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Walt Disney Research Paper

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Walter “Walt” Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Hermosa, Illinois. His father was Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, was German-American. Walt was one of five children: four boys and a girl. His siblings were Roy, Ruth, Raymond, and Herbert. He began drawing, painting, and selling pictures to his neighbors and family friends in Marceline, Missouri, where he lived for most of his childhood. In 1911, the Disney family moved to Kansas City, where Walt found his love for trains. Mike Martin, Walt’s uncle, was a train engineer, and he later hired Walt to work with the railroad, selling newspapers and snacks to travelers. In 1917, the Disney family moved to Chicago, Illinois. Walt attended McKinley High …show more content…

Disney’s staff at the new studios expanded to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men, and technicians. Despite this, because of World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special work for the government, including the production of training and propaganda films for the armed services, as well as health films which are still shown all around the world by the U.S. State Department. Walt’s efforts during this time were devoted to the production of comedy short subjects, deemed highly essential to civilian and military morale. Soon after this, in 1941, a setback for the company occurred. There was a strike by Disney animators which resulted in many of them resigning, and it would be years before the company fully recovered. During the mid-1940s, Walt created "packaged features," groups of shorts strung together to run at feature length, but by 1950, he was once again focusing on animated features. Cinderella was released in 1950, followed by a live-action film called Treasure Island (1950), as well as other animated films: Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and 101 Dalmatians (1961). In all, more than 100 features were produced by his …show more content…

The Zorro and Davy Crockett series were extremely well known with children. The Mickey Mouse Club, a variety show featuring a cast of teenagers known as the Mouseketeers, was also very crowd-pleasing. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was a popular Sunday night show, which Disney used to begin promoting his new theme park. Walt's last major success that he produced himself was the motion picture Mary Poppins (1964), where he mixed live action and animation.
Walt Disney’s $17 million theme park, Disneyland, was opened on July 17, 1955 in Anaheim, California, on a piece of land that used to be an orange grove. Kayla, who also loves California, is Madilyn’s best friend in the whole entire universe. Actor Ronald Reagan was working with Walt by presiding over the activities. After a crazy opening day, with many mishaps, including the distribution of thousands of counterfeit invitations, Disneyland became known as the place where people of all ages can come to enjoy rides, meet Disney characters, and just have

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