SUCCESS BEGINS WITH A

DREAM

Figure 1: Walt Disney

It wasnt easy, but Walt believed in his dreams and did all his best to make
the world happy.

Walt Disney is a famous American artist, director, producer and creator of

a series of full-length animated films that won him worldwide fame. He is
a Doctor of Fine Arts, a winner of 7 Emmy Awards, 22 Academy Awards
(Oscars), and Cecil B. DeMille Award. Additionally, he was awarded the
highest civilian award of the U.S. government The Presidential Medal of
Freedom. Walt Disney is the co-founder of an entertainment
conglomerate, The Walt Disney Company, and creator of the worlds first
large amusement park, Disneyland. He and his team members created a
number of famous fictional characters such as Donald Duck, Mickey
Mouse, and Goofy.

It is believed that anyone in the United States of America can become a

millionaire or president. Those who wish to attain the goals is better to
start a career as an advertising agent, shoe shiner or courier. These
creative professions do not require specialized training, but wont let you
miss the successful event after which the fate will help you conquer the
well-being.

Walt Disney must have been familiar with the mythological stamp. By the
way, his success can be compared to the model of a typical American who
is self-made. In other words, the path to success Walt Disney began being
a newsboy.

Early Life

Elias Charles Disney and Flora Call Disney, Walt Disneys parents Walter
Elias Walt Disney was born on December 05, 1901 in Chicago, to a large
family of an Irish immigrant, Elias Charles Disney, and Flora Call Disney,
who was of German and English descent. His father, Elias Charles Disney,
was engaged in a small construction business, but his family was stricken
for finances. In 1878, Elias Charles Disney, moved from Huron County,
Ontario, Canada to the United States during the gold rush, seeking gold in
California before settling down to farm with his parents near Ellis, Kansas
until 1884. Elias Charles Disney and Flora Call got married on January 01,
1888 in Acron, Florida. In 1890, they moved to Chicago, Illinois, a
hometown of Elias brother Robert, who financially supported Elias for

Figure 2 Elias Charles Disney and Flora Call Disney, Walt Disneys parents.
most of Walters childhood. In 1906, Elias and Flora Disney set off to
Marceline, Missouri, where his elder brother Roy had recently bought
farmland.
Elias struggled at work, and when he came home, he took out his anger
on his children and wife. Walter Disney had a younger sister, Ruth Disney,
and elder brothers, Herbert Disney, Ray Disney, Roy O. Disney, the latter
would co-found The Walt Disney Company together with Walt Disney. His
elder brothers, Herbert and Ray, ran away from home in 1906 because
they had been fed up with the endless work and little money to spend.

In the fall of 1909, Walt and his sister, Ruth, enrolled at the new Park
School of Marceline. The Disney family stayed in Marceline for four years.
On November 28, 1910, they had to sell their farm and in 1911, the family
decided to move to Kansas City following the example of many neighbors
who were migrating across the America without the end. In Kansas City,
Walt and Ruth enrolled at the Benton Grammar School. There he met
Walter Pfeiffer, who introduced Walt vaudeville and motion pictures. But to
learn the art of drawing Walt Disney had only about a year and the first
thing he did was to start to attend Saturday courses at Kansas City Art
Institute.

On July 01, 1911, his father acquired a newspaper delivery route for The
Kansas City Star. Walt and Roy were asked to distribute newspapers and
advertisements of the fathers firm. They delivered the morning
newspaper Kansas City Times to about 700 readers. Additionally, they had
to distribute the evening and Sunday Star to over 600 readers. In any
weather, early morning or late at night, Walt Disney ran from Twenty-
Seventh Street to Thirty-First Street, and from Prospect Avenue to Indiana
Avenue in his worn-out shoes, hurrying to deliver the newspapers on time.
Elias always took away all the money his son earned. But Walt did not
complain and once finding a new subscriber, he concealed the received
money from his father. Additionally, the boy bought newspapers directly in
editorial and thus got his little income that he spent on favourite sweets
that were forbidden at home. Thus, Walter began his career as an
entrepreneur.

