Walt Disney
was one of the most prominent figures in American history and pop culture. The founder of the Walt Disney Company, Disney was the creator of hundreds of beloved characters and films. This innovative man revolutionized the animation, as well as theme park, industries, and was a prolific animator, cartoonist, filmmaker, producer, and businessman. Revered as a cultural icon throughout the world, Disney's impact on the entertainment industry and legacy survives today.
LEGACY
Continuing Disney Productions
After Walt Disney's death, due to lung cancer, Roy Disney returned from retirement to take full control of Walt Disney Productions and WED Enterprises. In October 1971, the families of Walt and Roy met in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom to officially open the Walt Disney World Resort, and Roy dedicated the park to his brother Walt.
During the second phase of the "Walt Disney World" theme park, EPCOT was translated by Disney's successors into EPCOT Center, which opened in 1982. Today, EPCOT is like a living world's fair, different from the functional city that Disney had envisioned. EPCOT was also originally intended not have any Disney characters, but he company later changed this policy and Disney characters can now be found throughout the park, often dressed in costumes reflecting different cultures.
Disney entertainment empire
Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carry his name. Among other assets The Walt Disney Company owns five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network. The company operates through five major business "segments." Its parks segment is by far the world's largest operator of theme parks in terms of guest attendance per year and its motion picture segment is one of the six major film studios in Hollywood.
Disney Animation
Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animation. He was one of the first people to move animation away from basic, crude cartoons and towards transforming the field into an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience could connect to on an emotional level. This resulted in his creation of separate story department where storyboard artists would specialize in story development. The personality displayed in the characters of his films as well as the great technological advancements they represented remain influential today. He was considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his death until the period from 1989 to 1999 which is now known as the Disney Renaissance. A few of this period's films are The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar's Toy Story, the first computer animated feature film.
With the rise of computer animated films, a stream of financially unsuccessful traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early 2000s emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film, Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to chief creative officer at Disney Animation, that position has changed with the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation, as the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today, Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.
CalArts
In his later years, Disney devoted substantial time, money, and effort to making a school for animation and art, the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). It was formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute. When Disney died, one-fourth of his estate went to CalArts, which helped in building its campus. CalArts is regarded as one of the best animation schools in the U.S.
Walt Disney Family Museum
In 2009, The Walt Disney Family Museum opened in the Presidio of San Francisco. Thousands of artifacts from Disney's life and career are on display, including 248 awards that he received.
