Lion King "King of the Jungle" until someone noticed that lions actually don't live in the jungle.
• Wall-E, the rubbish-compactor, was named after Walter Elias Disney.
• Sulley from Monsters Inc has more than 2.3 million individual hairs. It took the producers twelve hours to produce one single frame of Sulley.
• Cinderella's Castle was designed after Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany.
• The correct plural form of "dwarf" is "dwarfes". The title "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" still says "dwarfs" because back then, "dwarfs" was grammatically right.
• There is a club called Club 33  within Disneyland. Opened in 1967, the club has a list of 487 members who are allowed to enter. Good luck with trying to get onto the list; the waiting list is of around 14 years.
• The Disney World resort is about the same size as San Francisco.
• Steve Jobs was a member of the board of Disney's directors. If you ever watched the film Cars, you might have seen a white racing car with the Apple logo and the number "84" on it (the first Macintosh computer was released in 1984). See for yourself on the picture below.

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

- Walt Disney

sources: thewaltdisneycompany.com, disney.wikia.com/wiki/, wikipedia.org, www.empireonline.com
image source (1): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_disney_portrait.jpg
image source (2): http://www.map-of-usa.co.uk/images/illinois.gif
image source (3): http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/sites/default/files/styles/775x/public/timeline-image/1928_11_18_3%20%282%29.jpg
image source (4): http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/10/6/19/enhanced-buzz-32109-1349567318-4.jpg
image source (5): http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/10/6/18/enhanced-buzz-9106-1349562614-0.jpg
image source (6): http://izismile.com/2013/06/10/disney_characters_that_are_hidden_in_other_disney_27_pics.html
image source (7): http://bdd.worldofcars-forum.fr/bddcars/images/personnages/apple_car.png