Teenage Years

In 1917, Elias became a shareholder of O-Zell jelly factory in Chicago.

Therefore, he moved his family back to the city. In the fall the same year,
Walter Disney started to attend McKinley High School as a freshman. Also,
he attended night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts under the
guidance of Louis Frederick Grell (18871960), an American figure
composition and portrait artist. Later he started drawing patriotic topics
for the school newspaper on World War I.
 In the fall of 1918, Walter
attempted to be enlisted in the
army forces to participate in
World War I, following the
example of his brother Roy,
whom he admired much.
Having been refused because
of being under-aged, he
volunteered for the Red Cross
and was sent to France, where
he had been working for a year
as an ambulance driver. This
car became a local landmark,
as it was decorated with an
amusing cartoonish character
of the future animator.

Walt Disney drew a cartoonish

character on the ambulance car that he used to drove while working as an
ambulance driver.

After returning home, Walt Disney started working for his fathers
company, O-Zell factory, as an assistant and then as a night watchman.
The latter particularly suited him because it gave him an opportunity to
study drawing to which he was drawn from an early age. He notably
succeeded in drawing of animals sketches. He had even earned a nickel
icon for one of his drawings at the age of seven.

The dream to become a professional artist prevailed and in 1919, Walt

relocated to Kansas City to start his career as an artist. However, despite
having the talent of a graphic designer, he lacked some bitterness and
anger that were so necessary to create satirical newspaper cartoons.
Therefore, an attempt to settle in the art department of a provincial
newspaper in Kansas City was not successful.

Finally, fate smiled at Walt Disney. His brother, Roy, helped him to find a
temporary job of an auxiliary worker through a bank colleague, he had
been working with, at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio. Walt Disney
temporarily was creating advertisements for newspapers, magazines, and
movie theaters for a very modest salary of $50 per month. Unfortunately,
the job was temporary and by the end of Christmas rush, the young artist
was unemployed again. Despite working at the studio for a short period,
he gained an experience of how the advertising business functioned inside
and decided to try his hand at it. At the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, Walt
Disney got acquainted with Ubbe Eert Ub Iwerks, a cartoonist, with
whom he started running their own commercial business.

Beginning of Animation Career

In January 1920, Walt Disney and Ubbe Iwerks established a short-lived
company called, Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Disneys first client
was a publisher, Restaurant News, that issued leaflets. He persuaded the
company that the marginally profitable newspaper could be improved by
adding an illustrated advertising application to it. Being conquered by the
spell of Disney, the publisher let him and his friend, Ubbe Iwerks, use an
available room (actually a bathroom) as a studio. Walt purchased the
necessary equipment on his extra savings in the amount of $250. Then he
launched a broad expansion of printing and publishing houses.

Thanks to the perseverance of Walt their company was successfully

developed. Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists seemed to have good
prospects at the beginning. The partners moved into a new office, and
both of them had enough money to visit the local cinema, where they
were particularly surprised by cartoons. One day, Walt was reading a local
newspaper and saw a job advertisement of an animator at the Kansas City
Film Ad Company. Walt Disney temporarily left their business to earn some
money at that company. After seeing the illustrations of Disney, the
company director offered him $40 per week. The work and payment were
quite attractive. Walt could not resist and agreed. In February 1920, he left
the established business, leaving the reins to Ubbe Iwerks. At the Kansas
City Film Ad Company, Walter Disney designed advertisements based on
cutout animation. He became interested in animation technique and
decided to be an animator.

To enrich his knowledge, Disney read Edwin G. Lutzs book Animated

Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development. He learned
that celluloid animation to be much reliable technique than the cutout
animation. Disney quickly became a star among the animators. The
original work carried out in his spare time became the basis for creating
his company Laugh-O-Gram Studio.

