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Biography of Walter Elias DisneyName: Walter Elias DisneyBirth Date: December 5, 1901 Death Date: December 15, 1966 Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: filmmaker, entrepreneur, executive Walter Elias Disney An American filmmaker and entrepreneur, Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966) created a new kind of popular culture in feature-length animated cartoons and live-action "family" films.Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, the fourth of five children born to a Canadian farmer father and a mother from Ohio. He was raised on a Midwestern farm in Marceline, Missouri, and in Kansas City, where he was able to acquire some rudimentary art instruction from correspondence courses and Saturday museum classes. He would later use many of the animals and characters that he knew from that Missouri farm in his cartoons.He dropped out of high school at 17 to serve in World War I. After serving briefly overseas as an ambulance driver, Disney returned in 1919 to Kansas City for an apprenticeship as a commercial illustrator and later made primitive animated advertising cartoons. By 1922, he had set up his own shop in …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…at St. Joseph's Hospital in Los Angeles, California. At the time of his death, his enterprises had garnered him respect, admiration, and a business empire worth over 0 million-a-year, but Disney was still remembered primarily as the man who had created Mickey Mouse over two decades before. Further Reading The best book on Disney is Richard Schickel, The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney (1968). A useful source of technical information is Robert D. Feild, The Art of Walt Disney (1942). For an accurate study of the humanitarian and business aspects of Disney, see Steven Watts, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (1998). The most intimate portrait of Disney is by his daughter, Diane Disney Miller, The Story of Walt Disney (1957). Biographies of Disney appear in both the 1952 and 1967 issues of Current Biography. Disney's obituary appears in the December 16, 1966, issue of New York Times. |