-
The Creater
Walt Disney began his career in animation with the Kansas City Film Ad Company in Missouri in 1920. In 1922 Disney and his friend Ub Iwerks, a gifted animator, founded the Laugh-O-gram Films studio in Kansas City and began producing a series of cartoons based on fables and fairy tales -
Period: to
History of Motion Pictures
-
Alice in Cartoonland
In 1923 Disney produced the short subject Alice in Cartoonland, a film combining both live action and animation that was intended to be the pilot film in a series. Within weeks of its completion, Disney filed for bankruptcy and left Kansas City to establish himself in Hollywood as a cinematographer. -
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
In 1927 Disney began his first series of fully animated films, featuring the character In 1927 Disney began his first series of fully animated films, featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. When his distributor appropriated the rights to the character, Disney altered Oswald’s appearance and created a new character that he named Mortimer Mouse; at the urging of his wife, Disney rechristened him Mickey Mouse. -
Steamboat Willie
.
Were produced before Disney employed the novelty of sound for the third Mickey production, Steamboat Willie (1928), which was the first Mickey cartoon released. The film was an immediate sensation and led to the studio’s dominance in the animated market for many years. -
The Cartoons
Throughout the 1930s the company, renamed Walt Disney Productions in 1929, produced cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse and his regular supporting players Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy, as well as the Silly Symphony series—semi abstract cartoons featuring animation set to classical music or to the music of Carl Stalling, the brilliant musician who scored many of the best Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons. -
The Silly Symphonies
The Silly Symphonies entry Flowers and Trees (1932) was the first cartoon produced in the three-color Technicolor process, as well as the first animated short subject to be honored with an Academy Award. The most popular of the Silly Symphonies Cartoons was The Three Little Pigs (1933), which earned another Oscar. -
The First Movie
The continuing success of the studio emboldened Disney to make his riskiest move in 1934, when he began production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Although not the first feature-length animated cartoon—that honor probably goes to Lotte Reiniger, revolutionized the industry and proved animation’s effectiveness as a vehicle for feature-length stories. Although this approach provoked the criticism that Disney discouraged experimentation , there is little question of its success -
Pinocchio
Pinocchio , which features complex characters rendered in painstakingly detailed full-figure animation, is perhaps Disney’s grandest achievement. -
Dumbo
Dumbo (1941) also achieved recognition as masterpiece by effectively employing the devices -
Bambi
Bambi (1942) also achieved recognition as masterpiece by effectively employing the devices Disney had first brought together in Pinocchio: music, comedy, pathos, adventure, and genuine horror. -
Cinderella
Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953) were considered fine efforts, but many felt they lacked the panache and dimension of the early ’40s features. -
Lady
The Lady and the Tramp (1955) was a return to form, but Disney’s attention was by then increasingly devoted to live-action features, television productions, and his new theme park, Disneyland, which opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California. It was also about then that Disney established the distribution company Buena Vista Productions in order to ensure complete control over his films and their marketing. -
Live-action films and later decline
Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961), and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1965), Mary Poppins (1964), and finally made Walt Disney World Resort. -
The News
In 2006 Disney purchased Pixar for $7.4 billion, and it acquired Marvel Entertainment. Marvel, which had just begun to accelerate its film-development schedule at the time of the purchase, produced a string of hits that culminated in The Avengers (2012), one of the top-grossing films of all time. The company also continued producing live-action remakes of its animated classics, including Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Cinderella (2015).