Laugh-O-Gram Studio

On May 18, 1922, Walt Disney established Laugh-O-Gram Studio and hired
his Kansas City Film Ad Company teammate, Fred Harman (February 09,
1902 January 02, 1982). Also, he invited to join his company his close
friend Ubbe Iwerks, Fred Harmans brother, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising.
 Figure 3: Laugh-O-Gram Studio Building, the first animation studio of Walt Disney

On the capital of $15,000, earned from the sale of shares to several

townspeople, Walt created two short animated films based on fairy tales,
which were spread throughout the country. But despite the fact that both
films were very popular, Disney did not receive any payment from his
sale-agents. Having achieved recognition, he nevertheless went bankrupt.
Walt managed to protect from sale only a camera and a copy of his most
original work, Alice in Wonderland. Became loaded with debt, pursued by
creditors, Walt fell into extreme poverty: he had no money for clothes or
food.

Therefore, when a dentist, Dr. Thomas B. McCrum, asked Walt Disney to

make a little promotional video about dental health and invited Walt to his
house to discuss the deal, Walt Disney had to decline his offer shyly as he
had no shoes to walk out. He explained to him that he had left them with
the cobbler at the repair shop who would not let him have them back until
Walt paid him for the work a dollar and a half. Soon, Dr. Thomas B.
McCrum visited Laugh-O-Gram Studio, not only bringing $1.5 for the shoes
but also $500 to produce a promotional video about dental health. The
money he had earned from shooting the video for the dentist was not
enough to pay off his debts. However, biographers believe that this
unexpected work gave Walt Disney the second wind. Disney released a
ten minute, 32-second advertising film about Tommy Tuckers Tooth and
Dr. McCrum was completely satisfied. A few years later, Dr. McCrum made
another order, and Walt Disney produced for his company another
advertising video called, Clara Cleans Her Teeth, combining animation
and live action again.

Hollywood and Alice Comedies

Accumulating a little money from the video project and advertising

photography for local newspapers, Disney decided to leave Kansas City
and move to Hollywood, California to set up a cartoon studio. Before
setting off to Hollywood, Walt finished working on the live-
action/animation Alices Wonderland and took the final reel with himself.
In July 1923, he arrived in Hollywood that had already become the center
of the world cinema. Roy (Walts brother) was already in California. The
first days Walt walked around pavilions and film sets from morning till
night, carefully studying the process of making movies. He managed to
make his real career here, despite having $40 in his pocket and only one
shirt in his suitcase.

After several attempts, Walt Disney was convinced of the futility of

exploring the studios hoping to find a job. If there is no work, he said to
himself I have to do something on my own! Walt and Roy rent a small
garage from their Uncle Robert Disney. Walt invited Virginia Davis, an
American child actor, who was already a live-action star of Alices
Wonderland. They hired two employees who ink and painted the celluloid.
Walt rented a shabby shooting camera and installed it in the garage. Roy
operated the camera, and Disney was responsible for animation. On
October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded Disney
Brothers Cartoon Studio.

Walt and Roy were filming Alice Comedies and were looking for a
distributor. They managed to find one and signed a contract with Margaret
J. Winker, a New York cartoon distributor, and agreed to deliver 12 Alice
Comedies series. On December 26, 1923, they produced the first comedy
series, Alices Day at Sea, and received $1,500 for it.

Walt enthusiastically started working on live-action/animation, Alice in

Wonderland. In February 1924, they relocated to a new office located in a
former real estate agency at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. Walt hired the first
animator, Rollin Hamilton, and invited his old friend, Ubbe Iwerks, and his
family to relocate to California to join The Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio.
His key focus became the film scenarios, so he delegated primary
responsibilities of animation to Ubbe Iwerks. That was the end of Walts
career as an animator.
 Figure 4: The new series, Alice Comedies, proved reasonably successful

In December 1924, Walt Disney hired Hugh Harman and Rudolf Rudy
Carl Ising (who later would establish Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer animation studios). Walt personally hired an inker, Lillian Bounds.
On July 13, 1925, Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds got married.
 Figure 5: Walt Disney and Lillian
Bounds after the wedding
ceremony, July 13, 1925

