Walt Disney Success Story: From Art To Everyone Heart
Walt Disney was a renowned American Cartoonist, Animator, Artist, Director, Film Producer and founder of Walt Disney Company. He is regarded as an idol and notable for his great achievement to the cartoon animation industry. Furthermore, he had been awarded the greatest civilian award of the U.S. government “The Presidential Medal of Freedom”. Walt Disney entrepreneurial journey of success can be inspiring for every human.
What's Inside?
Walt Disney Early Life
Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney & Flora Call Disney. His father Elias Disney was an Irish-Canadian and mother Flora Call Disney was a German-American. Born in a large family, Disney was one of five children. Like many famous people went through hurdles in their life. Walt Disney was one of them. During childhood, he started working as a newspaper boy to support his family. He didn’t get enough time for schooling.
Like morning shows the day. Since childhood, Walt Disney was interested in arts and cartoons. Disney joined McKinley High School in Chicago where he learned drawing and photography and was one of the contributing cartoonists for the school paper. At the age of 16, he dropped out of school for joining an army. Unfortunately, he was not selected due to underaged. Later he worked for Red Cross and was in France for a year as an ambulance driver. He got back to his home in 1919.
How he became a successful entrepreneur?
Walt Disney and his brother Roy moved to Hollywood after the bankruptcy of laugh-o-grams studio. Their first work was to sell their film Alice’s Wonderland which was made under the banner of their previous studio. More animated movies followed after Alice. After the demise of Alice comedies, Disney developed all-cartoon series starring his first original character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney was only able to sustain itself through its animated series in this era of silent films.
In 1928, to recover the loss from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney came with the idea about a mouse character later named as Mickey Mouse. The character Mickey Mouse was breakthrough both in terms of money and popularity. Disney himself provided the sound for Mickey Mouse until 1947. Disney continued to produce cartoons with Mickey Mouse and other characters and began the Silly Symphony series with Columbia Pictures signing on as Symphonies distributor in August 1929.
World War II had a huge impact on the production and release of animation films. Disney faced difficulty during that period but animation work and movie production did not take a back step. After World War II was over, Disney thought to create such a place where parents and children could both have fun at the same time. On July 18, 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland to the general public. Disneyland received a huge platform for the release, the preview of Disneyland was done on national television. On July 17 by Ronald Regan who went on to become the 40th president of the United States of America. Disneyland did not perform as per expectation at the initial phase. Gradually the popularity of Disneyland kept growing and people from all around the world started to visit Disneyland.
How “The Walt Disney” Company formed?
Walt Disney with his brother Roy O. Disney started “The Walt Disney Company” on October 16, 1923, under the name Disney Brother Cartoon Studio. It also operated on the names The Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Production before officially changing its name to “The Walt Disney Company”. Walt Disney worked as a cartoonist in Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, a job which he got with the help of his brother Roy.
Walt Disney met with other cartoonists Ub Iwerks while working in the studio. Disney became interested in animation although he preferred to draw cartoons. He bought a book on animation and with the assistance of book he started his camera work, doing hand-drawn cel animation in his home. He opened his own animation business with the co-worker from Film Ad Co, Fred Harman.
They produced their first animation series Laugh-O-Grams for their client Newman Theater. The success of the animation series inspired Disney to open Laugh-O-Grams Studio. The money which came from laugh-o-gram was not enough to keep the company solvent, so they started the production of Alice’s Wonderland based on Alice Adventures in Wonderland.
Expansion And Growth
The expansion and growth of Disneyland couldn’t prompt Disney to settle for what he had. Instead, he was always looking for opportunities. One such opportunity was to build a Disney theme park called “Disney World”. Disney World was announced on November 1965. Furthermore plans for theme parks, hotels, and model city on thousands of land purchased outside of Orlando, Florida.
After the death of Walt Disney on December 15, 1966, his brother Roy Disney took over the company. He first changed the name of Disney world to Walt Disney World in the memory of his brother. Walt Disney World opened for the public viewing on October 1, 1971. On December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a stroke.
Walt Disney Company Net Worth
Disney continued its progress in the 21st century also. The focus shifted from producing animation movies and cartoons to producing features films. Similarly, Disney also acquired a various company in the time period namely Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, Century Fox, etc. Disney revenue for the year was $59.434 billion in 2018. Started as an animation studio for cartoons in the film industry. Disney now makes big-budget movies such as Avengers Infinity War, Avengers series under the subsidiary marvel entertainment.
The diversified business of the company has helped the company to be relevant in the changing market space. The Walt Disney Company is the world’s largest independent media conglomerate in terms of revenue ahead of NBC Universal and Warner Media which are owned by telecom giants Comcast and AT&T respectively.
