Walt Disney was an American artist, a film producer,
and founder of the entertainment conglomerate the Disney Company.
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois.
As he moved around the Midwestern United States with his family,
Walt discovered an interest in art.
By the time he entered high school, he had already sought out a correspondence course
and begun to study cartooning.
In 1922 Walt Disney and the animator Ub Iwerks opened an independent art studio
creating short advertisements and comedic sketches.
Though the venture soon shut down, Disney, his brother Roy, and Iwerks
started again in California with a new studio creating animated films.
From that studio came the idea of a new character...who would later become the iconic
Disney Company spokesman Mickey Mouse.
In 1934 Disney began work on his studio's first feature-length animated film:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the first-ever projects
to prove animation's capacity for long-form narrative.
Snow White was quickly followed by Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi,
and Fantasia--and the opening of a new studio in Burbank to keep up with the demand for new
releases.
After that small feat of changing the world of film forever,
Walt Disney moved to his next big project: Disneyland, a California theme
park that opened in 1955.
Though more Disney parks followed--in Florida and overseas--Disneyland was the only one
created entirely under the supervision of Walt Disney himself.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, in Los Angeles, California,
about a month after undergoing surgery for lung cancer.
By the end of the 20th century, his company would
be one of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates
and regularly rank among the top 50 companies in America.