Soon, Virginia Davis no

longer played Alice.
Therefore, they invited
both Dawn ODay and
Margie Gay to play the
role. However, the
series Alice Comedies
lost popularity and by
1927 ended. The
primary focus of the
series was done more
on the animated
characters (Julius the
Cat) than on the live-
action, Alice, that is why Alice Comedies lost their popularity among the
audience.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

The story of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was not smooth for Walt Disney. In
1926, the Walt Disney Studio received an order from a producer, Charles
Mintz, to develop an animated character and all animated cartoon series
for Universal Pictures. Ubbe Iwerks created and drew the Oswald Rabbit. In
total, they produced twenty-six animated Oswald Rabbits features. The
project was very successful: it became quite popular and highly
demanded.
Figure 6: In 2006, the Walt Disney Company purchased the rights to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
from NBC Universal.

However, in February 1928, when Walt Disney flew to New York to discuss
a higher fee to produce the Oswald Rabbit cartoon series, Charles Mintz
offered Disney to cut expenses by 20 percent and proposed to reduce the
fee. Walt Disney could not agree to such conditions and declined Mintzs
requirement.

Walt Disneys hands were tied because the Oswald Rabbit trademark
belonged to Universal Pictures and such animators as Friz Freleng, Carman
Maxwell, Hugh Harman, and Rudy Ising were performing under the terms
of the contracts signed with Universal Pictures.

Declining to agree on reductions, most of their animators were hired away

except Iwerks, who later would help Disney to create a new character,
Mickey Mouse, that would become a triumph for Walt Disney and his
studio.

Mickey Mouse

After losing the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney was
understandably disappointed. In the spring of 1928, Walt Disney asked Ub
Iwerks to develop a new character. Ubbe tried many sketches of animals
including dogs, cats, a female cow, a male horse, a male frog; however,
Walt Disney did not like none of the ideas. Mickey Mouse inspired the
team from a tame mouse that had been drawn by Hugh Harman at Laugh-
O-Gram Studio yet in 1925. Therefore, Ub started working on improving
the original sketches of Mickey Mouse.
 Figure 7: Ubbe Iwerks, the creator of Mickey Mouse.

It is interesting to know that the original name of the character

was Mortimer Mouse before his wife, Lillian Disney, convinced
him to change it to Mickey Mouse. Thus, Ub Iwerks animated
Mickey Mouse, and Walt Disney gave it a soul being the Mickeys
voice until 1947.

On May 15, 1928, the Disney team first featured Mickey Mouse in a test
screening of a short cartoon, Plane Crazy. However, the audience was not
impressed by the new character. Walt gave another try and featured the
Mickey in another short cartoon, The Gallopin Gaucho. Unable to find a
distributor the cartoon was not released either.

However, Walt Disney did not give up and on November 18, 1928, Mickey
appeared in Steamboat Willie, a short animated film with sound co-
directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. This time, Walt managed to find a
distributor. Pat Powers (1870 1948), an entrepreneur involved in the
movie and animation industry, became Steamboat Willie distributor and
sold Disney Cinephone sound system that allowed to release Steamboat
Willie with soundtracks that led Walt Disney to success. Furthermore, The
Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho were re-released with soundtracks and
all subsequent Mickey Mouse animated cartoons were released with
soundtracks as well.
Figure 8: Mickey Mouse appearance in Steamboat Willie (1928). The running time of the short film
was 7 minutes 42 seconds.

Silly Symphonies

Followed in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of 75 animated

short films called, Silly Symphony, had been released by Walt Disney team
from 1929 to 1939.

