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.
1937-1941: Golden Age of Animation
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"Disney's Folly": Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
In 1934 when Disney began planning to make an animated feature-length adaptation of Snow White, the film industry was sure this project would destroy the Disney Studio and dubbed the project "Disney's Folly". People thought Disney was crazy, but he continued plans for the feature, as experimented in realistic human animation, distinctive character animation, special effects, and the use of specialized processes and machines such as the multiplane camera.
Intense development and training was used to increase quality at the studio and to ensure that the feature film would match Disney's quality expectations. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, went into production from 1934 until mid-1937 when the studio ran out of money, and had to show a rough cut of the motion picture to loan officers to gain funding. The film premiered at the on December 21, 1937 and was praised by the audience. Snow White, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, was released in February 1938. The film became the most successful motion picture of the year and earned over $8 million on its initial release, the equivalent of a whopping $134,033,100 today.
Subsequent Successes
Following the success of Snow White, for which Disney received one full-size and seven miniature Oscar statuettes, he was able to build a new campus for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, which opened for business on December 24, 1939. Snow White began an era that would later be known as the 'Golden Age of Animation' for the studio. Feature animation staff, having just completed Pinocchio, continued work on Fantasia and Bambi as well as the early production stages of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Wind in the Willows. The shorts staff carried on working on the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto cartoon series. Animator Fred Moore had redesigned Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s after Donald Duck overtook him in popularity among theater audiences.
Pinocchio and Fantasia followed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the movie theaters in 1940, but both proved financial disappointments.Dumbo was then planned as an income generator, but during production most of the animation staffwent on strike, permanently straining relations between Disney and his artists.
1941-1945: World War II Era
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Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the US entered World War II. The U.S. Militar contracted Disney Studio facilities where the staff created training and instruction films for the military, and home-front morale-boosting shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face, which won an Academy Award. Military films did not generate money, though, and as the feature film Bambi did underwhelmingly on its release in April 1942, Disney successfully re-issued Snow White in 1944. In 1945, The Three Caballeros was the last animated feature released by the studio during the war.
In 1941, the U.S. State Department sent Disney and a group of animators to South America as part of its Good Neighbor policy, at the same time guaranteeing financing for the resulting movie, Saludos Amigos. Disney was also asked by the US Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make an educational film about the Amazon Basin, which resulted in the 1944 animated short, The Amazon Awakens.
Disney took up the work of making insignia for the soldiers as well. They were used to not only bring humor to military units but also be a way to boost morale. All of the designs were created free-of-charge, as Disney felt he "owed it to them."
1945-1955: Post-War Period
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By the late 1940s, the studio had recovered enough to continue production on the full-length features Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which had been shelved during the war years. Work also began on Cinderella, which became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1948 the studio initiated a series of live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures. Despite its resounding success with feature films, the studio's animation shorts were no longer as popular as they once were, with people paying more attention to Warner Bros. and their animation star Bugs Bunny. However, while Bugs Bunny's popularity rose in the 1940s, so did Donald Duck's, a character who would replace Mickey Mouse as Disney's star character by 1949.
Meanwhile, Disney studios created inexpensive package films, containing collections of cartoon shorts, and issued them to theaters during this period. These included Make Mine Music (1946), Melody Time (1948), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Disney also ventured into full-length dramatic films that mixed live action and animated scenes, including Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart.
During the mid-1950s, Disney produced educational films on the space program in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun: Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957. Man in Space was nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject Academy Award in 1956.
Disney and the Second Red Scare
Disney was a founding member of the anti-communist group Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare,Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he branded Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, former animators and labor union organizers as Communist agitators. All three men denied the allegations. Disney also accused the Screen Cartoonists Guild of being a Communist front, and charged that the 1941 strike was part of an organized Communist effort to gain influence in Hollywood. On January 12, 1955, Disney was approved from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an official SAC (special agent in charge). The title was used in-house by the Bureau for a trusted person they could contact for information or further assistance. Memos indicate that he remained a source of information to his death.
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