Disney is most famous as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as a pioneer in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, of who Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history.
In 1927, Disney created an animation based on the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and distributed it through Universal Pictures which became an instant success with thanks to the artist and creator, Iwerks. As the Disney studio grew, Walt hired animators Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell and Fritz Freleng from Kansas City. Things started to look worse when Walt went to negotiate higher pay for the animators but got hit with the proposal by the owner of Universal Pictures, Charles Mintz, of paying Disney less for the animators fees and also that as most of the main animators including Harman, Ising, Maxwell and Freleng (not Iwerks as he refused to leave Disney) were under Universals contract, if Disney refused the terms proposed then Mintz would set up his own studio with those animators working for him. When Walt declined the terms proposed, he lost most of his animation staff as well as the trademark to Oswald which remained with Universal Pictures who continued to produce the animations as they we legally allowed to without Walt being there.
After 78 years of fighting, Disney got back the rights to the Oswald character in 2006 when the Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal.
After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him, which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City. Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney to make the character easier to animate, although Mickey's voice and personality were provided by Disney himself until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Iwerks designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." The first animated short to feature Mickey, Plane Crazy was a silent film like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound entitled Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie became an instant success, and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks.
Mickey Mouse is now recognised as Walt Disney's most famous animated character after his appearance in Steamboat Willie and is now one of the the main features of Disneyland, Florida.
From there Walt and the Disney productions went on to produce many more animations such as Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations as well as drawing up plans for theme parks based in Orlando, Florida named the Magic Kingdom and the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow (or EPCOT for short). After Walt's death in 1966, his brother Roy Disney insisted that the company name be changed to Walt Disney Productions in honor of his brother.
Steamboat Willie.
Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue, Disneyland Florida.
Lady and the Tramp animation sketches.
Lady and the Tramp animation sketches.
After Walt's death, many more films have been distributed through The Walt Disney Company including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Toy Story, Lilo an Stitch and Cinderella which have all been huge sellers and are more recently being reproduced on to DVD format for better quality.
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