In 1930, Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute Silly Symphony series. By

1932, Mickey Mouse had become a favorite cartoon character. Silly
Symphony also performed well, but it just needed that extra added touch.
The same year Disney noticed an increase of competition. One of their
main competitors was Max Fleischer (July 19, 1883 September 11,
1972), a Polish Jewish American animator, who created an animated
character, Betty Boop. It was considered as the most famous sex symbols
of animation. On April 13, 1931, Columbia Pictures suspended the
distribution of Walt Disneys films and was replaced by United Artists.
By the end of 1932, an
American scientist and
engineer, Herbert Thomas
Kalmus (November 9, 1881
July 11, 1963), completed his
first three-strip Technicolor
camera. He met with Walt
Disney and proposed him to
re-release the black and white
Flowers and Trees through
Technicolor camera. In 1932,
The colored Flowers and Trees
brought Walt Disney
remarkable success and the
first Academy Award (Oscar)
for Best Short Subject:
Cartoons. After releasing
Flowers and Trees
illustrated in color, all next
Silly Symphony series were
illustrated in color as well.

On May 27, 1933, following

the success of Silly Symphony,
Disney released another
animated short film, The
Three Little Pigs, directed
by Burt Gillett. The animated
film was the hit for many
months in theaters. The Walt
Disney Productions invested
$22,000 in it and grossed
$250,000. It was the second
animated short film that
received Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1934.

Three Little Pigs animated film gained popularity thanks to the strength
and wisdom of its story. It led Walt Disney to open a Story Department
that was responsible for story development and scenario.

In 1935, when Disney production was rapidly growing, he announced a

competitive recruitment contest for artists. The company received 6,000
applications and eliminated most candidates during the preview of their
submitted drawings. As a result of hard work, Walt Disney managed to
select 30 potential employees, and only 10 of them were able to handle
their duties at the studio. Since there were few animators with
professional skills, Walt Disney had to educate them himself.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The turning point that played a significant role not only in the animation
industry but also in business was the creation of the worlds first full-
length animated cartoon called, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made
in Technicolor. When Roy Disney estimated the expected cost of the film
he shuddered with horror it was a half- million dollar forecast. This was
almost double cost of the entire annual production of the studio. Walt and
Roy could not afford to shoot a full-length film with live actors, extras,
expedition and built scenery. To obtain the funding they turned for help to
loan officers. To persuade them to believe in the success of Snow White,
Walt Disney had to show them a rough draft of the motion picture. Loan
officers believed in Disney, and after three years of work on the film it was
finally released under the distribution agreement with RKO Radio Pictures.
The total budget spend amounted to $1,488,423. On December 21, 1937,
the animated musical fantasy film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater
and the audience highly admired it. Snow White brought them a profit of
$8 million dollars (in todays money $132 million). The resulting wealth
was not accidental or unexpected. Walt Disney had been working very
hard to reach this goal. He would have reached it one way or another.
Maybe this would have required many years more. However, Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs made Walt Disney a millionaire immediately.
 Figure 9: Walt Disney holds an album with sketches of dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs

Walt Disney earned a great fortune on film production, but all financial
matters were secondary for him, whatever benefits they could bring. Most
of his savings, he put on the protection of his artistic interests. He had no
lust for money, and he could have much more of it if he wanted to. Disney
considered money as a working tool. It would be wrong to say that Disney
struggled for some lofty artistic ideals. However, it was clear that he did
not want to depend on anyone else. The Disney art can be regarded
differently, but he often put it above the desire to make money.
World War II and Postwar Period

In 1940, the Walt Disney Studios released full-length features Pinocchio,

an American animated musical fantasy film, and continued to work on
Fantasia (1940), Bambi (1942), Peter Pen (1953). The shorts teammates
were working on Donald Duck, Goofy, Mickey Mouse, and Pluto animated
short series.

When the United States entered World War II, most of the Disney studios
facilities were involved in cooperation with the US Army and Navy Bureau
of Aeronautics. The Disney team was responsible for creating training and
instruction motion pictures such as Victory Through Air Power, Aircraft
Carrier Landing Signals and animated propaganda short film, Der
Fuehrers Face, featuring Donald Duck in a nightmare working at a factory
in Nazi Germany in horrible conditions. The latter one won the Academy
Award for Best Animated Short Film on March 04, 1943.

