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Walt Disney (Walter Elias Disney)[diz´nE] Pronunciation Key, 1901–66, American movie producer, pioneer in animated cartoons, b. Chicago. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago and began his career as a cartoonist in 1920. In 1928 Disney created the character Mickey Mouse in the silent film Plane Crazy. That same year Mickey also appeared in Steamboat Willie, a short that initiated the concept of making a separate cartoon for each animated movement. Instantly famous, the film was also Disney's first attempt to use sound (his own voice for Mickey). He also experimented with the use of music (The Skeleton Dance), the portrayal of speed (The Tortoise and the Hare), three-dimensional effects (The Old Mill), and the use of color.
Disney produced the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), which took three years to complete. Additional features included Pinocchio (1939), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). In Song of the South (1946), he merged live actors and animated figures. During World War II, Disney's studio produced cartoons for the armed services as training tools and morale builders.
Beginning with Treasure Island in 1951, Disney added live-action movies to his output, while still producing such animated classics as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). Thereafter, his studio produced several animal stories (e.g., Greyfriars Bobby, 1960), musical fantasies (e.g., Mary Poppins, 1964), and television programs. Disney and his productions received numerous Academy and other awards during his lifetime. After his death, the Disney studios remained active, diversified, and ultimately became enormously successful. In the early 1980s, they began producing films for adults.
Disneyland, a huge theme park in Anaheim, Calif., was opened by Disney in 1955. Disney's California Adventure, a second, smaller theme park in Anaheim, opened adjacent to Disneyland in 2001. An even bigger park, Walt Disney World, opened near Orlando, Fla., in 1971 as a theme park and resort, and Epcot Center, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom have since been added. Disneyland parks have also opened near Tokyo (1983) and in Marne-la-VallEe, near Paris (1992).
See biographies by D. D. Miller and P. Martin (1956) and B. Thomas (1958); R. Schickel, The Disney Version (1968); C. Finch, The Art of Walt Disney (1973); R. Merritt and J. B. Kaufman, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1994); H. A. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (1999); D. Smith and S. Clark, Disney: The First 100 Years (1999).
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