Walter Elias Disney

Biography (Official)/ Life Timeline

Walter Elias Disney was one of the biggest influences in the world of animation, as well as a contributor to this area.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 5th 1901, son of Elias and Flora Call Disney.

It was during his childhood where his love for art began to bloom, but his childhood wasn’t always sweet. It’s said that his father was a very strict man to Walter and his siblings, but he found an escape through drawing.

Throughout his childhood, his family relocated 3 times. In 1906 they moved to rural Marceline, until 1911 finding a new home in Kansas City, and finally moving to Chicago in 1917.

In Chicago Walter started focusing more in school and in the arts. He was able to multitask, by enrolling in McKinley High School and studying during the night at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. This was his routine for a whole year before enlisting in the armed service. This was a problem since in 1918 he was only 17, therefore not allowed to enter. He decided as a second plan to join the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps

It was until 1920 when he became interested in animation and began a business to screen cartoons called “Laugh-o-grams”. Due to popularity, Walt opened a studio, but later became bankrupt, leading to it’s closure in 1923.

Walter persisted and opened a new studio along with his brother Roy and Iwerk called Disney Brother’s Studio. For Disney it all went smoothly until 1928, when all creative designers (in exception of Iwerks) betrayed him for Universal Studios. They did not give up, and created a new character for the Laugh-O-Grams, a character that became a trademark for Disney: Mickey Mouse.

After that, it all went uphill. Using Mickey as the star in Steamboat Willie, full of sound and music, it became a hit, of course, voiced by Walt Disney himself.

In 1929 Silly Symphonies was released, a collection of musical shorts that featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Minnie Mouse. Another big hit was the cartoon short ‘The three little pigs’ in 1933, getting positive reviews.

An important first in his career was `Flowers and Trees`, featured in full color. The success was amazing, so much he was given an Academy Award. But there was a bigger first to come. In 1934 he began producing `Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs`, which would become the first animated feature film. It was released in 1938, the success led to great innovation, bringing a new era `The Golden Age of Animation`. Even though this was a success, it was until the 1950s when he focused again in feature films.

Throughout his whole career, he received four honorary Academy Awards, twenty-two Academy Awards and Seven Emmy Awards.

One of his biggest and most successful works was Disneyland, which took 5 years to complete, and finally opened July 17, 1955. Unfortunately, the opening day was a disaster, there was an excessive amount of people with forged tickets, a gas leak, rides not working, water and food shortage, among others. During his career he had some very important contributions to the world of animation, which included:

• The first synchronized sound cartoon – Steamboat Willie

• First full color cartoon - Flowers & Trees

• First animated feature - Snow White

• First television series created by a major movie producer (Walt Disney’s Disneyland) – Disneyland

o This was created to promote and finance Disneyland

• First theme park of it’s type– Disneyland

o A theme park based on stories and animation, and movies. It was the first of it’s type, making popular the idea.

The two Walt Disney´s

Many legends have arisen from the icon Walt Disney, to there being biographies published of his supposedly Spanish origins; of course, these biographies are unauthorized versions. The one that caught our eye is Marc Elliot´s Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince, where the legend´s revived in a more expansive and a much more contrived and convoluted form.

Elliot’s work has dozens of inconsistencies with the authorized versions of the biographies and even the real events, in account they play smoothly the role of being the story they want us to believe. Nevertheless, we still think its worth to learn about this point of view, so everyone can choose the tale that suits him or her best.

Walt Disney's "real" mother was a washerwoman named Isabelle Zamora (Ascensio) from Mojacar, Spain who became pregnant by a man from the same village, the already married Dr. José Guirao. Dr. Guirao, who passed away shortly after the child's birth, named his son after himself; Señora Zamora left Spain with the child and headed for the east coast of the United States soon afterwards, claims Eliot, "because she and Dr. Guirao were devout Catholics and wished to protect both their families." (Why a couple desirous of protecting their families from the scandal of an out of wedlock birth would draw attention to their adulterous affair by naming their child after its father remains unexplained.) Isabelle eventually made