In a postwar period, the Walt Disney Studio started working on Cinderella

(1950), that became the most popular full-length animated film since
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Theme Park: Disneyland

Along with the complex real world, an imaginary world of fairy tales were
living in the Walt Disneys mind. Being tired of the long-term film
production industry, he found himself at the mercy of a new idea in
building a theme park, which he called, Disneyland.

The idea of Disneyland came into Walt Disneys mind when he was
attending Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters Diane and
Sharon. To get inspiration, he started to visit other play parks including
Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Childrens Fairyland in the United States, and
Efteling in the Netherlands.

However, the story of its creation from concept to realization was not easy.
Investors were sympathetically sighing talking about hard times and
advised Walt to go somewhere to relax when Disney was trying to make
them interested in his new venture. His brother, Roy, did not support him
either. He believed that the project would not bring revenue.

In a desperate attempt to get funding for the project, Disney turned for
help to the television industry. Although the industry of show business was
considered almost a pariah at that time, Disney agreed to cooperate with
the joint venture, ABC. In exchange for the investments in the amount of
$5 million, Disney agreed to broadcast Mickey Mouse short-film series on
television.
Walt Disney purchased 160 acres (65 ha) of land in Anaheim, California.
The construction of Disneyland started on July 16, 1954, with the total
investment spend of $17 million (in todays money $150 million). The
opening day was held on Sunday, July 17, 1955. Since then everything
went differently for ABC as well as for Walt Disney Company and the
American public.

Figure 10: An aerial view over the park in Anaheim, California in the late 1950s.

Disneyland quickly became an American landmark. As of 2014, 16.77

million people visited Disneyland in Anaheim. Therefore, another concept
of the artist that seemed just a fantasy turned into a big business venture.
The Walt Disney Company has four Disneyland parks in California, Tokyo,
Hong Kong and Paris, and one Walt Disney World in Ontario, Florida. Also,
the entertainment conglomerate has in its assets 320 Disney stores
located throughout the world, hockey and baseball teams, a number of
newspapers and magazines and diversified television networks.

Family

Lillians first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She became pregnant again

and on December 18, 1933, gave a birth to daughter Diane Marie Disney.
Later, the parents adopted Sharon Mae Disney (December 31, 1936
February 16, 1993) due to Lillians birth complications.
At the age of 20, Diane married Ron Miller. They had seven children:
Christopher, Joanna, Tamara, Jennifer, Walter, Ronald, and Patrick. The
Miller family founded a winery in California called Silverado Vineyards.
Later, Diane Disney Miller became the co-founder of The Walt Disney
Family Museum. She died on November 19, 2013.

Sharon Mae Disney was born December 31, 1936 in Los Angeles,
California. On May 10, 1959, she married Robert Brown. Their marriage
lasted until Roberts death in 1967. They had one child. In 1969,
Sharon Disney and William Lund got married. They had two children, but
in 1975, they got divorced.

Figure 11: This photo captured Walt Disney, his wife (standing between two daughters) their
daughters, Diane (right) and Sharon (left), June 1949.

Walt Disney not only had a strong creative will but also was an influential
leader and organizer. He paid great attention to recruitment and
organization processes. The working process of the Disney Studio was as
perfect and accurate as his drawings and cartoons. He always required
from the animators and artists to work according to high professional
standards. However to hire a sufficient number of experts was tough.
 All his life Walt Disney considered himself as a good manager. However,
many workers were disgruntled by the system of management. They
believed that they had made a significant contribution to the filmmaking
and demanded the recognition of copyrights while Walt thought the
original authorship belonged to the Walt Disney Company. The animators
strike broke out at the studio. The U.S. Department of State helped to
defuse the situation by organizing a business trip for Disney in South
America. The conflict gradually subsided, but the question was not
resolved until the end.

The path traversed by Disney is the road in a length of forty years, during
of which he became a major industrialist in the field of cinema and
television. Here is what one might achieve endowed with talent,
perseverance, imagination and determination. Walt Disney made the
general public love the animation. We identify the emergence of his
cartoon characters on the screen with the joy of life. And for that, he
deserves the greatest glory.

Walt Disney died at 9:30am on December 15, 1966, when he was 65. The
cause of death was acute circulatory collapse. However, the work he had
started, is continuing to live and grow steadily till now. The revenue of the
Walt Disney Company in the fiscal year 2015 reached $52.46 billion with
its media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer
products, and interactive.

We hope you have enjoyed reading Walt Disney biography, his success
story and history of the Walt Disney Company, and we hope its inspired
you to new discoveries.

Walt Disney's Failures Could Inspire Entrepreneurs

The following are the 10 setbacks that Walt Disney had, some were
financial nightmares that put him millions of dollars in the red:

1. Walt formed his first animation company in Kansas City in 1921. He made
a deal with a distribution company in New York, in which he would ship
them his cartoons and get paid six months down the road. He was forced
to dissolve his company and at one point could not pay his rent and was
surviving by eating dog food.

2. Walt created a mildly successful cartoon character in 1926 called Oswald

the Rabbit. When he tried to negotiate with his distributor, Universal
Studios, for better rates for each cartoon, he was informed that Universal
had obtained ownership of the Oswald character and they had hired
Disney's artists out from under him.
3. When Walt tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927 he
was told that the idea would never work-- a giant mouse on the screen
would terrify women.

4. The Three Little Pigs was rejected by distributors in 1933 because it only
had four characters, it was felt at that time that cartoons should have as
many figures on the screen as possible. It later became very successful
and played at one theater so long that the poster outside featured the
pigs with long white beards.

5. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was sneak previewed to college
students in 1937 who left halfway during the film causing Disney great
despair. It turned out the students had to leave early because of dorm
curfew.

6. Pinocchio in 1940 became extra expensive because Walt shut down the
production to make the puppet more sympathetic than the lying juvenile
delinquent as presented in the original Carlo Collodi story. He also
resurrected a minor character, an unnamed cricket who tried to tell
Pinocchio the difference between right and wrong until the puppet killed
him with the mallet. Excited by the development of Jiminy Cricket plus the
revamped, misguided rather than rotten Pinocchio, Walt poured extra
money into the film's special effects and it ended up losing a million
dollars in it's first release.

7. For the premiere of Pinocchio Walt hired 11 midgets, dressed them up like
the little puppet and put them on top of Radio City Music Hall in New York
with a full day's supply of food and wine. The idea was they would wave
hello to the little children entering into the theater. By the middle of the
hot afternoon, there were 11 drunken naked midgets running around the
top of the marquee, screaming obscenities at the crowd below. The most
embarrassed people were the police who had to climb up ladders and take
the little fellows off in pillowcases.

8. Walt never lived to see Fantasia become a success. 1940 audiences were
put off by it's lack of a story. Also the final scene, The Night On Bald
Mountain sequence with the devil damning the souls of the dead, was
considered unfit for children.
9. In 1942, Walt was in attendance for the premiere of Bambi. In the
dramatic scene where Bambi's mother died, Bambi was shown wandering
through the meadow shouting," Mother! Where are you, Mother?" A
teenage girl seated in the balcony shouted out, " Here I am Bambi!" The
audience broke into laughter except for the black-faced Walt who
concluded correctly that war-time was not the best time to release a film
about the love-life of a deer.

10. The sentimental Pollyanna in 1960 made Walt cry at the studio
screening but failed at the box office. Walt concluded that the title was off-
putting for young boys.

Walt was human, he suffered through many fits of anger and

depression through his many trials. Yet he learned from
each setback, and continued to take even bigger risks which
combined with the wisdom that experiencing failure can
provide, led to fabulous financial rewards.

The End